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Sunday, June 10, 2007
Kevin McCullough :: Townhall.com Columnist
Why Liberals Spread Poverty
by Kevin McCullough
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Liberals would prefer more people to experience poverty. Their actions demonstrate their massive desire to see more people unemployed, and under paid. One of their chief political goals is to cripple the chance for the impoverished from improving their lot in life and thus become even more dependent upon entitlements that only they (liberals) will dole out. Thus the greatest con in elective politics begins again.

It's called a "surcharge."

You and I would call it a tax increase. One more way and reason for the political class to take even more of the money that you and I slave for by slugging it 9 to 5 everyday.

In their funny little semantic sideshow this "surcharge" would be their answer to resolving the problem of the "alternative minimum tax." This year the "AMT" (another hostile attempt for elected leaders to pick-pocket us) will hit 23 million people. Some making as little as $50,000. The original idea of the AMT was to purposefully inflict pain upon 155 wealthy people a gazillion years ago. But it has never been adjusted for inflation - and you know liberals - they've never found a tax no matter how ill conceived that they've ever had a desire to do away with. So now the liberal congress is about to unload a ghastly holocaust of earnings redistribution on many working class families if the leadership in Congress doesn't take action to care for the AMT.

Their idea?

A 4.3% "surcharge" on "rich people." Particularly those who make $250,000 or more. And one important note - the plan, since it is a "surcharge," would be in addition to the tax rate you already paid last year.

Why they do it makes absolutely no sense - especially to the poor. The data speaks clearly to this matter. When you place uber-taxes on the rich you create higher unemployment, greater poverty, and most importantly for people like me who care about the poor - less money in the treasury to provide the important safety nets for those who truly need them.

When you do the opposite - you get an opposite result. Cutting the top marginal tax rates - particularly on the upper middle, and upper class tax brackets has a stimulus effect. Jobs are created, poverty turns into ownership, and the treasury takes in oodles of dollars.

The liberals' motivations, if impure, make perfect sense. If liberals are in charge of the public sector programs that people become dependent on for day to day living - then liberals can always campaign on the issues of "not taking food out of school children's tummies." Thinking people understand that while offering a hot lunch for a child at school is a wonderful thing for those children who need it. How much more wonderful would it be if that family grew their own economic ability to not be dependent upon the government issued lunches. A family that has the ability to send its own children to school with lunch boxes packed full of Mom's special goodies doesn't need liberals to force feed them the high-carb, mediocre nutrition that one can only get from government processed lasagna.

But Mom and Dad seeing Sally and Johnny off everyday fully independent of state aid - is bad political business for liberals. If liberals can't be the family's provider, then they won't be as likely to need such politicians in place and government might actually begin to address what is best for said family.

If you haven't noticed - this didn't used to be such a partisan issue. It was a Democrat who in fact first demonstrated the soundness of the fiscal propriety of reducing taxes and increasing revenues - John F. Kennedy. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush followed in his steps and the results have always been the same. Each of them lowered, and in Reagan's case - greatly reduced, the top marginal rates - and the following year revenues poured into Washington in record numbers.

I know... some of you educated in public schools are scratching your head wondering, "How’d they do that?"

Follow the simplicity. Top marginal rates are reduced on the people earning the most - many of whom own businesses. Many of them take the savings and reinvest it - in business, in the market, in expansion, in additional services, franchises, or product lines. Every time they do they are giving work/employment to advisors, consultants, contractors, assembly line workers, systems analysts, and the list goes on. Many of those people have employees, or have to hire additional employees to complete the work that they are hired for. And every employee that they hire, earns a little more than they would have - had that company, small business, etc - not been able to grow. Continued...

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About The Author
Kevin McCullough is the nationally syndicated host of "'Xtreme' Radio and columnist based in New York. He blogs at www.muscleheadrevolution.com. His second book "The Kind Of MAN Every Man SHOULD Be" is in stores now.

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Kevin McCullough

You write;
“Why they do it makes absolutely no sense - especially to the poor. The data speaks clearly to this matter. When you place uber-taxes on the rich you create higher unemployment, greater poverty, and most importantly for people like me who care about the poor - less money in the treasury to provide the important safety nets for those who truly need them.
When you do the opposite - you get an opposite result. Cutting the top marginal tax rates - particularly on the upper middle, and upper class tax brackets has a stimulus effect. Jobs are created, poverty turns into ownership, and the treasury takes in oodles of dollars.”
I say it isn’t necessarily so. Take a statement from the above excerpt from your discourse: “The data speaks clearly to this matter.” I agree that the data speak clearly on this, but you may be hearing-impaired.
You titled your piece: “Why Liberals Spread Poverty.” I suggest the state of poverty might be described as an inability to consume at a level comparable to that of others who might otherwise be their peers. “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production”: so said Adam Smith. “Production cannot be effected without consumption”: so said the first supply-side economist (J.-B. Say.) Consumption is fifty percent of the game; impoverished people cannot contribute their fair share of consumption.
Mr. McCullough, you misread the data; are you aware there is a scoreboard? It’s in the NIPA’s; go have a look-see. Here is a picture.

http://webpages.charter.net/prologue/images/Poverty_Who.gif

The non-personal consumption includes the consumption of the fixed capital of the nation’s business community, that of all non-profits, and that of all public (governments) entities. It includes all expenditures for the maintenance of all public and private infrastructure. It also includes all expenditures for national defense and public safety.

We might note that the Cons look a little better when leaving out the Hoover years; but, then again, the Cons own Hoover – lock, stock and barrel. And the Libs look a little awesome when leaving out FDR; but then FDR showed the world how to fight and win a war, something that seems to have been lost recently.

Here is a little summary table on prosperity and poverty.

Growth -- Personal Consumption Growth – Non-Personal Consumption
Cons Libs Cons Libs
Complete NIPA era (1929+) 1.4% 2.8% -1.0% 7.7%
Postwar (1948+) 2.1% 2.5% 1.0% 4.3%

If you don’t understand why the liberal reward of labor favors prosperity, you should re-read Adam Smith. Thirteen years before the French laboring class stormed the Bastille, Adam Smith wrote in his “Wealth of Nations”: “The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going backwards.” (Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. VIII, pp 73-74.)

When conservatives go a decade before allowing a meager increase in the lowest wages, they are well into the “scanty maintenance” mode.

Conservatives suck; liberals lead the way.


Hm!
Nothing to say ... of all my experience, tax cuts works. They provide more jobs and hence more tax revenue. Redistributing doesn't work. It takes away incentive for hard work and promotes laziness. Destroys the nation.
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