Smarter Than Congress

You know things are bad when my 14-year old son understands the how the economy works better than the cretins in Congress and the White House. Maybe it's because even at 14 he's already worked, earning his own money and coming to understand how much a dollar is really worth. He has no illusions, doesn't like the idea of buy now and pay later, and really hates seeing all those taxes taken out of the pay he's earned. (Yes, I know he'll get all his income taxes back, but he's still paying FICA and Medicare taxes. It's the principle of the thing.)

One question he asked me is one everyone should be asking:

“How the heck is the government going to pay for all that spending? Where's the money going to come from?”

Not even Obama can answer that question. The Chinese have already told the President they won't be lending us any more money. Neither will the Saudis. If they get all that money from the taxpayers, the taxpayers won't have any money left to spend on anything but the necessities, which won't help spur the economy to recovery. Neither will placing a heavy tax burden on businesses, which Congress appears to be ready to do.

Congress seems more than willing to do what they can to punish businesses these days merely because they exist and, horror upon horrors, feel threatened if they have the gall to make a profit. After all, aren't businesses the root of all our problems? The Democrats in Congress certainly seem to think so.

There has always been tension between the Democratic Party and the private sector. That tension is over. With its vote in the House of Representatives to punish corporate bonus payments, the national Democratic Party has disconnected itself entirely from the private sector.

The public bear-baiting of AIG's Ed Liddy, and then passage of the bonus bill, gave the nation a good look at the modern Democratic Party freed of constraints.

The current version of the party has largely broken free of any understanding whatsoever of the private sector -- how it works or what it needs to function.

The biggest problem I see with the Dems in Congress is that very few of them have ever had to worry about making a payroll, paying their suppliers, planning for expansion, convincing a bank to make a loan, or trying to figure out how the latest regulations and laws handed down from on high are going to impact their livelihood. They give little thought about the actual effect the bills they pass will have on businesses large and small. That's because they really don't care. Businesses are seen as nothing but a source of revenue, despite protestations to the contrary. The people that own them are seen as greedy capitalists stealing the bread from the mouths of starving children. The people working for them are seen as victims incapable of making their own way and needing the guiding hand of the benevolent dictatorship that is the government. And anyone saying different is seen as an enemy of the (socialist) state under the sway of the the greedy capitalists.

Another problem with the Democrats controlling Congress is they believe that wealth is a zero sum game, and if one person got rich it's because they made someone else poor. (In the case of Congress it's likely true. After all, how many representatives in Congress end up becoming wealthy while impoverishing hard working business owners by burying them under increasingly burdensome regulations and hiking their taxes, putting an even bigger strain on them? Far too many.)

But a lot of it can be broken down to this: