Rush Limbaugh said this on his radio program yesterday (he's talking about what it means to live in a "free" country):
What is abundantly clear now is that our government, federal and state, no longer exist for the people. The reality now is the people exist for the government. Whether you like it that way or not is not the point. The point is the Rubicon has now been crossed. We all work in service to the government at all levels. That's how government sees it. That's how the president sees it; that's how senators see it. That's how state legislators see it and governors see it.Don't you just hate Rush Limbaugh?
Our income is not ours. Our property is not ours. Our work isn't ours. The government has first claim to all of it -- whether in the form of income, real property, guns, whatever. The government now claims the authority to both dictate and ban -- and there seem to be no avenues to stop this, and there's no opposition to it. The Republicans in Washington are rallying around failure at this point. Obama equals failure. The Republicans are rallying around it.
Now Republicans all across the country are even talking like the Democrats. "We must have a balanced approach. We must tax the rich. We must penalize those people who haven't paid their fair share. We must go get additional 'revenue' from those who have more than they need." Republicans and Democrats alike are now using this language, and what the language means is that our income isn't ours, our property isn't ours.
We exist for the government.
The government no longer exists for us.
It's the other way around.
I'm not "rich", but I don't hate the rich. I don't think they owe me anything. A "rich" man (or a richer man than I) has signed my paychecks since I started working full-time in 1978. In the five or six jobs I've had in my career, I worked for him, he paid me. We're even. Hell, one of my employers even paid me while I was sick in the hospital for six weeks, and my sick leave had run out, and I had burned off all my vacation. He said, "Don't worry about it. You just get better. We'll cover for you". (Thank you, Dale Peterson, wherever you are!)
Pay their fair share, my good right... left. These people give more to this country than Barack Obama could ever imagine. Are some of them jerks? Sure! Are some of them greedy pigs? Of course! That's the beauty of the free market. People acting in their own self interest promote prosperity, and do good for society without being told to. Without being forced by government. It happens automatically. It self-regulates, at least as well as government ever possibly could. Wealth redistributes itself, at least as evenly as government ever possibly could. Can't you see it? Go freedom!
The only jobs poor people create are gummint jobs. I worked for an eeee-vil corporation for 31.5 years: IBM. When I broke my back, I was off work for six months. I received my full salary during that time. This was a disability pay program. We didn't have a given number of "sick days". If you were sick, you didn't go to work. Amazingly, very few people abused that. I would have worked longer than I did, but my last six years, I had a butthead for a manager. I retired even though I loved my work. I just hated my job. The eeeee-vil corporation gives me a pension. I love rich people. I am one. I love eeee-vil corporations.
ReplyDelete"Rich" people have the same financial problems as the rest of us. It's just on a bigger scale.
ReplyDeleteBetween the end of WW2 and the mid-70s, productivity in the US increased by roughly 10-fold. During that same period, wages increased by roughly 10-fold. From the mid-70s to the present, productivity again increased by rougly 10-fold but wages only doubled. Why didn't wages keep pace with productivity? Lots of reasons but mostly because large corporations bribed politicians to change laws to enable them to keep a larger fraction of the profits. The rich got lots richer and the middle class has been bled dry. Read "Who stole the american dream" by Hendrick Smith for a more complete discussion of this. I certainly don't begrudge people like Steve Jobs for getting very rich for creating truely inovative products. However, I do think that people like Steve Jobs should be paying their fair share of taxes......and they haven't been. We need serious tax reform that starts with higher taxes on the rich and the elimination of massive tax breaks for large corporations.
ReplyDeleteAnd, just as I don't believe that the rich are evil, I don't believe that the government is evil either. Government does things that are ureful. My kid goes to a great public school with great teachers. Our tax dollars are used to create some pretty useful things, like the interstate highway system and the internet. Sure, the government is capable of wasting astonishing amounts of money and we can and should hold elected officials acocuntable for this waste.
I agree that government should not be fiddling with the economy, for the benefit of anybody. The free market would set wages and prices at whatever the buyers and sellers can agree on, and whatever supply and demand dictate.
DeleteThe "fair share" argument is an artificial artifact of governmental malpractice. If government would quit trying to pick winners and losers, and let the economy work as it should, the "fair share" would work itself out naturally. Perfectly? No. Nothing is ever perfect. Not even government. But I believe the economy can do a better job of distributing wealth than the government can.
As for taxes... thank God I'm not getting all the government I'm being taxed for. If government would perform only the roles that are specified in the enumerated powers of The Constitution (and whatever additional ones we agree are needed by amendment if we so choose), then taxation would be a simple matter of charging everyone for whatever benefits they derive from it. Things like military protection, the court system, etc., could be handled with a flat tax -- it could be a flat percentage of income. All the rest would come out of the private sector, and paid for at fair market value.
Oh, and one other thing: " because large corporations bribed politicians to change laws to enable them to keep a larger fraction of the profits"
DeleteAre you saying that a company's profits aren't theirs to keep? Why or why not? Every penny I earn is mine. It represents irreplaceable time from my life that it took to earn it. Taking it without my consent is tantamount to stealing that time from my life, i.e., fractional murder.
Corporations are nothing more than a free association (first amendment) of human beings, collectively working to earn a profit. Arrangements of officers, shareholders and employees are arrived at voluntarily, contractually. The profit is distributed accordingly. It's theirs. As I said, everyone should be taxed equally for constitutionally authorized government functions. Everything else is free will, fair market.