Here are excerpts from a real American businessman’s letter to Obama. He is Corey Miller, a 54 year old high school graduate who started a water well drilling company when he was 29. There are millions of other entrepreneurs out there who can identify with Corey; two of them are in my family.
Entrepreneurship is the heartbeat of our economy. Liberal, conservative, or whatever - Obama’s policies amount to just plain bad economics.
You see, Mr. Obama, I’m the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I’m the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I’m the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and would not demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I’m the guy you characterize as “the Americans who can afford it the most” that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution “to spread the wealth” to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything.
You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What’s worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.
What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach of every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states.
In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.
The whole letter is here. In it, he talks about how his business creates jobs. And, he gets at simple economic concepts that many people have lost site of in their yearning to be emotionally gratified by “getting the fat cats”. For instance, the simple fact that when you increase taxes on a buisness, it is paid by some combination of fewer jobs, lower wages, and higher prices. Econ 101: When you tax something, you get less of it.
This post would be more impactful to me if small business owners were the only people who will see increased taxes. They are in actuality only a percentage of the people who will carry an increased burden; there are plenty of non-business owners who fall into that “5%” range whose taxes will be raised.
I do understand the point, and agree with it to some extent though. Here’s a link to a brief op-ed piece that backs up your point Dan: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102802955.html
Thanks for the link. The top 5% earn 36% of the total income but pay 60% of the income taxes…I’m told that still isn’t “fair” enough – but whatever. For sure, taxes are going up on business owners and non-business owners alike, and it ain’t limited to the top 5% in either case.
On the business side, people need to understand that businesses don’t pay taxes – individuals, we, ultimately pay them indirectly as they are passed through the economy. What’s worse is there is a “multiplier” effect that occurs such that the impact of the increased tax burden is larger than the absolute dollar amount of the tax burden itself.
On the income tax side, his plan is a rebate plan. No tax RATES will be cut for anybody and they will go up for some (by the way, if he let’s Bush’s tax cuts expire completely the threshold for higher rates won’t be 200k, it is 42k). Instead, refunds (gov’t checks) are issued on the basis of various social criteria, and it turns out the majority of the dollars will go to people who currently pay $0 income tax (not sure why it is called a refund if they pay $0 already). In truth, this is more accurately described as a welfare or spending program than a tax cutting program – it just happens to be buried in the tax code.
Like I said before…IF the goal is economic growth, then when you look at the science of economics you see that his policies amount to bad economics. IF the goal is for everyone to make the same amount of money regardless of the value their skills command in a free market, well then, we’re on our way.
lower cost to suppliers -> decreased price of production-> increased supply @ lower price-> increased demand -> increased spending-> increased GDP
that’s the first day of econ 101.