Obama

“Tax Cuts for the Rich”

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That’s the term the Left and the media use. Even conservative media people and some Republicans use it. It’s wrong.

It’s not the rich. It’s people who want to be rich. It’s people with high incomes. It’s people running small businesses as LLCs and Sub-S corps that get funneled into the same tax category with people making high salaries. These people are working like hell to use their limited capital as efficiently as possible, to get the highest possible return. The successful high-earners among them are some of the most creative and productive people in our society. They create the jobs. The best of their small companies eventually become large companies and create tremendous wealth for their founders, shareholders, employees, contractors, suppliers and customers — all of us.

The higher we set the rates at which we tax these highly productive people on their incomes and capital gains, the lower will be the returns they earn on their capital and therefore the less they will invest. The less they invest, the less they will create. The less they create, the less wealth there will be for all of us. Scrooge McDuck, sitting on piles of idle money, isn’t affected by high income- or cap-gains tax rates. Nor is he creating much by keeping his money idle. But a guy who has most of his net worth tied up in a successful business has a lot to lose and will be trying to earn the highest possible return on his capital and effort. Make him a target, reduce his returns by singling out high earners for tax-rate increases, and he will invest less and work less, and therefore will create less and hire less.

We should be encouraging such people, not looting their capital to buy votes.

UPDATE: Robert Schwartz adds many good points in the comments.

Ignore The Canary

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I was talking to someone who grew up around Appalachian coal mines a few days ago.

“My daddy would always make sure he was the guy who carried the cage with the little bird in it when he went down into the mines. That way he would always be the first to know if there was a problem. He would watch the bird, and would run for the top when it would drop. Everyone else would just watch him, and start running when he would pass them by.”

It isn’t news that the Obama administration has increased employment in the public sector by an amazing degree, even when individual governments in Europe, and the European Union itself, have slashed budgets.

When even the cultures which most enthusiastically embraced government intrusion in their economies start to admit that it was a bad idea, it is pretty much the point when the bird stops chirping and keels over. The Democrats in charge of our country should have paid attention some time ago.

The latest news is that Cuba has announced plans to lay off one million government workers.

“Those laid off will be encouraged to become self-employed or join new private enterprises, on which some of the current restrictions will be eased.”

So the Communists are making noises that they are going to give up on a centrally controlled economy? They are gingerly adopting American business practices because it is the only way to survive? And, even though they are discarding the old ways as being self-destructive, the Liberals are enthusiastically embracing those same policies?

For goodness’ sake, when Cuba passes you in the mine, it is past time to turn around and make a run for the fresh air!

Others’ Shoes

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[I first posted this at my home blog, Phronesisaical. It’s a response to Lexington Green’s now famous Glenn Beck post. I’m reposting it here at Lex’s request. And forgive me if I seem slow to respond to comments; mine are frequently rejected by this system.]

Perhaps I’m taking on too much at once. I’m listening to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and reading some Russian history to get a feeling for before the Revolution. I’m re-reading Daniel Martin to get a better feeling for what La Vida Es Sueño is about. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum today sent me an invitation to visualize O’Keeffe’s creative process.

And I’d really, really like to understand what is going on with the admirers of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, the Tea Partiers.

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I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing (Updated)

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The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.

Why?

He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.

Using Boyd’s continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral.

Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

Someone who asks what the rally has to do with the 2010 election is missing the point.

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.

Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that. Defeat the enemy on that plane, and any merely tactical defeat will always be reversible.

Beck is unabashed that God can be invoked in public places by citizens, who vote and assemble and speak and freely exercise their religion. They are supposed to be too browbeaten to do this. Gathering hundreds of thousands of them to peaceably assemble shows they are not. But showing that the people who believe in God and practice their religion are fellow-citizens who share political and economic values with majorities of Americans is a critical step. The idea that these people are an American Taliban is laughable, but showing that fact to the world — and to potential political allies who are not religious — is critical.

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence, the very thing I proposed in this post.

Ronald Reagan said we would not defeat Communism, we would transcend it.

Beck is aiming to have America do the same thing to its decaying class of Overlords, transcend them.

Beck is prepping the battlefield for a generation-long battle.

He is that very American thing: A practical visionary.

See, simple.

Restore pride and confidence to your own side, and win the long game.

As Ronald Reagan also said, there are simple solutions, just no easy solutions.

God bless America.

[bumped]

[UPDATES BELOW THE FOLD]

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Your Tax Dollars, Funding Palestinian Propaganda

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The U.S. government is funding an ad campaign in Israel featuring billboards of Palestinian officials asking: “We are partners — what about you?” The Agency for International development “invested” $250,000 toward the billboards.

Via Michelle Malkin, who notes that a Democratic Congressman has been circlating talking points about how great this administration’s support for Israel has been.

Meanwhile, Palestinian terrorists have murdered four more Israelis, right down the road from Daniel Jackson’s house.