By Wayne Allyn Root, Former Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee
If my income is cut, or I lose my job, how will I react? Most people would dramatically slow down their shopping and spending. What is the result of that decreased spending? It clearly hurts the economy- retailers, supermarkets, department stores, and anywhere else you’d normally spend your money is damaged. What happens to the people who work for those companies? Millions of jobs are lost and the economy crumbles.
Let’s get more specific. What if I, and millions like me, cut out our restaurant visits each week? What if we cut out a vacation? What happens if we put off buying a new car or furniture? No big deal, right? Wrong. Millions of waiters, busboys, bellmen, hotel maids, hotel security, flight attendants, airplane mechanics, executives, secretaries, salesmen, and even janitors lose their jobs. And when those people lose their jobs, what happens to their spending and those whose jobs are dependent on it?
Even education suffers. Today my younger children are home tutored. They also take swimming, ballet, Kung Fu and lacrosse lessons. What if I decided to cut back on all that spending because I had less money coming in? What would happen to those tutors and sports coaches? What would all these people that depend on me do without the income? Jobs are lost. Businesses close.
Does anyone disagree with this scenario? If people have less money to spend or invest, the economy suffers. Right?
So here is the million dollar question for progressives and assorted socialist FOOLS (Friends of Obama & Obama Lovers)…
When you raise taxes, doesn’t it have the exact same effect?
You’re taking money away from people. You are leaving them with smaller paychecks. You are damaging their quality of living. You are making it impossible to spend, or shop, or invest like they did when they had a bigger paycheck.
So how exactly is raising taxes any different than a person taking a pay cut, or losing their job, or a business owner losing a portion of his or her income? The answer, of course, is that it isn’t different.
Obama’s mantra is “Tax the rich, they can afford it.” Really? Well, if you take an extra $5,000, or $10,000, or $25,000 away from me, I can’t afford it. I’ll stop hiring those tutors and coaches- and they pay the price. I’ll cancel my vacation, or my order of new furniture, or stop eating out. I’ll stop buying clothes, and slow down my dry cleaning. And, so will over 30 million American small business owners. Take away people’s money and jobs are lost. Period. The economy spirals downward.
So please explain to me…How does raising taxes help the economy? How does it end a depression? I want FOOLS (Friends of Obama and Obama Lovers) to explain to me how taking money away from consumers and business owners creates prosperity?
Here’s the dirty little secret. Raising taxes kills jobs, kills the economy, and deepens a recession into a Great Depression.
Taxes aren’t the lowest they’ve ever been. Obama and his friends (the FOOLS) are lying to you. Taxes are the highest in history when you add up federal income taxes, state, local, property, sales taxes, social security and medicare taxes, taxes disguised as fees, and the loss of deductions. The tax burden on small business owners has never been higher. And Obama threatens to make it far higher- perhaps an unimaginable ten times higher by taking away the home mortgage deduction and removing the cap on Social Security taxes.
This is all causing fear, loathing, depression and panic among the job creators. This is causing millions of Americans to consider leaving the U.S.A for places where business owners are appreciated and rewarded, not demonized and punished. That means they will take with them millions of jobs- gone forever.
Here’s a simple lesson in this scenario. The New York Post reported recently that toll prices (ie taxes) at bridges throughout New York had increased dramatically. The result? Traffic has dropped dramatically at those bridges. Taxes ruin everything they touch.
That’s the same reason over $1 trillion dollars of wealth has transferred from New York to Texas in the past decade. Taxes ruin business. Taxes force people to either spend less or re-locate to places with lower taxes. It’s the same reason that NY, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan and California are bleeding- losing jobs, losing taxpayers, increasing debt by the billions. These high-tax and spend states lead the nation in debt and moving vans moving out of their state. Taxes kill whatever they touch.
Let’s compare how different Presidents handled the issue of taxes.
When Reagan cut our taxes from 70% to 28% everyone had jobs, restaurants were booming, real estate was exploding, stocks were soaring, furniture was moving, auto sales were flying, it was one big party. It was morning in America.
Under tax and spend liberals like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama the country literally came to a grinding halt. The economy stood still. Commerce just…stopped. Jobs just…disappeared. All hope…vanished.
The lesson in all this is that “Trickle Down Economics” really does exist. Unfortunately Obama is proving it works in BOTH directions. Opportunity and prosperity can trickle down. So can depression, debt and despair.
Wayne Allyn Root is a former libertarian vice presidential nominee. He now serves as chairman of the Libertarian NationalCongressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts.” His website: ROOTforAmerica.com
