Maggie's Farm

I very much enjoyed Sarah's speech in Nevada which we posted yesterday.

Two things stood out for me: First, that women create as many businesses in America as men. I didn't know that. Bravo!

Second, her using the term "fines" for taxes on business success. That is wonderfully Reaganesque.

See comparisons with other countries. It's an eye-opener. Americans may talk Capitalism, but our Capitalism serves to stuff the ever-greedy maw of government. There isn't much room to become more redistributionist without truly disincentivizing effort, initiative, creativity, and job creation (see Cory Miller the Well-Driller).

Furthermore:

The OECD, the organization of western economies, says the U.S. already has the second most progressive tax system among its members, trailing only Ireland.

Maybe there might be other ways to spread the wealth besides the tax system.

Or maybe we're already doing that, too. Remember, no matter what we do, half the households in America will be below the median income.

Tigerhawk's anticipated total tax rate of 50% surely does approach the disincentivizing point, except for those who want to get really rich quick. Hence booming lottery sales and hedge funds, because achieving prosperity and security through slow, hard work and savings gets tough against the headwind of taxation.

Yes, I know the image is a cheap scare tactic but, honestly, I am a bit scared. A bit Halloween-scared. Not so much about Obama alone, but about the combination of Obama-Reid-Pelosi. Their view of America and Americans is quite different from mine. They have no faith in us, the people. 

Obama's "redistribution" Constitution. Calabrese in the WSJ

Most Presidents ignore the Constitution: "The government we have today is nothing the Founders could have imagined." Napolitano in the WSJ

Obama and redistribution at Volokh

A quote from this excellent excerpt - a fine essay in itself - (h/t, Vanderleun) from James Kalb's new book The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command:

"The tyranny of liberalism” seems a paradox. Liberals say that they favor freedom, reason, and the well-being of ordinary people. Many people consider them high-minded and fair to a fault, “too broadminded to take their own side in a quarrel,” too soft to govern effectively. Even the word “liberal” suggests “liberty.” How can such an outlook and the social order it promotes be tyrannical?

The answer is that wanting freedom is not the same as having it. Political single-mindedness leads to oppression, and a tyranny of freedom and equality is no less possible than one of virtue or religion. We cannot be forced to be free or made equal by command, but since the French Revolution the attempt has become all too common and the results have often been tyrannical.

Tyranny is not, of course, what liberals have intended. They want government to be based on equal freedom, which they see as the only possible goal of a just and rational public order. But the functioning of any form of political society is determined more by the logic of its principles than the intentions of its supporters. Liberals view themselves as idealistic and progressive, but such a self-image conceals dangers even if it is not wholly illusory. It leads liberals to ignore considerations, like human nature and fundamental social and religious traditions, that have normally been treated as limits on reform. Freedom and equality are abstract, open-ended, and ever-ramifying goals that can be taken to extremes. Liberals tend to view these goals as a simple matter of justice and rationality that prudential considerations may sometimes delay but no principle can legitimately override. In the absence of definite limiting principles, liberal demands become more and more far-reaching and the means used to advance them ever more comprehensive, detailed, and intrusive.

The incremental style of liberalism obscures the radicalism of what it eventually demands and enables it always to present itself as moderate. What is called progress—in effect, movement to the left—is thought normal in present-day society, so to stand in its way, let alone to try to reverse accepted changes, is thought radical and divisive. We have come to accept that what was inconceivable last week is mainstream today and altogether basic tomorrow. The result is that the past is increasingly discredited, deviancy is defined up or down, and it becomes incredible that, for instance, until 1969 high school gun-club members took their guns to school on New York City subways, and that in 1944 there were only forty-four homicides by gunshot in the entire city.

Read the whole essay, which very much reflects the Maggie's Farm view of things.

The press: "Yes, we're totally in the tank for Obama. So what?"

"So what?" ?

How long must we wait for the Dems to propose socialized legal care? It's only right, isn't it? How many folks are economically destroyed by legal bills? Or go without justice because they cannot afford legal help?

Universal legal representation is a right, not a luxury. Come on, Dems. Get on board, and help level the legal playing field!

As BD posted yesterday, it's sort of like feudalism, run by a "caring," "benevolent" political aristocracy on top of the heap. Scott at Powerline. 

You know, Panem et Circenses for the great mass of ignorant, feckless unwashed. Like me. It's truly heart-warming to know how much they care, and who can resist the loving, altruistic care of politicians?

What the Left always forgets, however, is that the State is totally dependent on us for its existence - on our wealth creation and wealth accumultation. The State does no work, produces no value, and pays no taxes: only free people can work that magic. Governments cannot do it, nor do they know how to do it. 

A quote from Malanga in City Journal:

Nothing could be more misguided than to renew this “tin-cup urbanism,” as some have called it. Starting in the late 1960s, mayors in struggling cities extended their palms for hundreds of billions of federal dollars that accomplished little good and often worsened the problems that they sought to fix. Beginning in the early nineties, however, a small group of reform-minded mayors—with New York’s Rudy Giuliani and Milwaukee’s John Norquist in the vanguard—jettisoned tin-cup urbanism and began developing their own bottom-up solutions to city problems. Their innovations made cities safer, put welfare recipients to work, and offered kids in failing school systems new choices, bringing about an incomplete, but very real, urban revival.

Yet this reform movement remains anathema to many liberal politicians, academics, and journalists, who have ignored or tried to downplay its achievements because it conflicts with their left-of-center views. The arrival on the scene of Obama, a former Chicago community activist and the first presidential nominee in recent memory to rise out of urban politics, has given these back-to-the-future voices their best chance in years to advance a liberal War on Poverty–style agenda. As the nation debates its future in the current presidential race, it’s crucial to remember what has worked to revive cities—and what hasn’t.

Whole thing here.

P.J. O'Rourke's 1988 Eat the Rich begins thus.

Out of print I guess, but readily obtainable if you never read this wise but highly entertaining treatise on basic economics.

Via Insty from Mankiw:

If there were no taxes, so t1=t2=t3=t4=0, then $1 earned today would yield my kids $28. That is simply the miracle of compounding.

Under the McCain plan, t1=.35, t2=.25, t3=.15, and t4=.15. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $4.81. That is, even under the low-tax McCain plan, my incentive to work is cut by 83 percent compared to the situation without taxes.

Under the Obama plan, t1=.43, t2=.35, t3=.2, and t4=.45. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $1.85. That is, Obama's proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to the McCain plan and by 93 percent compared to the no-tax scenario. In a sense, putting the various pieces of the tax system together, I would be facing a marginal tax rate of 93 percent. The bottom line: If you are one of those people out there trying to induce me to do some work for you, there is a good chance I will turn you down. And the likelihood will go up after President Obama puts his tax plan in place.

Is it possible that the Dems don't want folks to work hard?

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Who is greedy? New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore bankers who work 18 hrs/day, and the investors around the world who take the risks which make economies work and grow?

No. Those are folks with real and challenging jobs. I'll tell you who is really greedy: Politicians with their endless demands on my money, and the people whose votes they want to buy by making me pay their bills (after passing it through the governmental/political machine which always takes its own generous cut) and to give them the money I have earned through hard work and taking risks. That is real greed, and "Gimme yours" is the Dem agenda.

Anybody who wants an entitlement from somebody else's effort and risk and energy and creativity is, by definition, greedy. But Greed is Good, right? Once upon a time, it was a sin...but that's ancient history.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

- P. J. O'Rourke

In our "It's all about ME!" America, it's no surprise that reporters feel narcissistically ungratified by the idea of being observers. Maybe just writing and talking about what other people do makes them feel small and insignificant if they are inclined that way. Shucks, they want to be important too, like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. You know, they want to personally "make a difference," "save the world," and all that nice Miss America stuff. They probably also want chicks and dough, too, along with getting rid of land mines. Who doesn't?

Dang. A white spider keeps running across my keyboard and distracting me. Run away home, little guy. It's a Little Miss Muffet moment at Maggie's.

OK, he's gone. Now, to continue. Today, we have yet another confession from a political reporter at Newsweek. But he's not a reporter, he's a blogger getting paid to pretend to be a reporter. This sort of thing, which we have seen everywhere this election year, demeans the entire profession of reporting. In fact, it mocks the very illusion that it is a profession at all if my definition of a profession holds. This fellow is basically saying "I am neither capable of, nor interested in, being a devoted, ethical, and disinterested professional in my professed profession."

In real professions, you get tarred and feathered if you screw the pooch. A note pad does not a reporter make any more than a knife makes a surgeon. I want to say to these guys, who should have their hands full just trying to find and state the facts, "When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it."

Who pays taxes? From Spread Your Own Wealth Around at Powerline:

According to the most recent (2006) data released by the IRS, the top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 40 percent of all income taxes; the top 5 percent paid 60 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent paid virtually no income taxes (3 percent of all income taxes paid).

The personal income tax, the federal government's main source of revenue, is collected overwhelmingly from a relative handful of Americans. The large majority of all Americans pay little or no income tax.

Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," warns Aristotle.

We have turned into a two-class society: the shrinking paying class and the large receiving class. Disgruntlement ensues, because the paying class resents carrying everybody else's load, and the receiving class covers up their embarassment and shame about receiving with resentment, envy, and a trumped-up sense of entitlement: it is basic human psychology that the recipient always must resent their benefactor who, in politics, is their neighbor and compatriot.

The obvious political strategy is to increase the % that pay no taxes (or, under Obama's plan, get "refund" checks without paying taxes, aka welfare, aka vote-buying), while raising the numbers of government employees in any way you can. That's how you create a "grateful" population of spirit-crippled dependents, incentivized to work the system and to vote to their economic advantage. Obama's plan will take from the middle class and the small number of wealthy while bringing the number of non-taxpayers up to the magic number of 50%.

100 economists say it's a disastrous idea, and so do I. I believe that everybody should pay their dues so as to feel like a part of the country by contributing their sweat and to have a stake in it, but with 50% of people paying no taxes and getting checks instead, you'll never get a flat tax through. The receiving class would rebel.

The now-famous Joe the Plumber understands life better than any Dem politician, latte liberal, or academic, because he is in real life and he made it work.