2008-05-09

Public Letter to My Betters

I just checked my online balance at the bank. It looks as though Congress' "let's get re-elected through buying votes from the hoi polloi" faction has used the police power of the state to take profits away from you and give them to me as a "stimulus package." I can't say that it won't come in handy with all the recent expenses of buying a new home, paying for a new baby, homeschooling my children, etc. But I still think it's not right - especially since Congress tries to play as though they've been generous with their own money.

If you want to stimulate an economy, the least effective way is this so-called stimulus package. This takes money that has been generated by hard-working business people (at a rate that is the highest of all developed nations) and gives it to people who are less productive (or in my case, had no federal tax burden). It is sinful, the way this government takes the earnings of citizens at the point of a legislative and litigious gun. If you want an economy to grow (more jobs, more production, and more consumption), it makes much more sense to make more money available to those who have proven that they know what to do with money. That's a biblical principle that shows true again and again.

Anyway, thanks to my generous employers (and entrepreneurs like them who are penalized by Congress for being productive) for this leg up. I'll conclude with Sir Winston Churchill's famous dictum
:
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Speech, House of Commons, November 11, 1947.—Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, ed. Robert Rhodes James, vol. 7, p. 7566 (1974).

3 comments:

Aric Clark said...

Interestingly our taxes are so high and yet we can't even provide quality universal health care or higher education as nearly all of Europe does.

Chris Larimer said...

Britain has a sensible consumption tax that funds a lot of their work. We also spend an inordinate amount of our money on useless waste - programs that are geared to make us feel better than actually get better. The "stimulus package" is a perfect example of said waste.

Bill Crawford said...

Aric,

Let's throw some more information into that debate.

I wonder what the founders would think of universal healthcare?

Why didn't ancient Israel have one?

What is the unemployment rate in Europe?

Funny all the Europeans I know who have come to America don't seem to want us to immitate Europe.

Just thinking out loud here - I haven't formulated my final opinion about health care but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have the right to take money from someone else to pay my bills. (I actually refuse some of the programs I qualify for)

It may be their Christian duty but I shouldn't in essence hold them at gunpoint expecting them to pay it.

I recently talked to someone whose Gym membership was paid by medicare because they were on Mental Disability and had a weight problem....