Targeting the Argument -- Is The Right Again Fighting The Wrong Fight? Updated - Now with even more regulation!

Updated and bumped:

Forbes noticed and points out in Flat Tax This: Regulations Are The Boot On Hiring's Neck

Everyone’s talking about spending and flat taxes; but for healthy recovery, the hidden tax of regulation needs flattening too.

The right has a very good point about taxes, but it really isn't the full argument.   The talking heads almost daily discuss the tax rates and compare them to rates of the past with lines like, "the Clinton rates were higher and the economy flourished."

What they fail to note is the sheer mountain of regulations that have been created since Obama took office continuing and expanding on a long history of over regulating.  

It isn't JUST the taxes, the taxes are a means and they are high.  No one should pay more then 1/3 of their total income to the government.  With the taxes comes more regulations and rules.

(I will probably edit this, it is late but I wanted to get this out there).

Update: July 10, 2011 15:34

This opinion piece on jobs costing Obama his job sums up what I meant very well:

The private sector has regained about 30 percent of the manufacturing jobs it lost in the recession -- jobs created despite regulatory policies detrimental to manufacturing's expansion.
Add the administration's health-care policies (which drive up the cost of employment by increasing medical insurance costs) and environmental policies (which drive up the price of energy, particularly in Western Pennsylvania, where coal is a major source), and you can see why the private sector is skittish about enlarging payrolls.
That means the president has not only a small-business problem, but a blue-collar-worker problem. Both are sources of independent voters so essential to winning elections.
Add, too, the Dodd-Frank bill, which Larry Lindsey, former Federal Reserve governor, says "has made it much more difficult for banks to make business loans, as more of their resources must be devoted to regulatory compliance and (the) building of capital than to granting loans."
Partnerships are the key to economic growth. The great 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter described entrepreneurs as "gap-fillers and input-completers," meaning they bring together everything needed to create output and jobs in one place -- basically by partnering with various groups.
It's better that entrepreneurs, not government or academia, be central to this process because they typically know how to get things done, risk their own money and face real consequences if they fail.
"While the president often talks about having 'created' jobs ... he didn't," explained Lindsey. "Such jobs that have been gained have been produced by risk-taking entrepreneurs."
All that "shovel-ready" stimulus money filled many state budgets, but not so many private-sector job openings.
The president's resume includes little that indicates he knows how to create jobs -- which may, in the end, contribute to him losing his job.
Salena Zito

Read more: Issue could cost Obama his job - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/zito/print_745912.html#ixzz1RjjdHezq

Updated August 16, 2011:

If the federal government's regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald's, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.
Under President Obama, while the economy is struggling to grow and create jobs, the federal regulatory business is booming.
Regulatory agencies have seen their combined budgets grow a healthy 16% since 2008, topping $54 billion, according to the annual "Regulator's Budget," compiled by George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis.
That's at a time when the overall economy grew a paltry 5%.
Meanwhile, employment at these agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office to more than 281,000, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.
...
The Obama administration imposed 75 new major rules in its first 26 months, costing the private sector more than $40 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation study. "No other president has imposed as high a number or cost in a comparable time period," noted the study's author, James Gattuso.
The number of pages in the Federal Register — where all new rules must be published and which serves as proxy of regulatory activity — jumped 18% in 2010.
This July, regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will cost more than $9.5 billion, according to an analysis by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
And much more is on the way. The Federal Register notes that more than 4,200 regulations are in the pipeline. That doesn't count impending clean air rules from the EPA, new derivative rules, or the FCC's net neutrality rule. Nor does that include recently announced fuel economy mandates or eventual ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank regulations.

Regulation Business, Jobs Booming Under Obama

Patriots or Patriots

There is a group of millionaires who call themselves, "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength" who are advocating raising taxes on the wealthy. They argue that they should be taxed for the good of society as a whole -- increase their taxes so we can reduce debt without impacting social spending.

Well, aside from the fact that no one is stopping them from making a donation to the government that can be applied directly to the debt (pay.gov), true patriots are those millionaires who are providing jobs and fuel for the nation's economic engine not sending money to the black whole of Washington.

Here is an idea, how about each one of these millionaires decide how much extra money they believe they should pay and then hire people to do whatever service they believe is worthy. For example if they want to support senior meal programs then they could take $200,000 in extra taxes and hire 8 people at $40,000 each and deploy them in the city they believe needs the assistance. They would not only be providing the seniors aid they would be creating jobs multiplied in the economy AND they would be providing additional tax revenue to all stages of government.

Killing two birds with one $200,000 stones. Each of those jobs helps to support another worker in the economy and according to Obama's stimulus they would create or save another job!

So, why are they so selfish and unpatriotic?

Bad day, btw, I'll come back and clean this up in a few days.

Milton Friedman on Progressive Taxes

A further factor that has reduced the impact of the graduated tax structure on inequality of income and wealth is that these taxes are much less taxes on being wealthy than on becoming wealthy. While they limit the use of the income from existing wealth, they impede even more strikingly -- so far as they are effective -- the accumulation of wealth. The taxation of the income from the wealth does nothing to reduce the wealth itself, it simply reduces the level of consumption and additions to wealth that the owners can support. The tax measures give an incentive to avoid risk and to embody existing wealth in relatively stable forms, which reduces the likelihood that existing accumulations of wealth will be dissipated. On the other side, the major route to new accumulations is through large current incomes of which a large fraction is saved and invested in risky activities, some of which will yield high returns. If die income tax were effective, it would close this route. In consequence, its effect would be to protect existing holders of wealth from the competition of newcomers. In practice, this effect is largely dissipated by the avoidance devices already referred to.

Capitalism and Freedom

Rich Pays More Of The Taxes Today Then Ever -- Obama Wants More -- Social Security Taxes Next Cash Cow For Redistribution!

New data from the IRS will be out in a few weeks on who pays how much in taxes. My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%.

But Barack Obama has decided the rich still don't pay enough. He would redistribute the tax burden even more heavily on small business owners and the entrepreneurial class (two-thirds of the tax filers in the highest income tax bracket are small-business owners.) The nonpartisan Tax Foundation's Scott Hodge has just crunched the numbers on the Obama plan and concludes that "more than $131 billion would be redistributed from the top 1 percent of taxpayers to all other taxpayers."

Sounds fair, no? Only 1.13 million taxpayers, out of some 128 million, would end up paying higher taxes, according to the Obama camp.

DKK
WSJ

Democrat Solution -- Old Failed Policies -- Punish Success, Raise Prices

Senate Republicans blocked a proposal Tuesday to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies, despite pleas by Democratic leaders to use the measure to address America's anger over $4 a gallon gasoline.

The Democratic energy package would have imposed a tax on any "unreasonable" profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies and given the federal government more power to address oil market speculation that the bill's supporters argue has added to the crude oil price surge.

(...) "The American people are clamoring for relief at the pump," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., but if taxes are increased on the oil companies "they will get exactly what they don't want. The bill will raise taxes, increase imports."

Associated Press

Raising taxes sure does seem to be the default position of the Democrats isn't it!

Taxing away your freedom doesn't leave you very free does it.

Corporations aren't evil and taxes on corporations are taxes on us -- either via higher prices, lower employment, or lower investment returns. Corporations don't pay.

Here is the strange thing -- and I've heard O'Reilly repeat it often -- why don't the oil companies all lower the price and give us a break?

Well, for a few reasons. In many states it is actually illegal for gas to be sold below a certain margin, undercutting competitors.

If one company lowered their price then others would follow and they would be accused of colluding illegally.

If the price of the company suffered at all, the company, the CEO, and everyone else involved would be sued and possibly held criminally responsible for any loss investors suffered.

Making money doing something legal and moral should be admired and praised, not demonized! Especially when we have made it as hard to do business as any business out there.
DKK

What Are The Democrats Thinking?

...the latest news of Michigan's deepening budget woe is a national warning of what happens when you raise taxes in a weak economy.

Officials in Lansing reported this month that the state faces a revenue shortfall between $350 million and $550 million next budget year. This is a major embarrassment for Governor Jennifer Granholm, the second-term Democrat who shut down the state government last year until the Legislature approved Michigan's biggest tax hike in a generation. Her tax plan raised the state income tax rate to 4.35% from 3.9%, and increased the state's tax on gross business receipts by 22%. Ms. Granholm argued that these new taxes would raise some $1.3 billion in new revenue that could be "invested" in social spending and new businesses and lead to a Michigan renaissance.

Not quite. Six months later one-third of the expected revenues have vanished as the state's economy continues to struggle. Income tax collections are falling behind estimates, as are property tax receipts and those from the state's transaction tax on home sales.

DKK
American Thinker Blog -- The liberal vortex