Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Wednesday, November 18. 2009

Weds. morning links

Non-elites: Joe and Carrie


Report: FOX is fair



Top Ten Reasons Black America Fears Rush Limbaugh


Kossers are angry old white men?


Is Obama planning a $3 trillion income tax increase?


Barone: A Jacksonian sweep?


China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform. They own us now, don't they?


Al Gore, Ignoramus


Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records


From the Dean of the Harvard Med School:


...the majority of our representatives may congratulate themselves on reducing the number of uninsured, while quietly understanding this can only be the first step of a multiyear process to more drastically change the organization and funding of health care in America. I have met many people for whom this strategy is conscious and explicit.

    We should not be making public policy in such a crucial area by keeping the electorate ignorant of the actual road ahead.

McArdle: Deciphering The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Report


Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:55 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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The linked article includes this little gem: "(These CBO numbers assume no negative economic feedback impact from higher taxes.)"
What the hey? Tax rate increases from our current levels are nearly certain to reduce tax revenues rather than increase them. A contracting economy (or one that grows slowly) generates less economic activity. Pulling money out of the stream with higher tax rates virtually guarantees that the stream will lose force, resulting in lower activity and lower overall revenues. This is a sober fact, proven repeatedly, especially by states like Taxachusetts.
If the government needs more revenue, the right method is to release the chains on the economy. Lower tax rates, reduce regulatory burdens, get out of the way and the revenue stream will improve greatly. As a family can only get more revenue by earning it, so the government can only get more revenue by earning it with a growing economy.
His Hopeful Changeness and his coterie despise earned wealth so much that they ignore this crucial law of economics.
#1 Geoff on 2009-11-18 09:56 (Reply)
Geoff ... Most of the big government weenies couldn't hold a real job in our real universe. Like the egregious Michael Moore, who held one real blue-collar job for two weeks before he was 'let go' for not producing, they only work when they feel like it, and carefully ration what attention they give it. My two years living and working in D.C. only reinforced my prejudices about this.

The Brits, who are masters at caricaturing themselves, used to have a TV series called Yes, Minister, which explains this quite clearly.

I miss that show.

Marianne

Marianne
#2 Marianne Matthews on 2009-11-18 10:20 (Reply)
In my town, small businesses are hitting the dirt faster than my weekly walk-abouts can track. Lots of empty commercial with branch banks and cell phone companies surviving so far. Even Starbucks is cutting back (one on every three corners now).

Two weeks ago, a mid-sized company dismissed half its tech staff and informed employees they would have to call "consultants" in India for help, causing mayhem as it's taking three-times as long to solve the problem and, often, it's not solved at all. They still need the in-house techies who now are in short supply. Result: the sales staff can't do their job properly.

I don't see how this new infusion of stimulus money is going to help if it goes to "advisers" and community organizers. Thank you Goldman Sachs/Buffet for your $500K donation to another bureaucracy...counseling my eye.

These businesses need cold, hard cash in their pockets so they can pay for employees, rent/mortgages and raw materials, advertise/market their products and develop new customers. Most of the businesses showing profits are the ones that move money around from one place to another, not the ones who actually make or market something. Sad.
#3 jma on 2009-11-18 13:01 (Reply)
Capital is on strike until the government allows some possibility of a return on it.

The ditch digger with power equipment earns a lot more than the ditch digger with a shovel. The difference is capital.

Capital is extra money.

The rich are the ones with extra money.

That's trickle down, not dimes falling from the pockets of the rich.

It comes from the possibility of the hated rich making a profit.

Investment banks are middlemen, moving capital from where it is available to where it is needed, getting a return from knowing these things.

Kill them all off and you have ditch diggers with shovels, at best.
#4 rhhardin (Link) on 2009-11-18 18:06 (Reply)
CORRECTION: Goldman Sachs donation is $500 million, not $500 thousand per #3. Still a way-too-obvious PR move that will never make up for the damage done to the thousands who lost jobs, houses and their confidence in the American dream.
#5 jma on 2009-11-18 19:02 (Reply)

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