Unicorns and Loch Ness Monsters Aren’t Real, but Hillary Clinton and Jerry Brown Prove that there Are (Occasionally) Honest Leftists

On rare occasions, our government-loving friends let their guard down and say things that reveal the true nature of leftism as a punitive philosophy that subjugates the individual to the state.

An English leftist named Richard Murphy, for instance, actually argued that private income is the “rightful property” of government.

An American statist named Matt Yglesias openly expressed a desire for ultra-high tax rates solely for reasons of spite rather than to finance bigger government.

We now have another leftist who deserves recognition for openly embracing the notion that people should be pawns of government. The Governor of California, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, has bragged that coercion is the core of modern leftism.

Here are some excerpts from a recent Los Angeles Times story.

Gov. Jerry Brown has been…been making an explicit case for the power of government. …Brown said politicians need to be willing to use the blunt force of government intervention… “You need the coercive power of government to say, do this,” the governor said during a panel discussion… “Never underestimate the coercive power of a central state…,” he said.

Kudos to Gov. Brown. He didn’t use fatuous rhetoric about “government is just a word for things we do together.”

He openly acknowledges that statism is force, backed up by men with guns, based on what politicians want other people to do.

Now let’s look at another politician who deserves credit for honesty.

Though, rather ironically, we’re talking in this case about a politician who generally is known for mendacity and prevarication, so this belongs in the stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day category.

That’s because the Daily Caller reports that Hillary Clinton accidentally stumbled into a bit of honesty when discussing the economic impact of Obamacare.

Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton inadvertently slammed President Barack Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation, the Affordable Care Act, as a full-time job killer. …a women stood up and asked, “I just want to know why there’s like discrimination against the part-time workers… Clinton said. “That…Affordable Care Act.” …Clinton continued, “…we have built in some unfortunate incentives that discourage full-time employment.”

But these excerpts from the story don’t fully capture what Hillary said.

Watch this short video and it will be very clear that she’s admitting that Obamacare has undermined full-time work.

Wow, this sounds like she’s actually aware that Obama’s failed policy is pushing people into part-time work.

And maybe she’s even familiar with the research, from both private scholars and the Congressional Budget Office, on Obamacare having a negative impact on employment.

In any event, I think you’ll agree with me that Hillary deserves recognition for recognizing that there are real-world consequences to statist policy.

Sort of like these other leftists who have admitted that big-government policies backfire.

Nicholas Kristof wrote on the problem of government-caused dependency.

Jeffrey Goldberg admits gun ownership reduces crime.

Justin Cronin explains how he became a left-wing supporter of gun rights.

Jamelle Bouie pours cold water on Obama’s gun control agenda.

Though we shouldn’t be overly impressed that Hillary recognize a problem since it’s quite possible – indeed, probably nearly certain – that her solution will be to expand the size and scope of government and make the situation even worse.

In other words, she’ll probably combine the sentiments in this poster with the sad reality of Mitchell’s Law.

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Hillary’s Hard Left Turn on Social Security

Defenders of Social Security often make a point of stating that the retirement system is a form of “social insurance” because people become eligible for benefits by paying into the system.

Welfare programs, by contrast, give money to people simply as a form of income redistribution.

Proponents of the status quo are right. Sort of.

Social Security is an “earned benefit.” The payroll taxes of workers are somewhat analogous to a premium payment and retirement benefits are somewhat analogous to a monthly annuity payment.

But “somewhat analogous” isn’t the same as real insurance. Money isn’t invested and set aside to pay benefits. Instead, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program, which means the payroll taxes of current workers are paying for the benefits paid to current retirees.

If a private insurance company did the same thing, its owners would be arrested for operating a Ponzi Scheme.

But the government can get away with this kind of system because it can coerce younger workers to participate.

Or, to be more accurate, the government can get away with this approach so long as there are a sufficient number of new workers who can be forced into the program.

The problem, of course, is that the combination of longer lifespans and fewer births means that Social Security is promising far more than it can deliver.

And we’re talking real money, even by Washington standards. According to the Social Security Trustees, the cash-flow deficit over the next 75 years is approaching $40 trillion. And that’s after adjusting for inflation!

So how can this mess be solved?

At the risk of over-simplifying, there are four options.

1. Do Nothing. Some politicians want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend there isn’t a problem. They argue that the “Trust Fund” can finance promised benefits until the early 2030s. But the so-called Trust Fund has nothing but IOUs, which means that benefits can only be paid by additional government borrowing. As you can imagine, that doesn’t bother most politicians since they don’t think past the next election cycle. But this red-ink approach isn’t a solution because the IOUs will run out in less than 20 years. So what happens at that point? Retirees would have their benefits automatically reduced.

2. Personal Retirement Accounts. The reform solution would allow younger workers to shift their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts. This “funded” approach is working very well in nations such as Australia, Chile, and the Netherlands. Since there would be less payroll tax revenue going to government, there would be a “transition cost” of financing promised benefits to current retirees and older workers. But this approach would be less expensive than trying to deal with the unfunded liabilities of the current system.

3. Limit Benefits. For those that recognize the problem but don’t want genuine reform, that leaves only two other possible choices. One of those choices is to reduce benefits by modest amounts today to preempt large automatic benefit reductions when there no longer are any IOUs in the Trust Fund. Raising the retirement age would be one way of reducing outlays since people would have to spend more time working and less time collecting benefits in retirement. Another option is means-testing, which means taking away benefits from people whose income from other sources is considered too high.

4. Increase Taxes. The other option for non-reformers is to generate more tax revenue. An increase in the payroll tax rate is a commonly cited option. Politicians have already done that many times, with the payroll tax having climbed from 3 percent when the program started to 12.4 percent today. Another option would be to bust the “wage base cap” and impose the payroll tax on more income. Under current law, because the program is supposed to be analogous to private insurance, there’s a limit on how much income is taxed and a limit on how much benefits are paid. Imposing the tax on all income would break that link and turn the program into an income-redistribution scheme, but it would generate more money.

Now take a guess which of the four options is getting the most interest from Hillary Clinton?

As reported by the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton is signalling that she wants to change Social Security so it is less of a social insurance program and more akin to welfare.

At a town hall here Tuesday, she said she’d be open to a Social Security tax increase proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), her radical rival in the primary. During the 2008 campaign, Clinton had flatly rejected such an increase. Her comments this week could suggest that she has warmed to the idea, or that she is responding to a broader shift to the left among Democrats. …Clinton…described an approach similar to Sanders’s — raising taxes only on the wealthiest earners to avoid an increase for people who consider themselves upper middle class. “We do have to look at the cap, and we have to figure out whether we raise it or whether we raise it a little and then jump over and raise it more higher up,” Clinton said. …Sanders’s proposal — increasing payroll taxes, but only for the wealthiest earners — resembles the one President Obama laid out as a candidate in 2008. …At the time, Clinton opposed the idea. “I’m certainly against one of Senator Obama’s ideas, which is to lift the cap on the payroll tax,” she said in a Democratic primary debate then.

So Hillary’s original position was the do-nothing approach, but now she feels pressured to go with the class-warfare tax-hike approach.

As a side note, I think it’s noteworthy that the article acknowledges that the current “wage base cap” exists because there’s also a cap on benefits.

…the wealthy don’t pay taxes on their earnings above a certain amount each year, it’s important to keep in mind that they also don’t receive benefits on those earnings later on.

But I suspect this kind of detail doesn’t matter to Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the class-warfare crowd.

They simply want to maintain (or even expand!) the social welfare state in America. Vive la France!

For more information, here’s a video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

And here’s a link to my video on why personal retirement accounts are the ideal option.

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Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: Two Peas in a Statist Pod

I’ve had several reporters ask me to comment on the philosophical and policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

I’m always happy to oblige, yet I don’t think any of them have included my comments in their stories because I always give what seems to be a very unsatisfactory response.  My standard line is that Sanders and Clinton are two peas in a statist pod.

Yes, I realize that Sanders has a more aggressive us-vs-them approach, while Hillary is calculated and cautious, but those are merely differences in rhetoric and style.

What matters is action. And if you look at the Senate voting records of Sanders and Clinton, there’s almost no difference between them (or, for that matter, between them and Obama).

Let’s look at some of their policy proposals. Here are some excerpts from a Townhall column on Sanders’ statist agenda.

According to Bernienomics, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would prevent greedy capitalists from exploiting their workers and paying below a “living wage.” …Sanders…is…fighting for European style “free college”…Sanders supports the Environmental Protection Agency’s CO2 emission standards, even though these will raise the costs of energy and manufacturing. Sanders also supported allowing the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the internet as public utility… Sanders wants to raise taxes on the rich as much as possible…he has stated his desire to tax the rich at more than a 50 percent income tax rate. Sanders also recently proposed a massive increase in the estate tax… Sanders believes that Social Security is the “most successful government programs in American history,” so it only makes sense that he wants to expand it. …Sanders is also a major proponent of a single-payer health care system.

In other words, a typical statist agenda.

What about Hillary? Well, she’s must more guarded in what she says, but you can get a sense for her ideological mindset by looking at her new scheme to boost the capital gains tax.

Here’s some of what Ryan Ellis wrote for Americans for Tax Reform.

Hillary Clinton today proposed the most complex and Byzantine capital gains tax rate regime in history. …Under the Clinton plan, there would be six – yes, six — capital gains tax rates for those whose total taxable income puts them in the top 39.6 percent bracket. …or taxpayers not in the 39.6 percent bracket, we already have a graduated capital gains structure on assets held longer than a year. For taxpayers in this range, the rates could be 0, 15, 18.8, 20, or 23.8 percent. …her plan actually creates 10 different tax rates on capital gains, not counting those gains taxed as ordinary income due to their shorter duration of ownership. By anyone’s definition that’s really stupid tax policy. It will only serve to distort capital markets as investors will buy and sell not based on rational market signals, but on exogenous, arbitrary tax holding period considerations.

Not to mention that higher tax rates on investment will discourage risk-taking and entrepreneurship. And let’s not forget that it’s not a smart idea, from the perspective of competitiveness, to have the world’s highest capital gains tax rate. Or to pursue policies that will depress capital formation and thus lead to lower wages.

Now let’s get back to the main question. Is there a difference between Sanders and Clinton?

One could argue that Sanders has a more robust left-wing agenda. But that doesn’t make Clinton a moderate. Indeed, I challenge anyone to identify a single position she holds that would result in smaller government or less intervention.

The bottom line, as illustrated by this cartoon prepared by Jonathan Babington-Heina, is that Sanders and Clinton only differ in how fast they want to travel in the wrong direction.

P.S. This is the second cartoon from Jonathan I’ve shared. He also put together a superb cartoon that depicts the senseless damage caused by double taxation.

P.P.S. You also can get a sense of Hillary’s leftist mindest by looking at some of the crazy things she’s said over the years.

And to be balanced, Bernie also says crazy things. Let’s close with this example of political humor I saw on Twitter.

And here’s some more Hillary humor if you still haven’t received your recommended daily allowance.

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Equal Pay Day: Economic Illiteracy and Hillary Hypocrisy

I realize it’s tax week and I should be condemning our convoluted tax code and oppressive IRS.

But I can’t resist getting diverted to another topic. It’s time to debunk the notion that there is rampant sexism in the private economy that causes women to by systematically underpaid.

I addressed the issue back in 2010, citing the solid work of Christina Hoff Summers. And I cited more of her work, as well as some analysis by Steve Chapman, when writing about the topic in 2012. The bottom line is that rigorous analysis finds that the so-called gender gap largely disappears once you consider factors such as occupational choice, hours worked, and education.

I’ll add my two cents to the discussion. For decades, I’ve been dealing with leftists who repeatedly tell me that business owners are consumed by greed and put profit above everything. Yet if women truly were making less money than men for doing equal work, then why aren’t these greed-filled business owners firing all their male employees and hiring women who will work for 80 percent of what it costs to employ men? Or 85 percent? Or 90 percent?

When I pose this question, my statist friends begin to mumble and stumble, but the clever ones eventually asset that business owners are not only soulless profiteers but also malign sexists. And the sexism apparently trumps the greed because they’re willing to employ men when equally competent women would work for less.

At that point, I usually ask them why entrepreneurs (presumably women and perhaps financed by rich leftists) don’t take advantage of a huge competitive opportunity by setting up rival businesses that could hire women for less money and lure customers away from the greedy sexist firms by charging lower prices.

I still haven’t received an answer to that question.

And that may explain why even one of President Obama’s top economic advisers basically admitted that equal-pay propaganda from the left is completely bogus.

Let’s dig into the data. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute does a very good job of explaining why Equal Pay Day is based on nonsensical numbers.

…the bogus feminist holiday event known as Equal Pay Day…is a statistical fairy tale because it’s based on the false assumption that women get paid 23% less than men for doing exactly the same work in the exact same occupations and careers, working side-by-side with men on the same job for the same organization, working the same number of hours per week, traveling the same amount of time for work obligations, with the same exact work experience and education, with exactly the same level of productivity, etc. …The reality is that you can only find a 23% gender pay gap by comparing raw, aggregate, unadjusted full-time median salaries, i.e. when you control for NOTHING that would help explain gender differences in salaries… Most economic studies that control for all of those variables conclude that gender discrimination accounts for only a very small fraction of gender pay differences, and may not even be a statistically significant factor at all. …As the Department of Labor concluded in 2009, “The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.” They also concluded that “the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action.”

By the way, all this data and research doesn’t mean sexism doesn’t exist. I’m sure it does, and it probably goes both ways.

I’m simply saying that unjustified discrimination in a competitive market economy is expensive. People who put prejudice above profits suffer. Which is why there’s so little actual evidence to support the feminist position.

Now let’s enjoy a bit of fun. It’s always amusing to expose statist hypocrisy.

The Obama White House claims to believe in so-called equal pay for equal work. But apparently that’s only a rule for us peasants.

And Hillary Clinton doubtlessly will regale us with speeches about equal pay over the next several months. Yet she didn’t practice what she preaches.

Yes, I realize we’re all shocked that politicians like Hillary prevaricate and dissemble.

P.S. Since this is tax season, I suppose I should close with a couple of relevant items.

First, we have an update to the infamous chart on the number of pages in the tax code.

Second, we have a new video from Reason TV about the “best tax code.”

Sadly, I don’t think my tax videos will ever be that entertaining.

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Hillary Humor

Looking through my archives, Hillary Clinton rarely has been the target of political humor. I did share a quiz last year that definitely had a snarky tone, but the main goal was to expose her extremist views.

Similarly, I mocked both her and her husband that same year for plotting to minimize their tax burden, but I was simply calling attention to their gross hypocrisy.

The only pure Hillary-focused humor I could find was from 2012 and it wasn’t exactly hard hitting.

Well, it’s time to correct this oversight. Thanks to the bubbling email scandal, we have lots of material to share.

Let’s start with a video from the clever folks at Reason TV.

Needless to say, cartoonists also have had lots of fun with the former Secretary of State’s dodgy behavior.

Here’s Steve Kelley’s contribution.

And here’s how Dana Summers assessed the situation.

And Ken Catalino reminds us that Email-gate is just the tip of the iceberg when looking at Hillary scandals.

And since we’re have some fun with Mrs. Clinton, here’s someone’s clever photoshop exercise, calling attention to her habit of extorting huge payments for platitude-filled speeches.

And here’s a bit of humor that has a PG-13 rating, so in keeping with my tradition, it’s minimized so only folks who enjoy such humor will go through the trouble of clicking on the icon. The rest of you can continue below.

P.S. Hillary Clinton is portrayed as the “establishment candidate” for the Democrats. Some people interpret that to mean she’s a moderate, particularly when compared to a fraudster like Elizabeth Warren. But if you check out these statements, you’ll see that she’s a hard-core statist on economic issues. Indeed, there’s every reason to think she’s as far to the left as Obama.

P.P.S. Bill Clinton, by contrast, did govern from the center.

Sure, his reasonable (and in some cases admirable) track record almost certainly was a result – at least in part – of having a GOP Congress, but you’ll notice that Obama hasn’t moderated since GOPers took control on Capitol Hill.

For more evidence, check out this interesting (albeit complex) graph put together by Professor Steve Hanke. You’ll notice that Bill Clinton’s pro-market record generated results similar to what Reagan achieved (and Michael Ramirez makes the same point in this cartoon).

Needless to say, I fear that Hillary Clinton would be more like Obama and less like her husband.

P.P.P.S. In addition to his decent performance in office, Bill Clinton also has been the source of lots of enjoyable humor. You can enjoy my favorites by clicking here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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Another Edition of “I Can’t Believe Hillary Clinton Actually Said That”

I wouldn’t be too upset about Hillary Clinton winning the White House in 2016, but only if I somehow could be assured that we would get the kind of policies we got when her husband was President.

After all, economic freedom increased during the 1990s, largely because of a smaller burden of government spending and less intervention.

Unfortunately, I suspect Hillary isn’t a “Clinton Democrat.”

Indeed, it’s worth noting that she was a doctrinaire statist when she was in the Senate. Here’s what the National Taxpayers Union revealed about her performance in her last year in office.

Sen. Hillary Clinton…received a score of 4 percent and the title of “Big Spender” in 2008 — a slight increase from her 2007 rating of 3 percent.

The good news, if you have the ability to detect very small silver linings, is that her score did increase in her final year.

And it doesn’t appear that she’s learned anything since she left the Senate. Consider some of the bizarre statements she has made in the past few years.

• Mrs. Clinton said we can’t end the War on Drugs because “there is just too much money in it,” apparently oblivious to the fact that high profits for the cartels only exist because of criminalization.
• In 2010, while speaking in Latin America, she asserted that, “the wealthy across the Americas to pay their ‘fair share’ of taxes in order to eliminate poverty and promote economic opportunity for all.”
• While testifying before Congress, she repeated her argument that more revenue improves economic development, claiming that, “well-off Pakistani’s do not pay their fair share for the services that are needed.”
• And showing that her understanding of geography is just as weak as her understanding of public finance economics, Hillary claimed, “Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy.”
• Mrs. Clinton even asserted that, “rich people…do not contribute to their growth of their own countries.”
• And she bragged about paying above-average taxes, apparently thinking that the inability to manage her personal finances makes her an attractive choice to control the nation’s finances.

Now she’s added to the list. Here’s what she said the other day about job creation.

Wow. I’m not even sure what to say, other than I wish somebody would ask her where jobs do come from, the Tooth Fairy? Santa Claus?

I’m pretty sure, if pressed, she would use the same argument as her potential 2016 rival, Elizabeth Warren, and claim that government enables all the jobs by providing infrastructure and other public goods.

But there are roads and police in places such as Cuba and North Korea, yet we don’t see jobs there.

Or, to use more reasonable examples, France, Italy, and Greece have lots of roads and cops, yet all of those countries have very weak labor markets.

Maybe, just maybe, you also need some breathing room for private enterprise if you want robust job creation.

An editorial in the Washington Examiner correctly observed that Hillary Clinton’s comments demonstrate ignorance of basic economic principles.

…the private sector accounts for 84 percent of American jobs. But one must remember that the private sector also accounts for 100 percent of the wealth America creates. Meanwhile, government is funded exclusively through various taxes on private production and accumulation of this wealth — and that includes any taxes that fall upon the portion of privately created wealth that government collects and then uses to pay its own employees. This insight should be brought to Clinton’s attention, because Americans cannot afford to have one of their two major political parties reject basic economic principles.

I also like that the editorial explains that even public goods wouldn’t be possible if the private sector wasn’t creating the wealth to finance them.

P.S. Yes, I realize that many of the good policies America enjoyed in the 1990s were driven by Congress. I’m not saying the Bill Clinton deserves credit for those policies. Instead, I am merely pointing out that they were implemented during his presidency.

P.P.S. That being said, it’s worth noting that Bill Clinton seems much more rational than either his wife or the current President.

P.P.P.S. Since I mentioned statist heroine Elizabeth Warren, this is a good opportunity to recycle some humor. Here’s some mockery of her make-believe Indian ancestry, and here’s a clever application of her philosophy to dating choices for attractive women.

P.P.P.P.S. Here are some additional Hillary quotes as part of an amusing quiz.

P.P.P.P.P.S. One final point. I’m not sure who deserves the credit, but somebody in the Clinton household believes in proper (albeit hypocritical) tax planning.

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Hillary Humor…or Hillary Horror

I haven’t paid much attention to Hillary Clinton. Looking through my archives, I found a few posts criticizing her statist inclinations on issues such as taxation, geography, economics, the War on Drugs, class warfare, and financial privacy.

Compared to other major political figures, that’s a pretty meager list.

Moreover, to the best of my recollection, other than a few cartoons, I’ve never shared any Hillary humor (whereas Bill is a never-ending source of material).

That needs to change, and thanks to a quiz that was showed up in my inbox, that change happens today.

The quiz provides a series of quotes and asks the reader to identify the author (unlike the quizzes I usually share, which allow readers to decide how they feel on various issues).

Anyhow, here’s the quiz, taken verbatim from my inbox.

=====================================

Answer all the questions (no cheating) before looking at the answers.

Who said it?

1) “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

A. Karl Marx
B. Adolph Hitler
C. Joseph Stalin
D. Barack Obama
E. None of the above

2) “It’s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by
the few, and for the few……and to replace it with shared responsibility,
for shared prosperity.”

A. Lenin
B. Mussolini
C. Idi Amin
D. Barack Obama
E. None of the above

3) “(We)…..can’t just let business as usual go on, and that means
something has to be taken away from some people.”

A. Nikita Khrushev
B. Josef Goebbels
C. Boris Yeltsin
D. Barack Obama
E. None of the above

4) “We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give
up a little bit of their own … in order to create this common ground.”

A. Mao Tse Dung
B. Hugo Chavez
C. Kim Jong Il
D. Barack Obama
E. None of the above

5) “I certainly think the free-market has failed.”

A. Karl Marx
B. Lenin
C. Molotov
D. Barack Obama
E. None of the above

6) “I think it’s time to send a clear message to what has become the most
profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched.”

A. Pinochet
B. Milosevic
C. Saddam Hussein
D. Barack Obama
E. None of the above

Scroll down for the answers

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

Answers
(1) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton – 6/29/2004
(2) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton – 5/29/2007
(3) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton – 6/4/2007
(4) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton – 6/4/2007
(5) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton – 6/4/2007
(6) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton – 9/2/2005

=====================================

Actually, this isn’t humor. It’s horror. The last thing America needs is another statist president. Bush and Obama already have done enough damage.

Though many of the quotes are taken out of context in order to make Hillary look radical. For what it’s worth, the leftists at Politifact rate the email quiz as a pants-on-fire lie. I think “significant exaggeration” would be more accurate.

Let’s not forget that she cavalierly dismissed the likely economic damage of her 1993 healthcare scheme, asserting that “”I can’t be responsible for every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America.”

P.S. This quiz is somewhat similar to the infamous Al Gore-Unabomber quiz. For what it’s worth, I flunked that quiz with a score of only 42 percent.

P.P.S. Speaking of Gore, I’m also surprised I have so little humor with him as the target. All I could find was this video and a couple of one-liners from Leno and Conan. He also played a cameo role in this joke featuring Monica Lewinsky.

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A 2016 Preview? Rand Paul vs Hillary Clinton on Taxes

I wrote a post several years ago contrasting a good initiative by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and a statist proposal by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.

There was no connection between the two ideas, but I thought the comparison helped show the difference between someone who instinctively wants more freedom and someone who reflexively thinks there should be more government control.

Let’s do the same thing, but this time highlight a difference between Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton, particularly since the two of them may be rivals in 2016.

First, let’s look at what Rand Paul recently said about corporate inversions, which is what happens when an American company decides to re-domicile in another jurisdiction (generally through a cross-border merger).

Senator Rand Paul told Futures magazine that the rush of American companies moving operations outside of the nation is due to failed authors of the U.S. tax code. …“I blame the tax code and those who wrote the tax code,” said Senator Paul regarding the record number of inversions by U.S. companies. …Senator Paul said that antiquated tax laws have made the U.S. uncompetitive against countries in North America and Europe and called for Members of Congress to take a moment to recognize their faults. “…we should’ve brought a big mirror, so [Congress] could look in the mirror and see where the problem is. The problem arose from legislators who wrote a crummy tax code. The problem arises from having a corporate tax cut that is twice what Canada’s is and nearly three times what it is in Ireland. Money goes where it’s welcomed, and money has been flowing overseas. I don’t fault corporations for doing what they’re supposed to do, which is maximize their profit.”

This isn’t the first time Senator Paul has made wise observations about the taxation of multinational companies. He also was one of the few lawmakers who defended Apple for the tax strategies the company used to protect the interests of workers, shareholders, and consumers.

Now let’s look at Hillary Clinton’s recent contribution to the tax discussion.

In a recent interview, she basically bragged that she and Bill paid a larger share of their earnings to the IRS than the average household with similar income.

She argued to the Guardian that her family’s wealth would not injure her ability to talk about income inequality on any hypothetical campaign trails. “But they don’t see me as part of the problem, because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.” …are they truly paying more taxes than your average multi-millionaire, as she suggested? The Clintons last released their tax returns during Hillary’s 2008 presidential run. From 2000 to 2007, they paid $33.8 million in federal taxes, or 31 percent of their adjusted gross income — which was $109 million. At the time, the IRS said that taxpayers making $10 million or more — i.e. the people safely in 1 percenter territory — were paying 20.8 percent of their adjusted gross income in federal taxes.

Wow, bragging about paying above-average taxes.

In other words, assuming that she actually plans to run for President, she thinks that an inability to properly and intelligently manage her own finances is a reason to let her manage the nation’s finances.

Though at least she’s being philosophically consistent. After all, folks on the left act as if getting to keep any of our own money is some sort of special favor from Washington.

P.S. I can’t resist noting that Hillary thinks giving speeches is “hard work.” Since I occasionally get paid to give speeches (though only a tiny, tiny fraction of the $200,000-plus that she receives), allow me to state for the record that it is the easiest money to earn.

But I guess if you’re a former politician, it seems like “hard work” to actually go through even a modest bit of effort in exchange for money.

P.P.S. I also can’t resist pointing out that the Clintons are going through a lot of effort to minimize their exposure to the death tax, so even they have a limit when it comes to needlessly giving money to government.

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Political Photo(shop) Humor

Folks keep asking me to re-issue the post about the classroom socialism experiment, but that seems redundant when I can simply link to original post.

With that taken care of, let’s look at some new political humor.

The Ron Paul people win the award for the most intensity. So even though this almost surely isn’t real, it’s funny because it could be true.

Speaking of photos, here’s one that probably is real, featuring the Secretary of State. I dug it out of my voluminous collection of political humor.

And if you like poking fun at members of the Obama Administration, here’s one last bit of satire for you.

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Hillary Clinton’s Misguided (and Dangerous) Advice for Latin America

In an amusing coincidence, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I were both in Latin America this week offering fiscal policy advice. But it won’t surprise you to know that Mrs. Clinton’s suggestions are radically different than the advice I provided. She spoke in Ecuador and, according to an AFP report, said it was time for “the wealthy across the Americas to pay their ‘fair share’ of taxes in order to eliminate poverty and promote economic opportunity for all.” She also claimed that “her appeal to overhaul tax systems did not amount to ‘class warfare’ and was instead a recognition that the ‘winner-take-all-approach’ was a drag on progress.” The AFP story concludes with Mrs. Clinton asserting, “We can’t mince words about this. Levels of tax evasion are unacceptably high,”

By contrast, in my remarks to the Fundacion Libertad in Panama and in my speech to the Chamber of Commerce in El Salvador, I explained that academic research shows that better tax compliance is best achieved by lowering tax rates and eliminating inefficient and corrupt spending programs so that taxpayers have more confidence that their money is not being wasted. But let’s touch on something even more important than economics. I also made a moral argument about the danger of giving national tax authorities too much power and information – especially in a region where governments oftentimes are the source of oppression, expropriation, and tyranny. Simply stated, there are some things that are more important than obeying tax laws. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity video explains that so-called tax havens are an extremely important refuge for people who are subject to persecution and other forms of government malfeasance.

Let’s consider some Latin American examples. Imagine a political dissident in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez has turned that country into a thugocracy and opponents of his sinister regime are vulnerable to having their assets expropriated (and worse). Thankfully, many Venezuelans are able to protect themselves from socialist tyranny by putting their money in Cayman, Panama, or Miami (the U.S. is a tax haven for non-U.S. people). But if Mrs. Clinton got to make the rules, tax havens would no longer exist and Chavez would be empowered.

Or what about families in Mexico, who rightfully are afraid that if they keep their money in the country and report it on their tax returns, corrupt bureaucrats in the national tax office will sell their names to criminal gangs and suddenly their children will be kidnapped and they will have to deal with the horror of getting a ransom note accompanied by a child’s finger. Fortunately, many Mexicans can guard against this horrific possibility by placing their assets in Cayman, Panama, or Miami. But in Mrs. Clinton’s ideal world, those options would not exist and many more people would experience the nightmare of vicious crime.

And consider the plight of Argentinians. A few years ago, the nation’s venal government stole the private pension assets of the people. This is in addition to radical currency devaluations that have wiped out a big chunk of people’s savings. Prudent Argentinians have avoided these forms of back-door thievery by moving funds to Cayman, Panama, and Miami. In the Orwellian world envisioned by Mrs. Clinton, however, tax havens wouldn’t exist and governments would have carte blanche to engage in bad policy.

This is not the first indication of Mrs. Clinton’s government-über-alles mindset as Secretary of State. Let’s remember that she urged class-warfare tax policy for Pakistan and more recently said Brazil was a role model for soak-the-rich tax policy (a strange assertion since the top tax rate there is only 27.5 percent). If nothing else, at least we can give her credit for being consistent.

But if I have to choose between Mrs. Clinton’s consistent statism and protecting the liberty and freedom of oppressed and persecuted people, it’s no contest. Politicians and senior government appointees all over the world act as if folks in the private sector are nothing more than serfs and peasants who have an obligation to pay ever-higher tax burdens, so we should be happy that so-called tax havens offer a refuge – even if we don’t live in failed states such as Venezuela, Mexico, and Argentina. Actually, since Obama is trying to turn us into Greece, maybe this issue will be important for Americans even sooner than we think.

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Is Hillary Clinton Ignorant about Geography, Fiscal Policy, or Both?

Hillary Clinton recently opined that Brazil was a great role model for the idea of soaking the rich with higher tax rates. She didn’t really offer evidence for that specific assertion, but Politico reports that she did say that “”Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy.”

I’m not sure if “growing like crazy” is an accurate description, particularly since poor nations normally have decent growth rates because they start from such a low baseline.

But let’s excuse that bit of rhetorical excess and focus on the really flawed portion of her remarks.

Contrary to her direct quote, Brazil does not have the “highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere.” It may have the highest tax burden in South America. And it may even have the highest tax burden in all of Latin America, but its overall tax burden of about 24 percent of GDP is slightly below the aggregate tax burden in America.

I suppose I should issue a caveat and say there’s a very slight chance that the recession has temporarily pushed American tax receipts as a share of GDP below the Brazilian level, but that isn’t apparent from the IMF data. Moreover, there’s no doubt that the tax burden in Canada is significantly higher than the Brazilian burden.

So Mrs. Clinton either was unaware that the United States and Canada are in the Western Hemisphere, or has no clue how to read fiscal statistics.

But let’s suspend reality and assume that Brazil has a higher tax-to-GDP ratio. Would that somehow be proof that Brazil is a role model for class-warfare taxation? There is no precise definition of that term, to be sure, but high tax rates on the rich presumably are a necessary component of any class-warfare system. Yet Brazil’s top tax rate is 27.5 percent. That’s not exactly a low-rate system such as Hong Kong, and it’s 27.5 percentage points higher than the zero-percent rate in the Cayman Islands, but it also happens to be significantly lower than the 35 percent (soon to be 39.6 percent) rate in the United States. If that’s class warfare, sign me up for the Brazilian approach.

I suppose it’s possible that Brazil’s top tax rate recently has been boosted, but that didn’t show up in a Google search. And even if the rate was just increased, that would hardly be proof of Mrs. Clinton’s strange hypothesis that high tax rates and/or high tax-to-GDP rates are a magical formula for growth. That would require looking at future economic performance with the higher top tax rate, not the recent growth rates with the 27.5 percent top tax rate.

But pointing out Mrs. Clinton’s mistakes seems a bit rude and I do like to be a gentleman, so let’s at least give her points for consistency. Earlier this year, she urged higher tax rates on the so-called rich in Pakistan, so at least she doesn’t discriminate in her desire to punish success.

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