This is an easy post for me as most of it will be using Daniel Hannan’s own words and a link to an article written by him that you will be inticed to read.  The article is a message to “Occupy” folks and an attempt to point them in the right direction to vent their displeasure.  Hannan offers ten points of which I’ll only provide a brief tease;

1. Free-marketeers resent the bank bailouts. This might seem obvious: we are, after all, opposed to state subsidies and nationalisations….
2. What has happened since 2008 is not capitalism. In a capitalist system, bad banks would have been allowed to fail, their profitable operations bought by more efficient competitors…
3. If you want the rich to pay more, create a flatter and simpler tax system.  This is partly a question of closing loopholes (mansions put in company names to avoid stamp duty, capital gains tax exemption for non-doms etc)…
4. Those of us who believe in small government are not motivated by the desire to make the rich richer. We’re really not…
5. We are not against equality…
6. Nor, by the way, does state intervention seem to be an effective way to promote equality…
7. Let’s tackle the idea that being on the Left means being on the side of ordinary people, while being on the Right means defending privileged elites. It’s hard to think of a single tax, or a single regulation, that doesn’t end up privileging some vested interest at the expense of the general population…
8. Capitalism, with all its imperfections, is the fairest scheme yet tried. In a system based on property rights and free contract, people succeed by providing an honest service to others…
9. Talking of fairness, let’s remember that the word doesn’t belong to any faction. How about parity between public and private sector pay? How about being fair to our children, whom we have freighted with a debt unprecedented in peacetime?
10. Let’s not forget ethics, either. There is virtue in deciding to do the right thing, but there is no virtue in being compelled. Choosing to give your money to charity is meritorious; paying tax is morally neutral (see here). Evidence suggests that, as taxes rise, and the state squeezes out civic society, people give less to good causes.

Do yourself a favor and read all of Mr. Hannan’s memo to the Occupy protestors.

You can read my original post here.

“Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshaling resources that would otherwise stand idle – workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the financial soundness of reducing taxes when the federal budget is already in deficit. Let me make clear why, in today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarged the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

You probably think that this statement was made by conservative hero Ronald Reagan, but you’d be wrong. These were made by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. My only wish is that he’d (and all politicians and pundits discussing tax cuts) would use the phrase “tax rate cuts” rather than just tax cuts. It would help sell the logic that when something is cheaper people do more of it and this includes investing and working/earning money. The tax rate cuts enacted by JFK took the federal government from a deficit to a $3 billion surplus in 1965.

The author’s format is to provide a detailed description of the problems followed by a recommended solution and a summary. If you have done any reading you’ll recognize many of the solutions…tax rate cuts, simplified tax code, flat tax, reduce/eliminate tariffs, free trade, union-neutral contract bidding, restrictions on government unions, etc. The first part of the book is a fairly simple primer on economics and the laws of supply and demand. A few quotes stuck with me and are a good way to consider Mr. Laffer’s proposals,

“The dream in America has always been to make the poor rich, not to make the rich poor.”

“by their very nature government unions should also be nonpartisan and uninvolved as unions in the political process.”

“the firm that can provide the best product with the lowest costs should be awarded the contract.”

And on spreading the wealth

“The increase in demand for goods and services of the transfer recipients will be exactly offset by the reduction in the demand for goods and services by the transfer payers.”

And finally when considering actions to take to fix the economy…

“primum non nocere (First, do no harm)”

I have to ask at what point did these common sense approaches to our way of life go from natural to remarkable statements?  I shouldn’t be impressed by these thoughts expressed in a book.

In his book, Return to Prosperity, author Arthur Laffer makes three HUGE POINTS THAT are important to this dialogue,

1. The statistics on the poor in America do not show how many poor people work hard and move to the middle or upper class.  When they move up, they are no longer considered poor.  Their net gain in wealth is not reported with the poor. 
2. So how do we still have around the same percentage of poor people?  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1 and 1.5 million new immigrants enter the United States each year.  I am assuming that they mean LEGAL immigrants and most of these people are starting at the bottom income levels as “Immigration helps create the statistical mirage that poor people do not make progress in the American labor force.”
3. Lastly the average number of wage earners in a low income family is only equal to one half of a person working versus two for the high-income family, “It’s hard to have much of an income if no one in the family works.“

As politicians tweak our emotions about the less fortunate they may just be a little self-serving as they ignore the many success stories, discount the affects of immigrants, and keep many low or no wage earners from working enough to pull themselves out of poverty.

Brief 1: Never content to accept a win, special interest groups (perhaps the bane of our society) have already begun to dissect America’s victory when a team of soldiers killed Osama. The Onondaga Indian tribe released a statement criticizing the use of the code name “Geronimo” for bin Laden,

“Think of the outcry if they had used any other ethnic group’s hero. Geronimo bravely and heroically defended his homeland and his people, eventually surrendering and living out the rest of his days peacefully, if in captivity…Geronimo is arguably the most recognized Native American name in the world and this comparison only serves to perpetuate negative stereotypes about our people…Why would that be honorable to us? All they know is just cowboys and Indians, the stuff they saw on TV.”

Why do they make such a heap big deal about this? I found it interesting that in their complaint about stereotypes they used a stereotype that all we know about Indians is cowboy movies. People of my generation grew up with a lot of those type of shows like F-Troop and the Lone Ranger, but younger folks (that’s forty and younger) were not. 

To compound the insanity, Congress and specifically the Democrat-controlled Senate is ready to conduct hearings on the use of the term. Perhaps Joe Biden’s outing of the Seals was not enough to paint a target on their backs and the Democrats want to drag a few of their commanders in front of the cameras to explain their insensitivity. It is time to include diversity, social justice, and sensitivity courses to the already demanding training given to our special forces. These heroes just killed the NUMBER ONE MOST WANTED MAN IN AMERICA and a special interest group is complaining about the code name used. No one would have even noticed had they not made a bid deal about it. It is time to stop playing the victim card unless that is what you want to continue to be.

Brief 2: Perhaps there is no greater evidence of the Obama Administration’s view on use of executive power than these two stories. Both concern a citizen’s right to access services that were somehow deemed to be infringed. In one instance the legal case was dropped by Obama’s Justice Department and the others are being vigorously pursued. The Associated Press reports that Eric Holder and the Justice Department has filed at least six lawsuits against people who have blocked (allegedly) access to abortion clinics. Contrast that with Holder’s decision to drop the case against the New Black Panther Party when they blocked (on video) access to a voting precinct. Is it now okay to block/intimidate white voters, but not to exercise your rights of protest at abortion clinics? There is a law against blocking access to abortion clinics and people who violate the law should be punished in criminal court (as many were), but this is civil lawsuits and looks a lot like punitive punishment for folks who disagree with your political position. How many among us can financially afford to defend ourselves against the resources of the federal government?

"Now now uh A is um for um apple ya know and um B is for Barack, haha um now what is B for..."

Brief 3: The Washington Times is reporting that Obama has hired an outside firm to “coach” Obama and Biden to make them better speech readers. The no-bid contract is for an estimated $100,000 on top of the estimated cost of government employed speech writers who cost taxpayers $624,000 annually. This expenditure falls in the category of thousand dollar hammers as an indication of wasteful spending. The money would be well spent if Biden didn’t keep putting his foot in his mouth and Obama didn’t keep whistling his “s” and his prodigious use of “Um” while speaking sans teleprompter.

Brief 4: Some experts are saying that the current flooding along the Mississippi River may be worse that the famous 1927 flood. God help all of those affected. I couldn’t help but contrast the fact that the Obama administration is actually blowing up the levee in this instance yet no one is screaming and George W. Bush was accused of similar activities during Katrina and he was labeled a racist.

Brief 5: The Pittsburgh Steelers’ soon to be ex-running back Rashard Mendenhall has once again proven that loads of money and free time does not a thinker make. Earlier this year Mendenhall supported fellow Kool-Aid (sorry Kool-Aid) drinker Adrian Pederson of the Minnesota Vikings when he compared their contract fight with NFL owners to slavery. Mendenhall, perhaps not willing to play second fiddle, expressed his feelings about how we misunderstood bin Laden and that al quaida (cannot bring myself to capitalize or correctly spell their name) didn’t knock down the twin towers (I am paraphrasing). He is stupid and he fumbled the ball late in the Super Bowl.  Nuff said.

Brief 6: I was shocked when I read this story. Truly shocked!  Time magazine actually has a positive article  about George W. Bush. Bush was much maligned by the left and their media lap dogs for his initial handling of the 9/11 crisis. President Bush was reading a story to a kindergarten class when he was told of the strikes. Rather that rush out of the room, Bush was seen to calmly finish his story before leaving.

Now nearly ten years later some of the actual students have spoken out and have praised Bush’s handling of the situation,

“But I’ll always remember watching his face turn red. He got really serious all of a sudden. But I was clueless. I was just 7. I’m just glad he didn’t get up and leave, because then I would have been more scared and confused.”

“I think the President was trying to keep us from finding out, so we all wouldn’t freak out.”

“I don’t think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?”

“Today, when we talk about 9/11 in class and you hear kids make mistakes about what happened with the President that day, I can tell them they’re wrong because I was there.”

Since I aspire to be “rich” someday I am sensitive to attacks on those who make more money. It is entirely interesting those politicians who decry the “rich” are mostly rich themselves. Class warfare is a timeless tradition and with the budget issues facing our country it promises to heat up. The problem is that Obama and his fellow progressive have a rather simple task – to demonize those who have more than the rest of us. This play on petty jealousies is simple and unfortunately effective.

Our side takes a little longer to explain and cannot fit on a bumper sticker on a talking points memo circulated to lame stream media outlets for broadcast. Walter Williams’ recent article in Townshall titled Eat the Rich provides some wonderful concepts to help folks point out the economic fallacies perpetrated by the left;

• According to the IRS approximately 2 percent of Americans are rich (when you define rich as making over $250,000 per year)

• Congress is projected to spend around $10 billion per day on this budget

• If ALL income above $250,000 was taken (confiscated, withheld, and stolen) from citizens it would only last our federal government 141 days.

• That would leave an additional 224 days left without any money

• If we also tax evil corporate profits at 100 percent that would only feed the government for another 40 days (sum of all profits from the Fortune 500 firms is estimated to be around $400 billion)

• We are now at July 1 and there is no more money coming in.

• So why not take all of the stocks, bonds, yachts, and other luxury items from the rich to further spread their earned wealth? That would get us to mid August leaving four and a half months left to feed a hungry federal spending hog.

That would seem to leave the other 98 percent of us to pick up the tab. You must also remember that a very large percent of Americans on the lower scale pay no taxes. That 98 percent just became a much smaller group with which to share the burden. Can you imagine who easy it will be to slide the $250,000 threshold to $200,000, or $150,000, and then to $100,000? I have little doubt that progressives are “focus-grouping” terms and amounts to determine what numbers to use. All they need is a starting point for the limit. Changing it later will be easy.

Mr. Williams and many others have shown that the U.S. government has a spending problem. It is easy to posture for benefits for the poor and medical coverage for the needy and grants for Elmo and bazillions of dollars for kids’ education, but it is tough to make the tough call. Anyone, including Paul Ryan, who dares to speak about reform, will be vilified. It speaks volumes of his fortitude that he has a written plan to fix many things though not all.

My analogy for progressive government is that of a SCUBA diver. The diver wants to explore Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and figures how much oxygen will be needed for the journey. He drops off of the boat with a big splash much like we’ve seen Jacques Cousteau do on television many times. As he explores he gets further and further and deeper and deeper away from his planned itinerary. His experience is so rich that he must continue even though his tank is perhaps getting low. A unique thing about SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) is that when the tank is empty it is empty. You take a breath and if there’s no more in the tank then there is no more in the tank. You don’t know it’s your last breath until after you have taken it.

It is politically expedient to kick the rich until there is that last breath. As Williams points out,

“when government taxes profits, corporations report fewer profits and greater costs. When individuals face higher income taxes, they report less income, buy tax shelters and hide their money. It’s not just rich people who try to avoid taxes, but all of us — liberals, conservatives and libertarians…whether taxes are high or low, people make adjustments in their economic behavior…we must keep in mind that rich people didn’t become rich by being stupid.

After all aren’t we Taxed Enough Already (TEA Party)?

I would have expected the communist Castro to swing left-handed.

So what is “MLC” you ask.  It is Major League Communism and it has been in existence here in Pittsburgh for many years.  Major League Baseball has implemented a mini-communist experiment that would make Karl Marx proud “to each according to his needs and from each according to his ability” or as MLB calls it, revenue sharing.  This seems like a fair thing that the “richer” clubs pay more to support the “poor” clubs.  Maybe we should call this “Sports Justice.”

For instance in 2006 the New York Yankees “contributed” $77 million toward MLB revenue sharing and the Boston Red Sox antied up $51 million to promote Sports Justice.  Since these and other large market teams have the ability to make more money they can afford much higher salaries and would naturally be able to to buy the better players from the small market teams thus making MLB less competitive or unfair.  All teams contribute to the pot based on their ability and remove based on their need.  Baseball parity at last?  Does Major League Communism work?

Yes it does!  It works just like communism always works.  The rich are still rich or as in the case of the Yankess they still can afford the highest payroll and are generally at the top of list for payroll (often nearly $100 million more than the second place team).  The poor teams still cannot afford to keep their best players once they are eligible for free agency.  There are still the “haves” and “have-nots” just like before.

Pirates fans often resort to disguises to mask their identity and hide the fact that they continue to support the perennial losing team.

An interesting phenomenon that always is part of communism is that someone always figures out that they really don’t have to really try and yet still get a piece of the pie.  Perhaps the quintessential MRC scammers are my home team the Pittsburgh Pirates.  The Pirates seem aptly named as they take a substantial chunk of revenue sharing (over $70 million in 2009 and a payroll of only $48 million according to Sports Business Daily) and yet have just fielded their 18th losing season.  They even have gotten pretty close this year to having the worst MLB record of all time (modern era). 

Many fans were shocked when someone leaked the financial reports of the Pirates and other baseball teams recently.  It seems that the Pirate owners have found a way to make money.  They gleefully accept the shared wealth and choose not to field a real team.  They make a profit before a single ticket is sold.  It doesn’t hurt that they have one of the nicest ballparks paid for by the local taxpayers.   Why should they try when someone else will pay the bills?  Sound familiar?

This model just never works…just ask Fidel Castro.

Our story starts at the Ché Pizza Parlor, a new age pizza parlor in that they make socially responsible pizza and deliver them in hybrid compact cars.  One day the owner was in a pinch when one of her delivery persons called off to go protest something.  You see Ché Pizza provided its employees with “social justice” time much like traditional employers provided vacation or leave time.  Left with no other options the owner donned her cap and started to make deliveries. 

Ché Pizza was located in a suburb of a rather large city, Demotropolis.  The township had been a farming community that became developed after high taxes drove folks away from Demotropolis.  The suburb was unique in that you would find very upscale mansions nestled into much older areas and you could find both rich and poor within adjoining neighborhoods.  It happened this day that the owner had two deliveries in one of these areas.

As she pulled up to the first delivery she noticed that he owners must have been poor as they only had two older cars, and a big screen television that she could see through the window, but it wasn’t a plasma and was probably only 46 inches.  Thinking about all that she had she felt bad for the people as she delivered their pizzas and case of cold beer (no you didn’t hear wrong as beer delivery was not fictional in this state).  She wondered how these obviously poor folks would be able to afford the cost of the pizza and beer.  At that time the owners brain shrunk three sizes and decided that she would give the pizza and beer to them for free.  In order to save face for the family she explained that they had won a contest and drove off feeling very good about herself to her next delivery.

This neighborhood had a gate where she had to be buzzed in.  As she drove up the very long driveway to the house she noticed the contrast to her last delivery.  These people had three late-model SUVs parked in the driveway.  She could tell that they had money and probably lots of it.  It didn’t seem fair that these people had so much while the last house had so little.  This was America after all and we should all be equal as the Constitution guaranteed.

As she got their order ready she thought back to how she had felt when she gave the food and beer to the prior customer.  The act had made her feel pretty good, but as a small business owner she was concerned about what her social justice would cost her business when an idea hit her.  You could say that her brain shrunk even more and her heart grew just a little darker.  These rich folks could certainly afford to pay more for their pizza and she decided right there to change the total to cover the cost of their pizza and the order from the previous house. 

She was nervous about the total, but they hadn’t asked the price when the order was placed and she was somewhat relieved even though the husband questioned the amount, but didn’t squawk too much and paid.  “That was easier that I thought” she said to herself as she drove out the driveway.  Chuckling to herself a plan came into her head.  “Why not adjust the price our my pizza based on where you live and what you could afford?”  With Google Earth she could look at the delivery sites and set prices based on what you could afford.  She would still make the same money, but the “rich” people would supplement the poorer people.  It was the perfect scheme.

Pizza to each according to their hunger and from each according to their ability to pay.  It didn’t take long for the less fortunate to catch on to the system and one of her best customers was the family living in the first house.  It seemed like they ordered pizza and beer every day and they placed increasingly larger orders.  She did notice during the most recent delivery that they had a new car in the driveway and an empty plasma screen television box left at the curb.  She felt good about how she was making the world a better place.  She was, however, concerned that the wealthier neighborhoods seemed to be ordering fewer pizzas.

She never thought that the rich folks would know or even care about paying $25.00 for a large pizza as they had a lot of money.  The balance was rapidly tipping and she was starting to lose money as the orders from the rich families no longer balanced the cheap or free pizzas to the poor.  As she didn’t want to continue to lose money, she raised the price on the rich folks and even started charging a little more to the poorer folks.  Satisfied with her solution she was surprised to find that evening no orders for pizza from the wealthy neighborhoods and a swarm of people in front of her store.  They were upset that she raised their prices and were protesting.  They even trashed one of her delivery hybrids.

When she explained that the rich people stopped ordering and therefore were no longer supplementing their purchases they just didn’t care.  In their mind she was a wealthy business owner who should pay out of her pocket.  Unraveled by the spectacle she closed Ché Pizza Parlor for the night and sent her employees home (without pay).  She had to stay at her shop until the glass contractor showed up to board up the plate-glass window broken by one of the protesters.  On her way home she passed the wealthy neighborhood and noticed a pizza delivery car turning in to the plan.  Curious she followed and sure enough it pulled into the driveway of the house where she overcharged her first customer.  They obviously still desired pizza, just not hers. 

She noted the name of the rival shop, Freemar Pizza Express, and thought that it didn’t sound like a place for good pizza.  She also noted that they had a web page and decided to take a look.  It seems that Freemar Pizza Express offered “great pizza for an even greater price” and she was disgusted to note that there didn’t seem to be any discounts for less privileged people.  “That’s just not justice or fair!” she thought to herself. 

As the weeks went by business at Ché Pizza Parlor progressively got worse.  The owner even changed her pricing structure to make prices more even, but the wealthy people never came back and the other folks continued to complain until she finally baked her last crust.

The list was mostly local people, many of whom I never heard of.  I guess that I run in the wrong circles or it may be the fact that I actually don’t run in any circles.  One of the folks quoted was actor Charles Grodin who is probably best known for being abused by the cute St. Bernard dog, Beethoven.  Charles remembered some of the things that his mother taught him one of which was about closing the refrigerator door.  Grodin also mentioned a tip from his mother that I generally attribute to fathers about always turning the lights off, but he added something that my parents never said, “the electric company is already rich.”

I find myself traversing the house turning off lights in unoccupied rooms, but it is all about not wasting my money.  I have never felt jealous about the electric company’s revenue their service…yes, but never their profits.  Maybe Grodin’s mom said that, but in my experience I have found that generation to be more about taking advantage of their opportunities rather than complaining about what others had. 

I wonder if that is a liberal slip?  I should have let it go, but I started thinking about who decides how much is enough?  I remembered that our Presidente recently shared some thoughts on this;

“We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.” [emphasis added]

No one in the liberal media felt compelled to ask him what “enough” was.  My guess that it is somewhere over the $5.5 million that he and Michelle pulled in last year.  I have an novel idea for all politicians, protesters and pundits. 

How about the person who is making the money determines how much is enough?

This characterization drives me nuts. 

Obama does want to steal from the rich, the middle class, and the poor and buy votes with the money.  He is a leftist, progressive, socialist, Marxist, community organizer, or whatever you want to call him.  My problem is that allowing him and his apologists to compare him to Robin Hood is wrong.  Most people have a noble vision of Sir Robin and we should not sully his reputation by accepting the argument that progressives like President Obama are waging the same war.

Robin Hood did not exactly steal from the rich and give to the poor.  Robin Hood stole from the rich King and gave to the poor, overtaxed citizens.  This nasty king, in fact levied overly burdensome taxes on the citizens of the land to the point where they became poor.  Based on this, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and their ilk would be more aptly compared to the king himself rather than Robin Hood. 

Maybe we should christen Glenn Beck as our present day Robin Hood.  He has probably been the most outspoken and effective voice against King Obama and working to protect we poor citizens of America.  If you get the chance, listen to Beck’s speech at the CPAC Convention.

So the next time you hear the take from the rich and give to the poor analogy, please set your liberal friends straight…at least try.