Lower Tax Rates on the Rich

Nov 2, 2011 | Politics

The so-called tax deal between President Barack Obama and the GOP has opponents who claim it’s immoral because it “favors” rich Americans and defenders who insist it’ll boost growth, create jobs and narrow the budget deficit. Yet the deeper moral point, absent from both sides, is this one: The rich deserve their wealth as much as anyone, the relatively-higher tax rates they face are obscenely unjust, and if anything, the rich today should be paying radically lower tax rates.

Let’s start with basic tax facts. The IRS says that the top 1% of America’s income-earners ($380,354+) now generate 20% of all personal income, yet pay 38% of all federal income taxes, while the top 10% ($113,799+) earn 46% of the total personal income while paying 70% of all such taxes. The other 90% of tax filers, making 54% of personal income, pay just 30% of federal income taxes.

The disproportion is even worse when you consider that the bottom 50% of all federal tax filers (making $33,048 or less) earn only 13% of taxable income, yet pay a mere 3% of federal income taxes. The Tax Foundation calculates that the portion of U.S. federal tax returns with a zero tax liability is now more than 35% and climbing–nearly double the share in 1984.

Salsman on the Anti-Capitalist Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)

Nov 2, 2011 | Politics

Writes Richard Salsman on TARP After Three Years: It Made Things Worse, Not Better at Forbes:

The $700 billion “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) was enacted in Washington three years ago this week, and while most economists, policymakers and journalists still believe it made things better (“helping us avoid a second Great Depression,” they like to say), in fact it made things much worse – and today we’re still suffering from its bearish effects. As just one example, a similar scheme, modeled on TARP – the “European Financial Stability Facility” (EFSF) – is being adopted abroad, further undermining bank stocks.

Those who fail to grasp TARP’s true impact will find it difficult to comprehend the currently-bearish impact of the EFSF. The problem with most U.S. banks in 2008 was not that they were “under-capitalized” but that they held so many shaky (sub-prime) residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), assets which bank regulators insisted were some of the safest assets they could own, because they were “backed” by the taxpayer-backed mortgage GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and thus required virtually no capital.

Instead of U.S. banks shedding bad assets, merging and raising private capital, TARP compelled them to take unwanted, high-cost capital injections with “strings attached” that became a noose around their necks.

[...]

The critics of bank bailouts are right to oppose bailouts per se, but most of them ignore the irrefutable fact that in 2008-2009 most U.S. banks were forced to take TARP funds, coerced into paying above-market rates on preferred dividends, and compelled to run their operations as Washington prefers (the source of the financial crisis in the first place). Yes, most banks by now have repaid TARP funds, but the Dodd-Frank “reform” bill (enacted July 2010) continues or intensifies its evils while further institutionalizing government interference in banking. Even though U.S. bank profits have rebounded in recent years, bank stocks today remain 47% below where they traded when TARP was enacted in October 2008, and 23% below where they traded when the Dodd-Frank bill was enacted in July 2010. It is politically unsafe to invest in the banks.

The majority of U.S. banks were perfectly healthy in 2008-2009 and should have been left free of TARP. Instead they were exploited by Washington – and unwittingly by U.S. taxpayers – not the other way around.

Steve Jobs: One of the 1%

Nov 2, 2011 | Politics

Are you a money-making personality? Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (1955-2011) certainly was, but so also are the lesser-known creators of abundant value in the business sector who sustain the world economy like the Atlas who holds up the globe.

These are the 1% of us, the rare giants of industry, commerce and finance who occupy Wall Street suites, Silicon Valley campuses, and all great cities in between. These are the best and the brightest, not the worst and the dimmest, those who don’t whine that others owe them jobs or handouts but practice the virtues of rationality, honesty, integrity, independence, productiveness, and pride.

Jobs’ recent death elicited the requisite commendations and eulogies, the most worthy of which came from those who knew best his character, life, work, and achievements. Interviewed last August, Apple co-founder (in 1976) Steve Wozniak said “He’s always going to be remembered, maybe for the next hundred years, as probably the greatest business leader – or at least technology business leader – of our time, or ever.” Like Bill Gates, Jobs and Wozniak were college drop-outs (from Harvard, Reed College, and U.C. Berkeley, respectively) – proof to young aspirants that great success can come without over-priced college degrees.

Are The Real Uncle Tom’s Left-Wing?

Nov 1, 2011 | Politics

There’s already plenty of groupthink among American blacks. Over 90% of us vote Democrat with religious regularity, and we have been doing so for over fifty years. For a short time, I was one of them. I realized a few years ago that the Democrats’ promises of equality bestowed by government wasn’t working and will never work. I came to believe that redistributionist policies with the goal of social justice was essentially creating a new plantation within the federal government. Scraps might be thrown our way, but dependence on the plantation would be the inevitable result.

Over half a century since we started voting for Democrat policies, blacks in America are worse off than before. Black Americans are more likely to get involved with drugs, go to prison, and die younger than our white counterparts. Over 70% of our children are born out of wedlock. Our abortion rate has never been higher. There are two explanations for these results. 1) Blacks are an inferior race and can’t take care of themselves. 2) Despite the best of intentions, the government has created and implemented “social justice” policies that promote perpetual dependence. I choose to believe the latter.

Lecture: Capitalism Without Guilt — The Moral Case For Freedom

Oct 29, 2011 | Politics

Designers of the World Unite

Oct 25, 2011 | Politics

If you’re going to do the responsible thing and forego your profit in exchange for engaging in class warfare community service, I believe that it’s best to say what you mean. Yes, yes, I know that the SEIU has already approved some candidate slogans, but these stop short of being direct and factual. Let’s not mince words. Try these on for size in your propaganda posters:

• Let’s tax our way to prosperity!
• You won’t have to march on Wall Street when government has all the money!
• We’re running out of other people’s money! Help us take more!
• Redistribution! What we lose in bureaucratic waste, we make up for in volume!
• Money: Why earn it when you can just get the government to steal it for you?
• Union Rights! What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is ours.
• One nation, under God government unions. With equality and service for all.

That’s better. If you’re going to say something, say what you mean.

Dollar: Peikoff Podcast on Today’s World with Yaron Brook for October 2011

Oct 25, 2011 | Politics

Holleran on The 2012 Republicans

Oct 25, 2011 | Politics

As an advocate for secular republicanism, none of the 2012 presidential candidates are acceptable. Each candidate, including the President, who has indicated that he intends to run for re-election, fails to grasp, ignores, or explicitly opposes individual rights, capitalism and a rational foreign and domestic policy. But, unless we suffer a catastrophic attack or descend into anarchy or civil war before November of 2012, someone will be elected president of the United States. So, after watching tonight’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, sponsored by the generic Cable News Network (CNN), with its snickering media celebrity moderator, Anderson Cooper, I’ve decided to update my take on the 2012 Republicans. My criteria for serious candidates: who will be the least opposed to individual rights?

Examining “Occupy Wall Street”

Oct 25, 2011 | Politics

Mitt Romney: Fruitcake?

Oct 21, 2011 | Politics

Video: 9/11–A Decade Later–Lessons for the Future

Oct 17, 2011 | Politics

Cross: Occupy Wall Street Protestors Want to Take The Capitalism Out of ‘Crony Capitalism’

Oct 17, 2011 | Politics

[...] the real motive of the protesters is not to end ‘crony capitalism’–it’s to attack real capitalism and end whatever is left of it in America.

For years, Washington has favored certain bankers by intervening in the market. But that has nothing to do with genuine capitalism. Capitalism means that the government does one thing–protects us from force and fraud–leaving us free to conduct our economic affairs as we see fit. [...]

What the protesters object to is not government stacking the deck to determine winners and losers. They just want the government to pick different winners and losers. They want to take the ‘capitalism’ out of ‘crony capitalism’–not the other way around.

Steve Jobs and The Death of Capitalism

Oct 9, 2011 | Politics

The response to the death of Steve Jobs is overwhelming; as I indicated in yesterday’s post, there’s an outpouring of admiration, affection, and love for the all-American capitalist. But there’s also what Ayn Rand called the hatred of the good for being good and the contrast echoes today’s stark cultural schism. As if we needed more evidence that America is dying and desperately in need of resuscitation, the Christians known for anti-gay protests of American soldiers’ funerals announced on Twitter that its members plan to picket Steve Jobs’s funeral...

Read the rest at Scott Holleran's Blog.

Video: Andrew Bernstein on The Objectivist Lolapalooza

Oct 8, 2011 | Politics