Facts are stubborn things (Part 1) [Tea Party Express](Part 2 #25)

Tea Party Express ^ | December 6, 2011 | Howard Kaloogian

[Syncro]

 

 

In 2008 Barack Obama’s campaign shtick was “change.” That resonated because President Bush was spending too much and the country meant to change Washington. But Obama meant to change the country.

In response the Tea Party movement has arisen to implement the real change, putting brakes on that out of control big government growth. Our message to Washington is simple: you have run out of our money, stop excessive spending. You cannot borrow your way out of debt; you cannot spend your way out of deficits.

What is President Obama’s response to our message of fiscal responsibility? Shared sacrifice; everyone must feel his pain. By everyone he means the people, not the government. Winston Churchill was more eloquent when he observed that “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

Last year Obama used Pennsylvania’s Allentown Metal Works as a backdrop to tout his so-called stimulus spending as a success. A couple of months later, the plant closed.

Then Vice President Joe Biden bragged to a Pittsburgh crowd that all the runaway deficit spending would produce 250,000 to 500,000 jobs created each month by the start of last summer. We’re still waiting Joe.

Obama claimed his extreme spending spree would prevent unemployment from going above 8%. It’s been above that for the last 27 months.  To be fair, not everyone has done poorly under Obama. Federal government union employees have prospered.

Federal employment has grown by over 100,000 positions. Federal civil servants average pay and benefits were $123,049 in 2009 while private workers that year earned $61,051 average pay and benefits, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Take the Department of Transportation as a specific example of excessive government growth. Before Obama, only one bureaucrat there made over $170,000. After Obama’s spending spree, 1,690 bureaucrats are paid over $170,000 a year. How has Departments services improved the nations transportation services, has anyone noticed?

Now Obama claims austerity by wanting to freeze it at that exponentially higher level for a short while before increasing it again.

I guess that is what Obama meant when he said he “will not rest” until he creates jobs, jobs, jobs. But growing the government is not the same as growing the economy. Extending unemployment insurance payments is not a jobs program. Adding more Americans to food stamps is not a jobs program. Redistribution schemes do not create more wealth; it just shuffles the stack of what was already there, nothing new. No real help there.

News flash to Washington politicians: you don’t create jobs. The American people do. In the private sector, without government money, ordinary Americans start businesses and hire people. All that is needed is that the government leaves our money in our pockets and gets out of the way ending excessive and burdensome regulation.

If you succeed, Obama’s government would take your profits in oppressive taxation, to consume on growing the government overhead and whatever is left over is redistributed to government dependents who will vote for more handouts.

The truth is only 30% of the money intended to be redistributed actually gets to people liberals claim they want to help. If the government were a United Way charity with 70% overhead expense, would you contribute to it voluntarily?

If the government were a company, would you buy its stock? When you hear that Obama wants to raise taxes on anyone, what you are hearing is his call for big and bigger government. The government does not deserve a pay increase. It’s time to cut spending.

We here at the Tea Party Express are guided by 6 basic principles:

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• No more bailouts
• Reduce the size and intrusiveness of government
• Stop raising our taxes
• Repeal Obamacare
• Cease out-of-control spending

[Syncro]

Obama claimed his extreme spending spree would prevent unemployment from going above 8%. It’s been above that for the last 27 months. To be fair, not everyone has done poorly under Obama. Federal government union employees have prospered. Federal employment has grown by over 100,000 positions. Federal civil servants average pay and benefits were $123,049 in 2009 while private workers that year earned $61,051 average pay and benefits, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[onyx]

TPX you betcha!

[Syncro]

Thanks for the bump my friend!

[McGruff]

[Tenacious 1]

Here! Here! and Amen!

The government does not “create” jobs that help our nation or economy. In fact the opposite is true. Every job the government (any government) can create costs the tax payer. What does that mean?

In the private sector, an employee either directly or indirectly provides a product or service that is valued by others. The service or produce is purchased and either consumed, used (and replaced) or sold to another for the same. Thus the cycle grows wealth and wealth increases standards of living. There is no limit to the wealth that can be created (ever). However, wealth creation has a starting point. The beneficiaries of wealth creation are those entering the job market or industry regardless of age. Eventually, and hopefully, many of those will become wealth creators themselves as they advance in society's social structure.

That is until the cycle is interrupted and those who would otherwise enter the wealth creation cycle at an entry level are plucked from the process and placed on an entitlement program that requires government worker supervision and management.

Conversely, a government job is created by paying a government worker to manage the expenditures of tax revenue for the “good of the nation.” Politicians and media elite would have you believe that hiring a government worker broadens the tax income revenue base. At what cost? If a government worker is paid $100,000/year in salary and benefits, they may pay $18,000 per year in taxes. This worker is costing the other tax payers $82,000/year.

It is hardly a good thing that the government has “added” jobs in this case.

What's worse is that the government employee produces nothing that is actually consumed or builds wealth. It is impossible for the government to “build wealth” through job creation. Indirectly, the government does make many individuals wealthy (Fannie and Freddy, Solyndra, Politicians, etc.), but at a cost to the tax paying public at large far in excess of what is made.

Wealth is only a “zero sum game” when the government intervenes and interrupts the free market capital system. Since government does not produce a consumable product or service, it can only redistribute wealth based on the revenue it collects. AND there is a cost to collecting, accounting for and redistributing this wealth that must be skimmed from the collected revenue to pay for the government management of it before it can be redistributed.

Thus government can only be a consumer of wealth, not a creator.

[Syncro]

Some good stats, huh?

Gotta get this out there over and over again.

[noprogs]

The really sad thing is Paul’s “draconian and unrealistic” trillion dollar first year cut would only get us back to Bush-era deficits!

WTF happened in three years? Some bunch of hogs we have at the trough!

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Let's be clear about this graph:



First, it's for fiscal years and not calendar years. The Fiscal year ends on Sept. 30th.

Between Bush and Obama, Bush was mostly responsible for the deficit in 2009. The revenue loss and TARP were on him and not Obama. The "Stimulus" accounted for "only" $155B of the deficit that fiscal year. By far the biggest single contributor to the deficit was a loss of revenue, $624B. TARP was $184B in FY09.

Now this is not to absolve congress, the banks, Republicans, Democrats, etc. etc. It's just to say that pinning FY09's deficit on mostly Obama and holding Bush innocent is incorrect.

All the facts and figures can be found here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2763628/posts

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

“To be fair, not everyone has done poorly under Obama.”

No, not everyone. Some places are doing okay. The housing markets surrounding Washington DC and Manhattan have weathered the housing bust the best.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

“WTF happened in three years?”

We lost over $600B in revenue between 2008 and 2009. RP’s cuts PLUS a real recovery would eliminate the deficit.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

The figures I gave included the cost of the wars.

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12187

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

That comparison is a liberal comparison. For instance, Obama extended the “Bush Tax Cuts” so the effect of those tax cuts on the deficit should be pinned on Obama at some time.

It’s these biased plots that motivated me to do my plot. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2763628/posts It’s technically correct and gives a fairly unbiased impression

[bvw]

First post ever? Who do you work for?

[csmusaret]

5.07 trillion of the spending over the past decade is directly attributable to policy changes enacted by George W. Bush.

I thought only Democrats called tax cuts spending.

[csmusaret]

Presidents come and Presidents go, but Congress is always there just like an unemployed brother-in-law. Compare the deficits under the Republican and Democrat Congressional majorities:

[bvw]

I don’t know who the heck you are, but the posting of that deceptive chart set off three score alarm bells. First it was obviously bunkum, and second you didn’t source it.

It is from the Jul 24, 2011, Sunday New York Times, here: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html?ref=sunday

It was then “discussed” by James Fallows in The Atlantic, here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/the-chart-that-should-accompany-all-discussions-of-the-debt-ceiling/242484/ It is that discussion from which you seem to have drawn you own commentary as posted here. Who are you?

It was discussed on an FR Thread on July 29th and onwards, here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2755764/posts

That deceptive chart was debunked by Ed Morrissey on Hot Air on 26 July, using much better data and charts from the Heritage Foundation, here: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/07/26/charts-of-the-day/

Ed points out that the chart uses static budget modeling, a major and alone of itself, a fatal flaw, but common for those taking deceptive paths.

As Ed says the chart confuses what tax cuts are and declares them as a form of government spending — strictly a delusional liberal confusion, one ALL conservatives and the sane reject. The chart is also quite quite mad (in the insane sense of “mad”) to declare that Obama’s projected increases in spending over the next eight years will be only 1.44 T. That’s way way way low.

[bvw]

Wow. Great minds think alike. I was next about to post a different rendering of that same graphic, per DJ MacWoW’s post 9 on the FR thread (started by Recovering_Democrat) that I linked above.