Posted on 08/04/2004 10:26:45 PM PDT by Capitalism2003
http://www.investmentrarities.com/bestofjimcook.html
BEST OF JIM COOK August 2, 2004
BACK DOOR SOCIALISM
Leonard Read, 1951
Governments and socialists the world over have had to recognize that when government bureaucrats run corporations, they fail. Their new strategy is to let business stay private, but suck out its marrow with high taxes and micromanage businesses, via regulation, to further their socialist goals. An example would be the abolition of merit through hiring quotas, discrimination suits, racial preferences and so forth.
Despite spending half of all incomes, wages and business profits, governments still cannot make due. Ronald Reagan described the process. "Great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals…It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government."
Nevertheless, candidates on the left propose higher taxes and more government giveaways. Anywhere else in the world we would describe these liberals as the socialists they are. Unfortunately, for fiscal conservatives, the current administration spends as recklessly as any liberal. Editor Jeff Jacoby writes of the current President, "He has flooded the government’s books with red ink. And he has embraced new schemes for draining the Treasury…."
The newest socialist scheme is the prescription drug entitlement, a half-trillion annual expansion of the welfare state. To most retirees this sounds like a wonderful advantage. Unfortunately, it’s but one part of the many government schemes that are making our public finances unmanageable and also driving costs into the stratosphere. Robert Prechter points out that prices rise in direct correspondence to the amount of government meddling. "Look at the sectors that keep going up," he says, "food, housing, education and medical care. The government subsidizes home lending through specially authorized agencies such as Fannie May and Freddie Mac. The government runs most of the educational system, meddles in most private universities and subsidizes student loans. Government has completely distorted the medical profession by subsidizing medical expenses through Medicare and Medicaid and drafting intricate rules for medical coverage offered by insurance companies."
You may not worry much about these trends. After all, life in the U.S. is good. But, inevitably the comfortable life we take for granted can be lost. According to the greatest economist who ever lived, Ludwig von Mises, "Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors. But the idea of re-distribution enjoys great popularity still, even in the industrial countries….. "Interventionism and efforts to introduce Socialism have been working now for some decades to shatter the foundations of the world economic system. We stand on the brink of a precipice which threatens to engulf our civilization….."
To the masses the catchwords of Socialism sound enticing…. so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up. And so we must inevitably drift on to chaos and misery, the darkness of barbarism and annihilation."
Ludwig von Mises also gave us a solution. "Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us."
Our contemporary brand of socialism has one fatal flaw. It’s too expensive. When you try to shower benefits on so many recipients, you eventually must resort to subterfuge. Foremost among those tricks are money and credit expansion. Inevitably, you debase your currency. Years ago philosopher Leonard Read explained exactly what’s going on today. "Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are cause and effect, they feed on each other!"
The welfare state erodes our ethics, our prosperity, our character and our freedom. The economic damage done to date is far worse than anyone believes. In my view, we are on a precarious economic tightrope where any slip will plunge us into a financial crisis. Socialism has brought us to this predicament. A wise man once said, "Truth always emerges and finally prevails supreme in its power over the destiny of mankind, and terrible is the retribution for those who deny, defy, or betray it."
While I'll agree with the over regulation, I refuse to agree with the rest. 65% of all businesses in the US pay ZERO taxes, so that's just an outright lie. Second, business is doing just fine getting their way. How else could they get away with destroying this country by going overseas and then being able to move their goods and services back in at no cost. Whatever happened to corporate obligation? It used to go with the territory. No longer. The only suckers now are the American workers who are being taxed to death to pay for the excesses of the big business community. Our wages are plummeting..if you can find a job to pay a wage, yet our tax burden has tripled.
Our taxes just took an $833 million jump in Nevada in the past year. Literally every good and service tax was raised thru the roof. I get my real estate tax bill and I'm paying 12% of the real estate tax for "indigent healthcare." In the meantime, I can't afford my own. Because of price and tax increases, I'm now treading water. Anything can literally drown me. Yet the billionaires are getting richer day by day and punishing me for being merely a hardworking American citizen.
What is going on is SOCIALISM on a GLOBAL scale. Wake up and smell the coffee. The only ones benefitting are the big stock holders. Now I have no problem with that as long as they aren't costing me anything. But they're costing jobs, they're costing taxes, they're outsourcing and insourcing at record levels expecting me to subsidize their unlivable wages. What is that but the worst form of socialism?
BUMP
Most small businesses are incorporated in a way so they pay INCOME taxes, up to 37%...but not the special 'corporate tax' reserved for conglomerates. It is a myth that they pay no taxes...They are paying through the nose, especialy when you consider the FICA match they make for each employee, along with the numerous other taxes (medicare, medicaid, workers comp, unemployment insurance, etc, etc)
Right, you are!
http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/legal/gru_amicus/32_internatl.pdf
The following filed briefs in favor of "affirmative
action" in the Michigan "Grutter v. Bollinger"
(Michigan University) case. Be sure to save the
list of corporations below for later reference.
American Bar Association
American Council on Education, et. al.
Civil Rights Project of Harvard University
Clinical Legal Education Association
Fortune 500 Corporations that filed briefs in favor
of "affirmative action" for Michigan University
3M
Abbott Laboratories
American Airlines
Ashland
Bank One
Boeing
Coca-Cola
Dow Chemical
E.I. Du Pont De Nemours
Eastman Kodak
Eli Lilly
Ernst & Young
Exelon
Fannie Mae
General Dynamics
General Mills
Intel
Johnson & Johnson
Kellogg
KPMG
Lucent Technologies
Microsoft
Mitsubishi
Nationwide Mutual Insurance
Nationwide Financial
Pfizer
PPG
Proctor & Gamble
Sara Lee
Steelcase
Texaco
TRW
United Airlines
General Motors Corporation
Law Deans of Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, New York and Yale University, and
University of Pennsylvania
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law
Michigan Attorney General
Michigan Public Officials
National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, et. al.
NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund
Ohio State University
Thirty-six Faculty Members of The Ohio State University College of Law
UAW (International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers
Their social engineering (family breaking) tactics enlarge the labor pool. They side with greenies to eliminate domestic small business competition, and they lay tariffs against select industries that would help us to survive. You see, they assume that if things went more radically left, they, will their credentials, would easily be chosen as "ministers" for the new ministries. ...no loss in power or money.
And many of them are now pulling for Kerry, regardless of whether that will lead to higher taxes for them (which would only help in their efforts against us).
Vote for Bush, and hope that he can at least get his "ownership economy" plan (which the corporates hate) started. Otherwise, we'll continue to rent our lives from the company store.
Kerry Lists Endorsements From 204 Corporate Leaders
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1184967/posts
Actually it's termed "universal inter-dependence of nations.".
"All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations."
"It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." - The Communist Manifesto
Back door socialism...is that where the state owns your ass?
Do you have a source for this? I would like to use it in future arguments. Thanks
Modern Leftism as Recycled Fascism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181490/posts
"When fascism comes to America, it will come in the name of anti-fascism." --Huey Long
What?
Another rant about the liberal gay agenda?
Source please.
An S Corporation or a partnership passes all profits to the owners who then pays personal income taxes. That might account for 65% of businesses paying no taxes.
Socialism causes world wars.
I still want a source.
Companies pay taxes on telephone service, electricity...
I heard on the radio that John Edwards earned $27 million on a single court case one year...He hired a bunch of tax lawyers and found a way to incorporate himself, and ultimately dodged over $5 million in taxes. Now he wants to raise yours. A perfect example of leftist hypocrisy.
How about ..."it will come in the name of liberalism"?
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