Let Us Pray.

by David Kilpatrick

Let us pray that Obama does NOTHING that he promised he would.

1. Raising taxes on small businesses
Inherently a bad idea as small businesses employ 84% of the population and Obama seems to be completely unaware of a startlingly obvious dynamic in economics: BUSINESSES DON’T PAY TAXES! They simply collect revenue from consumers and pass on taxes to the government. So, the tax increase on the business owner may not be a tax increase on you, but when the cost of goods goes up, you are the one paying the bigger bill. This is also a sure-fire way to ignite inflation… remember President Carter? Inflation was in double digits because the Democrat super-majority in congress and the president didn’t understand that simple dynamic. A tax on business is a tax on everyone, and here’s the part nobody wants to hear: rich people are business owners. Taxing the rich doesn’t hurt the rich… it hurts their customers and employees.

2. Carbon credit trading
Obama readily admits that coal-fired plants will be bankrupted… even clean-burning coal will face heavy levies in the cap-and-trade schemes that will force electricity producers to pay penalties for the carbon emissions of the electricity generation plants, and Obama admits that the price of energy will skyrocket. This will also lend to inflation as higher energy costs effect the prices of all goods sold and the poorest of the poor will be the hardest hit as they will face heating and cooling costs that will be the highest in history. To offset the cost of government regulation on coal, we could turn to nuclear as France and many other nations have, but Obama is against nuclear power. Sadly, this leaves the United States with few options and the U.S. will remain the only country on the planet that is at war with its own energy producing industries.

3. The Fairness Doctrine
Democrats in both the Senate and the House will certainly try to push through the “Fairness Doctrine” which will be the first time in history that commercial broadcasters will have their content regulated by the Federal Government. This is the beginning of “change” that most Americans didn’t bargain for, but it is, unfortunately, part of the package. The Fairness Doctrine will require that broadcasters who air commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity also air opposing commentators, even if those commentators make the station no money. This will cause stations to move away from talk and commentary as “Free Speech” will not be allowed without regulation. This infringement upon such a basic right would likely draw a filibuster by Senate Republicans and would surely be taken before the Supreme Court, but nobody knows what will happen. Again, we can only hope that, for the first time in his career, Obama does not follow the Democrats. The unfortunate pattern though, is that freedoms, in the mind of the far left which now runs the country, only apply to people who think like they do. Remember one thing, my liberal friends: if one person can have their rights taken away today, your rights can be taken away tomorrow.

4. The Employee Free Choice Act
Obama believes that workers should have the freedom to choose whether to join a union without harassment or intimidation from their employers, but the key component in this measure would make private balloting a thing of the past – thus having the exact opposite effect by allowing intimidation from either employers or union thugs and with union membership languishing at around 6% of the work force, the unions who backed Obama’s election see this as a special reward. How does preventing you from having a private ballot help you exercise your free will? With union thugs looking over one shoulder as you vote and employers looking over the other, workers will find themselves in possibly the worst no-win position in history, yet it is part of the new society Obama promises to deliver. An increase in union membership will also result in an increase in labor costs as is proven historically which is bad for the general public and ultimately the workers as it will increase inflation as employers raise prices to cover higher costs and cut jobs in an effort to keep budgets under control.

5. Increasing the Minimum Wage and Indexing it to Inflation
Increasing the minimum wage is always popular because nobody wants to see others working full time and struggling to survive. What is missing is the down-side to this never ending increase-after-increase which actually serves to make the problem of low income survival even worse.
A. To capture the broad sense, we need to take a step back and look at this issue from a global standpoint. Increasing the cost of labor in the U.S. will make our labor even more costly than in other countries, which prevents the export of American goods while increasing outsourcing. Consumers will not buy a $100 stereo made in America when they can buy the same stereo for $20 – made in China. Does this help or hurt manufacturing in the U.S.? Clearly, it hurts it, so fewer jobs become available as prices rise.
B. As labor costs increase, so does overhead for the U.S. companies which will raise prices and reduce the size of their workforce. This will cause a rise in inflation and a rise in unemployment, thus a need to raise taxes to cover unemployment benefits, which will result in higher overhead (again), higher prices (again), more inflation and another round of cut-backs and so on. This is not a cycle that will improve anything economically.
C. With all the concern being on the minimum wage ever being potentially too low, at what point do we ask, “Is the minimum wage too high?” Surely, as it begins the unstoppable upward spiral, a rational person has to realize that unskilled, entry-level positions or positions sought by teenagers to get some experience while they live with Mom and Dad are not worth $20 per hour to have filled and as more and more of the unskilled or young are finding that no positions are available, many will turn to crime or other “under the radar” ways of making money. Clearly not helpful and possibly quite harmful.
D. Increasing the minimum wage also kills initiative. Why would an unskilled worker need to get an education if they can make plenty of money without one? Many of us were traditionally raised knowing that an education was the key to financial stability. If we remove that teaching from the fabric of our society, will we not be teaching our youth that an education is unnecessary? This would make our workforce less educated and further our inability to compete with labor forces in other parts of the world – a very harmful idea.

6. $1 Trillion in new spending
The argument is that “more spending” is the way to solve the economic crisis in the world today and, as Barney Frank (D-Mass) puts it, the deficit should not be considered at this time. The interesting thing to note here is that, for some reason, Obama thinks that government spending is somehow superior to private-sector spending when it comes to jump-starting the economy. If tax rates were kept at current levels or even reduced slightly, as McCain had proposed, private sector spending would be greater than it would be if you raise taxes on business owners and would not need to be supplemented by increased government spending. To say that somehow, our woes would be behind us if only the tax code was tweaked a little bit is naive at best and completely ignorant at worst. Again, let us pray that Obama was only joking about imagining that a tax adjustment is a fix to anything.
As it stands, roughly 18% of the gross domestic product is collected in taxes and amounts to roughly $2.2 trillion. To generate enough tax revenue to support this (even if they claim they don’t have to), tax receipts will need to increase by 50%. This cannot be done by only taxing the rich business owners who (will only pass the higher costs on to the consumers anyway).

Someone is going to have to pay the bill and if it won’t be us, it will be our children… or maybe not. In 1850, Alexander Tyler said, “Democracy is not a permanent form of government. It only lasts until people discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury.” – and we’re watching it happen.

Let us pray. Let us pray for the survival of our country.