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Name: Jamal Jackson
Location: Beaverton, OR
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Socialism lowers the threshold of who is considered "rich"

An economic system where the government doles out money to those it thinks is "needy" is a system that is unsustainable. The money that the government spreads out is money that is taken from a section of the population that the government thinks has too much. And of course it's government bureaucrats who determines who is needy and who has more than he or she needs.

To keep that kind of a system from crumbling, that threshold of "rich" will have to be lowered, because in such a system there is less incentive for productive people to work more - and more incentive for the less productive people to work less (since it is expected that the government will make up the difference with wealth redistribution). In fact just today, a news agency reported that Joe Biden said the following during an interview in Scranton, Pa.

Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, told a Scranton, Pa., TV station on Monday that Obama's tax break "should go to middle class people -- people making under $150,000 a year."

I don’t know if this is yet another misspeak from Biden, but this is exactly the trajectory socialism will follow - the original threshold of $200,000/$250,000 has dropped to $150,000. That number will keep dropping since, in practice, socialism cannot be sustained. Another important fact to understand is that the Obama's plan of tax-cuts for 95% of working Americans is very misleading - in fact, a lie because 35% - 40% of American income earners DO NOT pay income taxes. So how will that 35% - 40% of people get a tax-cut without paying a tax? Well, it's a simple trick - just rename a tax-credit (government giving free money) as a tax-cut. So Obama is giving free money to millions of people and then calling it a tax-cut!

The only way to help the "poor" is to have an economy that grows. An economy that grows creates jobs (of course it helps the poor only if they are willing to work). An economy grows when the "rich" invests their money in activities that start new businesses or grows an existing businesses. The poor does not give you a job, it's always the rich.

$500,000 in the hands of an entrepreneur is much more productive as far as growing the economy is concerned than $500 in the hands of a 1000 "poor" people. Economic policies are all about creating the right incentives for an economy to thrive - and, wealth redistribution creates all the wrong incentives, and is a bone-headed way to go about enriching those in the bottom.

CBS Evening News (this is a correction - it was not ABC as originally posted) did a report recently about how the different tax plans would affect various segments of the population. Under Obama's plan a "poor" family of four in Ohio who do not pay a single cent in taxes, would get a free check from the government for $550 a person, for a total of $2200. It was interesting to note that the "poor" family, had a 4 bedroom two-storey house, 2 cars, and a nice wide-screen LCD TV in their living room.
 
 
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Not about Warren Buffet but the rest of us

   

Obama and his supporters point to Buffet as an endorsement of Obama’s liberal economic stance.  Warren Buffet is someone who made money betting (sound bets undoubtedly) on financial instruments; he created his wealth through wizardry in the financial markets.

 Warren Buffet has got enough money stored away to endorse and pal around with anybody he chooses; a conservative or a liberal economic policy will affect him very little. Today, the economic issue is about the effect of a conservative or a liberal policy on regular folks. For a regular guy or gal to make it in this world a conservative economic policy is far superior as evidenced by the fact that the liberal socialistic policy has been tried and failed throughout the world. The two biggest growing economies in the world - India, and China - have given up their socialist economic model and have embraced capitalist market economics. Just in India alone since after the switch, 50 Million people have come out of abject poverty in the last decade because of the new economic model embraced by the nation. Sure in a capitalist model, the disparity between the rich and the poor may increase, but remember that total wealth is not the total amount of money floating around in the system. Wealth keeps growing and everyone (who works, and is responsible) gets to own a part of that wealth. That’s the only way of making sure that the relatively poor can make it in this world. There’s plenty of charity in the United States to help the truly needy, but for the rest a government welfare check will only breed dependence. As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day…..”.

Liberal economics does the following:

1) Super rich folks who have already made money have very little effect on their wealth. Their taxes may rise, but it's irrelevant to them. For rich people like Buffet, who thinks raising taxes is fine, here's something he should be aware of - the IRS does not turn down money that you give them even if you don't owe it to them. If Warren Buffet would like to give more money than what is due to the IRS he is free and most welcome to do so – the IRS will happily take it. If in the end, Warren Buffet does not like what's become of this country as a result of Obama's socialism, he can go buy an island somewhere and be king - the rest of us don't have that option.

2) The crowd at the bottom will get welfare checks from the government - which in the end is a huge disincentive to them. Here, the government is taking from the haves and distributing it to the have-nots (which is socialism). It's interesting to note though, that the supposed have-nots live a pretty comfortable life compared to most of the world – yes, including Western Europe. They have all the food they can eat, cable TV, flat screen TVs, one or more cars, etc. etc.

3) The people in the middle who want to make something of themselves, business owners, hard-working folks etc. will be the most hurt, because liberal economic polices "encourage" them only to get as successful as the government thinks it's necessary, because if they get too successful, they get taxed more. This is a huge disincentive to risk taking, hard work, innovation, etc.

At the end of the day, liberal socialist economic models look attractive (mostly to the second group of people) only for a short period of time, but in the long run that kind of model is not self-sustaining, and will crumble. Liberal economics, a.k.a socialism, is really a race to mediocrity, but what we need is a race to excellence.

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