Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

 by Joe Siano

 

The Biden Administration has unveiled its  economic agenda with pledges to reduce income inequality and spread wealth.  It is committed to “increased federal spending”.  Meanwhile the justice hungry AOC faction is sharpening the cutlery  to carve big, juicy pounds of flesh from America’s Fat Cats.

Given that Republicans, the supposed party of fiscal restraint, have notoriously upped federal budgets and debt with reckless abandon for decades, it  is incumbent that Team Biden to go big or go home.

They certainly cannot trot out a piddling $600 per person stimulus like Dubbya in 2008.  Even Michelle Obama understood that $600 was barely enough to buy a “decent pair of earrings”.   (It’s interesting how the party of the “little guy” considers $600 as the entry price for decent earrings or $58 as a reasonable price for a sweatshirt.)

As a political non-partisan, and in a spirit of public service, I offer this fun and exciting plan.   It will quickly level wealth distribution, put big stimulus money in the pockets of ordinary Americans and stick it to the rich.  Let’s play

 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?!!

The game is simple.  It begins with a wealth tax like in California.

Each year every American – man, woman, child – legal or illegal:

1.      Prepares a statement of net worth, which would require valuations of assets like collectibles, real estate, jewelry, art, securities, bank accounts and all other property

2.      Subtracts the equity in their primary residence from the total assets

If your total adjusted net worth is  less than one-million dollars the Federal Government will “top you off” up to a million dollars.  Congratulations, you ae now a millionaire!

And so is your significant other!

And so is each of your kids!

On the other hand, should your net worth be over a million dollars, here is where AOC with her carving knives gets busy.  Her minions will slice away “excess” wealth until each and every American  is brought up or down to the one million dollar mark.

But wait there’s more!

You may qualify for a Social Justice Intersectionality Compensation Bonus (SJICB).  Any individual who has suffered exploitation, abuse or psychic harm from the White Male Heterosexual Patriarchy will receive an extra 10 percent ($100,000) for belonging to each of the following historically oppressed classes.

·        Female (biological) - $100,000

·        Person of Color (excluding Asian) - $100,000

·        Descendent of enslaved peoples - $100,000

·        LBGTQ - $100,000

·        Spanish language or culture - $100,000

·        Islamic - - $100,000

The more that  your people have suffered, the more you make.  If you had zero assets and fit into all of the above categories, you could get whopping $1.6 million.  It’s only fair.

And The Goose Never Dies.

You ask, what if I spend all of my money and wind up broke again?  No problem.  No worries.  We’ll do this again next year. And the year after and after and after…….  The Goose Who Lays Golden Eggs is immortal.

And here is the Keynesian kicker to the plan.  By imposing no incentives to save, only to spend, aggregate demand will be stimulated and the economy roars like a Formula 1 race car.

Spoilsports may object:

·        The “rich” do not have enough cash assets to spread this thin. 

·        To raise the required cash, the “rich”  must make a wholesale sell-off of productive assets – triggering a crash in equity markets

·        The equity crash will severely diminish the amount of the money that the “rich” have to be confiscated.  Soon they have nothing left to invest in capital replenishment let alone research and innovation 

·   Once there is nothing left for the rich to give, the Fed must create new money to sustain the Who Wants To Be  A Millionaire program

·        Heightened consumer spending, disincentives to save or work, plus Fed money creation will result in hyper-inflation.  Thus, though you may be a millionaire, a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk may cost $1,000.  You will be even poorer than when the game began.

To which the Biden economic team will replay: “Malarkey!”

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

Greetings From The Vale Of Tears!

 by Joe Siano

Our first parents left a sad legacy.  They and their offspring were evicted from Paradise into this Vale of Tears, the “valley of the shadow of death”.

They fell for impossible promises. Thus we all fell into the misery of  “painful toil” to survive by the sweat of our brows all the days of our lives until we “return to the ground” from which we were taken.  Adam and Eve got a stern realty check. They were dust and to dust they, and we, shall return.

In his epic, The Golden Bough, J.G. Frazer notes the unique perspective of

human beings.  Of all creatures, only humans comprehend that life is short, fragile, painful.  No one gets out alive.  That's scary.

Frazier traces man’s struggle to overcome this dilemma through magic, religion and, ultimately, science. 

Being a Victorian gentleman, Frazer overlooked the most recent totem- the political solution.  It was just over the horizon in century to come.

As a man of  both faith and reason, I vouch for their efficacy.  Science and technology make material existence much more comfortable.  Faith provides hope and meaning.  It shapes our moral conscience.  Neither science nor true religion pretends to solve the quandary that life is short, challenging and often painful.

Democracy's leading political operators are serpent-oil salesman.  The curs that appear on Fox, CNN and MSNBC night after night peddle pipe dreams that are impossible, at best and deadly at worst.

Politics is a false god.

The age of big nation states with popular governments was just ramping up in the Nineteenth Century when Frazier was writing.  Bismarck united Germany and invented the welfare/warfare state.  In America, Lincoln crushed Federalism and laid the foundation for a centralized progressive empire.  In London, Karl Marx was polishing up his misguided philosophy that would bring misery and death to millions.

The era of mass democracy gave rise to demagogues.  These power hungry individuals will promise anything – no matter how illogical, unaffordable, dishonest or outlandish – that gullible voters will swallow.  Their pitches work best when seasoned with bile and enmity towards one or more imaginary bogeymen.

The specter of Marx lies behind all collectivist endeavors of the past hundred years be they known as communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism or progressivism.  Sometimes their Marxism is veiled behind a thick cloak of secrecy. Other times it is worn proudly for all to see.

America’s young Lefties sport their radicalism like a Prada purse.   It is the fashion accessory du jour for the AOC, BLM set.  Supporters, sympathizers and posers believe that they have found the lost path back to Eden.  The revolution will transform fallen angles into secular saints, cleansed of the sins of our fathers.

We are blessed have the real-life testimony of escapees from Communist nations  - those darkest corners in the Valley of Death- to disabuse America from socialist fairy tales.  Two recently came to my attention.

Carmen Alexe, was born and raised in communist Romania during the Cold War.  Alexe writes:

“Despite the fact that Romania was a country rich in resources, there were shortages everywhere. Food, electricity, water, and just about every one of life's necessities were in short supply. The apartment building in which we lived provided hot water for showers two hours in the morning and two hours at night. We had to be quick and on time so we didn't miss the opportunity.

Considering the shortages created by the government-controlled economy of my birth country, I came to understand and appreciate capitalism, the one system that had the most dramatic effect in elevating human civilization.

Only in a free-market system can we truly achieve individual liberty and human flourishing.”

Victoria Spartz, a newly elected Congresswoman from Indiana, comes from Soviet Ukraine.  Like Carmen Alexa, Spartz relates:

“I grew up in socialism, I saw what happens when it runs out of money and it’s not pretty.

And now we’re building socialism. I’m kind of going full circles. I can tell you what is going to be next. It’s very sad for me to see that.

there are only two systems: freedom and free enterprise, (or)  you have a system where government decides, political elites on top, how we’re going to live and what we’re going to do.

This system creates a lot of destruction and misery so we have to be smarter than that”

How ugly can things get?  Chai Ling, a pro-market/free speech advocate activist from China, was front and center for the Tiananmen Square massacre.  That’s how ugly. 

Ayn Rand, became one of capitalism’s most ardent and advocates based on her experience in the early Soviet Union.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exposed the horrors of Stalinism from firsthand experience its prison camps.

e.e. cummings, the bohemia rebel poet, toured the newly minted Soviet Union.  He was repulsed by what he found.  Cummings became an strident anti-collectivist, setting him apart from his Lost Generation cohorts.

Perhaps the best A/B Test of free enterprise versus state control of was example of East Germany / West Germany split during the Cold War. 

Immediately after fall of the Berlin Wall. U.S. Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich,  crossed over from West into East Germany.  What he discovered was eye opening.

"As soon as our bus crossed the old Inner German Border, we entered a time warp.

 Now, we found ourselves face-to-face with an altogether different Germany. Although commonly depicted as the most advanced and successful component of the Soviet Empire, East Germany more closely resembled part of the undeveloped world.

The roads—even the main highways—were narrow and visibly crumbling. East German automobiles .... tended to a retro primitivism. 

 The villages through which we passed were forlorn and the small farms down at the heels. For lunch we stopped at a roadside stand. The proprietor happily accepted our D-marks, offering us inedible sausages in exchange. Although the signs assured us that we remained in a land of German speakers, it was a country that had not yet recovered from World War II."

Upon arrival in Jena, we checked into the Hotel Schwarzer Bär, identified by our advance party as the best hostelry in town. It turned out to be a rundown fleabag. As the senior officer present, I was privileged to have a room in which the plumbing functioned. Others were not so lucky.

It is oft observed that capitalism is the worst economic system of all, except for all the others.  Yet it has lifted billions out of abject poverty.  Churchill remarked, ‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Utopia is not an option.  Human beings will always live in the Vale of Tears.  Liberty, respect for the lives and property of others, free markets and freedom of thought and expression are the surest means to minimize suffering and elevate the human condition.

Friends do not let friends buy the empty promises of demagogues, centralizers and utopians.

 

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

Beware The War On COVID - Winter Is Coming

 by Joe Siano

 

The forthcoming Biden administration has big plans for taking on COVID-19.  They haven’t quite declared it a war yet but the President Elect has elevated it to at least, “one of the most important battles our administration will face”.

The campaign website employs the language of societal mobilization:

·        “elimination of all cost barriers to preventive care and treatment “

·        “full deployment and operation of necessary supplies, personnel, and facilities”

·        “A decisive economic response”

·        “an immediate set of ambitious and progressive economic measures, and further decisive action”

·        “spend whatever it takes, without delay”

·         “Mounting an effective national emergency response”

·        “Rallying the world to confront this crisis”

No, he has not dropped the “W” bomb yet but he’s skating up real close to it.

World War I proved to be an epiphany for Centralizing Statists.  Woodrow Wilson fabricated an existential threat to the American way of life out of a classic European territorial struggle.  The kind that George Washington warned us to avoid.  Progressive Elites were delighted at how easily Americans capitulated to wartime planning:

“As the quintessence of Murray Rothbard's "welfare-warfare state," Wilson's regime exploited military

challenges to expand government planning. Wartime boards and commissions regulated everything from food prices, wages, and transportation to expressed or implied political opinions. They also produced a mobilized but browbeaten population. A Department of Information controlled and filtered the distribution of news; and local committees were organized, under federal supervision, to report on the expression of pro German or anti-American sentiment.”

Wilson’s manufactured wartime crisis endowed the Central State with two gifts that keep on giving – the Federal Reserve Act and the Federal Income Tax.

The point was not lost on the best and brightest Utopian Dreamers:

“because war demanded paramount commitment to the national interest and necessitated an unprecedented degree of government planning and economic regulation in that interest,  (Progressives) saw the prospect of permanent socialization, permanent replacement of private and possessive interest by public and social interest, both within and among nations.”

America has been on a wartime footing ever since.  Sometimes we have gone abroad to find actual shooting wars.  More often, politicians of both parties have declared an unending succession domestic wars.

Wars on Crime, Poverty, Drugs, Terrorism et cetera, ad nauseum.   

Continual faux crisis have drained our wallets, mortgaged our future, invaded privacy, destroyed lives, curtailed liberty, distorted education and numbed minds.   Kangaroo administrative courts, no-knock warrants and civil asset forfeiture have made due process a joke.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”  Thus sayeth Rahm Emanuel. 

The Statist mind is fertile, imagining the unimaginable.    Be prepared for wars.

Winter is coming.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

 

The Scarecrow, The Tin Man and Socialism

 

by Joe Siano

They say that those who cannot do, teach. 

Socialism is the subject.

The free enterprise system, otherwise known a capitalism, has lifted the world out of poverty.  The engine of competition, investment, innovation and global markets has made a handful of people very rich. More importantly, it has lifted billions of people out of misery and despair.

Art, culture and learning flourish in times of prosperity.  Think of ancient Athens, Rome and Renaissance Florence.  Culture, art and higher education are luxury goods that a subsistence economy cannot afford.

The arts, culture and scholarship help the human spirit soar to new heights.  However, over 60 years ago,  Joseph Schumpeter unveiled how the intellectual class that  that capitalism birthed and nurtured seeks to kill its patron.

"Capitalism inevitably…educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest
One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education.

The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes Capitalism’s Greatest Enemy: 

.....capitalism is being killed by [one of ] its achievements… [the] swell [in] the host of intellectuals. psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work.

All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite.…They swell the host of intellectuals…whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment….righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism

The hostility of the intellectual group—amounting to moral disapproval of the capitalist order—is one thing, and the general hostile atmosphere which surrounds the capitalist engine is another thing.

Capitalist evolution produces a labor movement which obviously is not the creation of the intellectual group. But it is not surprising that such an opportunity and the intellectual demiurge should find each other. 

Labor never craved intellectual leadership but intellectuals invaded labor politics. They had an important contribution to make: they verbalized the movement, supplied theories and slogans for it—class war is an excellent example—made it conscious of itself….They naturally radicalized it, eventually imparting a revolutionary bias”
- from Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

Thus those who could not do, taught. They peddle anger and resentment against the free market system that spawned them because they feel underappreciated. 

Their economic prescriptions have failed miserably again and again  Thus, they have imagined new oppressions at which to rail – sexism, racism, genderism and so on.

Since they have diplomas, certificates and an alphabet soup of credentials after their names, academic and cultural elites pretend to be a superior breed. .  They are not.

They are the Scarecrow of Oz.  He still has no brain upon receiving a diploma.  Never did and never will, despite the sheepskin in his hand.

Socialists are also like the Tin Man.  They have no heart.  At its core, socialism is the application of coercion and violence to bring others into compliance with one person’s or one party’s vision of utopia.  Utopians have, killed, imprisoned and tortured millions to implement their fantasies.  They have destroyed nations and countless lives with no trace of remorse.  They are  heartless Tin Men 

Dorothy is the naïf who pines for a better world.  She longs for:

a land that I heard of once in a lullaby….
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops

We all know and love Dorothies who want the best for everyone.  Our job, as advocates for liberty, is to gently disabuse daydreamers of their fantasies before they open the door to disaster.

And what about that Lion?  Well, Social Justice Warriors are always lyin’. 

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8 KJV)

B

SJWs and Satan  – both liars.  Ain't that the truth?

 

Click here for a nice distillation of Joseph Schumpeter’s thinking.

 

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

You Choose, You Lose - Choose Not To Lose

 by Joe Siano

Going to the candidates' debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose

Mrs. Robinson – Paul Simon 1968

The song says - when you choose, you lose.  Therefore, I choose not to choose.  I choose not to lose.

They say that this an “historic election”.  Americans will go to the polls in record numbers to determine whether they will be governed by one of two old White guys – both with hair issues and an aversion to truth.

One who spends public money like Imelda Marcos at a shoe store and another who thinks that this in not nearly enough.

Both endorse a counterfeiting Federal Reserve to create new money ex nihilo in absence of producing the goods to support our nosediving currency.

Both glorify mercantilist trade policies that stifle Americans’ ability to reap the fruits of skyrocketing global productivity, condemning us to pay monopolistic prices to domestic firms.

One is an architect of America’s “endless war” and global empire, The other who has not done much curb it.

One whom the media tars as racist.  The other with 40-year history of befriending segregationists, sponsoring legislation targeted to “super predator” Black men and unceasingly making insensitive ethnic wisecracks.

One is said to disrespect women.   The other selected a female running mate who openly slept with her political mentor to advance her career.

Personalities and policies aside, I have chosen not to choose, not to lose by withholding my consent from the farce.

By participating in their game, by voting for the candidate of your choice – even the Libertarian – you validate their corrupt system by implicitly accepting the outcome.

The secret ballot be damned.  I cast a ballot and here it is.  I voted the straight Write-In Column with the message of “Consent withheld”.  I do not want to be counted as an apathetic, lazy, lie-about lout.  I want to be counted as one who stood up and raised his electoral middle-finger to shell game called “free and fair” elections.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  My consent is withheld.

As through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Pretty Boy Floyd – Woody Guthrie

 

The 2 Percent blog is about pointing readers to leaders the realms political and economic thought.  At his juncture, I yield the floor to the gentleman from Germany,  Hans-Herman Hoppe , and the gentleman from France,  Étienne de La Boétie

In The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, La Boétie teaches:

“Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it, they would receive it.

You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes”.

Get that?  The enemy at home, in the Statehouse, in the Capital is a bigger threat to your life, liberty, livelihood and wellbeing than foreign enemies.

Who are these frightening individuals and where for the come from?  How do they come to such positions of influence and power?  In Democracy, the God That Failed, Hoppe explains:

“Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.

 It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and popular.

In America, we boast that any kid can grow up to be President.  Is that such a great thing.  Hoppe does not think so.  The 18^th Century Tom Paine noted that “the crown itself is a temptation to enterprising ruffians”.  In modern Demonocracy the threat to liberty comes from amoral, ambitious liars seeking high office, power and position.

“democratic competition is indeed worse than bad……

by freeing up entry into government, everyone is permitted to openly express his desire for other men's property. What was formerly regarded as immoral and accordingly suppressed is now considered a legitimate sentiment. Everyone may openly covet everyone else's property, as long as he appeals to democracy; and everyone may act on his desire for another man's property, provided that he finds entrance into government.”

Hoppe quotes H.L. Menken on this score:

“They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money that no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and become simply candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don't know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense”.

Hoppe concludes that the antidote for oppressive government is the withdrawal of consent.

“mass civil disobedience…... launching a transformation of the system itself. It is also more elegant and profound in theoretical terms, flowing immediately as it does from La Boetie's insight about power necessarily resting on popular consent; for then the remedy to power is simply to withdraw that consent.”

There you have it.  The powers that be are duly notified.  My consent is withheld. 

How about you?

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

Beware The True Super Predators- Net Tax Consumers

 

 by Joe Siano

 

Joe Biden infamously labeled young, urban men as “super predators”. 

I submit that no matter how many times you may have been mugged, robbed or vandalized, your loss was minimal compared to the damage inflicted by Net Tax Consumers.   These are the true super predators.

Who are they?

This explains.  The entire populace typically falls into either one of two buckets:

1.      Net Tax Payers

2.      Net Tax Consumers

For the sake of argument let’s agree that everyone receives some “benefit” from government such as roads, parks, police protection, courts-of-law and defense against foreign invaders.  Likewise, a great many of us pay taxes – including federal, state and local income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes not to mention sales taxes and innumerable fees on items like your phone and cable bills.  

At issue are those who receive more, significantly more, in monetary payments from the government than they contribute.  Theses are Net Tax Consumers.  They live off the taxes that others pay.

This phenomena is not news.  Over a century and a half ago,  back, John C. Calhoun observed a:

“…divide the community into two great classes:

one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes and, of course, bear exclusively the burden of supporting the government; and

the other, of those who are recipients of their proceeds through disbursements, who are, in fact, supported by the government;

or in fewer words, to divide into tax-payers and tax-consumers. ...

The effect ... is to enrich; and strengthen the one, and impoverish and weaken the other.”

 Unless they have significant sources of income beyond their government paycheck, most city, county, state and federal employees are Net Tax Consumers.   

In addition to public sector employees, the Tax Consumer pool is comprised of a vast number of folks in the supposedly private and non-profit segments. One or all of these groups may qualify as Net Tax Consumers:

·        Defense industry executives and workers

·        Government consultants and contractors

·        Research grant recipients

·        Subsidized artists and performers

·        College administrators and professors

·        Those living on entitlements and public assistance

The classic Lockean/Jeffersonian model was that governments were instituted to “secure” our God-given and “unalienable Rights”.  Its citizens were customers, purchasing protection from government.     

In the modern nation state the script is flipped.  According to Davidson & Rees-Mogg, the State aims to make all citizens feel that they are employees – stakeholders with skin in the skin in the game.

The Governing Class would like us to feel that we are all part of the Milo Minderbinder syndicate – “everyone has a share”.  But we are not.  Some profit while others pay.

My proposal is simple – disqualify Net Tax Consumers from voting.

To start with, the Downs Paradox holds “that for a rational, self-interested voter, the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits. Because the chance of exercising the pivotal vote is minuscule compared to any realistic estimate of the private individual benefits of the different possible outcomes, the expected benefits of voting are less than the costs.” 

Simply put, self-interested voter must invest precious time and energy to understand all that Candidate A proposes versus Candidate B and how that affects him.  And even if this voter figures out who is most likely benefit him, the likelihood that his vote will make any difference is near zero.  Finally, there is no guarantee that his favored candidates will deliver on his promises once elected.

Thus, most voters vote for personality or empty platitudes such as “equality”, “justice”, ‘jobs”, “hope”, “change”.  Or they vote for their traditional favorites – Democrats or Republicans – with a hardly a concern for the underlying issues.  Its no better than rooting for your favorite sports team.

Tax Consumers rise above this.  They vote for the guys who commit to taking money from your pocket and putting it into theirs.  Time and time again they opt for the party that embraces big spending.  The more likely that you job is dependent on public financing, the more likely you are likely to support the party of high taxes and high spending.

Net Tax Consumers vote themselves job security and pay raises whether they are doing necessary work or not.  Whether they are doing a good job or not.  Who wouldn't.

Ambrose Brierce nailed it when he defined politics as " A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

The way out of this is by disenfranchising from the electorate  those self-serving wretches who live on the public expense.  Ban them from the Booth!  No on should be allowed to use voting to pick their neighbors' pockets.

In fact, why don't we lock those SOBs up? 

Ben Franklin warned: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

Stick a fork in us.  We’re nearly done.

The mechanics of this can be accomplished though analysis of Federal Income Tax Returns.  I’ll leave it great libertarian lawyers and accountants such as Neil Schloss to work through the details.

The old Two Percenter with libertarian CPA Neil Schloss
and Trenton legend Daryl Brooks

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon