Inside, in addition to all the stories, you’ll find more than a dozen local columns and special features in this month’s magazine—information about local business that’s unavailable anywhere else. We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas on how NorthBay biz, the area’s only locally owned business publication, can best serve the business community in the North Bay.
After all the hysterics, in the end, hours before the deadline, the debt ceiling was raised by more than $2 trillion. It solved nothing. If anything, it made things worse by not addressing the core problem. Spending. I’m guessing by the time you’re reading this, our national credit rating will have been lowered anyway. It deserves to be. The federal government is borrowing $188 million every hour of every day. Maybe that’s what it means by investing in our future. We’re paying hundreds of billions just servicing the interest on this unimaginably tremendous debt. And now that the debt ceiling has been raised again, the road is clear to continue on this insane binge. More spending now in exchange for a promise to cut $1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. What a joke. Was there a bright side in this bipartisan charade? Sure, taxes weren’t raised as part of the deal, but the specially appointed commission will see to that omission in short order. You see—the entire debate was steered to talking about the debt ceiling and the ensuing crisis if the debt limit wasn’t raised. With all debate focused on the deficit and not the spending that created it, coming to grips with a real solution could continue to be deflected and deferred.
I truly enjoy listening to President Obama’s speeches. His creativity and detachment from reality has become an art form. Yesterday, in a Rose Garden address, he said, “Everyone is going to have to chip in. It’s only fair.” I must admit, it’s one of my most favorite all-time clichés, eliciting a visceral response every time I hear it. You probably recognize those lines too. He’s used them in practically every speech on the economy over the past two years. It’s how he likes to say he wants to increase taxes “on the rich” without saying the word “taxes.” Sort of the same double-speak he employs when he says the government has a revenue problem. Always fiercely maintaining that higher taxes are the answer, never acknowledging that spending is the problem.
You know, those making more than $250,000 per year, they’re the ones who aren’t paying their fair share. Yep, the ones who currently pay anywhere between 75 and 95 percent of federal income taxes being collected annually. They’re the ones—let’s get ’em. (Percentages vary depending on the definition of who’s included in the group.) It’s interesting, when he says “everybody,” because I don’t think he really means it, since nearly 50 percent of our fellow citizens currently pay zero in federal income tax. As I’ve said before, who wouldn’t want other people to pay more in taxes when they themselves are exempt? They have no skin in the game. They’re the receivers not the contributors. Confiscate other people’s earnings and redistribute it to me. The country’s best interests be damned. The government is hell bent on growing ever larger, increasing its size and scope while diminishing the individual. Create ever more “takers” and squeeze the “makers” until they become “takers” too. I do think the ruling elite should take the time to think this strategy through a little more, because the way it’s going pretty soon there will be no “makers” left. Then what?
To close, here’s a short, unattributed, paraphrased parable from the Internet:
An economics professor at a local college was speaking to an incoming class, telling them he’d never failed a single student, but recently had to fail an entire class. That class had insisted socialism works, asserting, “When no one is poor and no one is rich, it’s a great equalizing force that inevitably results in a better society.” The professor then provided the background details to the new incoming class. He said he told his former class, “Since you’re convinced that socialism is the superior system, we’ll conduct an experiment in this class. The entire class grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade—no individual will fail, but no one will receive an A.” The students eagerly agreed. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone received a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they weren’t as motivated and, consequently, studied much less. The second test average was a D. Now, no one was happy. When the third test rolled around, the class average plunged to an F. As the tests proceeded throughout the school year, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings, as no one wanted to do the work and study for the benefit of everyone else. To their great surprise, the professor failed the entire class. As he handed out the grades, he told them, “Socialism ultimately fails because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when a government (for example) takes the reward away, no one will try or make the effort and sacrifice needed to succeed.”
Can’t be any simpler than that.
That’s it for now. Enjoy this month’s magazine.
