The President seems to be on his tear down America tour again. Nothing works because big business, banks and Wall Street are too greedy and corrupt and the middle class has no chance to move up.
He says the idea that big business and the wealthy can raise the tide for all just doesn’t work and never has. If the American system of capitalism never worked how did America become the greatest, wealthiest most powerful nation in the world in just short of 250 years? Sure, there were bumps along the way, as a nation we did some terrible things to many people, everyone didn’t always play fair, there were winners and losers along the way, but every person in America did benefit from the rising tide, every person had (and still has) opportunity and even the least advantaged among us are better off than most of the people in the world.
You can find fault and justified criticism of all the great industrialists and robber barons in our history. Ford, Firestone, Vanderbilt, Carnegie and all the rest took advantage of our system, took advantage of labor, but would we have what we have today or be better off without the likes of these people or what they ultimately accomplished for America under our free market system?
This President delights in finding scapegoats in an ever ongoing effort to pit Americans against one another either to deflect the real cause of economic problems or advance a far left agenda. Over the centuries Jews, Gypsies, American Indians, the Irish, African-Americans and many others have been the victims of scapegoating to further someone’s political agenda. This President focuses on the wealthy (defined in interesting ways), business, Wall Street, banks, insurance companies, and the supreme court as his targets, all the while avoiding a positive, work together, we can succeed message about America. He sees success in tearing down rather than building up.
Mr Obama finds comfort in blaming someone else; his predecessor, Congress (mostly any part of Congress that doesn’t agreee with him) and the 1%. I am looking for an example of a CEO who kept his job very long using the problems he inherited when he took the job as an excuse for not raising earnings, revenue or market share. To be fair Mr Obama doesn’t know how to act like a CEO, he is after all a career politician and nothing more.
Populism sounds great in auditoriums, but the reality is it doesn’t work because promising more and more on the backs of others is a false promise. The lobster enters a trap for a free lunch and ends up being someone else’s not so free dinner. The lobster can’t figure out how to let go and back out the same way he came in.
When Americans hear the ongoing drone that taxing the “wealthy” will raise them up and give them more opportunity, they should ask exactly how that is going to happen. How will Warren Buffett paying an effective tax rate of 35% rather than 17% create jobs, cause US manufacturing to grow and make American goods more competitive on the world market? If you could assure that no American could make more than $250,000 a year, would that make you feel good or would you say, “”Hey, someday I would like to earn more than that.” or “I hope my kids do better than that.”
I send a donation each month to a school that gives a free education to inner city minority children and then gets them scholarships to the best private high schools in the state with most going on to college also on scholarships. If you believe in the Obama rhetoric, then you must also believe that my monthly donation would be put to better use paid as taxes to the federal government. That is the essence of the issue.
No, everyone cannot be left to simply fend for themselves, nothing is right-wing simple. We need some safety nets, some national strategy and some regulation to assure fairness, but we also need individual responsibility and accountability.
To play on the theme that my life is the result of someone else or some system being unfair to me is the biggest trap of all. Little in life is not the result of our own actions or inactions.
President Obama should be ashamed trying to make us a nation of lobsters
Related articles
- Daily briefing – Highlights from Obama’s statement (politico.com)
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
I do not agree with the Lobster analogy of Mr. Quinn at all. I don’t think Obama has only blamed others and I also don’t beleive that he is the cause of the problems with which he has been faced. When you promulgate ideas and have little ability to persuade because there is a sharp derision amonst those who govern it is near impossible. His efforts have largely been denied along strictly party lines. If anything he can be accused by the left of capituating to soon . To answer the notion that Warren Buffet being taxed at 35% would not add jobs I disagree. If the bottom to middle had more their consumption could be greater and that should add jobs providing the corpoartions were properly incented to manufacture here and not abroad. Warren Buffet or any one else for that matter can only wear one pair of shoes at a time and so while he may have 30 pairs in his closet he is not apt to buy another but the average Joe who has perhaps only 2 pairs might buy a 3rd pair if he had more disposable income and so that would add jobs. There is a need to properly tax the wealthy and while that will not be the answer to all our woes it would speak volumes about where this country is headed as when we start to recognize that the wealthy are dependent on the poorer we will make a society that is more self sustaining but when the heads of the S&P 500 are earning the excessive multiples of their employees salary as compared to how it was 40 years ago perhaps we see how trickle down economics really has not played out and how we need to go back to some modicum of fairness. There was a perfect example of this in last weeks business pages of my local paper. One article stated that the CEO of Medco stands to make $39 Million if the proposed merger of Medco with Easy Scripts is consummated. In the very next article was a story detailing that in the terms of the Great A&P Tea Company’s bankruptcy re-organization the unions at the compony were forced to accept cuts of 3-6%. This is what drives the Occupy Wall Street crowd. One man walks away with multi-millions while the rank and file grow poorer. At least during the Great Depression the wall street crowd were jumping out of windows while the poor waited on bread lines.
LikeLike
I don’t think you make your case, especially by mixing a merger example with a bankruptcy.
In a bankruptcy, executive pensions for example are not protected while workers pensions are. In addition, most of the high compensation is not cash as is pay, it is various forms of stock who’s value is determined by the stock market and also approved by shareholders.
Don’t misunderstand, there are many executives who are overpaid and while that may be annoying and an easy target, taxing them all you want will not change the fundamental changes occurring in the economy that caused our problems (a global economy, changing job skill requirement, etc.) along with misguided federal policy on housing that started it all and allowed the unscrupulous the take advantage. Add to that people who misused borrowing and you have the perfect storm.
Dick
Richard D Quinn Editor Quinnscommentary.com
LikeLike
You said, “To answer the notion that Warren Buffet being taxed at 35% would not add jobs I disagree. If the bottom to middle had more their consumption could be greater and that should add jobs providing the corpoartions were properly incented to manufacture here and not abroad. ”
You are right, more consumption by the majority would help. However, where is the link to the wealthy paying more in taxes? They already pay close to 50% of taxes and some 40% of Americans pay no income tax at all. Cutting the payroll tax for the middle class this year had little or no positive impact. Stimulating in a score of ways was marginally successful. The fundamental question is how do we make America more competitive in more areas of the economy and how do we get more Americans to participate in that. Bashing the people who are the drivers of such efforts whether you like them or not seems unproductive to me.
We should ask ourselves based on its track record, what positive things do we expect Congress to do with more tax revenue.
LikeLike