Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Obama's "Jobs" Program: Government Money is Stupid Money

Money taken out of the economy via taxation is a net negative.  Beyond infrastructure and the enumerated constitutional duties, government does not and cannot spend your money more efficiently that you can yourself.  

Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat trying to unseat Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, delivered a tart message with dictatorial undertones to the nation's greedy rich:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. . . . -- Elizabeth Warren
Despite such lectures by Ivy League professors who enjoy burning strawmen, conservatives are not anti-government nor anti-tax. It's all about proportion. Famed economist Henry Hazlitt says it best:
A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much. The kind of government services then supplied in return, which among other things safeguard production itself, more than compensate for this. (Henry Hazlitt)
If government would limit itself to just funding that infrastructure liberals continually blather on about, we would not be having these arguments, and we would not be mired in this economic morass.

Elizabeth Warren's factory owners benefit not at all from the cawing aviary of special interest rent-seekers now roosting in thousands of government agencies and gobbling billions of dollars in taxpayer contributions.    Also, Warren's factory owner, along with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and even famous tax dodger Warren Buffet, paid far more for those roads than did the other 99% of America.

Taxes Kill Economic Activity
we took a look at British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's still new (2011) program of increased taxes directed at oil and gas companies operating in the North Sea. Amazingly, the chancellor's tax hike took a 52% year-over-year chunk out of the area's second-quarter drilling activity. (The Fastest Way – David Lee Smith)
According to the author, Global consultant Woods Mackenzie estimates Obama’s proposed tax and regulation on the gas and oil industry “would lop off about 700,000 barrels a day of oil-equivalent production at a cost of some 170,000 industry jobs.”

Let's Go All The Way

Obama wants to claw back the special exemptions, loopholes and tax breaks gas and oil lobbyists have cajoled and bribed out of congress.  Fine. But don't stop there. Do it across the board. Make GM, their union partners in crime, and Wall Street welfare queens give us back the tens and hundreds of billions in taxpayer money they've absconded with.

No loopholes, no special deals for any group. If the Obamacrats are not willing to do this, then they are not serious, but are instead demagoguing the issue for naked partisan gain.

It's a simple calculus:
When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only 60 cents of every dollar it gains, [...] its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those attended with a minimum of risk. (Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson)
A better approach is to categorically and unapologetically remove all government loans, subsidies, tax breaks, loopholes and special exceptions. Period. Again, Henry Hazlitt explains:
Each private lender risks his own funds. [...] When people risk their own funds they are usually careful in their investigations to determine the adequacy of the assets pledged and the business acumen and honesty of the borrower.
But the government almost invariably operates by different standards. The whole argument for its entering the lending business, in fact, is that it will make loans to people who could not get them from private lenders.
This is only another way of saying that the government lenders will take risks with other people's money (the taxpayers') that private lenders will not take with their own money. (Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson)
And that is the crux of the problem, and that is why private sector spending is inherently more efficient than government spending.

Obama blew a trillion dollars and we've got nothing to show for it but more economic misery.  We would be stupid to give him one more dime, let alone another $500 billion.

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another obama campaign charade. The bus tour to promote obama's reelection

Unknown said...

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."
Warren needs to get educated.

This woman went from Welfare and food stamps to earning her first million in 5 years.

http://ap-dp.blogspot.com/2011/10/from-welfare-to-millionaire.html

Ducky's here said...

does not and cannot spend your money more efficiently that you can yourself.

---------

How do you spend money "efficiently"?

You determine what short term itch you want to scratch and purchase something you don't need and don't even want in a short time. That's efficient?

Wait till the Christmas madness for an example of how you spend your money "efficiently".

Now I admit the government is spending in much the same fashion but this idea that individuals scratching an acquisitive itch know what our long term needs are is asinine.

Ducky's here said...

I think Warren speaks good economic sense. She recently went gutless and went all in on the dangers of the recent Iranian "terrorist threat".

I imagine we'll see her blue dog soul if she's elected. Her being from Oklahoma is a red flag anyway.

Anonymous said...

Silver,

You speaketh much sense, fine sir.

Too much sense, actually.

I find it mildly frustrating that common sense like yours is inevitably cast aside by the libs in lieu of hyper-emotionalism and class warfare rhetoric.

*sigh*...and so it goes in our divided Nation, thanks to Our Dear Leader.

Silverfiddle said...

Ducky: No liberal in their right mind would vote for that DINO Warren.

I see you're too smart to fall for her closet tea party trickery. I'd stay home on election day if I were you...

Anonymous said...

While I basically agree with Elizabeth Warren’s reassertion of John Donne’s timeless “No man is an island ...” theme she doesn’t seem aware that if it were not for those smart enough, strong enough, brave enough and persistent enough to

A) find workable ideas,

B) implement them,

C) build businesses to manufacture and distribute the resultant products and services thus enabling the public to get what it wants and needs,

D)there would be no need for roads, bridges, tunnels, and no need to hire policemen to protect the wealth generating facility.

There would be no need for an insurance industry either to protect against earthquake, wind, fire, flood, theft, and liability, and very likely there would be no community surrounding the industry in question.

Above all, there would be no need for LABOR to run the mill.

The enterprising individual -- from the earliest dirt farmers who worked the land in order to feed us to the most sophisticated inventors, developers and purveyors of digital technology today have made the very existence of this country possible.

We owe inventors, entrepreneurs and those capable of organizing and running a profitable business EVERYTHING.

For the most part government today is little more than a PARASITE that feeds off industry. The parasite has grown so large, so powerful, so bloated -- and so drunk on its own sense of power -- it now threatens to KILL the HOST that made the parasite’s existence possible in the first place.

WHEN THE HOST DIES, THE PARASITE DIES WITH IT.

In other words RAPACITY and ABUSE of ANY kind ultimately results in DEATH -- the wages of sin, if you will.

If anyone can find a way to express it more clearly, let him please come forth.

What the extremes of both left and right conveniently forget is that this works both ways. There’s a constant need for wise men of good moral character to fine tune the relationship between the administration of creative entrepreneurship and those whose labor make it practicable.

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

My GOD! The verification word for that last post was CORDIAL.

Can you believe that?

Surely it must be a Sign from Heaven!

~ FreeThinke

Z said...

Seems to me that our Conservatives in government wanting to straighten out the economy are on track when the short term itches are ignored for the bigger picture as much as possible. They're the ones saying "We can't borrow more or our childrens' futures are GONE...we've got to do something longlasting and effective for THEIR future not short term fixes."

Ducky, let's hope "Christmas madness" works; our economy needs some spending. It never has to mean individual OVER spending....even the poor can have a Christmas with gifts they made and even most of the materials for those homemade gifts must be bought somewhere.
If only people could buy American as much as possible

SF...I fear Obama'll be getting many more dimes before 2012...either from us or China.

Infidel de Manahatta said...

We are truly boned. Trillions in debt. Office holders eating us out of our livelihood.

Is it too late for another revolution?

Anonymous said...

From Hot Air: She is the new hick-
I’m a new category, an elite hick,” said Warren, on the “Left Ahead” podcast. “I don’t even know what to say about that one,” she said, laughing.
Hot Mike Ball then came back to the word “hick,” saying he had been called that in his lifetime too.
“If you’re going to be in the Senate, and we would like you to, as a fellow person who was born in Oklahoma and raised in West Virginia, I’ve been called a hick myself a lot. I’ve got to say I’d love to see you in office,” said Ball.
“I’m going for the hick vote here,” Warren answered. “I just want you to know. Maybe we could start wearing stickers that say ‘Hicks for Elizabeth’ – could we do that?” she asked.

Jersey McJones said...

Silver, I need to point out a few falsehoods in your post:

1. Money taken out of the economy via taxation is a net negative.

Not true. The vast majority of the money is not "taken out of the economy." Aside from some foreign aid and some military spending, most all the money is recycled right back into the economy.

2. "Beyond infrastructure and the enumerated constitutional duties, government does not and cannot spend your money more efficiently that you can yourself."

Not necessarily true. There are many different examples, but take health insurance for one, because that's a big portion of the spending. Medicare is FAR more (up to ten times more) efficient than privates sector health insurance.

3. Also, Warren's factory owner, along with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and even famous tax dodger Warren Buffet, paid far more for those roads than did the other 99% of America.

Totally false. Most infrastructure spending comes from state and federal gasoline taxes and the vast majority of that is paid for by regular folks.

4. "According to the author, Global consultant Woods Mackenzie estimates Obama’s proposed tax and regulation on the gas and oil industry "would lop off about 700,000 barrels a day of oil-equivalent production at a cost of some 170,000 industry jobs.""

5. My ass. Wood Mackenzie is a front for the energy and mining interests, so anything they say is bullshit. Allowing a little more drilling in the Gulf is certainly not going to create "170,000 industrial jobs." That's just stupid. Obama is not stopping the oil companies from drilling, as they have millions of acres now they aren't even tapping, and the bill will never pass anyway, so why even bring it up. Sleazy, stupid, and FALSE.

6. "When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only 60 cents of every dollar it gains, [...] its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those attended with a minimum of risk."

No one is proposing getting rid of all exemptions for anyone or anything. It's a silly, hyperbolic calculus.

7. "And that is the crux of the problem, and that is why private sector spending is inherently more efficient than government spending."

What??? If that were true, then the private sector wouldn't have to come running to the government every time they screw up.

8. "Obama blew a trillion dollars and we've got nothing to show for it but more economic misery."

That's a lie. You are lying. Obama cut taxes (more in one year than Bush ever did in one year), and then had to spend the money to cover entitlement spending and unemployment when the Bush Recession hit. Only a fraction of the Recovery Act went to any kind of stimulus.

YOU KNOW THIS. STOP LYING.

JMJ

Anonymous said...

"Seems to me that our Conservatives in government wanting to straighten out the economy are on track when the short term itches are ignored for the bigger picture as much as possible. They're the ones saying "We can't borrow more or our childrens' future is GONE..."

Yes, Z, that is what they are saying, but talk is cheap, and as far as I can see our elected representatives are not doing much other than issuing blasts of hot air.

"Ducky, let's hope 'Christmas madness' works; our economy needs some spending. It never has to mean individual OVER spending ... even most of the materials for ... homemade gifts must be bought somewhere."

Ducky disapproves of what-he-regards-as frivolous spending, Z. Like most of the leftists I've known, he seems to think we'd be better off with little more than the basic necessities of life -- as he would define them, and that we should focus our attention on pursuits that he deems worthwhile.

Leftists -- like would-be theocrats -- truly believe they are possessed of superior wisdom, and understand much better than us poor mortals what our needs and desires should be.

In many cases they may be right, but bowing to their infinite wisdom would obviate freedom of choice, and thus turn us into nothing more than cogs in a smoothly running machine that exists primarily to be served -- and serviced -- by us. If the would-be dictators had their way, we would have no life other than to do their bidding.

Even GOD gave us free will. Life would have no meaning without the freedom to be wrong. We were not designed to be automata.



"If only people could buy American as much as possible."

Again that wish hampers our freedom of choice to buy what works to our best advantage as individuals. Because of Union Overreach, American labor has effectively priced itself out of existence. It cannot compete with labor from countries that have not yet caught the disease of misunderstood and misapplied notions of egalitarianism that has all-but destroyed the ascendancy of the West. Why should Americans pay more just to be "patriotic?" That flies in the face of common sense in just the way Marxism does.

What may appear to be "selfishness" is a primary motivator in human interaction. People will always want to buy from sources that give them the best "deal." So, it's up to American Labor to emend its priorities, and get back in tune withreality -- NOT the other way 'round.

Sound economies run on SENSE not SENTIMENT.


~ FreeThinke

Silverfiddle said...

Jersey: Thank you for giving us a scary glimpse into the mind of a liberal.

Let me "recycle" your paycheck for you...

Stop with the medicare efficiency lie. It's already been debunked

http://www.qando.net/?p=3362

Wrong again on how infrastructure is paid for. Big trucks are taxed more, so the best you can say is that road MAINTENANCE is proportional. Gas taxes do not pay for all infrastructure.

So you're smarter than Wood Mackenzie? Then show us your alternate analysis or cram it. And I notice you completely ignored their factual observation of what actually happened in Britain.

#6. No it's not. Would you invest a dollar if you knew at most you would get a dollar back, but on the downside you'd only get 60 cents back? If so, I've got some investments I'd like to sell you.

#7 Wrong again. Fannie, Freddie, Solyndra, Ethanol subsidies... Government confiscates money and spends it on things that the private sector refuses to, resulting in financial debacles.

Pleas explain how government is so much more efficient than the private sector. We all need the good belly laugh

You ALL CAPS whining doesn't change the fact that Obummer's record-breaking deficit spending has accomplished nothing. And don't even try with that "jobs saved" crap. It's unquantifiable hogwash.

Progressive statism has failed.

Ducky's here said...

Even GOD gave us free will. Life would have no meaning without the freedom to be wrong.

-----
How about the freedom to be right once in a while, Freethinker.

By the way, in the age of pervasive blitz advertising I question the effectiveness of "free will".

Silverfiddle said...

From the Wall St Journal:
the federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its second biggest annual budget deficit,...

The Obama years have racked up the three largest deficits, both in absolute amounts and as a share of GDP
, since Hitler still terrorized Europe. Some increase in deficits was inevitable given the recession, but to have deficits of nearly $1.3 trillion two years into a purported economic recovery simply hasn't happened in modern U.S. history. Yet President Obama fiercely resisted even the token spending cuts for fiscal 2011 pressed by House Republicans earlier this year.

The table also shows how close the federal budget was to balance as recently as fiscal 2007, with a deficit as low as $161 billion, or 1.2% of GDP. Those are the numbers to point to the next time someone says that the Bush tax rates are the main cause of our current fiscal woes.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637513885592874.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Put that in your hopium pipe and smoke it.

Anonymous said...

Conservatives are known for having the common gene of looking ahead to the future and balancing their immediate decisions on this.

Liberals are driven by "gimmegimmegimmegimmeNOWNOWNOW!!" It is the wise squirrel who stores up for the Winter vs. the slacker squirrel who knows he can whine and complain and get free acorns from the squirrel gob'ment because he failed to plan accordingly.

Case in point: liberals. All emotion, all immediate gratification. But sorely lacking in rationality and the ultimate gratification of planning ahead.

Anonymous said...

>How about the freedom to be right once in a while,

You have it. Unfortunately, Ducky, you seem to be reluctant to use it.

Anonymous said...

How do you spend money "efficiently"?

Ducky, the very fact that you asked that question illustrates all that is wrong with your thinking.

Anonymous said...

In case anyone is Interested:


GOP Primary DEBATE in NH airs on CNN TONIGHT at 8pm, EDT


~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

This is fun:

http://www.dittoville.com/2011/10/17/herman-cains-new-book/

It's so bad it's wonderful.

GIVE PIZZA A CHANCE!

At last a political candidate with a sense of humor.

Let's give three cheers for

HERMAN CAIN -- THE ANTI-OBAMA.

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

Too bad Americans don't speak German.

All those opposed to Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Economic Recovery Plan could counter him with

NEIN! NEIN! NEIN!

~ FT

Bd said...

Clinton/Warren 2016

Warren/???? 2020

Jersey McJones said...

Silver, your citation compared Medicare costs to overall private insurance overhead. That's a sleazy tactic on the writers' part. When you compare Medicare to private health insurance OF THE SAME DEMOGRAPHIC, let alone when compared to the different types of coverage.

Before Medicare, over 50% of seniors had no coverage. Since it's inception, private premiums rose 75% more than Medicare premiums. Finally we spend 50% more on healthcare in America than any of our competitors, and they all have essentially Medicare for everyone!

Now, of course, we can't know what the difference between Medicare and private coverage would be right now, because we have Medicare. We have no experimental control. But what the Ryan plan came out the non-partisan CBO estimated coverage costs would raise 5,000-6,000 dollars per person, and there is no evidence that the insurance industry would be offer coverage to such a high risk demographic in the first place!

All said, Medicare is OBVIOUSLY more efficient than private insurance could be in it's stead.

"So you're smarter than Wood Mackenzie?"

I wouldn't know, but I do know a conflict of interest when I see one. Do you?

"Would you invest a dollar if you knew at most you would get a dollar back, but on the downside you'd only get 60 cents back? If so, I've got some investments I'd like to sell you."

What the hell are you talking about? NO ONE IS PROPOSING SUCH A THING!

"Wrong again. Fannie, Freddie, Solyndra, Ethanol subsidies... Government confiscates money and spends it on things that the private sector refuses to, resulting in financial debacles."

Again, where do you think the money goes? Do you think it's launched on a spaceship for Mars?

The obvious fact to anyone who knows anything about the economy and gov't is that the vast majority of government spending comes back to the economy. Remember the big three expenditures, not your paltry examples: Social Security, Medicare, and the Military.

"Pleas explain how government is so much more efficient than the private sector. We all need the good belly laugh"

It's not always more efficient. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Only a moron would assert that gov't is always more efficient or the private sector is always more efficient at what they do. It depends what you are talking about.

Sheesh, man!

JMJ

98ZJUSMC said...

@Silverfiddle:

I see you're too smart to fall for her closet tea party trickery. I'd stay home on election day if I were you...

Heh!

98ZJUSMC said...

By the way, in the age of pervasive blitz advertising I question the effectiveness of "free will".

Free will is very effective when tempered with common sense.

98ZJUSMC said...

Trestin said...
How do you spend money "efficiently"?

Ducky, the very fact that you asked that question illustrates all that is wrong with your thinking.

10/18/11 2:42 PM


Beat me to it, Trestin..

Ducky's here said...

This is only another way of saying that the government lenders will take risks with other people's money (the taxpayers') that private lenders will not take with their own money.

-------
So Countrywide writes a bunch of subprime $750K jumbos and sells them in a big bundle to Lehman, repeating the process with the proceeds and Lehman leverages this junk to it's customers (i.e. suckers at 50 to 1.

Where is the government involvement?

Silverfiddle said...

Oh, Ducky, that's an easy one...

Who bailed everybody out???

Uncle Sucker!

Just like the reckless gamblers knew they would.


Keep smokin that hopium Jersey. More government will fix it all, right?

If it were just your money going up in smoke I'd just laugh off your obstinate ignorance, but the socialist schemes you worship waste everyone's money (or at least the half of us that pay taxes).

You obviously can't read, because you misread the medicare mythbuster, and you willfully did not comprehend this, which is written in clear prose by a smart man:

"When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only 60 cents of every dollar it gains, [...] its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those attended with a minimum of risk."

And thanks for mentioning fannie, Freddie, Solyndra, Ethanol subsidies. They're all competing for which destroys more wealth through capital misallocation.

Imagine the jobs and productive economic activity that could have been created had the government not confiscated and then wasted that money.

This explain a lot. I suppose you also think Obama knows what he's doing on the economy...

Ducky's here said...

Maybe, Silverfiddle, but not quite that easy.

Mr. Greenspan refused any government intervention because he believed the free market (LMAO) is self correcting. Of course he later admitted he blew that call. He did not see any need in th future for intervention.

The boys who were writing the derivatives were essentially betting that housing prices would rise for an extended period of time, after all, they always rise, correct?
So were they counting on the bailout or were they possibly so goddamn stupid that they believed it? How can we tell?

This went on at a dizzying level before the fools realized they had a problem and that only happened when home vales fell and the smartest guys in the room realized ALL their action was on the freaking over.

Nope, it is very easy to make the case that the bad actor here was the unregulated market.

Ducky's here said...

Fannie, Freddie, Solyndra, Ethanol subsidies

------
Fannie and Freddie should NEVER have been privatized. The junk went into the fan when they decided that as a PRIVATE company they were going to double the stock price by getting into the junk market.
It should be noted that they controlled a LOWER volume of the outstanding market after the crash than before.
They were losing share to the subprime writers.

Ethanol subsidies -- dumb, no doubt. Thank the founding fathers who gave a bunch of farm states with a population less than New York City a 40% vote in the Senate. This kind of mischief is inevitable.

Solyndra - some hanky-panky there but that hardly makes the case that we should not subsidize the technology.

Ducky's here said...

Obama blew a trillion dollars and we've got nothing to show for it but more economic misery.

-------

Who's we?

Are you under the impression that the financial system for the last 40 years has been operating for the benefit of the nation?

Of course you aren't and I really think in your heart of hearts you are in sympathy with the OWS folks.

Anonymous said...

I know exactly how leftists always seem to win battles and get their way.

The BORE the opposition to DEATH with their implacable will and dauntless, relentless, indefatigable flow of fatuous falsehood.

THEN they wade through the corpses and TAKE OVER whatever is LEFT, then run IT into the ground, until IT dies.

Leftists are PARASITES. They never think of what is certain to happen to them once they've killed off all the available HOSTS.

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends ... Not with a bang, but with a stampede of specious logic.

~ FreeThinke.

Anonymous said...

"O, Judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason. Fie on it! Fie! 'Tis an unwedded garden. Things rank and gross possess it merely ..."

Welcome to the People's Republik of North Amerika!

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE


~ FT

Silverfiddle said...

Have you ever seen money-lovers risk trillions of their own money without a safety net?

Neither have I. Never have. Never will.

Uncle Stupid underwrote it all... Fannie, Freddie, AIG... All of it.

With tens of thousands of pages of financial regulations on the books, it is laughable and willfully ignorant to say the unregulated free market did this.

No Ducky. Human nature did it, because Uncle Stupid incentivized it all.

Kid said...

This is pure union giveaway money. Plain and simple. oblabber even said so himself when he went to plan B -to get the money in smaller increments. The first being 35 billion which he said was to restore public union jobs.

If those people were let go, they Aren't Needed. Needless to say, no mention of private sector jobs, outside of hairy reid the effeminate vampire lying today saying private sector jobs were 'just fine'.

If anyone think that, they need to bookmark a financial site that reports the weekly economic numbers, such that will come out tomorrow.

I've been reading them everyday for the last 3 years and Initial Jobless Claims have been 400,000+ per week for the last 3 years. That sound 'just fine' to you?

Tomorrow's Expected number is 402k.

Any libs out there enjoying this? What goes around comes around folks. Not a personal threat. Karma. Count on it.