Someone sent me the link to a USA Today story from May 28 about how every household in America now "owes" somewhere in the neighborhood of $660,000+ for the national debt and ongoing cost of governmment. Of course, that's just federal.
In Illinois, the state assembly is voting as we speak to raise the income tax from 3% to 5% because of the traditional, historic incompetence of legislators to live within their means. Our illustrious US Senator Dick(head) Durbin visited the state house to encourage stage legislators to stick the residents of Illinois with the greatest tax burden possible.
"We can make Illinois howl!" Durbin said, paraphrasing Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman and enthusastically punching the air with his fists. (No, really, I just made that part up.)
Meanwhile, a gang of apparently able-bodied self-proclaimed Victims huddled in small pathetic groups around the state house, wearing t-shirts announcing their intention to cry and go homeless unless they can continue to suck the public teat. They're all suffering from that epidemic illness called I-can't-get-up-off-my-lazy-ass-except-to-beg-for-more-freebies.
Gee, I feel for them.
It doesn't occur to state legislators that businesses that are now in Chicago can very easily move to places more business-friendly, like Indiana, and carry on with nary a hitch in their operations. Do they really believe that Illinois residents and businesses are just going to sigh to themselves and say, "Yeah, well, I guess we do owe the government more than we're paying. After all, they do so much for us...."
Remember that micro-economic, supply-side graph, the "L" with the diagonal line connecting the long and short ends -- what costs more you will get less of. Raise taxes once again on citizens, you will have fewer citizens.
I kinda feel sorry for Illinois farmers, who are pretty much stuck here with their acreage. Too bad they can't just move their whole kit-and-kaboodle to Iowa or someplace that's more human-friendly. Pretty soon, they'll be the only people left to tax.
On a more positive note, yet another show -- this one on MSNBC, no less -- told the story of a group of homeless teens in California who were venturing to Arcata, California, to carry out some kind of plan to make a big killing selling dope. So I guess the entrepreneurial, innovative American spirit still resides within them, even if it's left the vast middle class of qualified voters.
Where does this end?
I may start practicing injured expressions and a limp to get myself on the gravy train. I just don't see much point in working anymore. Being an independent contractor, my taxes aren't automatically withheld... I see every goddamn penny that goes to government, and have to go out and drum up business for payments that go strictly to one level of government or another. It's getting to be that I spend more than half my time just to fund socialism -- something I object to on moral and other grounds. In the truest sense, this is slave labor.
So this is how Barack Obama and his cohorts have donned the infamous "mantle of Abraham Lincoln": Where Lincoln ended slavery, they have resurrected it. They believe they've made it "fair" though -- we are all slaves, regardless of race, religion, gender, age, or national origin.
I feel like I'm being invited to watch Marie Antoinette eat breakfast. (see the blog for 5/12, An instructive historical anecdote.)
And it occurred to me, watching the local ABC-TV affiliate report on our incompetent State Assembly, that raising taxes is simply the line of least resistance for these assholes in government. They don't want to go line-by-line through the state budget and figure out what doesn't work. They have no idea what works or doesn't. They have no idea which state-funded projects to cut. They don't want to take the time or invest the effort in finding out. They don't want some fat-cat contractor parking his limo in front of their sorry local office and reminding them that that $5,000 they contributed to the election campaign didn't come without strings. Raising taxes to pay for all this bullshit is just the easiest thing for legislators to do. It protects them from thinking.
Watched part of George Stephanopoulos' Sunday show -- maybe last week? (All this political crap is becoming just a blur....) E.J. Dionne suggested that California's problem is that the citizens passed a referendum that made it very difficult to increases taxes in California. To his credit, George Will kinda looked surprised and bemused at this, almost like he was ready to burst out laughing.
Yeah, what a hoot! And Dionne's is a typically liberal perspective. Let's never consider spending cuts. Let's just make it easier to raise taxes.
But you know what? I'm tapped out. I've been cashing in my IRAs over recent months partly to preserve their value in anticipation of the massive inflation coming our way, mostly because it's the only way I've been able to pay my mortgage. Once again, thanks to incompetent government mismanagement of the economy, work is getting harder to find. And the policies they're putting into place now will only make it harder.
What really ticks me off, though, is that my fellow citizens actually voted for the bozos who've been actively working to 1.) annihiliate our liberty, and 2.) wipe out any hope of material prosperity in the US.
They got exactly what they voted for. Obama is working very hard to deliver on all of his promises, even if he kills us. So who are the biggest morons in this scenario?
No comments:
Post a Comment