JB Williams

Obama’s Trickle-Down Disaster
October 27, 2008

For the record, economic conditions don’t trickle up. They only trickle down...

If you don’t believe me, answer how long it took for the Democrat manufactured economic crisis on Wall Street to trickle down to Main Street? Good or bad, economic conditions always flow down hill. It’s gravity, stupid!

This is reality: economic conditions trickle down. Our only options therefore are these:

▪ Do we want trickle down prosperity, or trickle down poverty?

▪ Do we want trickle down freedom, or trickle down socialism?

Americans too young or too ill-educated to know that there is no “fairness” in socialism, aka communism-lite, or theft by quasi-democratic process, should spend a little time with my eleven year old son who already seems to grasp the difference between “freedom” and “free-stuff.”

Maybe a little Fifth Grade lesson in “mob rule” is in order here...

A Fifth Grade Lesson for Voters

From the mouths of babes – My son Joseph was dismayed by a few schoolmates who were regurgitating Obama campaign rhetoric on the school playground.

As a general rule, I answer my son’s social studies questions at homework time, but otherwise tell him that politics is not really for the fifth grade playground. Fifth graders can’t vote and they should really be focused upon simpler pleasures.

But he was very curious about this particular election and very disturbed by what seemed like obvious untruths to him. He had some good questions that deserved some honest answers... As is a habit of mine in such situations, I asked the questions so that he could come up with his own answers.

Question – What’s the difference between freedom and free-stuff?

Joseph – Freedom means I can be anything I want... There’s free-stuff? What kind of stuff is free?

Question – If you and two friends are visiting a fourth friends house and he has all kinds of cool stuff that none of you have, can the three of you simply take your “fair share” of his stuff so that you will all be equal?

Joseph – No... that would be stealing and not very nice!

Question – What if you all took a vote to decide what’s fair?

Joseph – That sounds fair...

Question – So three of you vote to divide up your friends stuff more evenly.

Joseph – Yeah...

Question – And the fourth friend, the one who owns all the cool stuff votes no?

Joseph – I would if I was him!

Question – Your friend just lost his cool stuff... You three outnumber him and by democratic process, you now have a right to your “fair share” of his stuff.

Joseph – But that’s not fair to him at all!

Question – But it was completely democratic. How could it not be fair?

Joseph – Didn’t our democracy just steal his freedom, and also his stuff?

Dad – That’s democracy! End of lesson...

Sadly, it seems that too many American voters have somehow lost sight of what my fifth grader was able to reason through, on his own. I guess common sense isn’t so common after all... at least beyond the fifth grade.

Intellectual elites aren’t overlooking such a simple common sense principle of freedom as well as cause and effect. They simply seek personal wealth and political power from promising to rob some Americans for the alleged benefit of other Americans.

And with pure democracy, what Thomas Jefferson referred to as “mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – any numerical majority can run roughshod over any remaining minority. Since most people are not “rich,” that makes “rich” folks the minority easiest to run-over, democratically of course.

There’s a reason why Obama and other leftist Democrats promise to tax only 5% of Americans. The reason is “mob rule.” If the other 95% of the people are willing to allow 5% of Americans to be robbed on their behalf by democratic process, then “the mob” will make sure that Obama has the power to do so, and Obama can count on their support on Election Day.

Fortunately, 95% of Americans are not yet that well-indoctrinated. Only about 50% are. But imagine Obama promising the opposite...

What if Obama was running on a platform of taxing 95% of Americans for benefit of the 5%? Could he get more than 5% of the vote on Election Day? Mob rule won’t work that way. You must pander to the mob, not the minority.

The BIGGEST Fly in Obama’s Marxist Ointment

Obama says he will only tax the top 5% of Americans making over $250,000 in order to “spread their wealth” to Obama’s supporters. It’s simple theft by quasi-democratic process, aka democratic socialism. McCain is right and Palin gave it the right name.

But according to the I.R.S. 5% of Americans don’t make above $250,000. In fact the top 5% of

Americans only make an average of $153,000 per year, well short of Obama’s $250,000 mark for his target definition of “rich.”

Since the top 5% only make 60% of what Obama claims they make, he can only raise at best 60% of the revenue projected to come from the top 5% of income earners.

What Do You Suppose Will Happen Next?

To make up the shortfall, he will have to tax, at a minimum, the top 25% of Americans. That would be households making $64,000 or more. He will do this because he will have to in order to keep any of the promises he is making on the campaign trail today. But, who’s counting?

In case you don’t know, the top 25% of American wage earners currently pay more than 86.3% of all federal taxes collected in the country. According to Obama and friends, 86.3% is less than their “fair share” of the national tax burden. It seems to me that 25% of income should cover 25% of the burden, if we are talking “fairness”.

Now let’s not confuse “charity” with “tyranny” either. Most Americans are pretty generous with their own assets when it comes to carrying for others unable to care for themselves. No nation on earth is more generous.

But charity is the act of giving, of one self, with the consent of the giver. When you take from someone that which rightfully belongs to them, against their will, it is called theft. When you take by political process, that which belongs to others, it’s called tyranny, not “fairness.”

It’s not about “fairness” though, is it? – Tyranny is all about power!

Obama’s Trickle-Down Disaster

Obama isn’t selling trickle-down opportunity. Opportunity only exists in freedom.

He is selling trickle-down free-stuff and even my eleven year old son was wise enough to ask – “what kind of stuff is free?”

Obama’s Democratic (big “D”) Socialists aren’t selling trickle-down prosperity, they are selling trickle-down poverty.

▪ There’s no such thing as “corporate tax.” Every last penny in “corporate tax” is passed on to consumers in “higher prices” - to employees in lower wages, lost benefits and lost employment. Corporate taxes “trickle-down.”

▪ Wealth trickles-down in the form of increased investments, increased productivity and increased employment opportunities. Wealth “trickles-down.”

▪ However, poverty also trickles-down. Removing earnings from productive people impairs investment and productivity, thereby trickling-down in the form of lost opportunities for others. Poverty “trickles-down” too.

When the potential for investment gain is penalized by excessive taxation, who will risk their bird in hand for, maybe, another bird in the bush? And when people won’t invest, how does an economy grow? This should be an easy one to answer as you watch investors flee from the market in record numbers day after day...

Obama’s New Jobs are Government Tax-Funded Jobs

With a federal government already bankrupt from excessive spending, how many more government jobs can taxpayers afford? Private sector jobs create prosperity. Government jobs attack private prosperity and suffocate everyone’s productivity and freedom.

Can you name a single federal program that has been run well and on-budget? There is no such program.

Our current financial crisis is the direct result of government greed, not corporate greed. It was government that forced lenders to make bad loans, in the name of “equality.” Now every home-owner is in equal trouble as housing values fall.

Throughout history, socialism and communism have failed everywhere they have been tried. That’s because people who can’t or won’t feed themselves, can’t feed anyone else.

When the nation that has fed the world for decades can no longer feed itself, then what?

My eleven year old son gets it. How can so many American voters miss it?

There is an easy answer to that question. Free-stuff comes without personal responsibility. Freedom is all about personal responsibility and personal responsibility is not nearly as attractive as the illusion of as free-stuff, particularly to those who have used their freedom unwisely.

For Obama supporters, the lie is simply more attractive than the truth.

I’m still working on this one with my eleven year old. But I bet he has it down before he’s old enough to vote!