The Socialists of Oregon mailed to the polls Tuesday, and decided to slit their own throats. In a vote of roughly 53-47%, they decided to raise taxes on individuals making over $125,000/yr, and raised the basic corporate fee from $10 to $150 with additional taxes based on gross volume of trade, and not net gains. These looting mechanisms, known as measures 66 and 67, will enable the state’s pampered workers, who can retire after 30 years with 80% of their paychecks, to continue to leech off of the state’s independent workers and businessmen, who must support these state apparatchiks in their opulent retirement. Likewise, they will make it much harder for any fledgling corporations or small business start-ups taking the corporate route, instead of the sole proprietor route, to get off the ground. But such considerations count for little in the mind of the Socialist, whose main concern is how to loot the commodities he wants from those who produce them, or produce the money that can procure them. By doing it through the law, or through so-called “democratic” methods (actually 59% of the electorate voted of whom 53% voted for these measures, or 31.7% of the populace imposed these taxes on 100% of the populace — that’s their so-called Democracy), he can assuage the fact that he is nothing more than a looting thief, a highwayman now dressed up as a concerned state citizen, wanting to make sure everyone pays their so-called “fair share”. He beautifully typifies the mentality of the looter described by Frederic Bastiat, back around 1850, when he wrote “Some persons consider that plunder is perfectly justifiable if only sanctioned by law.” Well, Silverwolf saw some of the campaign literature on the pro-looting side and it said, for example, that “only 447 households in our county will be affected by the new income tax”, as if the fact that the plundering was confined to a small number of people made it completely justifiable. We well know the effect of such “morality” on the morality of the average citizen, and in this case it cozens him into an attitude that, yes, it’s quite alright to loot people of 11.8% of their income, (making it the highest state income tax in America unless Silverwolf is mistaken, quite apart from the federal income tax), as long as they are “wealthy”. Apart from being immorally Un-American, in that it violates the rights of one narrow segment of the population, and ultimately the right of every Individual not to be robbed by the collective, it also conveniently overlooks the fact that “wealth” is not being taxed, but income. The wealthy individual, with several million dollars worth of real estate, but with a miniscule cash income will not be affected by this law, while the $10,000 waitress who buys a winning lottery ticket and wins a quarter-million will be taxed as if that is her usual annual salary, and not just a once in a lifetime fluke. And of course, the wealthy always have their legal tax dodges like buying treasury bills whose interest is not taxable by the states, or tax-free state bonds, or municipal bonds which are usually free of state and federal taxes. So in these ways, despite all the feel-good class-hatred rhetoric whipped up by the Democrat hatemongers and their state workers/union backstops, the tax burden gets shifted to the middle class, because even with the new looting mechanisms in place, you can be sure that in a year or two the state will again be decrying the huge budget deficits that will once again arise, like a recrudescent cancer, whenever vast numbers of state bureaucrats are living off the fat of the middle and working classes. Then they will say that they have to raise taxes on the middle class too, so that everyone can “pay their fair share”. But that showdown has been postponed for a year or two. Yet when it comes, the taxpayers will be much poorer, due to inflation and these higher taxes on businesses, who will pass them on to the consumer. And then when the government and union Socialists cry “wolf”, the voters will cry back “Silverwolf”, and cut off their testimonials, fiscally speaking. The Libertarian Revolution is out there brewing and stewing in people’s entrails; Silverwolf can sense it. And like the revolution that swept Eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall, this Libertarian Revolution will sweep away the structure of the Wilson-FDR model that has dominated American politics for almost exactly a century, and do it with amazing rapidness. Silverwolf believes the economic ideas of Ron Paul and the Austrian school will emerge victorious in a couple of years, as people see the continued failure of the current Keynesian Demo-Repub government bureaucracy, and realize the chaos that Keynesian economics has brought to America.
As an additional observation, it’s interesting to note that in their rush to greed, the Socialists have cut their own throats in another way, and that is by taxing corporations according to their gross sales volume, and not their net profits. Now this is not something a Socialist is going to think about, and it probably never occurs to his little grey cells, but what he is doing is taxing high-volume, low-margin sellers, who create competition and keep prices down, at a higher rate than low-volume, high-priced sellers, who are essentially price-gouging. So the Socialist in his stupidity is rewarding the price gouger who feeds inflation, and punishing the low-cost wholesaler who is the consumer’s best friend. And they will pay for this extra bit of stupidity at the checkout counter and the cash-register. Except, why should they worry, the welfare check gives them the cash, so no need to shop for the lowest price, and the food stamp card covers the vittles, so let’s buy it at the convenience store while prices are high and lines are short, and let the workers and the businessmen stand in line at he discount supermarket to save their nickels. “It’s just like those greedy, profit-oriented, penny-pinching businessmen to worry about saving a dime, while we elevated Socialists are well above the money problem.”
That is until inflation strikes. And the Libertarian Revolution at the polls.
If Oregon Socialists want to slit their own throats, that is their right. But it’s too bad that while slitting their own throats, they have to slit the throats of all the other people in the state.
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwww! — Silverwolf
Silverwolf:The Lobo Breed 