Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Monday, September 22, 2008 3:08:49 PM
The picture of our economic future and fortune under the next President slowly begins to emerge, becoming a little clearer, as the differences between the candidates are spelled out, for me at least, after reading three recent articles; one considering our states as laboratories where the competing visions of our candidates have played out at the State level (by Phil Graham and Mike Solon); another looking at the real spending behind the imaginary tax cuts of one candidate and the current, disparate payment of taxes (by Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara); and a third digging into the economics of the Obama plan, and his effort to characterize increased taxation through government confiscation as “civility” and “neighborliness” (by Jeff Jacoby).
Using the states as a laboratory, applying a competitive index to examine 16 variables for ranking the states, Graham and Solon concluded - growth in jobs, income and population were critical elements if a state were to prosper. They learned that the top three states were Texas, Florida and Arizona; noting, remarkably, “a third of all new jobs created in the last ten years were in these three states.” On the other hand, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio were the three least successful states, demonstrating that governance, taxes, and regulatory policy matter. Their conclusion is evident; the title of the article is “If You Like Michigan’s Economy, You’ll Love Obama’s.”
Repeated calls for tax cuts for the middle class are unmasked as unreal and imaginary in “Tax Cuts, Real and Imaginary, Obama's spending programs in disguise.” Gingrich and Ferrara noting the Obama tax cut for 95% of American’s is a false promise, a deceptive ploy to transfer income from those who pay taxes to the 40% who no longer pay any share of the income tax; the top 10 percent paying 71 percent of the federal income tax though earning just 39 percent of the nation's pretax income; the bottom 60 percent of income earners together, on net, paying less than 1 percent of all federal income taxes while these workers earn 26 percent of national income.
In a third article, “Seeing through Obamanomics,” Jeff Jacoby argues that the declining number of Americans who have confidence that Barack Obama can do a better job handling the economy suggest that more Americans are beginning to understand the confiscatory, compulsory, and corroding effects of an Obama income re-distribution scheme.
Borrowing from Winston Churchill’s insight - “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries” - we can see a future economic landscape under a President McCain with an equal sharing of opportunity and risk, success with joy and education with failure, higher highs and lower lows; whereas, on the other hand, we can see a future economic landscape under a President Obama with an unequal sharing of risk and a reduction of opportunities, upside-down incentives with rewards of government bailouts for failure and penalties for success, higher lows and lower highs; life will be like the traveler on a trip through flat and monotonous terrain, travelling on an almost endless road that goes on and on, a road with no half-way point and no end in sight, travelling through a dry and desolate desert, a desert terrain with no foliage and no color, fewer opportunities for success with no hope of achievement rewarded – yes, an equal sharing for all, a sharing of dullness, misery; and, at every turn - government.