With leftist commentators shamefully and nonsensically (though not unpredictably) blaming "tea-party rhetoric" for the shootings in Tucson this past weekend, it's worthwhile, I think, to check out a small sampling of "liberal rhetoric" from the not so distant past.
http://www.binscorner.com/pages/d/death-threats-against-bush-at-protests-i.html
Consider the likely reaction of the media and the left if these threats had been directed at our current president.
Update 1/12/2011 - Krauthammer's commentary
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256935/massacre-followed-libel-charles-krauthammer
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Living Well
A fallacious liberal talking point (one of many) is the alleged stagnation of Americans' real income over the past few decades. A couple of recent columns by Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Barone debunk this myth, arguing that our standard of living has improved immeasurably over the period.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255835/every-man-king-victor-davis-hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256159/its-about-more-money-michael-barone?page=2
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255835/every-man-king-victor-davis-hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256159/its-about-more-money-michael-barone?page=2
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Summer Reading
The world vs. Israel
Krauthammer
http://article.nationalreview.com/435513/israel-disarmed/charles-krauthammer
Two by Steyn
http://article.nationalreview.com/435606/israel-turkey-and-the-end-of-stability/mark-steyn
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NjhmOGYwMTNiMTczYjUwMjU5M2RjMjk2MmUzYzQyZWY=
Mona Charen getting some facts straight about the "humanitarian" "aid" flotilla.
http://article.nationalreview.com/435253/flotillas-and-falsehoods/mona-charen
Excellent piece by Victor Davis Hanson on the global double standard toward the Jews.
http://article.nationalreview.com/435972/the-new-wannabe-ottomans/victor-davis-hanson
Krauthammer on the myth of Iran's isolation
http://article.nationalreview.com/436058/the-myth-of-irans-isolation/charles-krauthammer
Krauthammer and Steyn on the oil gusher and the specter of King (Barack) Canute
http://article.nationalreview.com/435089/whose-blowout-is-it-anyway/charles-krauthammer
http://article.nationalreview.com/435157/king-barack-the-verbose/mark-steyn
A look at the devastation caused by redistributionist policies to "aid" the poor, written by someone with extensive first hand experience - Theodore Dalrymple (aka Dr. Anthony Daniels).
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_otbie-sympathy.html
Krauthammer
http://article.nationalreview.com/435513/israel-disarmed/charles-krauthammer
Two by Steyn
http://article.nationalreview.com/435606/israel-turkey-and-the-end-of-stability/mark-steyn
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NjhmOGYwMTNiMTczYjUwMjU5M2RjMjk2MmUzYzQyZWY=
Mona Charen getting some facts straight about the "humanitarian" "aid" flotilla.
http://article.nationalreview.com/435253/flotillas-and-falsehoods/mona-charen
Excellent piece by Victor Davis Hanson on the global double standard toward the Jews.
http://article.nationalreview.com/435972/the-new-wannabe-ottomans/victor-davis-hanson
Krauthammer on the myth of Iran's isolation
http://article.nationalreview.com/436058/the-myth-of-irans-isolation/charles-krauthammer
Krauthammer and Steyn on the oil gusher and the specter of King (Barack) Canute
http://article.nationalreview.com/435089/whose-blowout-is-it-anyway/charles-krauthammer
http://article.nationalreview.com/435157/king-barack-the-verbose/mark-steyn
A look at the devastation caused by redistributionist policies to "aid" the poor, written by someone with extensive first hand experience - Theodore Dalrymple (aka Dr. Anthony Daniels).
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_otbie-sympathy.html
Monday, May 24, 2010
Bad Character, Bad Policy
In his National Review (11/23/2009) tribute to Charles Krauthammer, Jay Nordlinger wrote,
...he has been a brilliant critic of President Obama: a persistent, fearless, profound critic of Obama. Indeed, many conservatives, and some liberals as well, consider him the critic-in-chief.
On policy, this is true. Krauthammer has a unique ability to recognize the significant aspects and far reaching ramifications of poor policy decisions. (And good ones too, but this is Obama we're talking about). Krauthammer's critiques of those decisions are consistently forceful and elegant. (an example below).
For exposing the emptiness of Obama's character - his ethical, spiritual, and indeed, intellectual deficiencies - there's Mark Steyn.
Steyn's latest thrashing of Obama for his recent remarks about murdered WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl is a good illustration. Steyn hits Obama on multiple fronts - his rhetorical ineffectiveness, his moral passivity, his lack of imagination and his inability to comprehend the salient issue at hand.
Barack Obama’s remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In support of Chicago’s Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley’s bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave a gazillion speeches on health-care “reform” and drove support for his proposals to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.
Like a lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the “Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act.”
Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it.
This is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”
Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.
Instead, he delivered the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.
There's much more along these lines from Steyn including his scorn for Obama's claim that Pearl's death "captured the world's imagination." This "one-worldism" fantasy of Obama's took a hit as countless jihadists celebrated Pearl's death. And Steyn derides Obama's misconstrual of "press freedom" as the key, much less sole, issue at stake. Talking up the legislation was the lesser of Obama's tasks. To honor Pearl's memory, the circumstances and true reason for his death needed elucidation. Pearl was murdered for who he was, not because of his occupation as a journalist. This was made clear by Pearl's murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who, as quoted by Steyn, boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi.” This is the same KSM, by the way, who has leftists wringing their hands over his waterboarding.
Obama's egregious character flaws could be overlooked if they did not contribute to his egregious policy failures. Predictably, they do. Steyn writes,
This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.
That photo was also noted in Krauthammer's analysis of Obama's latest diplomatic fiasco with Iran.
The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.
That picture — a defiant, triumphant “take that” to Uncle Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost to lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.
(My emphasis).
They’ve watched President Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant, and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.
In his interview on NRO's "Uncommon Knowledge" (see my link - May 15) Fouad Ajami asserts that Obama's entire Iran policy is based on a faulty assumption - that the regime was seeking an accomodation with the U.S. and was frustrated to that end only by President Bush's cowboy diplomacy. Ajami believes that Iran never had an interest in such an accomodation. It knew that it could survive any sanctions by turning to a nations like Japan, Italy, China, Russia, Venezuela and others, including now, Brazil and Turkey. The regime sees a far greater advantage in becoming a nuclear power and demonizing (literally) the U.S. as the Great Satan with its diametrically opposed ideology, than engaging it as a diplomatic and trading partner.
Krauthammer, continuing –
They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s reexerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured last month into extending for 25 years Russia’s lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol), and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).
They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see more than mere passivity from the U.S. as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.
This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat — accepting, ratifying, and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.
Not mentioned in Krauthammer's column was the sinking of a South Korean vessel by North Korean torpedoes - an act of war that will surely go unpunished. Another act of war - Iran's support of the forces fighting the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan - continues to be overlooked. On a Fox News panel, Krauthammer did mention the North Korean attack and he made the point that it was a direct consequence of an evil regime obtaining nuclear weapons. Expect Iran to make similar provocations in the powder keg of the Middle East once it goes nuclear. And expect all rogue states to continue to test the limits of the seemingly limitless stores of submissiveness of this administration.
Steyn
http://article.nationalreview.com/434712/one-of-those-moments/mark-steyn?page=1
Krauthammer
http://article.nationalreview.com/434644/the-fruits-of-weakness/charles-krauthammer?page=1
...he has been a brilliant critic of President Obama: a persistent, fearless, profound critic of Obama. Indeed, many conservatives, and some liberals as well, consider him the critic-in-chief.
On policy, this is true. Krauthammer has a unique ability to recognize the significant aspects and far reaching ramifications of poor policy decisions. (And good ones too, but this is Obama we're talking about). Krauthammer's critiques of those decisions are consistently forceful and elegant. (an example below).
For exposing the emptiness of Obama's character - his ethical, spiritual, and indeed, intellectual deficiencies - there's Mark Steyn.
Steyn's latest thrashing of Obama for his recent remarks about murdered WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl is a good illustration. Steyn hits Obama on multiple fronts - his rhetorical ineffectiveness, his moral passivity, his lack of imagination and his inability to comprehend the salient issue at hand.
Barack Obama’s remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In support of Chicago’s Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley’s bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave a gazillion speeches on health-care “reform” and drove support for his proposals to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.
Like a lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the “Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act.”
Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it.
This is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”
Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.
Instead, he delivered the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.
There's much more along these lines from Steyn including his scorn for Obama's claim that Pearl's death "captured the world's imagination." This "one-worldism" fantasy of Obama's took a hit as countless jihadists celebrated Pearl's death. And Steyn derides Obama's misconstrual of "press freedom" as the key, much less sole, issue at stake. Talking up the legislation was the lesser of Obama's tasks. To honor Pearl's memory, the circumstances and true reason for his death needed elucidation. Pearl was murdered for who he was, not because of his occupation as a journalist. This was made clear by Pearl's murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who, as quoted by Steyn, boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi.” This is the same KSM, by the way, who has leftists wringing their hands over his waterboarding.
Obama's egregious character flaws could be overlooked if they did not contribute to his egregious policy failures. Predictably, they do. Steyn writes,
This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.
That photo was also noted in Krauthammer's analysis of Obama's latest diplomatic fiasco with Iran.The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.
That picture — a defiant, triumphant “take that” to Uncle Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost to lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.
(My emphasis).
They’ve watched President Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant, and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.
In his interview on NRO's "Uncommon Knowledge" (see my link - May 15) Fouad Ajami asserts that Obama's entire Iran policy is based on a faulty assumption - that the regime was seeking an accomodation with the U.S. and was frustrated to that end only by President Bush's cowboy diplomacy. Ajami believes that Iran never had an interest in such an accomodation. It knew that it could survive any sanctions by turning to a nations like Japan, Italy, China, Russia, Venezuela and others, including now, Brazil and Turkey. The regime sees a far greater advantage in becoming a nuclear power and demonizing (literally) the U.S. as the Great Satan with its diametrically opposed ideology, than engaging it as a diplomatic and trading partner.
Krauthammer, continuing –
They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s reexerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured last month into extending for 25 years Russia’s lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol), and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).
They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see more than mere passivity from the U.S. as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.
This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat — accepting, ratifying, and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.
Not mentioned in Krauthammer's column was the sinking of a South Korean vessel by North Korean torpedoes - an act of war that will surely go unpunished. Another act of war - Iran's support of the forces fighting the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan - continues to be overlooked. On a Fox News panel, Krauthammer did mention the North Korean attack and he made the point that it was a direct consequence of an evil regime obtaining nuclear weapons. Expect Iran to make similar provocations in the powder keg of the Middle East once it goes nuclear. And expect all rogue states to continue to test the limits of the seemingly limitless stores of submissiveness of this administration.
Steyn
http://article.nationalreview.com/434712/one-of-those-moments/mark-steyn?page=1
Krauthammer
http://article.nationalreview.com/434644/the-fruits-of-weakness/charles-krauthammer?page=1
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Parasitic Public Unions
When liberals bring up the topics of corruption and greed it's usually to castigate corporations, banks, "Wall Street" and the like. Private concerns are always targeted. Off limits is corruption in the public sector (unless Republicans are involved), or, perish the thought, corruption involving unions. The left certainly showed no concern over the fact that Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was the White House's most frequent guest last year with 22 visits. Imagine the outrage if the CEO of Halliburton had visited the Bush White House 22 times in one year.
A prevelant circumstance today for many state and local governments is that contracts are negotiated by (overwhelmingly Democratic) politicians whose campaigns have been heavily funded by unions. Needless to say it's in these officials best interests to provide generous benefits to their donors at their constituents expense. In a WSJ op-ed (5/21), Mortimer Zuckerman examines the pernicious effects of government corrupted by union payoffs.
What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money.
Zuckerman writes that this collaboration is bankrupting state and local governments, most notably in California, New York and New Jersey. It's also driving private firms from those states and causing disproportionately high unemployment.
It is galling for private-sector workers to see so many public-sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga points out in the City Journal that California's schoolteachers are the nation's highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives.
All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation's. It will get worse. There's an exodus of firms that want to escape California's high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises.
...City government was developed to serve its citizens. Today the citizenry is working in large part to serve the government.
Zuckerman points out that more than one third of the "stimulus" package was directed toward support of public service employees. Mr. Stern's visits bearing fruit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703315404575250610059801620.html#mod=todays_us_opinion
Update - 5/24
A letter to the editor in today's WSJ:
Ms. (Randi) Weingarten is president of the AFT and most of its members are government employees with tenure and job security. They have an employer-provided pension plan. They have employer-provided benefits. They get several vacations and summers off.
My wife and I are both self-employed. We are not members of a union. We have no tenure and no job security. We have no employer-provided pension plan. We have no employer-provided benefits. We can't afford to turn down whatever work we may find in order to take a vacation.
I'm not belittling teachers or the work they do. But it is a bit difficult for me to watch folks who are much better off than I am asking for $23 billion more than they already have, especially when that money comes from my (rising) taxes.
Robert Allan Schwartz
Lexington, Mass.
A prevelant circumstance today for many state and local governments is that contracts are negotiated by (overwhelmingly Democratic) politicians whose campaigns have been heavily funded by unions. Needless to say it's in these officials best interests to provide generous benefits to their donors at their constituents expense. In a WSJ op-ed (5/21), Mortimer Zuckerman examines the pernicious effects of government corrupted by union payoffs.
What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money.
Zuckerman writes that this collaboration is bankrupting state and local governments, most notably in California, New York and New Jersey. It's also driving private firms from those states and causing disproportionately high unemployment.
It is galling for private-sector workers to see so many public-sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga points out in the City Journal that California's schoolteachers are the nation's highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives.
All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation's. It will get worse. There's an exodus of firms that want to escape California's high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises.
...City government was developed to serve its citizens. Today the citizenry is working in large part to serve the government.
Zuckerman points out that more than one third of the "stimulus" package was directed toward support of public service employees. Mr. Stern's visits bearing fruit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703315404575250610059801620.html#mod=todays_us_opinion
Update - 5/24
A letter to the editor in today's WSJ:
Ms. (Randi) Weingarten is president of the AFT and most of its members are government employees with tenure and job security. They have an employer-provided pension plan. They have employer-provided benefits. They get several vacations and summers off.
My wife and I are both self-employed. We are not members of a union. We have no tenure and no job security. We have no employer-provided pension plan. We have no employer-provided benefits. We can't afford to turn down whatever work we may find in order to take a vacation.
I'm not belittling teachers or the work they do. But it is a bit difficult for me to watch folks who are much better off than I am asking for $23 billion more than they already have, especially when that money comes from my (rising) taxes.
Robert Allan Schwartz
Lexington, Mass.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Hauser's Law Redux
It was exactly two years ago that David Ranson's editorial extolling Hauser's Law appeared in the Wall Street Journal (5/20/2008). And with Democrats talking recently, even more so than usual, about the need to raise taxes on the "rich" in order to increase revenues and reduce the deficit, I thought the timing was right to re-examine Hauser's remarkable observation.
That observation - that there is absolutely no correlation between the top marginal tax rate (TMTR) and revenue as a percentage of GDP - was made by economist W. Kurt Hauser in 1993. Coined Hauser's Law by Ranson, it is similar to, yet more powerful than (Arthur Laffer's) Laffer Curve since the former is based on actual empirical evidence.
Graphical Depiction of Hauser's Law
As Hauser said, “Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide, and underreport income. . . Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation.”
Putting it a different way, capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax intolerant.
Disregarding the available evidence, President Obama and Democratic leaders continue to promote tax increases for revenue enhancement. To be sure, there's ignorance and stupidity involved here, but more important is the ideological imperative. "Spreading the wealth" is the paramount goal, even if it results in less overall wealth, a weaker economy, lower revenue, higher unemployment and persistent poverty. The less well-off, who thoughtlessly submit their allegiance to the Democratic Party with its soothing and deceptive rhetoric, are those who are most shamefully exploited and harmed.
Ranson's WSJ op-ed as reprinted on the Hoover Institution website.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/30653464.html
That observation - that there is absolutely no correlation between the top marginal tax rate (TMTR) and revenue as a percentage of GDP - was made by economist W. Kurt Hauser in 1993. Coined Hauser's Law by Ranson, it is similar to, yet more powerful than (Arthur Laffer's) Laffer Curve since the former is based on actual empirical evidence.
Graphical Depiction of Hauser's Law
The Laffer Curve - Should probably be skewed toward the bottom - i.e. - Making the peak of the curve much closer to 0% than 100%.
As Hauser said, “Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide, and underreport income. . . Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation.”
Putting it a different way, capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax intolerant.
Disregarding the available evidence, President Obama and Democratic leaders continue to promote tax increases for revenue enhancement. To be sure, there's ignorance and stupidity involved here, but more important is the ideological imperative. "Spreading the wealth" is the paramount goal, even if it results in less overall wealth, a weaker economy, lower revenue, higher unemployment and persistent poverty. The less well-off, who thoughtlessly submit their allegiance to the Democratic Party with its soothing and deceptive rhetoric, are those who are most shamefully exploited and harmed.
Ranson's WSJ op-ed as reprinted on the Hoover Institution website.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/30653464.html
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