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Founding fathers would fight the system
President Obama and the Democrats’ War on Prosperity is merely the economic aspect of their War on the Right to Pursue Happiness.
Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etc. wouldn’t merely be outraged – they’d be taking up arms to preserve their liberty.
How do we know this? Because that’s exactly how they responded to the bullying of tyrants in their day.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.
Rich, farmers, military bankrupting the U.S.
Now we read in the news that the economy won’t get better until the banks start lending again.
Duh!
Interest rates are low and the interbank lending rate is essentially zero. The Federal Reserve – the United States Central Bank – is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of paper currency into the monetary system. The Congress has passed hundreds of billions in legislation pumping that money into the economy.
Hundreds of billions have been pumped into the failed “big” banks and reinsurance companies. So what’s the problem economists?
I mean it don’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s wrong. U.S. banks hold some $400 trillion worth of derivatives, most of which are worthless. Banks and mortgage finance companies, such as DiTech.com, hold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgages that took the savings out of home equities.
Middle- and low-income workers have lost billions of dollars in income over the last 28 years. Taxes on most Americans are too high because the military has confiscated too much of federal tax revenues. So what’s the problem economists? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
The United States has no savings from which to draw on for capital investment in the free market because Uncle Sam takes too much real income to support a worthless armaments industry which makes weapons that mostly sit in the Arizona desert and never get used.
We waste $500 billion per year on weapons of war that we will never need nor use. Plus we spend over $300 billion per year on double-dipper 20-year military retirements. Why shouldn’t military retirees have to wait until 65 to draw their retirements?
Then there is the farm lobby which gets enriched to the tune of a couple of hundred billions per year.
Duh!
Americans who work for a living take a real hosing. The rich get richer and get their taxes cut. The military gets billions which it wastes big time. Farmers get handouts and low taxes by the billions. Workers get the shaft.
And so does America. So what will Congress do about creating real income for workers and creating the savings necessary for getting us out of this depression?
Probably nothing because neither the Democratic nor the Republican leadership has a clue as to how to get the military, the rich folks or the farmers off our backs.
America needs real income. It needs savings, savings, savings. It needs to make things, things and more things. It needs jobs, jobs and more jobs to provide the real income for real savings and real capital investments so that the gross domestic product is real, and not phony like it has been for the last 30 years or so.
Duh!
Don Kennedy
Starke, Fla.
A true conservative Protestant Republican
High taxes a bad sign for our country
From the economics laboratory that was Europe in the Dark Ages came the rule, “The king shall take one in five.” It was in the Old Testament, originally, Genesis 47:24, “Ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh and four in five shall be your own,” giving rise to the principle in Mediaeval Europe.
Those taking more became corrupt, spiraled into failure, dropping gross annual product, violence and strife. Those taxing less were too weak to defend themselves, keep the peace or provide for the weak and infirm. What is the case for America?
Amazingly, a study of federal spending and revenues by the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows that nationally we have been hovering around one-fifth for at least 43 years when the “black,” untaxed economy is included. Their analysis goes back to 1960.
The AAAS study is available at www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fdshr03.pdf. It is clear the people will hold the government in check if they have to break the law to do it.
In a study from 1776, we found similar figures, but ours may be in question given official data that may have been politically manipulated as has been found of that in the Franklin D. Roosevelt era. Even today, the Consumer Price Index includes such esoteric items as “a bale of jute.” When did you last buy “a bale of jute?”
Additional taxes paid to states and other authorities must be included. All state and local taxes we are required to pay bring total taxes to more than over 50 percent. Historically this has been a precursor for collapse from within.
The French Revolution began as a protest of high taxes and national debts, which are taxes. It can happen here.
Adrian Vance
Lakeport, Calif.
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