Those of you old enough to remember the Cold War may remember something called the Brezhnev Doctrine. This was the rule concocted by the Soviet tyrants that basically said a nation could never regain freedom once it fell under communist rule.
In my simple way of looking at such matters, this rule translated into: “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.”
We have a somewhat similar situation with American fiscal policy. The proponents of bigger government have openly stated that their top goal – both from a policy perspective and political perspective – is higher taxes.
But what they haven’t told us is that there is no limit on the amount of additional revenue they want to confiscate from people in the productive sector of the economy.
In other words, “What’s yours is yours until they decide to grab more.”
So even though President Obama just got his class-warfare tax increase on the so-called rich (as well as a big tax hike on all American workers), is seems all that did is whet his appetite for even more of our money.
Here’s the key excerpt from The Hill.
President Obama insisted Sunday that additional tax revenue will need to be part of future deficit deals… “There is no doubt we need additional revenue…,” he said.
Gee, what a surprise. It appears you don’t cure an alcoholic by giving him more to drink. Likewise, you don’t rein in the spending demands of the political class by giving them more revenue.
Unsurprisingly, the Senate Majority Leader also thinks there should be more money in Washington and less in your pockets. Here are a couple of relevant passages from Politico.
Any budget deal in Congress must “without any question” include revenue, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in an interview aired Sunday. …To lift the sequester, Reid said, the deal needs to include new revenue.
It’s worth noting that Obama and Reid aren’t randomly expressing their addiction to other people’s money. These statements are an explicit signal that they will not allow any changes to fiscal policy unless they get to further fleece the American people.
So what are the practical implications?
- Some lawmakers want to tinker with the sequester because the defense budget is disproportionately impacted. That can’t happen without giving Obama and Reid a tax hike. So the only solution is to go with the sequester.
- Some lawmakers want to reform entitlements to avert America’s long-run fiscal crisis. That can’t happen without giving Obama and Reid a tax hike. So the only solution is to wait for 2017 (particularly since Obama and Reid doubtlessly would insist on the wrong types of entitlement changes that would simply kick the can down the road).
But those are short-term considerations.
The real moral of the story is that we have a serious spending problem in Washington. In theory, higher taxes could be the price to get needed reforms to control the size of government. But in reality, higher taxes are always a substitute for good fiscal policy.
So accept the fact that gridlock is the best possible outcome for the next four years and don’t get seduced into a tax hike. Unless, of course, you want to make it easier for the crowd in Washington to increase the burden of government spending.
[…] The bottom line is that there’s no reason to worry about the sequester and there’s certainly no reason to go along with Obama’s plan to replace the sequester with a tax-heavy budget deal. […]
With an education system run by the government, is there any surprise that our kids are taught what to think not how to think? Johnny can’t even read! See http://www.lifestrategies.net/education/
A good first step would be getting the Feds out of education.
The real solution? One time I saw a post with what seemed like a viable strategy to achieve a constitutional amendment (convention? conference?). Seems like changing the US constitution to be more like Switzerland’s is the only thing that can save the USA… Anyone know more about this?
Well said (or quoted) Andrew!!!
An eloquent expression of our situation comes from the 1960 movie The Magnificent Seven.
The bandit leader Calvera talks to Chris, the leader of the seven gunmen who have agreed to defend the farmers. Chris asks how Calvera can justify robbing the farmers.
Calvera: “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.”
We are all stuck so long as the voters act like sheep. When will they realize that pushing each other around for a bit more feed will not end well for them?
History is not encouraging. Franklin Roosevelt was more admired as economic conditions became worse under his New Deal management. The populace of Russia supports Vladimir Putin as their savior from (crony) “capitalism” at the time that the Soviet Union collapsed. US children are taught that it is fundamentallly selfish to own more than an accepted bit of property. So, why work hard?
Too many people act like sheep, and they will certainly be sheared.
We need more diversion of revenue from the private sector to collective management. Let’s see which one will be the target minority this time? We got the rich last time around, so I’s probably someone else’s turn now. Lets see what minority emerges for the next sacrifice. Perhaps we can even count on support from the rich this time. Since they got screwed last time around, at least some of them will be out, eager for revenge, to have some other group also screwed. When will your turn come?
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How do Americans think that the path towards Europeanization and decline would manifest itself? How did they envision it would feel? How do they imagine they’ll be able to tell its here? Mandatory soccer? Chinese soldiers marching down main street reminding Americans of their decline? No. Of course not. This is it! This is what decline is, what you are living now, this is how it feels, this is how it compounds. The new American norm. A long wretched and irreversible slow descent. Slow on a day to day basis, but precipitous on a historical and intergenerational time scale.
The economy is becoming hooked on low growth irreversible government spending. Now you would not want the economy to go into withdrawal, would you? You would be blamed for the convulsions. So bring down another bottle of that Keynesian! We have to drink ever more frequently, but there’s hope, there’s a will and thus a way.
Higher taxes will not only finance ever bigger low efficiency government. They will also bounce back as a bigger apparatus for the very propaganda of even bigger government. The propaganda whereby the way to survive as most prosperous nation in the world is to imitate Europe, a continent whose best performing members are on a one to two percent annual growth trendline, in a world that is growing by five. Choosing Europe as a way to salvation in this early twenty first century is like a country in the seventies deciding to embrace the future by going communist. Europe’s low motivation decline is well underway and its marginalization, whether sudden or gradual, no more than a couple of decades away.
The alarms are off, but the American voter-lemmings are in stupor. They can no longer jump out of the pot. There are three billion people in this world growing at annual rates of around seven percent, pulling the entire world (including the western world voter-lemmings) to an average growth rate of five percent. Any country that falls behind that growth trendline is toast in a couple of decades.
Now on a two percent growth trendline, the annual US growth deficit is quickly driving American prosperity towards the world average. And the plan is…is…[drumroll]… to demotivate the most productive, those whose productivity is tens, hundreds, even thousands of times the productivity of the average citizen, in the delusional hope that the majority can be further insulated from the consequences of mediocrity and the pressures of international competition?
Growth rate is below par by three percentage points and the plan is to demotivate exceptionalism? We don’t need the strongest effort-reward curves in the world, France will do just fine? Genghis Khan is at the gates and the plan is to castrate and disarm the population. It will work for sure!….(*)
“Those of you old enough to remember the Cold War may remember something called the Brezhnev Doctrine. This was the rule concocted by the Soviet tyrants that basically said a nation could never regain freedom once it fell under communist rule.”
Eerily reminiscent of Muslim attitudes towards their former strong holds…
My religion forbids despair, but I don’t see a way of backing this train up. They want to buy votes with “free stuff”. Congress had the bare bit of integrity to keep the Sandra Fluke set piece from taking place during a session of the people’s business. That there was obvious collusion with Stephanopoulos’ question regarding contraception during the republican debates is beyond doubt. What can be done against such unrelenting malice?
Starve the beast is the only way. That and make congress part time, make them live in the real world under the foolish laws they promulgate against the rest of us.