Bill Whittle, with whom I had the pleasure of having dinner in Manhattan Beach this evening, has some:
Leave. Just go away. Retire to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda or wherever, but do it now, please, while you still have some love for this country. Close your companies, fire your employees, shutter your factories and offices, sell your property, and take all of that somewhere else… better yet: somewhere scenic but poverty-stricken. Somewhere that could use some wealth creation. Somewhere that people simply are grateful to have a job in the first place. Somewhere where you will be appreciated.
You are not welcome in America any more. Take your wealth and prosperity and inventiveness and hard work and vision and insight and bold risk-taking and joy in seeing growth and wealth creation and just go away – right now, before it’s too late. Because if you stay, Joel Berg and Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd will continue to come after you for more and more and more and they will not ever stop – not ever – until you are forced to flee. And when that day comes, you will go with not with fond remembrances and a desire to return home, but rather a black heart and hard and bitter memories.
So on behalf of those few of us who still believe in the Land of Opportunity, I beg you and implore you, in the name of our common patriot ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that we could become so spoiled and ungrateful: take your 60% of the total income taxes and just go away.
Because if you do, then there will no longer be an Enemy for the Left to stick it to. Then, perhaps, the half of the country that pays no income tax might have to put some skin in the game. Then, perhaps, with most of the wealth generation gone we will turn to our community organizers to provide the wealth creation, and the tax dollars, and the innovation. When you have gone the President of the United States, supported by an army of little acorns like Joel Berg, will have to start calling for the rest of us to be taxed more to address the inequality gap.
No representation without taxation.
[Late evening update]
I think that the old Heinlein quote is appropriate:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”
It is also known as Atlas shrugging
.
I would like to agree with all that. As long, that is, as you didn’t make all that money by shuffling paper, but by actually doing something useful.
i thought it was called “Going Galt”
and if ” better yet: somewhere scenic but poverty-stricken. Somewhere that could use some wealth creation. ”
is the criteria I suggest Bill move to Martinique.
Go there, set up some factories, create some jobs.
Make it a marianas of the carribean
“I would like to agree with all that. As long, that is, as you didn’t make all that money by shuffling paper, but by actually doing something useful.”
I agree. There’s a difference between re-arranging wealth and generating new wealth. To be sure, the government takes a back seat to no one in the former, but they’re not the *only* ones who know how to do it…
as you didn’t make all that money by shuffling paper, but by actually doing something useful.
I’ve seen that sentiment a lot – and it’s getting annoying.
What is ‘something useful’ defined as? If shuffling papers wasn’t valued, the paper shuffler would not be compensated for it.
I know a bunch of people doing just that – and they are going to Belize. Not sure why, but several rich people I know are moving there. As far as I know, these are people that for the most part don’t know each other.
It’s kind of sad to see them all go. Personally, I’m looking at Taiwan… flat tax rate and all that, and younger countries tend to have more freedom. (I also grew up in the orient anyway.) But I’m younger than the others, and still plan on working. I think ITAR is more likely to drive me there than taxes at this point, but you never know.
An article like this is so wrong it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s just point out two myths that it trades in:
* That those not paying federal income taxes have no “skin in the game,” and are taking advantage of services funded almost entirely by the rich. If you count all taxes, as Robert McIntyre did, you find that in 2001 the rich top 1% earned 19% of the nation’s income and paid 26% of the federal taxes. Everyone else earned 81% and paid 74%. [Click my name to read the article]. And that’s just federal taxes. The rich pay a lower fraction of their income in state and local taxes than the rest of the population. Everyone income group has skin in the game, and roughly the same fraction of skin.
* That wealth is created by individuals in isolation. I’d love it if American entrepreneurs moved to Haiti to create wealth there. But they’d quickly find out that it’s difficult to create much wealth without a healthy and educated workforce, decent roads, phones, Internet service and medical care, reliable police and courts, a domestic market with money to spend, efficient ports, etc. The taxes I pay would not come close to buying me all the things that that make my wealth possible in the U.S. For a rich person, U.S. taxes are a bargain.
Why is it so hard to remember that “Atlas Shrugged” is a work of fiction?
“As long, that is, as you didn’t make all that money by shuffling paper, but by actually doing something useful”
Yeah because giving money to a man so he can start up a farm or small business, in return for a little more money back, and therefore creating new jobs and wealth, is “not useful” and just “shuffling paper”. Bankers need to just go! That guy wanting to start a new business should magically create the capital he needs on his own.
Let’s not forget the futures market that allows farmers to know what their income will be, and gives them a measure of security and ability to borrow money for investment in their farm and to plan that they would never enjoy otherwise. But of course a futures market means people to buy the futures, and brokers to handle the sales, but yeah, that’s just “shuffling paper” and should stop too, no matter how much futures markets have helped farmers. It’s not “real labor” and not “creating” something.
Why is it so hard to remember that “Atlas Shrugged” is a work of fiction?
We have no problem remembering that. Why do you?
Well, Martinique is a welfare slum with nice weather — it’s part of France and has all the wealth-destroying taxes and regulation that the motherland does. Belize is a substantially better bet – it’s English-speaking, has low taxes, Common Law, but has crime and corruption problems, as well as not much infrastructure.
“Jim” 5:47 AM touched on the main point only peripherally — police and courts are not one item on a laundry list, but rather, the central thing that a government must provide and do well. Furthermore, the nature and type of laws (including tax policy) that are made and enforced are critical. North Korea has lots of police and courts (very reliable, too – -you can predict the verdict quite easily) but I wouldn’t care to try to live or do business there.
Of the other items — “a healthy and educated workforce, decent roads, phones, Internet service and medical care, …, a domestic market with money to spend, efficient ports, etc.” there are workarounds for all of these. An environment that will attract capital will also attract a workforce, and even if the locals are not well-educated they will learn if industry is present. Decent roads are nice, but you can start with 4X4’s on dirt roads, and light aircraft on dirt strips, and upgrade infrastructure as things grow. Phones and internet — start with satellite-based systems, upgrade with growth. Medical care — clinics and personnel will come with the other guestworkers. Domestic markets — nah, export markets will serve to jump-start the economy. Almost all successful newly industrialized countries went that route. Efficient ports — start with information products — offshore telework, etc. and export via the satellite dish. Then upgrade the ports.
The core product government must concentrate on is civil peace and predictable, impartial enforcement of a rights-respecting legal system in a constitutional representative government with non-confiscatory rates of taxation. If you have that, everything else will come. Absent that, you have bupkis.
Any country that wants up to several million highly productive residents and taxpayers need only demonstrate that it can provide those things, and offer no-hassle residence permits. The One will guarantee a stready supply over the next four to eight years.
People often forget that Atlas Shrugged was a trilogy.
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/393124.html
That those not paying federal income taxes have no “skin in the game,” and are taking advantage of services funded almost entirely by the rich. If you count all taxes…
Excellent straw man, Jim. Well…not excellent excellent. It wouldn’t convince someone not already in the tank. But it’s not completely barmy, which is something.
The difficulty is that you’ve shifted the definition of “the game” when you aver people who don’t pay Federal (and most State) income taxes still have skin in the game. Which game, huh? The game in question is the huge expansion of Federal power over every individual citizen’s life. It’s this that’s funded by Federal income taxes, and the fact that you pay state sales taxes or FICA or car registration fees doesn’t give you any “skin” in that game. (Whether it gives you skin in any interesting game is another question.)
And why does that game matter? Because, Jim, that’s the only one you can’t easily vote with your feet about. Federal taxes and Federal power hit each individual citizen, unlike all those other things. It’s the one part of government power that’s inescable, as long as you live in the United States.
If I think New York City has an absurd local tax rate, I can move to Houston, which doesn’t. If I think California’s recent sales-tax increase is unjustified, outrageous, and too much — I can move to Nevada or Texas. These things are straightforward. They don’t involve learning a new language, or new cultural habits (mostly), or living under a different law. None of that is true at the national level, with respect to Federal law. And that’s why, for two centuries at least, the prospect of Federal tyranny has worried intelligent thinkers far more than state tyranny. That’s the “game” that counts. And, as observed, too few people have skin in it. Which matters.
That wealth is created by individuals in isolation.
Did anyone say they wouldn’t hire people? Duh.
they’d quickly find out that it’s difficult to create much wealth without a healthy and educated workforce, decent roads, phones, Internet service and medical care, reliable police and courts, a domestic market with money to spend, efficient ports, etc.
Right, Jim. That’s why they would create those things. That’s what able, clever, ambitious people do. They don’t sit around and whine about how “someone” should give them all these things, about how they’re “rights.” And would they have difficulty creating them? Ha ha. That’s why they’re rich, Jim. That’s how they got rich. By creating amazingly useful services. They’re good at it. They’d be without those things for as long as you’re without air once you exhale, because creating them is as easy and natural to them as breathing is to you.
I’d love it if American entrepreneurs moved to Haiti to create wealth there.
Sure you would, for a short time. But then you’d start to complain about wreckers and conspiracies and Great Satans, because things would stop working here. Then you’d want to emigrate there, and you’d hold marches and protests and candlelight vigils about how mean and unfair they are at not letting you in, because you’re a social parasite. Finally, you’d attempt to organize enough lazy (at least intellectually) and jealous fools to force them to give you the fruits of their labor, by power of sheer numbers. And maybe then you’d succeed. There are always more idiots than useful creative people, by definition.
Oh, and this is priceless cluelessness:
Why is it so hard to remember that “Atlas Shrugged” is a work of fiction?
How about: because so many people, from the President on down, appear intent on recreating it in real life?
Or possibly: because Rand (Ayn that is) is a terrible fiction author — really, her style is leaden and her characters made of solid wood, her prose turgid as an 8th grade essay — but she wrote from real-life experience, that being the young Soviet Union.
What makes “Atlas” so compelling is that the first part of it, the looting by the parasites, is so evidentally true and happening. Whether the second part of it, that it would be plausible to emigrate from the nation of parasites, short of putting an ocean between them and you (as our ancestors did in coming here), or the gulf of outer space, is indeed debatable.
Carl: Money is fungible. The federal government is funded by all federal taxes, not just the income tax, and that burden is carried by all income groups. The rich carry it a bit more, but not much.
That’s why they would create those things.
And yet, people have not created those things in Haiti. In fact, let’s make it much easier for rich American tax haters, let’s invite them to New Hampshire. You still have federal taxes, but you get all the benefits of being in the U.S., with no state sales or income tax. All you have to do is put up with snow and ice. The Free State Project tried this, and was a total bust — they couldn’t even get 1,000 people to move here. Good luck getting them to go to Belize.
The craziest thing about Whittle’s piece is the idea that for the rich to withhold their taxes would be doing the rest of the country a favor. So every time a rich person cheats on his taxes, that makes a poor person a bit more self-reliant? And that’s why the poor are so much better off in places like Haiti, where the rich hide their money from the government? The mind boggles.
I have to keep reminding myself Rand’s novels are fiction because so many real life Ellsworth Tooheys, Wesley Mouches, Orren Boyles, etc., have crawled out from under their rocks to turn America into the People’s Republic of Lootistan.
What “liberals” forget about ATLAS SHRUGGED is that the goody-goody “humanitarians” in the novel are eventually replaced by fascist, leather-pants-wearing, gun-toting Cuffy Meigs. You start out with love beads and mass Kumbaya singing, but when you give the State unlimited power, what you get is a jackboot in the face.
> The federal government is funded by all federal taxes, not just the income tax, and that burden is carried by all income groups.
Jim is whining about SSi. However, he knows that if he mentions it, someone will point out that it’s a forced savings plan in which the poor get a far better return and the “rich” basically get their money back, at least under the current benefits plan.
SS advocates have always argued for the cap on “contributions” on the theory that uncapped contributions with uncapped payout would erode political support and that uncapped contributions with capped payout would force us to see SS as welfare for old people, again eroding political support, and put SS on the radar as a tax to avoid for rich folks.
Unless Jim wants to argue that they’re wrong, he’s going to have to give up on his SS references, no matter how coy.
Yes, we do loan SS revenues to the general fund. That doesn’t actually change anything.
BTW – The difference between the revenues and the payouts has started dropping and we’re likely to go negative before 2017, so we’re going to find out how good those IOUs are. If we say that they’re no good, even though they say full faith and credit, folks with other IOUs are going to wonder what theirs are worth. And, the folks whose benefits are cut are not going to be thrilled.
It’s a good thing that folks like Jim stopped Bush from making any changes. (Even with a 50% haircut, my private investments have a better return than SS.) Wouldn’t want to do anything to reduce the impact of the imminent SS trainwreck.
“Bill Whittle, with whom I had the pleasure of having dinner in Manhattan Beach this evening”
I’m sooooooo jealous, Rand.
Pfffffftttt! (or howeverthehell you type a Bronx cheer) ;-p
That’s close enough, Barbara.
Anyway, you’re not jealous — you’re envious. Which, as we know, is a sin. Kind of like the people who want to soak the rich. 😉
plutosdad, point taken. However, how about all those people who took someone else’s hard-earned money entrusted to them, lent it to people they knew couldn’t pay it back, then bundled up the mortgages into piles with other ones that actually might get paid back, then shuffled those piles into new piles to obscure the truth even more and sold the stage 2 (or 3) piles as securities (having bribed so-called regulators to look the other way) – and then took their bonuses gained by all this obfuscation and ran, while the whole house of cards collapsed around them? How about the desirable tax rate on that income?
I have no problem whatsoever with someone making money by lending money to someone else who wants to buy something (a new house, new plant for a factory, you name it). I have a great deal of trouble with the multiple layers of abstraction heaped on top of such a simple concept by people with an axe to grind.
Bill misses one important thing: America was THE LAST country on Earth where being a success was A-OK. Once Jims and Baraks destroyed that, there’s NO other place to go. Belize is a joke. Australia and Canada are ahead of America on the way to fascism with a human face. Japan is essentially xenophobic. What’s left, Chilie? Same creeping socialism as Aliende is being forgotten (anyone remembers Carter in America?). The only place where rich and middle class can go now is actually the Moon, or mass graves.
Fletcher says: However, how about all those people who took someone else’s hard-earned money entrusted to them, lent it to people they knew couldn’t pay it back, then bundled up the mortgages into piles with other ones that actually might get paid back, then shuffled those piles into new piles to obscure the truth even more
Are you talking about the government?
(big grin)
Mac:
I believe Fletcher is talking about Merril,
UBS, Bear Stearns, Countrywide, Natinal City,
Thornburg,,,,,
Even Greenspan admitted his worldview was
flawed, and he used to sleep with Rand.
It’s kind of sad watching true zealots beating the
drum, when the real randians have given it up.
Pete,
You are right about this at least as far as Australia goes:
“Australia and Canada are ahead of America on the way to fascism with a human face.”
Except for the “human face” bit
Our present Prime Minister of a nominally socialist party is a particularly nasty piece of work who looks like he’d actually enjoy putting that jackboot in your face.
The banks did not decide to lend to people who couldn’t repay, the government required them to do it. Canada had much the same banking system, but no Community Reinvestment Act. And no toxic assets.
Must be a coincidence.
Nonsense, Jim. Every loan app has to show that the borrower currently possesses the means to service the loan. Now, the means by which that is demonstrated is of course subject to gaming. I’ve seen wage statements that look like they were made up on a computer. I’ve seen docs with dizzying fax trails up top (where the document has been going around and around while being massaged into suitability). I’ve seen forged signatures. I’ve seen appallingly poorly done appraisals. I saw one file with five different social security #s for the borrower. I found a toll booth operator who was able to get four different investment properties at about the same time (i.e. straw borrower).
To lay it at the feet of only:
Borrowers, or
Mortgage Brokers, or
Appraisers, or
Mortgage Finance Companies, or
Banks, or
the Community Reinvestment Act, or
FNMA, or
FHLMC, or
the Retirement Funds, or
the Investment Banks, or
the Rating Agencies, or
the Lawyers who wrote the documents, or
the Regulators who abnegated their duties, or
the sold-out idiots in Congress, or
a co-opted White House
is of course ludicrous. The culpability is pervasive at all levels amongst all parties. And what everyone seems to be forgetting is the business side of things. There’s much more money to play with in corporate America (and the rest of the world, as we’ve learned. I guess folks really are good at figuring our stuff out, easy though given the rampant amounts of corporate espionage going on), and that’s where the real action was. Mortgages were just the easy pickings given that they could be packaged up and loaded into spreadsheets for data analysis.
And by the way, brigands and looters are not Atlases, they’re thieves, and if they want to leave the country I’m okay with that, as I’d rather not have them in my society. I’m disgusted at the attempts that are being made to turn ‘Atlas Shrugged’ into some kind of parallel of the movie ‘Wall Street”s “Greed is good.” No it’s not, greed is one of the seven deadly sins. Rational self-interest can be virtuous, but it is certainly not a license to pillage and loot the hard work of others.
And by the way, brigands and looters are not Atlases, they’re thieves, and if they want to leave the country I’m okay with that, as I’d rather not have them in my society.
What does this have to do with the topic of the post?
You will find many of them amongst ‘The Rich’ under discussion who are passing themselves off as the engines of creation (they must be – look, they’re rich!) when they’re not.
Ken Murphy: You will find many of them amongst ‘The Rich’ under discussion who are passing themselves off as the engines of creation (they must be – look, they’re rich!) when they’re not.
So, we punish ALL of them because they’re rich. Those that create jobs and those that don’t. Make them all give up their money to pay for those that occupy a couch all day. They’re rich, they don’t need it. Oh, and while we’re taking your money, we’ll demonize you too, taking the rest of the industry down with you…(business jet travel).
I repeat — why no toxic assets crisis in Canada?
Of course there were other differences as well — stricter leverage requirements (18:1 versus the US’s 28:1 or Europe’s 60:1), no populist local laws against genuinely nationwide banks, no contingent-fee lawsuits — but no Community Investment Act is a conspicuous difference.
C’mon people — try using the comparative method.
Easy answer:
– No Chris Dodd
– No Barney Frank
– No bank-occupying, racketeering thugs of ACORN
Jim Bennett – well, according to Canada’s conservative prime minister, speaking on Fox News Sunday before the G-20 summit, Canada has tighter bank regulations then the US.
Something which may be of relevance is that Canada didn’t have a banking crisis during the Great Depression either.
It kinda helps that Canada’s PM is also an economist.
> It kinda helps that Canada’s PM is also an economist.
It also helps that Canada is basically a monoculture not unlike North Dakota.
Lots of things work in such cultures that don’t work in the US as a whole.
Le Canada n’est pas une culture unique! Canada is not a monoculture! Tell this to the people of Quebec! Dites cela à la Quebecois! Pardon my French, but mon dieu!
Part of Canada somewhat resembles North Dakota culturally. The rest doesn’t.
And it isn’t just French-speakers vs English speakers. The Quebecois are not the same as the Acadians.
Ask if the oil drillers of saskatchewan think they are in the same culture as the naked reefer smokers on the beach in Vancouver or the fisherman in Labrador.
Finally, look at Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General of Canada, their head of state, who doesn’t have the appearance or biography of someone who would be a leader in a country which resembled North Dakota.
You will find many of them amongst ‘The Rich’ under discussion who are passing themselves off as the engines of creation (they must be – look, they’re rich!) when they’re not
No, actually, you won’t find any of them amongst “The Rich” under discussion. Those are not the people to whom Bill Whittle’s piece was addressed.
> Ask if the oil drillers of saskatchewan think they are in the same culture as the naked reefer smokers on the beach in Vancouver or the fisherman in Labrador.
Actually, the drillers and the fishermen are the same culture. (Roughnecks are rednecks btw.)
> Finally, look at Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General of Canada,
The relevant culture isn’t race- or language-specific.
Andy, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. What is the relevant culture you’re referring to?
Fortunately, all complex sociological discussion can be reduced to humorous television advertisements.
This one from Nissan reflects what I’m getting at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hXy3Qm7QKU
Maybe you’re thinking more along the lines of the famous “I Am Canadian” commercial? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRI-A3vakVg
But even in that one, one of the lines was “I believe in diversity, not assimilation.”
“Always attack the rich. Everyone will be on your side–the rich first of all.”
–Ellsworth Toohey,
THE FOUNTAINHEAD
Andy, the point I am making is that Canada is not going to get itself into as-serious trouble as is the USA. And as for a monoculture – the only thing all Canadians have in common is winter.
jim
If you are going to ask why Canada is doing so great
perhaps you should ask why Iceland is in such a
fiscal crisis? Were the Icelanders investing in homes
for poor blacks in Rejkavik?
Fletcher , the problem is you can’t separate the two. You can’t say to have loans, but then say not have any “derivatives” Derivatives help people price things to buy and sell, which takes guesswork out of pricing, and means people will be LESS likely to get ripped off, because you have many more people involved buying and selling and the pricing becomes transparent.
This works well for stocks and derivatives of stocks, and for futures. For bonds (and therefore these mortgage contracts) though we still don’t have a really good open transparent exchange mechanism.
This problem with these mortgages is a special case due to the way Bear Sterns and others (well as I understand it) was deliberately packaging them together to hide the bad mortgages.
But the problem is not the derivatives themselves.
But shuffling paper is a perfectly fine way to make money, and charging interest is one of the things that allowed investment and experimenting to really take off. Before when the churches kept people from charging interest it was hard to get a loan and you could only have a successful business if you were already rich. But it’s not just the loans, the derivatives help make sure the loans are priced fairly.
> the only thing all Canadians have in common is winter.
They seem to think that “not American” is an important attribute.