Tag Archives: Taxes

Obamacare’s Taxes And The Impact On Jobs

Romney says that he knows why jobs come and why jobs go.  Obama doesn’t.

Barack Obama feels a sense of charity.  And he thinks that government should act on that charity.

Are there people who get sick or hurt and can’t afford their care?  Well, by golly, the government should step in and perform that charity.

But when he realizes that people respond in rational ways, he becomes confused and then angry.  “Why won’t people just DO the right thing?  Why won’t they accept the added burden of Barack’s charity and continue to hire?”

An Indiana-based medical equipment manufacturer says it’s scrapping plans to open five new plants in the coming years because of a looming tax tied to President Obama’s health care overhaul law.

Cook Medical claims the tax on medical devices, set to take effect next year, will cost the company roughly $20 million a year, cutting into money that would otherwise go toward expanding into new facilities over the next five years.

“This is the equivalent of about a plant a year that we’re not going to be able to build,” a company spokesman told FoxNews.com.

He said the original plan was to build factories in “hard-pressed” Midwestern communities, each employing up to 300 people. But those factories cost roughly the same amount as the projected cost of the new tax.

“In reality, we’re not looking at the U.S. to build factories anymore as long as this tax is in place. We can’t, to be competitive,” he said.

This is why companies move jobs overseas.  The government forces the price of labor to the point that such labor isn’t competitive.

By the way, to answer the question above, “Why won’t they accept the added burden of Barack’s charity and continue to hire?”  I suspect that he would say that they are greedy.

Romney: I know Why Jobs Come And Why They Go

Without a doubt the main focus on the election so far has been the economy and the lack of jobs.  On one hand you have Romney claiming that he knows how business works, how the economy works.  On the other hand, you have Obama claiming that Romney simply guts American jobs while making himself wealthy.

I think it’s important to note that Obama never runs any ads claiming that HE knows how to grow jobs.

Anyway, I was going through some Obama commercials and found this one:

The point of the ad is that Romney took companies here in America and sent their jobs to other countries, countries like China and India.  The impression being that Romney doesn’t grow jobs, rather, he outsources American jobs.

It’s effective ’till you think it through, which I grant you, isn’t likely to happen considering the American electorate.

Romney claims, “I know how business works.  I know why jobs come and why they go.”  That claim is entirely truthful as it relates to his owning Bain, his restructuring companies and his sending jobs overseas.  When businessmen look at the state of the company before them, one of the things they look at is labor.  And they make a value based decision on where that labor might be better obtained.  Many many things are considered; ease of transition, cost of shipping, risk of client dissatisfaction due to hard accents, time zone difficulties and education of labor force.  And yes, included in that calculation is the tax and wage burden of the companies.

Romney knows why he sent those jobs overseas.  Because regulations and restrictions here in America make it more expensive than it has to be.  Moving work to another country is a painful and difficult decision to come by.  Making that transition is very difficult.  But no one does it because they WANT to.  They do it because business demands it.

Romney doesn’t say that he’s going to outsource jobs.  Not at all.  What he says is that he knows why people do it.  And that he’s going to change those reasons and incent businesses to keep labor here.

And THAT is something that Obama hasn’t clue one about.

“You Didn’t Build That” – Out Of Context

Obama is taking a lot of heat for his comments in Virgina.  It was in that speech that he made the now infamous, “If you have a business, you didn’t build that.”  The republicans are going crazy with the clip, using it in every ad they can put on TV or the radio.  They’ve got it on Facebook and Twitter.  Obama saying that business owners didn’t build “that.”

And the left is going nuts over context.

First, I’ve always said that the remark IS out of context.  The president clearly was referring to roads and bridges when he mentioned “that.”

Second, this is politics.  These same people who are now fainting over context were no where to be seen when Romney was quoted as saying, “I like to fire people.”  No one was complaining about context when Romney’s comments on self-check out lines was doctored.  It is what it is.

Third, and this is the biggie for me, Obama BELIEVES the message that the republicans are pushing in the out of context quote.  Two months ago, if you were to ask Obama if he felt that businesses were built by their owners or with help from the government, he’d tell you that of COURSE it was built with the help of the government.  Heck, he’s saying that in the speech.

So, here are his remarks:

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, like I said, the only way you can pay for that — if you’re actually saying you’re bringing down the deficit — is to cut transportation, cut education, cut basic research, voucherize Medicare, and you’re still going to end up having to raise taxes on middle-class families to pay for this $5 trillion tax cut.  That’s not a deficit reduction plan.  That’s a deficit expansion plan.

I’ve got a different idea.  I do believe we can cut — we’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently.  (Applause.)  Not every government program works the way it’s supposed to.  And frankly, government can’t solve every problem.  If somebody doesn’t want to be helped, government can’t always help them.  Parents — we can put more money into schools, but if your kids don’t want to learn it’s hard to teach them.  (Applause.)

But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them.  So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way.  We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more.  (Applause.)  And, by the way, we’ve tried that before — a guy named Bill Clinton did it.  We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine.  We created a lot of millionaires.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

And now, finally, the press is getting around to going after Romney over the context of the quote that he’s using.  And his response?  Just like I’ve been saying.

LARRY KUDLOW: “Why do you think President Obama, what did he mean, if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build it, someone else made that happen? He claims it’s being taken out of context. What do you think it means? Do you think this is Obama anti-business, anti-entrepreneur? Or do you think maybe he has been treated unfairly?”

GOV. ROMNEY: “Well, just read the whole speech. I found the speech even more disconcerting than just that particular line. The context is worse than the quote. The context, he says, you know, you think you’ve been successful because you’re smart, but he says a lot of people are smart. You think you’ve been successful because you work hard, a lot of people work hard. This is an ideology which says hey, we’re all the same here, we ought to take from all and give to one another and that achievement, individual initiative and risk-taking and success are not to be rewarded as they have in the past. It’s a very strange and in some respects foreign to the American experience type of philosophy. We have always been a nation that has celebrated success of various kinds. The kid that gets the honor roll, the individual worker that gets a promotion, the person that gets a better job. And in fact, the person that builds a business. And by the way, if you have a business and you started it, you did build it. And you deserve credit for that. It was not built for you by government. And by the way, we pay for government. Government doesn’t come free. The people who begin enterprises, the people who work in enterprises, they’re the ones paying for government. So his whole philosophy is an upside-down philosophy that does not comport with the American experience. And if we want to get people working again–and that’s my priority–if we want to get people working again, we have to celebrate success and achievement and not demonize it and denigrate the people who have worked hard, who are smart, who have made the kinds of investments to build a brighter future.”

The context of the quote is worse than the quote.  Obama’s using the success of the business owner as a lever to force him to pay more taxes.  And he hides behind “they wanna give something back.”

The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share

Obama’s now famous quote out of Virgina, ” If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen. ” is surprising not because he believes that.  No, it’s surprising because he actually said it out loud.

Everybody knows that Obama is a big government guy.  We all know that he sees the world through the lens of unequal results rather than unequal opportunities.  But one has to wonder if Obama himself hasn’t channeled the villains in Atlas Shrugged:

“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

If it were as easy as picking mangos that had dropped from the tree, everyone would be a mango seller.*

But the context of Obama’s speech wasn’t about government building out infrastructure, it was about the rich paying more taxes; paying their fair share.  But what is that fair share?  Ask a liberal and you’ll get a look that’s either:

  1. Glassy and confused
  2. Arrogantly silent – as if the question is beneath them to answer

But tell them that the rich already pay their fair share and they’ll start to object.  Tell them that they pay MORE than their fair share and you’ll see real denial.

Take the above chart.

Every single income group earns more share of the income than they pay share of taxes.  Everyone, that is, except the wealthy.

Fair indeed.

* My wife’s family is Puerto Rican; I visit often.  Every time I visit when the mangos are in season, there are people with bags gathering them from the little rural roads.  It’s dangerous enough to drive those narrow winding roads, but with the folks on the roads to boot?  Anyway, these people then lug the mangos 1/8 of a mile to the main road and sell them to people driving by.  Mangos literally lying in the ditch are picked by some people and sold to to others.  This makes me think of liberals every time.

Amendment One: Role Of The State

I was thinking about the whole debate and then the vote on North Carolina’s gay marriage amendment today.  One of the most interesting realizations was the number of liberals who voted with me today.

Think about it.  I’ve been advocating Liberty, real individual Liberty free of state coercion, for years now.  I’m as for two gay men getting married as I am for the owner of a bar refusing to serve those two gay men.  I’m as for the right to open a barber shop without a barber’s license as I am for allowing people to suffer the consequences of not obtaining health insurance.

Quite simply, I have a long standing history of advocating for the Liberty of the individual.  The Left most certainly does NOT.

The left clearly advocates for the state to intervene to feed people.

The left clearly advocates for the state to house people, to send people to college, to provide medical care and retirement.

The left is ALL about the state controlling people’s lives and restricting individual Liberty until the Statue of Liberty herself pukes.  The idea of Liberty to the Leftist is foreign and on that is despised and feared.

Why is it then, that now, in this debate, the Leftist resonates with the Libertarian?

Fascinating.

Taxes: The Left Wins – I Lose

I have been waging a continuous war on taxes and increasing them.  I personally think that the best way to cause our elected officials to reduce the size of government is to reduce the amount of money we give ’em.  Those on the left feel that the best way to balance the budget is to INCREASE taxes.  Now,  unless they are pure Marxists who simply will not accept any other form of economic structure than that of transferring money from the wealthy to the poor, what my friends are saying is that we need to increase taxes to increase REVENUE.

The more money IN, the better off the budget/deficit will be.

Sadly, for the second year in a row and for the last 24 out of 30 years, the left has succeeded in growing revenue.  In 2011 the United States Federal government will have taken in $2.3035 trillion.  This represents a 6.51% increase year over year 2010.

If I’m lucky I can achieve my goal of shrinking government in 2012 but it doesn’t look good.  The Tax Policy Center is calling for a 2012 tax receipt increase of  $165.1 billion in 2012.  And it only looks to get worse year over year after that.

Sigh.

Joe Biden Is A Cheapskate

 

I just mentioned that President Obama is a liar.  He claims to want to pay higher taxes, yet, when given the opportunity, he doesn’t.  Rather he chooses to shelter his money and keep what he can.  In fact, Obama pays less in taxes than does his secretary.

Ironic.

Now we find out that his Veep, Joseph Biden, is a cheapskate.

The vice president’s effective federal tax rate is 23.2%. The Bidens gave $5,540 to charity, a little less than 2% of income.

TWO percent of the Vice President of the United State’s income went to charity.

And the left has the balls to claim that conservative republicans don’t care about the poor, about kids, about education and the downtrodden.

On the other hand, perhaps we can defend Mr. Biden for stretching his pennies into copper wire.  See, the Liberal doesn’t see taxation as confiscation.  Rather, the liberal sees taxation AS CHARITY!  They feel that by legislating laws that force people to pay for their charity of choice that they have somehow acted in a moral manner.

Beware the Leftist who is willing to spend YOUR money in the name of his charity.

 

Higher Taxes: Less Revenue

 

In the latest example of the Laffer Curve we see that 0% of $60 billion is less than [some number > 0]% of $60 billion.

See, Apple doesn’t think that having to pay the world’s highest corporate income tax is in the best interests of the company.  Or the shareholders.  So it’s not going to pay the tax.

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Are You Smarter Than A Three Year Old: Inequality and fairness

It’s no secret Obama is going to bang the “It’s not fair” drum this election.  Hell, he’s been bangin’ it since LAST election.  He’s continually calling for the rich to “pay their fair share.”  He can’t rub two speeches together without mentioning that everyone should play by the same rules.  Even more, he continues to claim that the richest among us have been doing exceptionally well in the economy while the rest of us are seeing wages stagnate for the last 30 years.

Don’t forget that it isn’t true:

 The claim that the standard of living of middle Americans has stagnated over the past generation is common. An accompanying assertion is that virtually all income growth over the past three decades bypassed middle America and accrued almost entirely to the rich.

The findings reported here—and summarized in Chart 8—refute those claims.  Careful analysis shows that the incomes of most types of middle American households have increased substantially over the past three decades.

So if it isn’t true, why does Obama continue to bang this drum?

Because he thinks that we think it’s true.

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Michigan Tax Policy: Reducing Rates Expanding The Base

It doesn’t matter who’s doin’ the takin’.  If your property is being confiscated even as you grow it, you are going to either quit working so hard to make more property, hide that property better or move to a place where that property won’t be confiscated.

The fact that the government is taking that property doesn’t matter; at some point people just reach a limit and slow down.

So what happens when the confiscation stops?  Growth occurs.  Witness Michigan.

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