Silverwolf was listening to the usual Socialist propaganda put out by the government station known as the BBC the other night. On their business report they featured the wealthy “Socialist”, Bill Gates, the second richest Capitalist in the world according to those who measure such things. Gates was putting out the Obama-Buffett line, that the “wealthy” or the “rich” will just inevitably have to pay higher taxes to cope with the huge deficits, i.e. the giveaways to the banks and their associates. Let’s throw that tax burden onto the “rich”, they say. What this really means in code will be higher taxes on the middle class, and anyone lucky enough to suddenly have a good year and have a higher income, perhaps after years of living on the edge. Suddenly one good year makes one “rich”, or “wealthy”. This is one of the big lies in the jargon of Liberals and Keynesians. The little guy who suddenly has a good year has a huge percentage of that wealth taxed away to be given to the banks, militarists, and welfare-ists, even though he is in a completely different class to the guy who has been having huge incomes for the last twenty years and who make most of it from government contracts, government contacts, or from dividends of stocks indirectly subsidized by the Federal Government, like “defense” stocks, banks, and insurance companies.
And, of course, the effect on the wealthy who pay no or very little tax will continue to be nil (for example, tax free munis, or avoiding state taxes with Treasury instruments will persist and be defended by Liberals) while those who do have to pay tax, like salaried employees, will get fleeced at a higher rate to make up for the fresh subsidies to the crony capitalists (who are not real Capitalists at all, but actually State Socialists).
What Gates, Obama and Buffett conveniently ignore is not only the spending problem which is the real cause of the debt problem, and not the lack of or unwillingness to pay exorbitent tax rates, but additionally they ignore the disincentive effect of higher tax rates on the entire economy, and especially those potential entrepreneurs who would have started ventures, but were disuaded by the new, higher tax rates. That damage to the economy is never mentioned by these so-called Capitalists, and we think it is because these fellows were never basically workers, but more traders of stock and builders of businesses. They built their success on two things: the ability to buy a stock and have its value go up, and the ability to build a business so that the original stock, which the founder owned, increased in value millions of a percent. Their business was their ticket to immense wealth.
Contrast this to a hard-working labourer like Congressman Ron Paul, who spent long years working in charity hospitals, delivering thousands of babies, and another four years serving in the military as a medical officer. Dr. Paul knew his wealth would depend on two things: how hard he worked, saved, and invested, and also on the integrity of the money he earned working all those years. It took Ron Paul years of hard work to earn what Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have almost certainly made and lost in a single hour, many times over. It is well for such super-wealthy individuals to pontificate about what tax rates we peons down below must pay to keep intact the integrity of the dollars in which their wealth is measured. But it has very little in common with the Doctor who is spending years in assiduous care, delivering four thousand babies, solving countless other medical problems along the way, and patiently saving for his family’s future, while raising several children.
So when the BBC publicizes the views of these “Socialist” Capitalists, they are really insulting the little ants in the Capitalist system, like you and me and Ron Paul, who live in the existential economy of everyday life, now made more sinister and dire the world over by the spectre of rising inflation, as the Socialists try to cope with the mess they made in the US housing market and the European debt crisis. They are lobing propaganda mortars into the public’s consciousness to get them to accept even higher tax rates.
Far fairer would be a complete absence of income tax on anyone in the private sector, workers, and anyone making under a certain poverty-level income, while assessing a stiff income tax on government workers making over that poverty-level income, and anyone making an income through contact with the government, like government contractors. Dividends on stocks of companies doing business with the government would be taxed, but not dividends on purely Free-Market Capitalist companies. Farm companies receiving farm subsidies would be taxed heavily.
Such a system would distinguish between dollars made in the private sector through production of goods and services, which raises the level of society in general, and dollars made through government confiscations and privileged contacts.
Additionally, since government Socialists are so enamoured of the income tax and higher tax rates, they should have absolutely no objection to paying it, since they are advocating it. Their selflessness will be appreciated by the rest of us.
This whole question of the disincentive effect of higher tax rates, which the Liberals and Keynesians will never ever even whisper in public, was beautifully illustrated in the old Soviet Union, where it was almost impossible to launch a protest, by a group of the Soviet States most brilliant citizens, right under the noses of the Soviets, and there was not too much they could do about it.
And this non-violent tactic against the Soviet State, which was also a protest against every Leviathan State that has ever existed, and still do exist the world over, where they push their citizens around like cattle — this protest, we say, was quietly initiated by the Soviet Chess Grandmasters during the Cold War.
The protest materialized in the form of the Grandmaster Draw, a brief chess game, lasting perhaps a dozen moves, in which both grandmasters rapidly played an exceedingly drawish opening, usually trading off a lot of their major pieces, and verbally agreeing to a draw. The practice became so egregious that, after many years, chess federations began to ban such quick draws, requiring the players to play a minimum number of moves before a draw could be agreed.
Now, one should remember that at this time to be a Soviet Grandmaster was akin to being a British Pop Star in the early 60s. You were a national hero, all your physical needs were taken care of, though not lavishly, but you’d never be rich. When Spassky played Petrosian for the World’s Championship, the pot was $2, 000. A few years later, under Fischer, it was over a million.
So why did those Soviet Grandmasters protest? They had everything set up for them, although they did have to work nominally at another profession (Botwinnik was an engineer; those who had no profession were Chess journalists). No unbalanced Bobby Fischer, sitting up all night in NY City plotting how to destroy the Russians with opening innovations, for the Soviet State. In the Soviet State everyone is healthy, and since an overridding passion for chess is unhealthy, therefore everyone will work at another profession, and if they’re still chess bums, we’ll give ’em a journal to edit. There are a lot of outhouses in USSR, and they each need a stack of chess mags to keep the men of the nation happy.
But we think the real reason Tigran Petrosian, and so many of his genius colleagues, would play those twelve-move draws and then run off to watch a soccer game, was the same reason that millions of Americans will have when they will decide to work less in the face of higher tax rates, consume less, and generally feel that America under the Liberal Keynesians like Obama is a rip-off, not a just system. Their reasoned protest will be Indolence, and American prosperity will suffer. If you’re going to have me work like a slave all day, and then rip off 30-40% of what I make, to feed your military-industrial, banking, welfare buddies, then stick it. I’m sitting.
That’s what Petrosian did, and that’s what the American Productive Class will do if a Keynesian tax-raiser gets elected or re-elected.
So go ahead, BBC, NPR, and every government propaganda outfit around the world, keep putting out the myth that higher taxes will cure your greedy government-consumption of the People’s productivity, and keep ignoring the Grandmaster Draw effect of your insane, anti-Capitalist policies.
Only Ron Paul stands between them and the America of the Grandmaster Draw.
Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! — Silverwolf
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Tags: BBC, Bill Gates, chess, Grandmaster Draw, income tax, Keynesianism, Obama, Ron Paul, Socialism, tax rates, Tigran Petrosian, Warren Buffett
