Arnold’s April Fool’s Day for taxpayers

I always opposed Arnold’s political career, beginning with his pet initiative in 2002, Prop. 49,  that goosed spending $500 million. He claimed that, for every $1 spent on the new programs, $3 would be saved for taxpayers.

Ever hear of a government program that worked that way? If that’s the way things worked, Obama’s $2 trillion “bailout” ripoff would be “saving” us $6 trillion — leading to the total elimination of taxes. Government “spending” that “saves” tax money is the ultimate perpetual motion machine.

In 2003, Arnold promised to oppose all new taxes, and was elected governor. In 2006, voters put him back in office. I opposed him every time, knowing he was just an Austrian socialist who married into American royalty, the socialist Kennedy family.

April Fool!

Now here we are, April Fool’s Day 2009, and his $12.5 billion in massive tax increases is kicking in. The average family will pay a couple thousand dollars more in taxes every year — unless they leave the state. I expect a large number will, further reducing the tax base — and leading to yet more tax increases. Our sales and income taxes, already the highest in Amerika, now are even higher.

To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, Arnold tore down paradise and put up a massive tax state.

And for what? Arnold says the “people” demanded that taxes be increased. He’s right:

• The people in the powerful teachers’ unions.
• The people in the powerful prison guards’ unions.
• The people in the powerful government-workers’ unions.
• The people in the Kennedy family.
• The people in the editorial, columnist, and editorialist chairs at the ultra-leftist Los Angeles Times.
• The people in the Marxist universities.
• The people in the state Legislature.

He and his fat-cat buddies will be living it up, drinking champagne and chugging caviar on their yachts, while the rest of us slave away for them to pay for everything.

All we have to look forward under Arnoldocracy is blood, sweat, toil, tears, and taxes.

Arnold: I’ll be back to tax

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is obsessed with taxes. Like the relentless Terminator machine he played in the talkies, he’s following a mission with algorithmic determination: Tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax.

Last month, he jacked up Californians’ taxes $12 billion. And he’s campaigning to trick voters to pass, on May 19, another $20 billion tax increase.

Now, Schwarzentaxxer is working to jack up gas taxes  — a real carjacking.  On Meet the Press yesterday, he was asked whether increasing the gas tax is needed to pay for all the socialist programs he favors. He replied, “I think one has to look at it.”

Translation into German: “Jawohl!”

No wonder California’s employment rate just shot up to 10.5%. That’s 2.4 percentage points higher than the national rate of 10.1%.  As bad as things are nationally, they’re even worse here — because of Arnold’s socialism.

Just a year ago, California’s unemployment rate was 6.2%. So it’s gone up 4.3 percentage points in just a year. If that rate of increase continues — and with Obama continuing Bush’s attack on the economy, no relief is in sight — then by the time Arnold leaves office in January 2011, California’s unemployment rate will be 19%!

Arnold don’t feel no pain

Arnold himself is worth more than $100 million, so he doesn’t feel the tax increases he has imposed on the middle class. He has no idea what it’s like to be the breadwinner in a struggling, young, middle-class family that just had its taxes jacked up

He tools around town in a Bentley, which costs up to $340,000, and gets as low as 9 mpg. So Schwarzentaxxer terminates California’s economy with AB32, which destroys businesses to fight non-existent global “warming,” yet hypocritically is himself a major polluter. He also flys around in a private jet, spreading pollution everywhere.

He’s a selfish egoist who doesn’t care about anything but increasing his own pleasures and perks and power — at our expense.

L.A. Times obsessed with tax increases

Whisper “taxes” and L.A.Times journalists salivate like Pavlov’s dog (shown at right).

They pushed hard for Gov. Schwarzentaxxer’s record state tax increases of last month. Now, star journo Michael Hiltzik writes that rich folks are just lazy loafers who deserve to be taxed at even higher rates.

I remember when I came to the Orange County Register as an editorial writer in 1987, the Times as always was in full tax-hike fury. An enterprising member of Gov. Deukmejian’s staff wrote up a fake “tax bill,” listing all the new taxes the Times itself would pay if its wildest tax-increase dreams came true, and sent the bill to the Times’ publisher. Of course, there was no reply.

I would go further today: If you want tax increases, you should pay for them with 100% of your income and property taxed away. You then would live on food stamps and other welfare. It should apply to the Times’ owners and management, Schwarzentaxxer, and Hiltzik, whose salary must be at least $150,000, or about 4 times the $35,000 median income of American women.

Hiltzik’s fantasy

Hiltzik actually writes:

Those squawks sometimes take the form of a claim that too much taxation saps the economic value of the wealthy — their capacity to invest, to create jobs, etc. It’s proper to note that years of study have unearthed no consistent evidence that taxation causes the rich to alter their investing behavior much, at least not until their tax burden reaches a point vastly higher than what Obama contemplates.

Actually, you don’t have to be an economic historian to know what happened. All the booms of the last century came after tax cuts: 1920s, late 1940s, 1960s, 1980s, and late 1990s (Clinton cut capital gains twice).

The recessions and depressions all came after large tax increases, excepting only the small 2000-1 recession, which was caused by a rare deflation (by Fed boss Alan Greenspan, who, weirdly, followed it with 2001-2009 inflation gutted the economy, and is continuing under his successor Bernanke).

(The Great Depression was caused by the severe protectionist Smoot-Hawley bill, because tariffs are taxes. And the Great Depression was made “Great” by mega-tax increases under first Hoover, then FDR.)

Movin’ on up — to Singapore

Famed investor Jim Rogers became so disgusted with America’s Hiltzik-style high taxes and regulations that he split for Singapore. He said,

If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia.

In each case, the favored area featured low taxes, strong property rights, and a pro-growth attitude.

Who in his right mind would start a business in America under Obama and Schwarzentaxxer and Hiltzik, when Asia beckons as a low-tax haven?

Queen Elizabeth II needs to depose PM Brown, restore freedom to the UK

Britain’s ruling Socialist “Labour” Party is jacking up the top tax rate to 60%.

The country also is close to bankruptcy:

There is now a palpable fear that global investors may start to shun British debt as the budget deficit rockets to £118bn — 8 per cent of GDP — or charge a much higher price to cover default risk.

The connection is obvious: The Socialist Party has driven productive people to other countries, or underground, while spending the country into penury.

Will Brits — or Americans — ever learn?

Queen Elizabeth II should dismiss Prime Minister Brown and his socialist cabinet and rule the country herself, eliminating income, capital gains, and business taxes — and ending the spendthrift welfare state along with all the Orwellian controls Brown, and his predecessor, Prime Minister O’Brien — excuse me, Blair — imposed.

Britain no longer is a real democracy and free country. So, Brits would be better off if their despot, Brown, was displaced by their beloved monarch as the locus of real power.

Yes, I know that the Brit royals, Prince Charles even more so than QEII, are a bit leftish.

That’s why the queen should take as her model Hans-Adam II, prince of Liechtenstein, who runs his country impeccably, with rock-bottom tax rates and sky-high freedoms. He actually said, “Our low taxes attract foreign depositors, and tax evasion is not a crime under Liechtenstein laws.” No wonder the country is booming.

He is her seventh-cousin, once removed. So, as we say in America, they’re, like, from the same ‘hood.

After the queen is done restoring freedom to Britain, she could start on the other countries in the Commonwealth, beginning with loopy, Soviet Canada.

The United States of Taxia

This is one of those times — the early 1990s was another — when our Masters in Government tell us that higher taxes are the solution to all our problems, from the economic meltdown to the heartbreak of psoriasis. President Obama wants to boost federal taxes. And Gov. Arnold wants to boost state taxes out here in Taxifornia.

But consider this chart of income tax rates around the world. The darker the color, the higher the tax rate. It’s from this Wikipedia article:

You can see that the USSA — the United Socialist States of America — has among the highest top tax rates in the world, higher than neighboring Canada and Mexico. We’re also higher than our major economic competitors, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Russia, and most countries in Europe.

America’s economy is not going to get moving again until we cut taxes, not increase them. America is over-taxed, over-governed, and soon will be over-Obamaed.

Why Obama’s tax increases will hit more than just “the rich”

In the letter section of Jerry Pournelle’s blog, somebody named Doug explains:

Obama’s Tax increase – 

Hi Jerry,

There’s a dirty little secret to Obama’s tax plan (one that McCain tries to make, but not very well). While it’s true that income tax won’t go up if you make less than $250K, he doesn’t consider Social Security or Medicare to be ‘taxes’. He plans to eliminate the cap on Social Security Tax. That means that everyone who makes more than $102,000 (in 2008) will see a 7.65% tax increase on every dollar above that limit. Plus businesses will also see their ‘share’ of the tax rise as well. That impacts far more people than the $250K benchmark he talks about.

If you make $125,000 a year, your income taxes will increase $1759.50. Your employer will also have to pay the same additional amount in taxes (which will be passed on as an increase in the price of their goods). I don’t know about you, but that’s real money to me – and the lower threshold blows a hole in Obama’s argument that most small businesses don’t make $250K. They sure as heck make $100K.

Your benefits won’t increase, just your tax. Soak the rich, redistribute wealth, etc, etc.

And that doesn’t even address the Medicare tax, which must increase to pay for his healthcare plans. But again, that’s not a tax. He’s very good at dancing on the edge of an outright lie.

Regards,

Doug

[Jerry Pournelle responds:] The only way I know of to give a tax cut to those who at the moment pay no income taxes would be to send them a check; and nothing I have seen from Obama denies that this is his intention, while some of his followers have told meetings that is is exactly what will happen. I don’t have time to follow this up.

The Obama scheme is to soak the rich. California has pretty well showed that this is a great way to drive the rich out of the state.

I TOLD you Gov. Steroid would try to increase taxes

Last December, I predicted:

Arnold will try to increase taxes next year

Arnold faces a $14 billion deficit. What will he do?

In his January budget, he’ll call for only massive spending cuts to balance the budget. This will be the beginning of a kabuki dance with the Democratic Legislature. They will denounce him for “hurting the poor,” etc…

Then he’ll come out for…

major tax increases — at least $5 billion, I’d guesstimate.

Bingo.  The L.A. Times reported today:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed during private negotiations over the weekend to close the state’s $15.2-billion budget gap with a temporary but immediate one-cent hike in the state sales tax, according to legislative sources….

The governor could declare that over time — perhaps a decade or longer — his statewide plan amounts to a tax cut. In the near term, it would raise more than $5 billion per year.

What a bunko artist. A tax increase becomes a tax “cut”!

A tax increase in the midst of an economic recession would hit the state like a 9-Richter earthquake. Citizens will leave or not come here, businesses will take off, and people will buy more stuff tax-free from the Internet. They might not get that $5 billion.

And, with people leaving the state, other revenue sources — especially the income tax and capital gains tax — will take a big hit, maybe as big as $6 billion or more. In other words, the tax “increase” would increase rates, but not revenues. It would be a negative tax.

That happened in the early 1990s when then-Gov. Pete Wilson, another “moderate” Republican and mentor to Gov. Steroid, increased taxes and saw state revenues decline by $2 billion, from $42 billion to $40 billion.

Federal and state tax hikes, too

Gov. Steroid’s tax-increase obsession isn’t the only one. Local governments across Taxifornia are getting in on tax-increase mania.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain are talkin’ tax increases.

And let’s not forget that the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationist policies are a tax increase. Is your salary keeping up with increased prices for gas, groceries, and much else? I didn’t think so.

So we could get a triple-whammy: federal, state, and local tax increases. Is it any wonder the economy is floudering?

Will they ever learn?

And Gov. Arnold’s sales-tax boost won’t be “temporary.” It supposedly will last 3-4 years, conveniently getting Gov. Steroid beyond his term in office. Then the next governor — Jerry Brown, Sen. Feinstein, or some other Democrat — will have to deal with the problems created by Arnold’s tax increases and crashing economy. And they’ll deal with it by continuing the tax.

A couple of years ago, unemployment here was below the national average. Gov. Arnold’s policies have increased our unemployment rate by 1.6 percentage points in just the past year, to 6.9%.  to the third-worst in the nation, behind only depressed Michigan and Rhode Island.

This is really what Gov. Arnold means by “postpartisanship”: He’s worse than Republicans and Democrats.

Democrats’ Achilles’ heel: tax increases

This is going to be a BIG Democrat year, with Obama victorious and Donkeys running up big majorities in Congress.

Then they will LOSE big in 2010. That’s because they just can’t give up their obsession with tax increases. It’s their Achilles’ heel. No matter how well they ingratiate themselves with voters, Democratic tax increases crash the economy and turn the government back over to the Republicans — who have their own idiocies (such as an obsession with invading Iraq as often as the Germans invaded France).

So, why do Republicans lose, as in 1992? Because sometimes Republicans forget the tax-increase lesson themselves. In 1990, to get Democrats running Congress to support his Iraq War I, Bush I agreed to massive tax increases that crashed the economy. He lost to Clinton in 1992.

Clinton was the ultimate chameleon. He increased taxes in 1993. But when the economy still didn’t grow much, he twice cut taxes and the dot-com boom ensued.

Bush II, our current prez, gave us a couple decent tax cuts early on. Bush II remembed how tax increases cost Bush I re-election. Then Bush II — and his Federal Reserve Board chairmen, whom he appointed, Greenspan and Bernanke — gave us the tax-increase called inflation to pay for Iraq War II.

But the next Republican candidate, in 2012, will start with a clear tax-slate. However, President Obama might be as slick as Slick Willie, and follow some tax increases to make his Democratic allies happy with tax cuts to “get the economy moving again” — to use the phrase of Democratic Prez JFK when pushing his tax cuts in the early 1960s.

A Democratic tax-increaser in action

Meanwhile, let’s take a case in point of an obsessive Democratic tax-increaser: incoming California State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg. In an interview, he said:

Q: Are the Democrats concerned that the increase in taxes would have a negative effect on business retention in California?

Steinberg: I think the Democrats are approaching the tax question in an intelligent way. Look at the upper-income tax. This was a tax that (Pete) Wilson, a Republican governor, pushed through [raising the top rate from 9.3% to 11.3% for four years, until 1995]. I know the claim is made that wealthy earners would leave California, but that belies the facts.

Except, Senator, the rich did leave California after Wilson’s record tax increase of 1991. So much so that state revenues dropped — despite the increase in tax rates — from $42 billion a year to $40 billion. Revenues didn’t rise until the Wilson tax expired in 1995. His tax delayed the state’s economic recovery 3 years after the national recovery occurred.

It was around that time that Tiger Woods spit California for Florida, which has no state income tax.

Steinberg:  I did Proposition 63, the mental health initiative, which was just a surtax on earnings over $1 million [raising the top rate from 9.3% to 10.3%], and there hasn’t been some great flight out of the state. …

Oh, yeah? Then why does California now have a $17 billion budget deficit? Because the rich, who pay most of the taxes, aren’t as rich anymore, or have left Taxifornia.

When California voters passed Prop. 63 in 2004, the state, along with the rest of America, was splurging during the giddy economic boom from the Bush-Greenspan-Bernanke inflation. It was easy money. Let the good times roll! Real estate values, and profits, soared to record levels.

It couldn’t last, and didn’t. Now we’re in the bust part of the inflationary boom-bust cycle. State revenues are plummeting. Deficits are soaring. Tax increases, as in 1991, would only make the deficit even worse.

Steinberg: People choose to live in California for a lot of good reasons, and ensuring that we have the resources to properly invest in education and health care and an infrastructure, I think, is more important to the business community.

I could understand the senator saying that if he was a lefty representing Santa Cruz or San Francisco, two of the most beautiful places on earth. If you’re rich, it’s worth the 10.3% income tax to live there.

But he represents Sacramento, which is inland. I’ve been there a few times. It’s not as good a place as Reno, a 2-hour drive to the Northeast, but with a 10.3% state income tax compared to 0% in Reno. Sacramento used to be an farming town. Now its business is the metastasizing state government and it slaughters not cows, but taxpayers.

Actor Michael Caine explains Supply-Side Economics

Supply-Side Economics is criticized a lot, especially by those blaming “the free market” for the current economic doldrums — even though government’s hyper-regulation is the real culprit.

But all Supply-Side Economics states is that if you tax and regulate people above a certain level, they stop producing and investing. If they’re poor, they suffer terribly from the lack of production and jobs. If they’re rich, they move their capital, or themselves, to other states or countries.

In his autobiography, “My Life,” Bill Clinton trashed Supply-Side Economics — then went on to laud his own two capital gains taxes in his second term, which were SSE tax cuts! Well, no one ever accused ol’ Bill of the audacity of veracity.

But don’t mind what I say. Listen to Sir Michael Caine, one of my favorite actors. He stars in one of my favorite movies, “The Man Who Would Be King,” with Sean Connery.

From a working-class Cockney background, Caine rose to be one of the world’s top actors, with the movie salaries to prove it. In the current GQ magazine includes an interview with Caine:

But you were in L.A. for most of the ’80s.
Eight years. It was a time of massive taxes here [in England; I think Caine means the 1970s, before Thatcher’s tax cuts — J.S.].

Do I recall rightly? Sean Connery was in the same situation. The taxation rate was 90 percent?
Eighty-two.

Oh, only 82.
In certain circumstances, it could be 90. So I got out. I’m never giving any government more money than I take home. It’s now 40 here, so I live with that.

Why would anyone do anything if they had to give up 90 percent of what they make?
Hey, we’ve got a whole culture here of benefit [welfare]. We’ve got 3 million people on benefit here. It’s not worth goin’ to work. I mean, don’t get me started on this…. No. No, no.

Sorry.
The anomalies here are incredible. Two and a half million British people sitting on their arses, on benefits, and bringing foreign workers in to do the jobs they won’t do. How does that work out?

Keep that in mind while Obama and others keep blabbing about increasing taxes on “the rich.”

And check out “The Man Who Would Be King,” which is based on a Kipling story. It tells you all you need to know about what happens to anyone trying to conquer Afghanistan. Too bad Bush didn’t see it in 2001 before invading.

Dingbat Democratic tax-increase proposal

Democrats aren’t long going to enjoy running the whole government — as they will after Obama wins in November — if they raise taxes. Their latest idea: a surtax on millionaires to fund Iraq War veterans’ benefits. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is supporting the idea.

For one thing, how about ending the war, as Democrats promised in their 2006 victory campaign, so there aren’t any new Iraq War veterans?

But here’s the “reasoning” we’re getting, from Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas:

So someone who earns $2 million a year would pay $5,000. … They’re not going to miss it….

He might not, personally, “miss it,” but his investments and businesses will — as well as the folks hired by his businesses.

Let’s change the equation a little. Somebody makes $20 million a year, so he won’t “miss” an additional $50,000 in taxes. But losing that money means he’ll have to fire a middle-class employee making $50,000 a year. The fired employee will go on unemployment and welfare, costing taxpayers more money, leading to even more tax increases

I’ve explained this over and over to Democrats for 30 years, but they just don’t get it.

Well, China’s economy is growing so fast that America can keep up only if we not only avoid tax increases, but cut taxes. (Oh, and stop wasting trillions on dumb wars.) It’s the only way to stay ahead.

Of course, when China is running America, the Democrats will have a “solution” to that: Raise taxes to teach everybody Chinese.