Kerry isn't as ignorant on economic matters as he sounds.....but he certainly thinks that you are.

[dude1394]

Neal Boortz

Kerry isn't as ignorant on economic matters as he sounds....
...but he certainly thinks that you are.

A caller to my talk show earlier this week was trying to explain his support for John Kerry. He particularly liked Kerry’s plan to increase taxes on the highest income earners. It was an explanation only a Democrat could love. “If the government takes more money away from the rich,” he said, “then the rich will have to work harder to get that money back, and this will increase productivity and help our economy.”

If this caller is right armed robbery should be looked at as a positive influence on our economy. The more the thugs steal, the harder their victims work to replace it, and the more productive our economy becomes. Maybe this is whyour Democratic friends seem to be so soft on crime. Parole and probation can be used as tools to boost our economy.
The truth, of course, is just the opposite. Kerry’s plan is to raise taxes on the top two percent of income earners. Any psychologist who is not employed by government will tell you that you get more of the behavior you reward, and less of the behavior you punish. Punish people for their economic activity and they will reward you by slowing that activity down.
I just can’t bring myself to believe that John Kerry is as economically vapid as he sounds, but he certainly believes that many voters are that stupid, and more. Kerry is merely using the rhetoric of class warfare, an appeal to those who live lives steeped in envy of others who have worked harder and smarter and have thus accumulated greater wealth than they.

Perhaps there are a few people reading this column who actually believe that higher taxes on the evil top two percent of income earners would be a good thing. Are you open to a few facts and maybe some new information?

First of all, just who are these people who are making all that money? Many of them are the small businesses in America who account for over 75 percent of all jobs. Have you ever heard of a “Sub-S” corporation? That’s a small business entity structured in such a way that business income is reported on the personal tax return of the owner. There are literally millions of these Sub-S corporations in the country … small businesses with more millions of employees. Since these business profits are reported on individual income tax returns statistically these businesses appear as nothing more than individuals with large incomes. It is these businesses that Kerry wants to hit with his tax increase. Just how dothink these businesses will come up with the money to pay the additional taxes? By cutting somewhere else, that’s how.

Let’s say you are a Sub-S corporation with five employees. Kerry gets elected and your taxes go up by about $35,000 a year. Perhaps the easiest way to recoup that loss would be to cut back on some capital expenditures and expansion plans, and fire your least productive employee. How many employees of these small businesses will be laid off to satisfy John Kerry’s class warfare designs?

Small businesses are the heart of the American economy. John Kerry wants to punish them for their success. Do you really think that’s a plan worth supporting with your vote?

Kerry also wants to replace the tax on corporate stock dividends. In other words, he wants corporate profit to be taxed twice. Tax it once when the corporation reports its earnings to the government, and tax that profit again when it is distributed to the (shareholders) owners. Since the tax on dividends was erased more people have become investors. And why not? The potential reward for this activity has been increased. What do you think happens when the government starts punishing this behavior?

We can’t undo years of government economic mis-education in 950 words, but there is room to dissect a bit more of Kerry’s class warfare rhetoric.

Kerry says that the Bush tax cuts shifted much of the U.S. tax burden “from wealth to work.” This statement was designed to make you believe that only working people have to pay taxes; that the wealthy are somehow getting a free ride. It’s an income tax, my friends, not a wealth tax. The top one percent of income earners still earn about 17 percent of total reported income, but they’re paying 37 percent of all income taxes. In the meantime, the bottom 50 percent of income earners have been almost completely removed from federal income tax rolls. Tell me again, Mr. Kerry, how the burden is being shifted?

Another Kerry rhetorical gem: “"He [President Bush] made a clear choice: To pass the bucks to the privileged while passing the buck to our children," Just how, pray tell, were bucks passed to the privilege? This is another great misconception about tax cuts that is eagerly nourished by the left. No money is “passed.” The people who actually earned that money are simply being allowed to keep more of it! The left loves to portray a tax cut as some sort of a gift. What would you say to someone who steals your wallet and car, and then hands you back a few bucks so you can get home on the bus? Gee, mister. Thanks for the gift?” Then we have referring to the hard working Americans who have reached the upper income levels as the “privileged.” Simply more class warfare rhetoric. They worked hard and exercised their power of choice wisely to get there. This “privileged” nonsense is designed to make it look like they’ve received some favor denied to the rest of us.

The opportunity to work hard, make good choices and prosper is denied nobody. The willingness to do so, however, seems in short supply.

[madape]

Those silly dims. Class envy is the cornerstone of their idiology.

Here's a graph from the Congressional Budget Office that shows how the portion of tax revenues generated by the top 10% of wage earners has gone UP dramatically over the past 30 years, during which time the tax rates of the top 10% has dropped considerably. This is just another illustration of the validity of the supply side theory that the less you tax people, the more apt they are to work.

[dude1394]

Madape so true and yet the dims want to propogate it. If there is one thing that disturbs me about the bush tax cuts is the increasingly progressive nature of it. It's the law of unintended consequences. What does an electorate do that doesn't have to finance their own government? Vote for more of it? Reduce it?

The biggest thing that obviates this treand is that most folks on the low-end of the economic scale in the US don't stay there. So they vote for government handouts, but then become profitable and realise that the governement handouts really means they are getting robbed for them.

However I'm not sure that if the congress/white house were in democrats hands that we wouldn't quickly usher in an era of socialism. Hopefully the current dimocratic party will get beaten so badly by the conservatives that they will ultimately wake up and become responsible. But it will probably take about 20 years or so.

[madape]

I thought that would happen after the party was humiliated in the 2002 Congressional elections. That embarassment should have sent a message to the dims that they've verged too far left to connect with a majority of American voters. They should have recognized their mistakes, and in response brought their party towards the center. Instead, they took their party FURTHER left by hoisting up socialists like Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle, and then throwing the party's weight behind crackpot leftist presidential candidates like Howard Dean and John Kerry. The Democrats are moving so far left that they might as well run Castro as a nominee.

I think the only person that can save this party is Hillary Clinton. I'm looking forward to a 2008 presidential matchup between Condi Rice and Clinton, with the future of the Democtatic party hanging in the balance. If the Dims lose again, they may well become a fringe party like the Greens. A less Christian Conservative offshoot of the Republican party, or a Perot-like pro-business party will fill in the void.

What a wonderful day that will be.

[Mavdog]

Boortz is so full of crap. This piece is class warfare at its worst.

The companies that elect to classify themselves as Subchapter S Corps are almost totally small businesses, not the type who would be generating earnings of greater than $250K to each owner. Those who elect to be Sub S do so to avoid the tax on the corps profits, preferring to have the business' profit pass directly to the individual as income.

There is no basis of fact to proclaim such as Boortz does that small businesses would see their tax bills increase under the Kerry plan. It's hard to imagine that a "small business" would produce the amount of net income to the owners that would iput them in the brackets Kerry proposes to change.

The wealthiest Americans SHOULD pay more in taxes than those with less assets and incomes. A progressive tax structure is good for our country and does NOT disincentivize Americans from earning money or investing.

[madape]

The wealthiest Americans SHOULD pay more in taxes than those with less assets and incomes. A progressive tax structure is good for our country and does NOT disincentivize Americans from earning money or investing.

good thing for you then, that the Bush tax structure is more progressive than Clinton's. The wealtiest quintile now pay 50% of the nations taxes, up from 40% in the early eighties.

[Mavdog]

Originally posted by: madape

good thing for you then, that the Bush tax structure is more progressive than Clinton's. The wealtiest quintile now pay 50% of the nations taxes, up from 40% in the early eighties.

Glad you agree with me.

[Drbio]

Boortz is hardly full of crap. He is a well respected libertarian who has been roundly praised by both dimwatocraps and republicans alike.

Just because he stung you with facts and it hurt your feelings hardly makes him full of crap.

[Mavdog]

Originally posted by: Drbio
Boortz is hardly full of crap. He is a well respected libertarian who has been roundly praised by both dimwatocraps and republicans alike.

Just because he stung you with facts and it hurt your feelings hardly makes him full of crap.

hmmm, just what "facts" are you referring to? Oh yeah, I forgot, you don't deal in facts, just typical one line burps with inane words like "dimwatocraps".

The "fact" that small businesses such as Sub-S Corps, the ones he spends so much time discussing as examples of who will pay more taxes, don't typically have net income which would place then in the higher tax brackets?

The"fact" he conjures up that "John Kerry wants to punish [small business] for its success"?

The "fact" Boortz whines that "the bottom 50 percent of income earners have been almost completely removed from federal income tax rolls" because they earn LESS THAN $30,000 annually?

The "fact" of calling taxation akin to "someone who steals your wallet and car"?

Guess he missed this "fact" from Kerry's proposal: "under my plan, 98% of all Americans and 99% of all companies will get a tax cut." Seems that Boortz in all his rhetoric would lbe pleased to see tax reductions...but I guess he didn't want to spend the time to check the "fact" that kerry's proposal will lower taxes before he railed against him.

[Drbio]

your responses would be laughable if not so pathetic. your own liberal heroes praise Boortz on high. You only deal with smoke and mirrors. So are your dimwatocrap heroes all of a sudden wrong and you know better than them?

[Mavdog]

Originally posted by: Drbio
your responses would be laughable if not so pathetic.

Can't refute my information, eh?

your own liberal heroes praise Boortz on high.

And what "liberal heros" do you presume that I have? Regardless, you still have not made one single point to contradict what I have said...

You only deal with smoke and mirrors. So are your dimwatocrap heroes all of a sudden wrong and you know better than them?

Do you put your thumb in your ears and wave your hands when you say childish words/epitaphs like "dimwatocrap"? or do you just giggle to yourself like my infant used to do when she had amused herself?

So "smoke and mirrors" is making factual rebuttals? Seems it is clear who has been dealing in "smoke", and I'd suggest that you look in the mirror and you'll see someone who can't deal with the truth....as well as someone who lacks the capability for debate.

[Drbio]

*Yawn*

More drivel from the uninformed.

[Mavdog]

Originally posted by: Drbio
*Yawn*

More drivel from the uninformed.

and once again proving my point. Good work!

[kg_veteran]

*in best third grade voice*

I'm like rubber, you're like glue, bounces off me and sticks to you!

[Drbio]

It's really funny....he just keeps saying "you just proved my point" to me, dude, madape, etc when he doesn't have a freaking clue that he has no points and others are certainly NOT making any for him.


pathetic.