Saturday, April 16, 2011

Wolf: Obama's Spray-On Hair Of Fiscal Policy

Dr. Milton Wolf's latest OpEd for the Washington Times debunks the latest Obama plan to "soak the rich". Here's an excerpt from, "Obama's spray-on hair of fiscal policy":
President Obama, in addition to his new Obamacare taxes, now calls for tax increases on "the rich" -- the very taxes he proudly prevented just four months ago. In a deeply dishonest speech, the class-warrior-in-chief proclaimed that "we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society." He repeated, "We can't afford it."

First, Americans earning $200,000 are not "millionaires and billionaires." Second, to claim we can't afford to permit free citizens to keep their own earnings is to claim that those earnings belong not to the Americans who earned them but to the government that did not. And third, the "$1 trillion worth of tax cuts" is a flat-out fabrication. Tax revenues under President Bush were actually much greater than those collected under President Clinton -- nearly $5 trillion more.

Once again, economic reality makes fools of class-warfare politicians and their dishonesty about tax rates and tax revenues, but Americans are finally catching on.
(Read the full text of "Obama's spray-on hair of fiscal policy".)

Wolf's second point is especially critical. Wealth is created by private citizens who produce goods and services through rational thought and labor. It is not created by the government.

Punishing those who produce and create goods to redistribute to those who do not will not solve the federal debt. But it is a good way of destroying production and wealth-creation in any economy. Instead, the solution is to scale back government to its proper limited functions.

For a related take, see this video by Bill Whittle, "Eat The Rich":