All Government Is Free

Yes, of course all government is free, where have you been studying economics. All our money is the government's so it can do what it wants, right? If you have been paying any attention to the discussions in Washington, that seems to be the message.  All they need to do is spend a few trillions more dollars and all will be fine.  Unfortunately, that is far from reality.  Somehow millions become billions and then trillions.  Government never gets enough money, it always needs more.


Government is like the furnace that needs constant tending and fuel. It has an insatiable appetite and it never will be enough.


It is for that reason that we believe in a very small government, doing only those things that individuals cannot do for themselves or through organizations (charities)
that help provide for those temporary needs most people need sometime during their lives. Otherwise, government tries to be all things to all individuals which is an impossible task.


Examples of government inefficiency are  numerous but let us make a couple observations.  Those who work for all levels of government don't view the dollars as their own and therefore do not take care in shepherding them, rather they are careless, spendthrift and foolhardy with "some else's" money.  The recent million dollar Vegas party for the General Services Administration (GSA) (the government's bookkeeper and investigator) is a great example. Here is the organization that is supposed to make sure that the government is doing a good job spending our money and they irresponsibly spend significant dollars.  What a travesty. Heads should roll!


Additionally, have you ever seen a hard working government worker? Most come in at starting time, leave at their scheduled departure time and don't take work home.  Hey, they worked their 7 hours, what do you want?  If you want a good example of this attitude, go to your local court.  A case might be called for 8:30 and the Judge shows up at 9, if you are lucky. However, they might not show until 10 or 11.   If you doubt our statement, ask a lawyer who has to appear before one of these "Lords of the Manor."


Finally, the saying "close enough for government work" is really a true statement.  How many people are removed from Welfare rolls by the state? How many people have died and Social Security continues to pay for years in the future?  Recently, in Michigan, a woman won a $1 million lottery.  She took the money and continued to receive Welfare. Only after someone turned her into the news media did the agency decide to take it away. She now is being charged with Welfare fraud.  Had someone not acted, she would have continued to take the money--"because she deserved it and had bills to pay."  Where were the state workers who should have checked the list of lottery winners and compared that with recipients  of the largess of the state? Probably on lunch break.


We need to cut government (federal, state and local) employees (sans military) by one-half to two-thirds. We doubt that it will impact any services we receive.


Conservative Tom

Free Lunch Egalitarianism

By: CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Here we go again.

At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country’s spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health-care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health-care reform. That was not true.

It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There’s no free lunch.

Now we know. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate is that Obamacare will add $1.76 trillion in federal expenditures through 2022. And, as one of the Medicare trustees has just made clear, if you don’t double count the $575 billion set aside for the Medicare trust fund, Obamacare adds to the already crushing national debt.

Three years later, we are back to smoke and mirrors. This time it’s not health care but the Buffett Rule, which would impose a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate on millionaires. Here is how Obama introduced it last September:

“Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a [higher] tax rate than Warren Buffett. … And that basic principle of fairness, if applied to our tax code, could raise enough money” to “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade. … This is not politics; this is math.”

OK. Let’s do the math. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this new tax would yield between $4 billion and $5 billion a year. If we collect the Buffett tax for the next 250 years — a span longer than the life of this republic — it would not cover the Obama deficitfor 2011 alone .

As an approach to our mountain of debt, the Buffett Rule is a farce. And yet Obama repeated the ridiculous claim again last week. “It will help us close our deficit.” Does he really think we’re that stupid?

Hence the fallback: The Buffett Rule is a first step in tax reform. On the contrary. It’s a substitute for tax reform, an evasion of tax reform. In three years, Obama hasn’t touched tax (or, for that matter, entitlement) reform, and clearly has no intention to. The Buffett Rule is nothing but a form of redistributionism that has vanishingly little to do with debt reduction and everything to do with re-election.

As such, it’s clever. It deftly channels the sentiment underlying Occupy Wall Street (original version, before its slovenly, whiny, aggressive weirdness made it politically toxic). It perfectly pits the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Indeed, it is OWS translated into legislation, something the actual occupiers never had the wit to come up with.

Buffett and Mitt Romney pay roughly 15 percent in taxes is that their income is principally capital gains. The Buffett Rule is, in fact, a disguised tax hike on capital gains. But Obama prefers to present it as just an alternative minimum tax because 50 years of economic history show that raising the capital gains tax backfires: It reduces federal revenues, while lowering the tax raises revenues.

No matter. Obama had famously said in 2008 that even if that’s the case, he’d still raise the capital gains tax — for the sake of fairness.

For Obama, fairness is the supreme social value. And fairness is what he is running on — although he is not prepared to come clean on its price. Or even acknowledge that there is a price. Instead, Obama throws in a free economic lunch for all. “This is not just about fairness,” he insisted on Wednesday. “This is also about growth.”

Growth? The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Now, in the middle of a historically weak recovery, Obama wants to raise our capital gains tax to the fourth highest. No better way to discourage investment — and the jobs and growth that come with it.

Three years ago, Obama promised universal health care that saves money. Today, he offers a capital gains tax hike that spurs economic growth. This is free-lunch egalitarianism.

The Buffett Rule redistributes deck chairs on the Titanic, ostensibly to make more available for those in steerage. Nice idea, but the iceberg cometh. The enterprise is an exercise in misdirection — a distraction not just from Obama’s dismal record on growth and unemployment but, more importantly, from his dereliction of duty in failing to this day to address the utterly predictable and devastating debt crisis ahead.