Byron's Blog

Anonymous watched in horror as big government passed a punishing real estate tax, while liberal politicians, led by Barack Obama tried to explain how higher taxes would benefit the contracting U.S. economy.

Economic Poison

by Anonymous

What is it with these guys? You know the ones, the guys who gorge themselves at the public trough, only to raise their heads long enough to dig into your pocket and scoop out loot that they can spread around to their pals and pet projects.

One recent example is the obscure but painful Chicago real estate transfer tax. It was already ridiculously high at $7.50 for every thousand dollars on a home purchase, representing nothing more than legalized theft, but get this -- the thing's now ten bucks for every grand you spend. Say you want to buy a $500,000 home. Now you get to shell out $5,250 to those free spending city leaders, instead of the $3,750 that it used to cost. Hooray high taxes!

Naturally, it gets worse. The economic buffoonary involves the requirement to pay the tax, even if you don't buy the house. No, seriously -- even if you decide that you are not going to go through with the transaction, you have to pay. Wow. Somehow the boneheads who came up with the plan have included a clause that forces you to pay the tax once you've made a down payment on a home, even if the deal disintegrates.

The editorial writers at the Chicago Sun-Times said it well -- "Say you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread, but then change your mind....Should you still have to pay...?" No, but city leaders, who cannot satiate their hunger for money, see it differently. Naturally, they live in fantasy land, where money sprouts out of the ground grows into tall trees, where you harvest as much as you want. Hooray fantasy land!

There is -- of course -- nothing new about the government ripping-off people, a specialty among Democrats and their emerging standard bearer Barack Obama, who for some loony reason things the way to expand an contracting economy is to increase taxes. And where exactly did you go to business school, Senator? His idea -- that increasing income taxes on people who invest enormous amounts of money will somehow lead to economic nirvana.

Lesson one, Senator -- productivity cannot happen without investment and any move to reduce investment, such as raising taxes on any group of income earners, will have a negative effect on the economy. That will damage job creation -- among other things -- which hurts the very people who he and the others in that party claim they're trying to help.

Now, about that bright idea to increase corporate taxes, (a bonehead move no matter how you look at it) expect it, if you-know-who becomes President, which leads to lesson number two: corporations do not pay tax, people do.

Certainly people who have previously read the words of Anonymous know and understand this concept about corporate taxes and the drag they represent on the economy, so let's be brief. Raise corporate taxes and firms will one, fire workers to pay it, two, raise prices to pay it, thus introducing inflationary pressures on the economy, while hurting working Americans with higher costs for goods and services or three, enact some combination of one and two. When people argue to the contrary just do this, ask them where they earned their M.B.A. and enjoy the blank stare on their faces and chuckle inside when they eventually have to admit that they don't have one.

The economic poison that too many politicians are spewing is designed to appease voters, or pay for their poor planning and over-spending. It must to stop and only financially savvy, hard headed voters can stop it. Plenty of political leaders are hoping to divide people along class lines, pit one against another, while they continue to take money from the economy, wreck American's financial health and line their pockets or pay-off their friends. Hooray politicians!