Economic Realities

A couple of predictions for the economy over the next two years - both of which will have a potential impact on the Obama Republicans:

1) The expiration of the Bush tax cuts will lead to an immediate, but temporary influx of new cash to the government and a decline in private capital. This will be followed within a year with an increase in unemployment as privates small businesses lay off employees. The deficit will not go down because government spending will most likely increase - the Obama Republicans are probably not going to do anything about the Obamacare.

2) What little funding increase cuts the Obama Republicans do push through, right now a measly $100 billion, could lead to a decline in the economy because so much of it is now dependent on government spending - a la FDR.

The fact is, the government does NOT need more money to function, it needs to cut spending and not just increases in spending, but the baseline - whole programs and agencies need to be cut from the federal budget. By revoking completely and not replacing it with Republican Care - Trillions of dollars can be saved, but it doesn't decrease our current spending levels.

The sad fact is that none of the programs proposed by the Obamacrats or the Obama Republicans does anything to help the middle class. The majority of the Obama economy has been about wealth redistribution - from the middle class to the welfare class. The top 1% - the small percentage that are really wealthy - are relatively immune to the Obama's shenanigans, they have their wealth and new money doesn't change that much so you could take a few extra bucks out of their paychecks to help pay for government. But since the majority of the 1% are small business and not zillionairs then you do risk increasing unemployment in both the welfare class and the middle class.

No economic policy should be about keeping individuals happy where they are - the intent is for people to strive to move up the economic ladder and not stay where they are. By not taxing the welfare class the government provides no incentive to move up. By increasing taxes on the middle class and upper middle class then they become trapped, unable to move up, and in many cases they move downward as the upper class hold more and more of the country's wealth.

We could always go back to the pre-Reagan taxes for the upper income brackets (top 1%) - 70+% tax rates. This won't change their wealth much - not talking about small businesses which make up most of the upper 1% - as they have their money. It will, though, create an effective permanent barrier to upward movement from middle class to upper middle class to wealthy. It will also effectively stop the upward movement of the welfare class to the middle class.

The apparent stagnation in the welfare class has nothing to do with the current tax structure but everything to do with the government's continued policy of aiding and abetting poverty. Poverty is not caused by rich people, especially in a country like ours where everyone has the opportunity to succeed.

the Hubris of Government

"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive."

- Joe Biden, Oct. 26

This is the type of hubris that has led to the continued decline of American preeminence around the world. The notion that without government we as a people, as a nation would be nothing is the central cause for poverty, immorality and nearly every other malady that has plagued this once great nation. The Founders of this nation understood that a central government was indeed a necessity but they saw that government as being limited in scope and power. No one can name a single great idea of the last 3 centuries that required the government. I will not say that government has not been important to bringing some of those ideas to fruition - after all having access to a nearly infinite pile of cash can and does go a long way. Had it not been for government Bell Labs would still be pumping out great ideas and GM would not be producing one of the 21st Century's biggest technology failures - the Volt. Biden and the Obama are Socialists, socialists of the worst kind - almost evil in their ignorance of reality.

The idea for the Atomic Bomb did not originate from some government paid science wonk, no it grew in the minds of brilliant scientists from the academic worlds of Europe and America before the massive insinuation of government funding. The Bomb itself is the product of a zealous government - there is a difference. One of the things that disturbed me most about working at Los Alamos was here was the collection of some of the country's smartest scientists gathered to work on the National Security Problems that troubled our nation and yet too many of them were engaged not in research vital to our security but in pet projects funded by American Tax Dollars. These are scientists being paid salaries and having access to the finest state-of-the art equipment in the world doing research for publication in scientific journals with absolutely no relevance to National Security - if only a University professor had it so good - no responsibility for classes and students and struggling for tenure. I do not attack the notion of Science for Science's sake but I do have a problem with its funding with Tax Dollars at government institution that have a responsibility to the nation as a whole and not to the individual scientist. If government must fund science and they should, then I would like to see tens of thousands of National Laboratory scientists competing for university jobs and an increase in NSF funding with a huge decrease in DOE funding.

the Obama picked a Nobel Prize winning physicist to head up the Department of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, a brilliant scientist. Surely his appointment to Secretary of DOE is a signal that a brilliant career was sacrificed for ideology - a socialist ideology at that. Dr. Chu is one of those scientists among many that I know and know of that made a choice that I do not understand. For some reason truly brilliant people are drawn to the nonsense notion of a Utopian world - the kind of world that an the Obama type espouses. There appears to be no correlation between intellectual ability and leadership - the Obama is a prime example - a man with supposed intellectual capacity but absolutely no clue on how to lead. The left attacked George Bush but he was a leader, by every definition of the word and only near the end of his stint in office did we see the chinks in his armor and only then because he strayed from his principles.