The forthcoming and anticipated Trump/Republican tax cuts “will not create an economic boom, but will instead lead to a higher concentration of wealth among the rich, while dramatically increasing deficits and debt,” whined Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.).
How ignorant and arrogant can you get?
Like so many other politicians — and all of them on the socialist-Communist Democratic Party side — Yarmuth does not grasp who or what creates wealth. He appears to assume that wealth is simply there, like a natural resource. And that the job of government is to distribute it “fairly”. By what objective standard of fairness? Whatever keeps him in power. End of story.
I’m not sure if the issue is ignorance or evasion. In today’s hysterically irrational era, it’s a combination of both. Either way, it’s incurable. The left is gone, intellectually speaking. Democrats were saying this 35-plus years ago when Ronald Reagan pushed through significant tax cuts as President Donald Trump appears poised to do now. Nothing has changed. And it never will.
The goal here is not to convince Democrats to become rational. They no longer function in the realm of reason and rational thinking. The goal is to fight them the right way — with economic literacy and with moral courage. And to never stop fighting them because — like their standard bearer last year, Hillary Clinton — they will simply never give up or admit that they’re wrong.
When fighting for tax cuts, Republicans should not shy away from the fact that this never was the government’s money in the first place. Cutting taxes is an act of moral virtue as well as good for the economy as a whole. Income taxes are particularly dreadful, because their whole purpose was never to fund the Constitutional mandates of the government for national defense. Their purpose was solely to redistribute wealth. Redistributing wealth is always morally wrong, whether it’s done at the rate of 90 percent, 70 percent or 25 percent. Republicans are right to fight to get those levels lower and lower until — ideally — the progressive income tax as we know it is history.
As for the corporate tax, it simply adds insult to injury. It’s a way of telling the most successful business people: “We already punish you according to how successful you are. Now we’re punishing you even more.” It’s a massive duplication and a moralistic doubling down on achievement and success by a nasty, envious government class, along with the voting fools who support them.
Profit-seeking corporations are not charities. They are not supposed to be. They are supposed to be productive enterprises, and productive enterprises are — by definition — hugely profitable. Wealth is a sign of health, and no rational person wishes to live in an unhealthy society or economy. Of course, wealth producers are entitled to give away every bit of their earnings if they choose. Or to keep every penny. Regardless, other people will benefit, because they will be spending that money somewhere, or saving it and adding to the capital available for others to borrow at interest.
Generosity was never an issue in the brief era of American capitalism prior to the progressive income tax and the wealth redistribution state we have now. Even since those things were imposed, America has remained the most generous society in human history and on the planet. It’s not that there’s anything genetically more generous about Americans than other people. Americans come from every race and cultural tradition, as we know. The simple fact is that the country with the least government intervention in the economy is the most profitable, innovative and economically successful. The country with the most wealth is in the position to be the most generous.
For a century now, America has been at war with itself. Although there have been occasional bouts of relief with the Kennedy, Reagan and quite possibly now the Trump tax cuts, for the most part the trend has been ever more wealth redistribution, taxation and — worst of all — moral shaming about the capacity of wealth creators to make the world a better place by producing. The lowest point of all was the wretched and miserable Barack Obama presidency where wealth creation was belittled by his infamous phrase, “You didn’t build that.” And the subtext was always: It’s not yours. It’s the government’s. Obama raised taxes but, much worse than that, he morally spat upon wealth producers precisely for their best virtues. He shamed what had made America truly great — ingenuity, free enterprise, wealth creation — and for that we should always shame him (and his equivalents) back.
A little reversal in the form of tax cuts is a beautiful thing, and it’s one of the main things that has kept America going since it entered the age of wealth redistribution about a century ago with the income tax. But if we hope to survive and remain prosperous for generations to come, we’ve got a very long way to go.
And spending cuts — real, massive and lasting ones — have got to come next.
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