Destroying the Nation in Just Four Years

The graph to the left is from the National Taxpayers' Union.

Thomas Sowell has written another noteworthy article.  He exposed some of the rhetorical chicanery practiced by President O-buma and his ideological soul mates.  In particular, he cites their use of straw man argumentation, or as he describes it, arguing against a caricature instead of confronting the argument actually made.  One such example is mainstream media's bobble-headed reference to the so-called trickle-down theory.

No such theory has been found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic theories [nonetheless] this nonexistent theory has become the object of denunciations from the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post to the political arena, and has been repeated as far away as India.  Sowell’s credentials concerning economics are extensive and impressive; still, they refer to this nonexistent theory as though it were scripture.

Franklin Roosevelt was the father of modern US socialism.  His speechwriter Samuel Rosenman made an early straw man reference to the trickle downism that he alleged existed at that time.  He was referring to tax-rate reductions that Congress enacted during the 1920s.  Tax rates were so high that they had driven taxpayers into shelters.

Vast sums of money had been put into tax shelters such as tax-exempt municipal bonds instead of being invested in the private economy, where this money would create more output, incomes and jobs — thereby producing higher tax revenues for the federal government.  Almost invariably, the more we tax productivity, the less we get of it; conversely, the more we subsidize waste, the more we have of it.

The author points out that similar effects resulted from decreasing tax rates during the Kennedy, Reagan, and George W. Bush administrations.  Increased economic activity drove up employment; growing demand for labor increased incomes; higher incomes translated into increased tax revenues, despite lowered tax rates.

There were other consequences as well…people in higher-income brackets paid not only a larger total amount of taxes, but a higher percentage of all taxes, after what were called 'tax cuts for the rich.' It was not simply that their incomes rose, but that this was not taxable income, since the lower tax rates made it profitable to get higher returns outside of tax shelters.

Raising tax rates during the current recession is a recipe for disaster.  Regardless, the O-bumites are engaging in straw man rhetoric to drum up support for further dampening economic expansion by increasing tax rates.  They know full well what they are doing, and it is time that voters caught on to them.  They are simply pursuing the O-buma-George Soros-Steven Chu-Lisa Jackson, et al playbook for bankrupting the nation.

May your gods be with you.