Thomas Sowell: ‘Just Asking’ The Income Redistributionists
chris 34 mins ago
http://conservativeread.com/thomas-sowe ... utionists/
In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality.
One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor.
Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just “ask” for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.
Barry
Despite pious rhetoric on the left about “asking” the more fortunate for more money, the government does not “ask” anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don’t pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.
So please don’t insult our intelligence by talking piously about “asking.”
And please don’t call the government’s pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit “investment.” Remember the soaring words from Barack Obama, in his early days in the White House, about “investing in the industries of the future”? After Solyndra and other companies in which he “invested” the taxpayers’ money went bankrupt, we haven’t heard those soaring words so much.
Then there are those who produced the wealth that politicians want to grab. In Obama’s rhetoric, these producers are called “society’s lottery winners.”
Was Bill Gates a lottery winner? Or did he produce and sell a computer operating system that allows billions of people around the world to use computers, without knowing anything about the inner workings of this complex technology?
Was Henry Ford a lottery winner? Or did he revolutionize the production of automobiles, bringing the price down to the point where cars were no longer luxuries of the rich but vehicles that millions of ordinary people could afford, greatly expanding the scope of their lives?
Most people who want to redistribute wealth don’t want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want “the rich” to pay their undefined “fair share” of taxes. This “fair share” must remain undefined because all it really means is “more.”
Once you have defined it — whether at 30 percent, 60 percent or 90 percent — you wouldn’t be able to come back for more.
Obama goes further than other income redistributionists. “You didn’t build that!” he declared to those who did. Why? Because those who created additions to the world’s wealth used government-built roads or other government-provided services to market their products.
And who paid for those roads and other government-provided services if not the taxpayers? Since all other taxpayers, as well as non-taxpayers, also use government facilities, why are those who created private wealth not to use them also, since they are taxpayers as well?
The fact that most of the rhetorical ploys used by Barack Obama and other redistributionists will not stand up under scrutiny means very little politically. After all, how many people who come out of our schools and colleges today are capable of critical scrutiny?
When all else fails, redistributionists can say, as Obama did at Georgetown University, that “coldhearted, free-market capitalist types” are people who “pretty much have more than you’ll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use,” so they should let the government take that extra money to help the poor.
Slippery use of the word “use” seems to confine it to personal consumption. The real question is whether the investment of wealth is likely to be done better by those who created that wealth in the first place or by politicians. The track record of politicians hardly suggests that turning ever more of a nation’s wealth over to them is likely to turn out well.
It certainly has not turned out well in the American economy under Barack Obama.
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Financial Noose Is Tightening - Time To Leave The US Is Now - Time Is Of The Essence
noosetightens.jpeg
http://allnewspipeline.com/Financial_No ... ve_Now.php <--- Videos at link
By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die
With the Bank of America now warning its customers that we are preparing to enter a 'financial twilight zone' as shared by Bloomberg and the 1st video below from The Alex Jones Channel, each and every day we see new signs that the war upon cash is heating up and the financial noose tightening around our collective necks as the 'mark of the beast system' is being prepared to be fully implemented in America and the days remaining for those planning on leaving the country for greener pastures dwindle, time is truly of the essence for those who plan on jumping this rapidly sinking ship. First, a note from the Bank Of America to its investors shares this dire warning.:
Investors remain trapped in “The Twilight Zone”, the transition period between the end of QE and the first rate hike by the Fed, the start of policy normalization...until (a) the US economy is unambiguously robust enough to allow the Fed to hike and (b) the Fed’s exit from zero rates is seen not to cause either a market or macro shock (as it infamously did in 1936-7), the investment backdrop will likely continue to be cursed by mediocre returns, volatile trading rotation, correlation breakdowns and flash crashes. For this reason we continue to advocate higher than normal levels of cash, adding gold and owning volatility in mid 2015. Given extremities of liquidity, profits, technological disruption, regulation, income inequality…potential for a cleansing drop in asset prices cannot be dismissed. Most likely catalysts: Consumer, Rates, A-shares, Speculation, High Yield.
With Michael Snyder and the Economic Collapse Blog telling us that they may be getting ready to confiscate money from bank accounts in Greece while Mac Slavo over at the SHTFPlan tells us that once cash is banned, Americans will be able to be forced to purchase certain products, we can now clearly see how big banks are working with government to restrict the use of cash by people in this country and the banks begin to charge US for allowing THEM to hold OUR money. Only days ago, the Market Oracle told us about another shot that has been fired in the war on cash as small business owner Lyndon McLellan of North Carolina had all the cash seized from his stores bank account by the govt, over $100,000, the latest sign that anyone and practically everyone here in America is in the same potential danger.
In the 2nd video below from Luke Rudkowski and We Are Change he shares with us the true story from the mouth of a man who has voluntarily implanted himself with a microchip which he is able to use to hack into Androids as well as pay his gas bill or other bills without cash. We can see that transhumanism is here now and while this man admits to Luke that there are very dangerous potential drawbacks to this technology, "it's cool" and likely before too long, they'll use these 'cool' features in order to 'sell' the mark of the beast to the unsuspecting masses clueless it's a tool of evil.
In the 3rd video below from Paul Sandhu we learn why cash is the final frontier that needs to be conquered by governments to take away the very few freedoms still remaining for most American citizens as the war upon cash is kicked into overdrive. Paul tells us the story of Lyndon McLellan of North Carolina and why the government attack upon him, the stealing of his money, could happen to any of us.
The recent alert republished below from the website of Steve Quayle gives us more proof that the noose is tightening as we see travelers being harrassed by Homeland Security agents at airports both here in America and overseas about the amount of cash they may or may not be holding on hand. With the 'clampdown on cash' already having progressed to the extent detailed in this story, we are simply running out of time and time is of the essence now.
NOW THE WAR ON CASH BEGINS-HERE IT COMES! HEADS UP TRAVELERS
Observation
Hi Midas. An interesting observation from recent travels. I've been travelling internationally 3-4 times per year for a few decades now. But I've never seen this happen. When boarding our flight at SFO, there were 8-10 Homeland Security agents lining the jetway right before stepping onto the plane. They were pulling people aside and when we were stopped, a very odd encounter followed:
agent: 'passports please' We hand over passports, agent opens and looks over quickly.
agent: 'what is your relationship?'
response: 'we're married, you just looked at our passports, didn't you look at our names?' [obviously had no interest in looking at the passports]
agent: 'how much money are you travelling with?'
response: 'not much'
agent: 'so you don't have a large sum of money?'
response: 'no'
agent: 'how much?'
responce: 'we do't have much'
agent: 'so you're not travelling with ten thousand dollars or more?'
response: 'no'
agent: 'ok' [very curt response I must add]
2 hours later we're boarding the connecting flight in Amsterdam, and start back throught the gate security process (full screening again) and after we redress from the body scan take-down, we start towards the waiting area. 3 security personnel great every person with a dog nosing around us. I thought, standard drug sniffing dog, but it jumps towards my wifes hat she's holding in her hand. She comments 'you want my hat' and walks past. A gentleman a few feet away is observing the whole process and comments 'no, he wants your money. He's trained to snif for how much you have.' I take my place next to him to observe a few people coming through the process and sure enough, a few people get the enthusiastic greeting any drug smuggler wouldn't want to see, but then the question from security 'how much money do you have?' follows. One lady with $3000 had to produce it for viewing (to the entire lounge I may add), while another gentleman with $7000 was waived through.
Quite a different screening process than I've ever been subjected to. Is something up? Not sure. But given the discussions on banks being required to notify the feds on cash withdrawls, Citi and others calling for a 'cashless society', and now this level of screening, it just feels odd.
Best, Steve
chris 34 mins ago
http://conservativeread.com/thomas-sowe ... utionists/
In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality.
One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor.
Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just “ask” for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.
Barry
Despite pious rhetoric on the left about “asking” the more fortunate for more money, the government does not “ask” anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don’t pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.
So please don’t insult our intelligence by talking piously about “asking.”
And please don’t call the government’s pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit “investment.” Remember the soaring words from Barack Obama, in his early days in the White House, about “investing in the industries of the future”? After Solyndra and other companies in which he “invested” the taxpayers’ money went bankrupt, we haven’t heard those soaring words so much.
Then there are those who produced the wealth that politicians want to grab. In Obama’s rhetoric, these producers are called “society’s lottery winners.”
Was Bill Gates a lottery winner? Or did he produce and sell a computer operating system that allows billions of people around the world to use computers, without knowing anything about the inner workings of this complex technology?
Was Henry Ford a lottery winner? Or did he revolutionize the production of automobiles, bringing the price down to the point where cars were no longer luxuries of the rich but vehicles that millions of ordinary people could afford, greatly expanding the scope of their lives?
Most people who want to redistribute wealth don’t want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want “the rich” to pay their undefined “fair share” of taxes. This “fair share” must remain undefined because all it really means is “more.”
Once you have defined it — whether at 30 percent, 60 percent or 90 percent — you wouldn’t be able to come back for more.
Obama goes further than other income redistributionists. “You didn’t build that!” he declared to those who did. Why? Because those who created additions to the world’s wealth used government-built roads or other government-provided services to market their products.
And who paid for those roads and other government-provided services if not the taxpayers? Since all other taxpayers, as well as non-taxpayers, also use government facilities, why are those who created private wealth not to use them also, since they are taxpayers as well?
The fact that most of the rhetorical ploys used by Barack Obama and other redistributionists will not stand up under scrutiny means very little politically. After all, how many people who come out of our schools and colleges today are capable of critical scrutiny?
When all else fails, redistributionists can say, as Obama did at Georgetown University, that “coldhearted, free-market capitalist types” are people who “pretty much have more than you’ll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use,” so they should let the government take that extra money to help the poor.
Slippery use of the word “use” seems to confine it to personal consumption. The real question is whether the investment of wealth is likely to be done better by those who created that wealth in the first place or by politicians. The track record of politicians hardly suggests that turning ever more of a nation’s wealth over to them is likely to turn out well.
It certainly has not turned out well in the American economy under Barack Obama.
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Financial Noose Is Tightening - Time To Leave The US Is Now - Time Is Of The Essence
noosetightens.jpeg
http://allnewspipeline.com/Financial_No ... ve_Now.php <--- Videos at link
By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die
With the Bank of America now warning its customers that we are preparing to enter a 'financial twilight zone' as shared by Bloomberg and the 1st video below from The Alex Jones Channel, each and every day we see new signs that the war upon cash is heating up and the financial noose tightening around our collective necks as the 'mark of the beast system' is being prepared to be fully implemented in America and the days remaining for those planning on leaving the country for greener pastures dwindle, time is truly of the essence for those who plan on jumping this rapidly sinking ship. First, a note from the Bank Of America to its investors shares this dire warning.:
Investors remain trapped in “The Twilight Zone”, the transition period between the end of QE and the first rate hike by the Fed, the start of policy normalization...until (a) the US economy is unambiguously robust enough to allow the Fed to hike and (b) the Fed’s exit from zero rates is seen not to cause either a market or macro shock (as it infamously did in 1936-7), the investment backdrop will likely continue to be cursed by mediocre returns, volatile trading rotation, correlation breakdowns and flash crashes. For this reason we continue to advocate higher than normal levels of cash, adding gold and owning volatility in mid 2015. Given extremities of liquidity, profits, technological disruption, regulation, income inequality…potential for a cleansing drop in asset prices cannot be dismissed. Most likely catalysts: Consumer, Rates, A-shares, Speculation, High Yield.
With Michael Snyder and the Economic Collapse Blog telling us that they may be getting ready to confiscate money from bank accounts in Greece while Mac Slavo over at the SHTFPlan tells us that once cash is banned, Americans will be able to be forced to purchase certain products, we can now clearly see how big banks are working with government to restrict the use of cash by people in this country and the banks begin to charge US for allowing THEM to hold OUR money. Only days ago, the Market Oracle told us about another shot that has been fired in the war on cash as small business owner Lyndon McLellan of North Carolina had all the cash seized from his stores bank account by the govt, over $100,000, the latest sign that anyone and practically everyone here in America is in the same potential danger.
In the 2nd video below from Luke Rudkowski and We Are Change he shares with us the true story from the mouth of a man who has voluntarily implanted himself with a microchip which he is able to use to hack into Androids as well as pay his gas bill or other bills without cash. We can see that transhumanism is here now and while this man admits to Luke that there are very dangerous potential drawbacks to this technology, "it's cool" and likely before too long, they'll use these 'cool' features in order to 'sell' the mark of the beast to the unsuspecting masses clueless it's a tool of evil.
In the 3rd video below from Paul Sandhu we learn why cash is the final frontier that needs to be conquered by governments to take away the very few freedoms still remaining for most American citizens as the war upon cash is kicked into overdrive. Paul tells us the story of Lyndon McLellan of North Carolina and why the government attack upon him, the stealing of his money, could happen to any of us.
The recent alert republished below from the website of Steve Quayle gives us more proof that the noose is tightening as we see travelers being harrassed by Homeland Security agents at airports both here in America and overseas about the amount of cash they may or may not be holding on hand. With the 'clampdown on cash' already having progressed to the extent detailed in this story, we are simply running out of time and time is of the essence now.
NOW THE WAR ON CASH BEGINS-HERE IT COMES! HEADS UP TRAVELERS
Observation
Hi Midas. An interesting observation from recent travels. I've been travelling internationally 3-4 times per year for a few decades now. But I've never seen this happen. When boarding our flight at SFO, there were 8-10 Homeland Security agents lining the jetway right before stepping onto the plane. They were pulling people aside and when we were stopped, a very odd encounter followed:
agent: 'passports please' We hand over passports, agent opens and looks over quickly.
agent: 'what is your relationship?'
response: 'we're married, you just looked at our passports, didn't you look at our names?' [obviously had no interest in looking at the passports]
agent: 'how much money are you travelling with?'
response: 'not much'
agent: 'so you don't have a large sum of money?'
response: 'no'
agent: 'how much?'
responce: 'we do't have much'
agent: 'so you're not travelling with ten thousand dollars or more?'
response: 'no'
agent: 'ok' [very curt response I must add]
2 hours later we're boarding the connecting flight in Amsterdam, and start back throught the gate security process (full screening again) and after we redress from the body scan take-down, we start towards the waiting area. 3 security personnel great every person with a dog nosing around us. I thought, standard drug sniffing dog, but it jumps towards my wifes hat she's holding in her hand. She comments 'you want my hat' and walks past. A gentleman a few feet away is observing the whole process and comments 'no, he wants your money. He's trained to snif for how much you have.' I take my place next to him to observe a few people coming through the process and sure enough, a few people get the enthusiastic greeting any drug smuggler wouldn't want to see, but then the question from security 'how much money do you have?' follows. One lady with $3000 had to produce it for viewing (to the entire lounge I may add), while another gentleman with $7000 was waived through.
Quite a different screening process than I've ever been subjected to. Is something up? Not sure. But given the discussions on banks being required to notify the feds on cash withdrawls, Citi and others calling for a 'cashless society', and now this level of screening, it just feels odd.
Best, Steve
://.soundclick/band/page_music.cfm?bandID=178805
Google You tube Slacker G Guitar skills (1&2)
The same spirit that ruled over Hitler is headed our way.
Let those with ears to hear understand.
Google You tube Slacker G Guitar skills (1&2)
The same spirit that ruled over Hitler is headed our way.
Let those with ears to hear understand.
