RoR: Forum

Even leftists like Jon Stewart are saying that phrase "reduce spending in the tax code" is "Orwellian". Talk about verbal contortions to avoid saying, "I want to raise taxes."

The premise behind that statement is that everything anyone earns belongs to the federal government, and then the government "spends" some of "their" money by allowing you to keep some fraction of what you earned.

Post 1

Thursday, April 21, 2011 - 6:47am

President Obama: "But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society."

I understand the use of rhetoric. If you can slip one over on a sleeping competitor, you win a debate point. But even as that line went over the air, it was stopped by my filter. Every millionaire and billionaire does not get $1 trillion in tax cuts. That is nonsense.

Once you stop and think about it, and do a little checking, you realize that the President's speech writers are mediocre thinkers.

There are about 3 million millionaires in America (Wikipedia) and about 1000 billionaires (Forbes). Realize that this is an effect of inflation. One million dollars in gold from 1900 would be $75 million today. So, today's "millionaire" is the $14,000-aire of 1900, comfortable, indeed, but not luxurious.

The youngest billionaire is Mark Zuckerman, founder of Facebook, which points to the basic problem with the President's worldview. Ten years ago, there was no Facebook. It was founded in 2004. Today about 600 million people worldwide use the service, largely for free (Wikipedia). As I cited Wikipedia twice, I point out that it, too, is available to all for free and is worth about $3billlion and is privately held.

So, perhaps President Obama could have said, "We are not going to let millions of people use free services like Facebook and Wikipedia." What then would be his popularity rating?

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 4/21, 6:49am)

Post 2

Thursday, April 21, 2011 - 12:55pm

Try to imagine some armed robbery suspect on the witness stand at his trial, saying, "You must understand that we cannot continue to let businesses hoard excessive revenues. And we must reduce their out of control spending of our pre-redistributed funds. Not only is property the true theft when capitalists hoard our wealth, but we must see that the earners and producers are the thieves when they try to keep our fair share."
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 4/21, 12:57pm)

Post 3

Friday, April 22, 2011 - 9:13am

Steve, what scares me about your reductio ad absurdum is that I can see it actually happening. In fact, I'd be almost surprised if it hasn't.

Post 4

Friday, April 22, 2011 - 9:20pm

Luke,

Yes, that is the horrible part. But it is the trend that is important. We have seen better than a hundred years of going the wrong way, but at a fairly slow pace. The pace has quickened and we can imagine it looking like a hockey stick graph. And we see that the opposing sides are debating and fighting more fiercely and using arguments arising from more fundamental philosophical levels. That is very good. We are going to fight at the level of the real differences, the public will become more highly educated on these differences (free enterprise or state controlled economy, personal responsibility or no one can help themselves, worship ability and success or surrender to neediness and failures, defend production and property rights or redistribution and collective ownership).

I don't know if we will win in this 'cycle' or there will have to be some future renaissance 1,000 years from now. But I think we have a good chance. Before, we had no chance because the real principles weren't being put forth which is needed to secure real wins.

Post 5

Thursday, April 28, 2011 - 1:07pm