Friday, August 16, 2013

The Politician’s Principle of Plunder

Leave it to an U.S. Congressman from my resident state of Minnesota, Democratic Representative Keith Ellison, to so well articulate the absurd economic thinking of our governmental officials when he said: “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money; it’s just the government doesn’t have it.”
 
Tell me that isn’t a clear portrayal of the principle of plunder:  “We” [the government] are not broke because all the government needs to do is to take the money from ‘we’ [the people].
 
Rep. Ellison was advocating for his Inclusive Prosperity Act (HR 6411) – a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on financial trading.  He explained, “The government has a right; the government and the people of the United States have a right to run the programs of the United States – health, welfare, housing – all these things.”
 
The looting mechanism proposed in the Inclusive Prosperity Act is a 0.5% tax on the trading of stocks (50 cents on every $100 of trades), and lesser rates on trading in bonds, derivatives and currencies.  It marks the return of a sales tax on financial transactions in place from 1914 to 1966; and targets the high-risk, high-speed trading of the markets.  Ellison claims his new tax would rake in $300 billion a year.  [He’s assuming that there would be no reduction in sales/purchases of stocks, bonds, or derivatives.]  So let’s imagine that he is right and we get $300 billion a year coming into the government.  What does he want to do with it?  He says it will stabilize “the deficit and allowing us to invest in the things that matter—education, roads and bridges, and health care for our seniors and veterans.”  Sounds worthy of support wouldn’t you say?  But don’t miss the point: Ellison is questing for more government spending.  The best you can say about him is that he doesn’t admit that he wants to increase the national deficit.
 
Speaking of the deficit – What was that deficit?  For 2012 the national deficit was over a Trillion dollars for the fourth year in a row.  So the man who is telling us that “there’s plenty of money” … even if we assume he really can get all the revenue he claims he can get from this Act year-after-year … is pure folly.  $300 billion wouldn’t even cover a third of the national deficit if we didn’t spend it on anything else.
 
Do the math, people!  With governmental officials such as Ellison making such wildly optimistic claims, we are still just a larger version of Detroit heading toward inevitable collapse and bankruptcy.  Ellison would loot more people to simply make our financial situation even less safe.
 
As the U.S.A. continues to spiral into debt, it is better to reverse it by cutting taxes and governmental expenditures.  Money retained by private citizens to use in the free market economy is always better in terms of economic growth and in terms of increasing individual liberty.  Your money in the hands of the government is demonstratively wasteful and is used to increase government-control over everyone’s life.  Look to and expect your elected officials to stimulate economic development without    suppressing free enterprise!
 
Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

No comments:

Post a Comment