Deal or No Deal

Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
October 26, 2008


I discovered the love of studying history when I was in the 5th grade at Bruce Elementary in the early 1960’s. My 5th grade teacher was Ms. Bobbie Buchanan. I will never forget my history and I still love to read it and study it and analyze it. She taught us that history repeats itself time and time again.

As with any presidential race, I like to stand back and listen to the candidates and political pundits and analyze all the rhetoric that is bandied about. There is so much in our rich historical nation’s past that is trying to repeat itself. Whether you agree with me or not is a moot point. This is what I see.

You can never study Franklin Delano Roosevelt too much. The “New Deal” was the largest peacetime expansion of federal government power in the 20th century. The notion that FDR saved us from the Depression is hogwash; Roosevelt's policies, actually in hind sight, prolonged and deepened it. He did do some good things. TVA and electricity for everyone came about during his time in office. But if we study FDR and his New Deal as a way of dealing with the Depression and the slow economy of that time, the lesson we take away is this: government is an immensely useful means for achieving one's private aspirations, and resorting to this reservoir of potentially appropriable benefits is perfectly legitimate. One thing we have to fear is politicians who believe this.

Roosevelt's revolution began with his inaugural address, which left no doubt about his intentions to seize the moment and harness it to his purposes. Best remembered for its patently false line that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," it also called for extraordinary emergency governmental powers. There's no doubt that Roosevelt changed the character of the American government--for the worse. Many of the reforms of the 1930s remain embedded in policy today: acreage allotments, price supports and marketing controls in agriculture, extensive regulation of private securities, federal intrusion into union-management relations, government lending and insurance activities, the minimum wage mandate on businesses, national unemployment insurance, Social Security and welfare payments, production and sale of electrical power by the federal government, fiat money (loss of the gold standard)--the list goes on.

So let’s talk about this New Deal that Obama is offering. The "tax-cut plan" of Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama is nothing more than another wealth-transference program that, in the "old days of FDR," was known as welfare.

Sen. Obama claim’s that he'll cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers. What he has left unsaid is that to accomplish this, he'll have to levy a massive tax increase against the other 5 percent who already pay nearly 60 percent of all taxes.

Just as troubling, however, is this little factoid: Even the one-third of all American working families who pay no income taxes now will receive a government check under the Obama plan. And that number could rise to about 44 percent under Obama's proposal. And for most, these payments would exceed even the amount they pay in payroll taxes.

Obama is not offering a tax cut. He's proposing welfare payments, and it's a classic welfare program in that it will only encourage lower-income workers to remain as lower-income workers, given the higher marginal tax disincentive should they improve their employment lot.
He says he wants to raise the taxes on the people that make over 250 thousand a year and ‘spread the wealth around’. Well think about this, those people might have a business that brings in that amount but it’s not really what they personally earn. They have to pay payroll and taxes and order supplies and keep inventory on hand. Obama doesn’t seem to understand that aspect of business never having been a small business owner himself. He doesn’t know the difference between income and wealth.

The really wealthy people or businesses will just move their investments out of the US and hide their assets and cause the economy to tank. Tax revenues will hit the bottom, and the wealthy won’t be paying the taxes. The tax burden will end up falling on the shoulders of Joe the Plumbers, or Will the Well Diggers, or Harry the Home Furnishings store owner, or Bob the Building supplier. It’s going to be us, the working middle class, which will be the hardest hit.
It is amazing to me that some individuals feel so entitled to spend other people's money. Imagine your church pastor coming to you and saying the wealthiest 10 percent of church members would have to give the church $10,000 per year and the next 25 percent would have to pay $5,000 so that the "poorer members" don't have to pay anything. And since you are one of the wealthier church members, the pastor wants your $10,000 check. Most people would probably just join another church. I know I would.

Mark my words. You know how I will vote. What about you? Deal or No Deal?