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I used to take a much more charitable view of the guy, but not anymore. Here’s his latest bout of populism:

On taxes, Obama is also expected to call for economic fairness encapsulated by the so-called “Buffett Rule,” arguing that the wealthy shouldn’t pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than middle-class taxpayers. Many wealthy taxpayers earn investment income, which is taxed at 15 percent, and Obama has proposed that people earning at least $1 million annually – whether in salary or investments – should pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

You’d fail my Eco 207 test this upcoming Friday. It’s quite a place we are in when a $3.5 trillion federal spending proposal is viewed as a draconian, radical trojan horse for the economy. You know what, the federal budget should be about half that, and the federal government has no business doing half of what it does. And that’s not even radical. It’s simply amazing at how the Commander in Speech frames the debate. It’s not even about the proper role of government anymore. It is: huge government = virtuous and good, any opponent of this vision is a moral beast and people will die in the streets. Hey Barack, I tell you what, try some freedom, you might like it.

7 Responses to “More Economic Illiteracy from the Central Planner in Chief”

  1. Rod says:

    It really never matters whether one taxes the bejeezus out of the people or just borrows or creates the fiat money to pay for the spending. Either way, it’s just colossal waste down the rathole. The rathole gets bigger all the time, like a black hole that has so much mass it is like Mega Maid in the movie Spaceballs. Flip the switch, President Scroob!

    And then we have the spectacle of Vice President Biden talking about how we ought to add manufacturing jobs. You’ve added government jobs, Joe! Lots of ’em. They don’t produce a gosh darn thing, Joe.

    Now, I have to say that Paul Ryan’s plan does not do enough cutting in the near term, when we need it. Somebody in the presidential race has to stand up and proclaim that the budget baseline negates all the cuts. Why not for one year, next year, we cut back beyond the baseline and then do away with the baseline altogether? Zero-based budgeting and the sunsetting of all appropriations after, say, five years would do the trick. I bet 98 out of a hundred people don’t know anything about the budget baseline.

  2. Vitaeus says:

    Found your blog from a post over at http://www.coyoteblog.com/
    I am enjoying reading back through your archives.

  3. Jason B says:

    What irks me more than anything is just the flat out assertion that if you make too much money then the government is going to take it away. There isn’t even an attempt to justify a reason for taking it. Is there some project that you would like to use the money on? Do you want to redistribute it? But no, the only reason is that we don’t want that rich guy to have too much stuff. Envy is a dirty emotion.

  4. Harry says:

    Today, Obama reiterated the familiar theme of how “trickle down” has failed, begging the question with the same force as his tired, old predecessors. “Trickle Down” goes all the way back to FDR and Rexford Tugwell, who thought only of demand.

    This narrative is a twisted distortion of economic history, an effort to discredit the demonstrable success of supply-side measures implemented in the early 80’s. Anyone doing business then could see the salutary effects of lower regulation and flatter tax rates.

    True, the tax cuts were phased in because Dave Stockman, a Keynsean bean counter insisted, so everybody who was able deferred as much reported income as possible. True, Anne Gorshuch, Reagan’s new EPA director was drawn and quartered without pity by the Spanish Inquisitors at the NRDC and the Sierra Club.

    But the price of oil dropped like a stone, all of a sudden everybody got a big raise, and price-earnings ratios of financially strong companies were at levels not seen since 1950.

    In 1992, George Stephanopoulos would make the charge that the Reagan years were “The worst economic performance in a century.”

    Maybe that was a correct statement, if one measures from Inauguration day to some point in the midst of GHW Bush’s term, say, after April Glaspie gave Sadaam a cue to invade Kuwait. GHWB was another part of the chorus who called supply-side economics Voodoo Economics.

    Even though George Schultz once observed that GWB “gets it” and I took some comfort in that remark, I wonder about all of those people dressing up in drag at Bohemian Grove and what they think about Voodoo economics. I doubt that Hayek or Bastiat would like to attend their picnic; they, along with Rizzo and me would not have been invited.

    Obama, Dave Axelrod, Tim Geithner, Joe Biden, David Plouffe, to name a few, are downright repulsive. Malevolent liars.

    And that is the official position of the University of Rochester.

  5. mark says:

    this election is going to be very depressing…

    then again I know why I will never vote

  6. Harry says:

    Mark, the young man running the car wash thirty years ago made the same comment to me. He was impressed with Ross Perot’s charts, and I have to admit that George Herbert Walker Bush never had the conviction to challenge Perot. I told him he was throwing his vote away, and sure enough, we got Clinton.

    Clinton was a walking disaster the first three years, with Hillary care, a Laura Tyson knee-jerk stimulus, crony capitalism for Caterpillar and other favored industries, and a full-out war on the rest of capitalism. If you managed a mutual fund, you paid more attention to the Congressional Quarterly than you did to company financial statements. During that time George McGovern bought a bed and breakfast inn in Massachuttes and learned about business.

    Clinton ran again against Bob Dole, an honorable man who I think sided with GHWB about voodoo economics. I think this was around the time when professor Wintercow was about to study the evils of voodoo economics, after his study of physics and football return science at the unlevel fields of Amherst.

    Clinton won, Bush beat Gore and Kerrey, Pelosi won in ’06, and we are in a big mess, but not because of supply-side (I call it regular, rational, liberal) economics.

    My suggestion is that you vote for whoever is running against Obama, who is a walking disaster. I know that WC does not like opinions intruding on his site; he is obliged to invite thoughtful dissent to all, and, to his credit, has continually welcomed other views. He gets crickets’ legs squeaking from intellectual cowards.

  7. Rod says:

    I think it was the Stratford Motor Inn that McGovern bought after he left “public life.”

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