American Enterprise Institute: Alan Viard- 'Income Tax's Penalty on Savings'

Source:American Enterprise Institute- Alan Viard speaking to AEI in Washington.

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Source:American Enterprise Institute 

"Alan Viard talked about proposals from Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) that called for changes on several tax fronts. The proposals were part of a larger effort on tax reform by both Senate Finance Committee Chair Baucus and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp (R-MI). He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications." 

Source:CSPAN- Alan Viard speaking to CSPAN in Washington.

From CSPAN

In the United Sates, you can get taxed for basically anything that you do, including not spending money from one jurisdiction or another. You get taxed more making money, unless you live in Florida, where they don't have a state income tax, but you have to pay the Federal income tax. Plus whatever local income taxes you may have to pay, city or county. You get taxed for spending money, sales taxes across the country. 

Uncle Sam taxes tobacco as well, you get taxed for inheriting money, you get taxed for making money through investments, called capital gains, or selling property, business's get taxed for making money. It's not just Income Taxes that people have to pay, but we also have to pay taxes, incase in the future we are unemployed, don't have an adequate pension, can't afford health insurance as seniors. We get taxed just for being alive and living in a home. 

Yes, America's tax rates are low compared, basically with the rest of the developed world. Which I believe is one reason why we didn't get hit as hard by the global recession, even though we did get very hard, but we pay taxes on basically everything we do.

One of the reasons why I believe we have so many tax loopholes, including a lot of them just pure Welfare, for people who don't need it is because we have so many taxes. Fewer taxes than perhaps Britain, which isn't really saying anything.  We eliminate some of these taxes or at least lower the rates, we can eliminate a lot of the tax loopholes, expect  people to do more on their own, take less from them and not expect a big check from Uncle Sam every year. 

I'm not going to say we need tax reform in America, because that would be like saying we need air to breathe, but what I am going to do, is to lay out a plan, that would reform our tax code. That's based on not what people make or produce for society, but instead tax people or better yet bill them for what they take from society. Which would encourage people to be productive and smarter with their money, instead of penalizing them for it.

I'm for what I call a Progressive Consumption Tax. It's progressive and doesn't hit low-income people as hard because it would have lower rates on basic goods that people need in life to survive: groceries, clothing, non-luxury housing, non-luxury transportation. (To use as examples) And tax luxury items higher: luxury cars, yachts, fancy meals, parties, sporting events, alcohol and tobacco. (To use as examples) 

We should also eliminate the savings tax up to your first 10% of income so people are still encouraged to spend to drive economic growth. And even match lower-income people's savings up to a certain income level. So we can approve on our very low savings rate, instead of taxing people for producing, we would tax them for what they consume. Replace the income tax with a Progressive Consumption Tax, but not scrap the other taxes, at least not with this plan.

American Enterprise Institute: 'Ashton B. Carter: Pivoting U.S. Defense to Future Challenges & Opportunities'

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AEI operates independently of any political party and does not take institutional positions on any issues. AEI scholars, fellows, and their guests frequently take positions on policy and other issues. When they do, they speak for themselves and not for AEI or its trustees or other scholars or employees." 

From AEI

FOX News: 'New Regulations On Way For Halfway Houses'

Source:FOX News Toledo- a halfway house in Toledo, Ohio.

"You could soon see more convicted felons in your neighborhood.

As Ohio leaders move more nonviolent offenders out of state prisons to save money, Toledo's elected officials are preparing for the after-effects: an expected increase in the number of halfway houses.

Toledo only has two state-licensed halfway houses right now, including a Volunteers of America treatment center in North Toledo. But local leaders expect to see applications for several more, as convicted felons move from a life behind bars to a community-control setting."  

From FOX News Toledo

Anytime you have a slow, economy, with high unemployment, like we have today, you are going to have states and localities, like Toledo, Ohio, run deficits. And as a result they're going to look for ways to make saving without hurting their public services. 

I'm not a resident of Toledo, Ohio, actually I've never even been there, but that's what's going on here. Prisons and jails are expensive and when they're filled with nonviolent offenders, like drug addicts, they become more expensive. And when economic and financial times are tough, getting those folks out of prison and jail and having them live in places like this that are privately run, where the residents there pay for their own cost of living, makes a lot of financial sense, especially for taxpayers.

Arthur Brooks: 'Does Free Enterprise Hurt The Poor?'

Source:American Enterprise Institute- from Arthur Brooks piece about free enterprise and the poor.

"Arthur Brooks, author of the new book "The Road to Freedom," takes on the top myths about free enterprise. Part 3: "Free enterprise hurts the poor."

Free enterprise is the only system that truly helps the poor around the world.  It helps the poor more than anyone, as a matter of fact. Since 1970, 80 percent of the world's worst poverty's been eradicated. Eighty percent. The reason for that is globalization, open trade, entrepreneurship, and free enterprise. A lot of people don't know that trade from China to the United States has increased by 1,000 percent since 1980.  That's lifted 600 million Chinese out of the worst poverty. Free enterprise is the reason that people around the world aren't starving to death. If we're good Samaritans, if we really love the poor, we have to fight for free enterprise for everyone." 

From the American Enterprise Institute

I'm all in favor of a private enterprise system (what others, especially on the Right call free enterprise) and capitalism. But even with the most unregulated economic system in the world (and no developed country has a completely unregulated private enterprise system) we're still going to have poor people. Because we're still going to have people who lack the skills to be successful in life, either by making mistakes early as young adults, like leaving school or having kids early, or simply not having enough of an opportunity to be successful, like not having the access needed to get themselves a good education. 

So you want to encourage people to be successful in life and having taxes and regulations fairly low and are easy to enough to understand and to work with, are ways of achieving economic freedom for the most people possible in any society. But you need an education system, as well as safety net, that encourage people and empowers people to be as successful as they possibly can then allow them to enjoy the fruits of the success, but only taxing them based on the services that they receive from government.

Invest Bliguru: Free to Choose- Milton Friedman: 'Cradle to Grave-Public Assistance (1980)'

Source:Invest Bliguru- Robert Lampman participating in this discussion.

"Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people's welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act followed close behind. Soon other efforts extended governmental activities in all areas of the welfare sector. Growth of governmental welfare activity continued unabated, and today it has reached truly staggering proportions. " 

From Invest Bliguru 

From Cradle to Grave, is referring to how people who were born onto public assistance, raised on public assistance, have kids before they are ready to raise them and live off of public assistance as adults as well, that we literally have had generations of families who’ve lived off of public assistance, because they have never gotten the skills that they need, to be able to leave public assistance. Meaning they would have the skills that they need to get a good job and not have to live off of public assistance, because they have the means to be able to take care of themselves and their kids.

A lot of this is a result of the safety net that was created in America, in the 1930s with the New Deal and the 1960s with the Great Society. Where you had all the social insurance programs that we're designed to help sustain people while they are in poverty, but not do anything to help these people to get themselves off of public assistance and out of poverty once and for all. This is what public assistance was in America, pre-1996. The TANF Law (Temporary Assistance For Needy Families) better known as Welfare to Work, changed all that.

It’s not a question in my mind and I believe many other Americans minds, of whether we should help people, who for whatever reasons can’t fend for themselves. The question is how to we do that. Do we just give them a few hundred bucks each month and expect nothing from them other then using that money to pay their basic needs, but continue to allow them to make the same mistakes, that they’ve made and while they are on public assistance, like having kids when they aren’t ready to take care of them, having more kids, when they can’t take care of the ones they already have, using their public assistance checks to buy alcohol and other drugs, or do we instead help them help themselves, so they no longer have to live on public assistance.

Do we empower people to now have the skills to take care of themselves instead of what we’ve done in that past. The first question is what we were doing pre-1996. The 2nd question is what we’ve done ever since. This is what Classical Liberal Professor Milton Friedman was focusing on in his movie Free to Choose. And interviewed people who hate the current public assistance system and want to see it ended. People who were happy with the current system and people who were speaking in favor of the reforms that happened in 1996, that Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis ran on for President in 1988.  

You can also see this post on WordPress.

You can also see this post at The Daily Post, on Blogger. (No pun intended) 

You can also see this post at The Daily Post, on WordPress. (No pun intended)

Calvin King: 'Ronald Reagan- Warned Us About Barack Obama'

Source:Calvin King- Then private citizen Ronald Reagan, campaigning for Senator Barry Goldwater for President in 1964.

"How Reagan summed up Obama in the first 5 minutes of a speech over 40 years ago." 

From Calvin King

If you are ignorant and just downright so dishonest, that you'll say anything, to advance your cause and hurt people you see as opponents, or even enemies, you'll say whatever you can come up with and not let the facts get in the way of a good partisan attack. And perhaps you'll say so much that isn't true, that you'll start to believe your own nonsense. 

I use to believe that people who thought Barack Obama was a Socialist, or an African, Atheist, Muslim, (how someone can both be an Atheist and a Muslim, someone needs to explain that to me) who was born in Kenya and is an illegal immigrant, who's President of the United States: I use to think these people were purely escaped mental patients. Who volunteered for the Michele Bachmann presidential campaign.

I use to believe that people who said these things, we're just straight up making this garbage up. (To be too kind) Because they knew their followers, were ignorant enough to believe them. I mean you want to know why the American education system is in bad shape right now, all the evidence you need to see to believe that is with the people who actually believe this nonsense. (Again, to be too kind) I use to believe that the people who made these claims were simply fools, who don't know any better.

I'm sure there are plenty of those people making these charges, but they aren't the only ones. We simply still have a lot of ignorant people in this country. Who simply don't know any better, which is why they are ignorant, who make up these charges and believe them as well. And yes they are a fringe in America, but the fact is they all vote and all have loud voices in American politics. And powerful enough to get other ignorant Americans behind them.

But let's put some facts on the table just for the hell of it and maybe some ignorant people will learn something. Barack Obama born in Hawaii in August 1961, has a Hawaii birth certificate to show that. He's a practicing Christian who attends church on a regular basis. If he was a Socialist, he wouldn't of bailed out the banking and auto industries, he would've nationalized them. At least until they were ready to be independent again. And he wouldn't of cut taxes by over two-hundred-billion-dollars, but would've raised them by at least two-hundred-billion.

Americans can believe basically whatever the hell that they want to and don't have to pass an IQ test in order to do that. Which is a good thing for a lot of people who believe all of this garbage (I'm too kind) about Barack Obama and they can also say practically whatever they want to. As long as they aren't threatening to hurt people or incite violence and libeling people falsely. 

But again facts are facts and you can't argue with them, because once you do that, you are arguing against reality, trying to convince people of things that are simply false. Which is what a lot of the Far-Right is doing against Barack Obama in America. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Post, on Blogger. (No pun intended)

CATO Institute: George Will- ‘Keynotes 2010 Milton Friedman Prize Dinner’

Source:CATO Institute- Washington Post Conservative columnist George Will, speaking at the Milton Friedman Prize Dinner, in 2010.

Source:The Daily Post 

“Pulitzer Prize winner George F. Will delivered the keynote address at the dinner for the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. Will was introduced by Cato Institute President and Founder Ed Crane. The dinner was held May 13, 2010.” 

From CATO Institute

George Will said in an interview with Charlie Rose in October, 2008 (a future blog post that is coming up) that, there’s a Libertarian Wing and a Social Conservative Wing in the GOP. And that the Libertarian Wing, is getting larger in the GOP thanks to Ron Paul, CATO Institute, and others ,. He’s mostly correct and I agree with most of that. I would just phrase that a little differently.

There’s a Conservative Wing and I mean Conservative across the board not statist in any sense and there’s a statist wing in the Republican Party. So-called Christian-Conservatives (Christian-fundamentalist-theocrats, in actuality)  who now make up the Christian-Right, Tea Party, and people who don’t identify themselves with either of those groups.

Thats the State of GOP today which is made up of people who believe in economic freedom, except for the right for workers to organize, religious freedom for Anglo-Saxon-Protestant-Christians, and they want big government out of our wallets, so they can get in our bedrooms and living rooms to tell us how we can live our lives, who we can sleep with, who we can marry, what we can watch on TV, and what we can listen to, what bars and clubs we can go to, etc. To a certain extent even what we can do with our own money.

Unfortunately for the Republican Party, the Christian-Fascist wing of the Republican Party is winning in the Republican Party. Which is bad for them and anyone who believes in liberal democracy and doesn’t want America to become a one-party state, which is most of us.

As we move along as a country, we are getting younger, more tolerant, more liberal, and libertarian. We are becoming a country that wants big government out of our wallets and bedrooms. Generation X and Y are perfect examples of that.

But as the changes are happening, we have Christian-Fascists who are still stuck in the John Wayne-Ozzie and Harriet’s-Beaver Cleaver’s 1950s America and haven’t figured out that color TV is common and that people like to have a good time and don’t want to be told how to live their lives. That not all Americans don’t fit in with the 1950s establishment, that we are all individuals and don’t fit into the Christian-Fascist box of what Americans are supposed to be. And that if you don’t fit in that box, which is only the size of a lunch box, that somehow you are Un-American, or Socialist.

George Will, is right about the Republican Party in the sense of the two wings that make up today’s GOP. What he would call a Libertarian Wing, that he fits in, that I would call Conservative, which is different. And a so-called Social Conservative Wing (even though they don’t believe in conserving anything) that I would call statist.

There are Christian-Fascist Republicans and are unfortunately for the Republican Party, the Statists are not only coming, but are winning in the Republican Party and are on course to put the Republican Party out of business.