Economic socialism package
Political ·Saturday May 3, 2008 @ 16:17 EDT (link)
Bush's economic stimulus package is a fraud. Premises:
- The government doesn't create money, it takes it from the citizens at the point of a gun.
- Therefore, the stimulus money must come from taxes (or borrowed money, which will eventually require taxes for interest and repayment).
- There is a pool of tax money that will used to make the stimulus payments (to make things easy, let's say x people are getting payments of $600, so 600x).
- The stimulus payment is some part y of all taxes collected t: yt = 600x.
- The actual gain from the stimulus payment is therefore 600 - yt. There will be net losers and net gainers; people only get the full amount if they pay no taxes, and people over certain ceilings ($75k, or $150k if married filing jointly) get nothing, even though they contribute.
- This is income redistribution, which is socialist (I'll still take my money, but I think we'd all be better off if nothing had been done; there's also the administrative overhead to consider).
Worse still, parents get more money if they have more kids. Argh. I'm already subsidizing them via property taxes and child tax credits. Will the pandering never end?
GD (of the Conservatives and Libertarians at MS (CLAMS) list from work) shared an interesting anecdote regarding the stimulus and relative American and Canadian taxes. I haven't done my own analysis of the respective tax policies, but Geoff's seems reasonable and aligns with my experience and sources.
Truth be told, the strongest attachment I have to Canada is because my father (and to a lesser extent—only lesser because we lived for a time with my grandmother, where my father grew up—my (step)mother) were born there (both in Ontario, but my mother lived in British Columbia for a while); being in elementary and high school there was difficult and did not instill any love for the country in me. Certainly Canada has natural wonders, but it also has hardcore socialists that can make our liberals look sane. To the United Kingdom, the third country of which I am a citizen, I do have attachment and wistful longing for; I consider that I grew up there (even though I left when I was 9) and would very much like to make one or more extended visits.
Take our liberals, Soviet Canuckistan, please....
From: GD
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 11:43
To: ...; Conservatives and Libertarians at MS
Subject: "We're only going back there to visit, right?"
My wife just did our taxes last night. We're getting back a few bucks (missed our goal of having a zero return—I don't like freely loaning the gov't my money). She ran the numbers as if we were living in the Great White North. We would owe a lot of money in taxes. We'd have to sell the house, the cars, at least one of the kids....
Last year I gave my son the classic object lesson in budget and taxation, combined with one reason we moved to America. I gave him $10 in quarters and then started taking off taxes, levies, fees, mortgage payments, utility payments, etc. He was not pleased. Then I gave him a tax refund.
"Dad, why didn't you just let me keep that money in the first place?"
Then I repeated the process using Canadian tax rates. He was really not a happy camper when it was all gone. I had to explain to him that we could not afford to live in the Vancouver area like we used to and have a house, cars, each kid with their own room, private school, karate etc. I told him that was the most basic reason we left Qanuckia.
"Dad, we're only going back there to visit, right?"
God Bless America
