How much money is ‘too much’?

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Joel

Thomas Sowell makes a great point in response to Obama’s rather bizzare statement that “at some point, you have made enough money”. Sowell address this rather benign-sounding remark by pointing out that:

There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think that they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that is starting down a very slippery slope.

Politicians with the power to determine each citizen’s income are no longer public servants. They are public masters.

…Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy — quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody’s rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can’t tell the water where to go.

Now, some of you may read this analysis and say: well, we limit rights of individuals all the time, just because we limit this one right doesn’t mean we put all of our rights in jeopardy. Well, you might be right. Maybe we can still have some rights and not others… but who will get to decide what rights those will be? And how many of them will we have?

If someone can just categorically say that he or she dislikes the freedom to earn the income you are capable of… and turn this personal preference into a moral axiom… what other personal preferences could just as easily be turned into axioms? Could the right to other personal property be repudiated? What about the right to political speech? What about the right to due process? Could we at some point have “too much” due process? What about Children? China already has proven THAT personal right can be trampled pretty easily if enough power is influenced on a population… what about our right to practice religion?

But these questions aside… assuming we got past the rather uncomfortable political conflict I just addressed; assuming we accepted that government SHOULD have this prerogative… How are we to weigh and evaluate the value of one right vs the other? Do we have a coherent framework to make this balancing process fair and equitable (and perhaps more importantly… subject to the will of society as opposed to the whim of those in power?) I ask this rather rhetorically to point out that for those of you on the left… who are comfortable with Obama’s statement… you had better have ready answer to this question because if you don’t… than you have lost the debate. If you don’t have a solution or a philosophy on balancing rights (and a way to enforce this process on those in power)… than we are not subject to anything other than the whims of those in power and Sowell would therefore be not only right but justified in his argument.

Now, philosophical arguments aside, I think the more important question is really this: what KIND of politicians do we want to be governed by? Public masters or public servants? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer the latter.

via ‘Enough Money’ – Thomas Sowell – National Review Online.

“the system”

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Joel

I wanted to point you all to an outstanding point made by Lee Cary @ the American Thinker.

Here’s what he [Obama] said,

“But understand this: We also have to look at where some of our tax revenues are going. So when Sen. McCain proposes a $300 billion tax cut, a continuation not only of the Bush tax cuts, but an additional $200 billion that he’s going to give to big corporations, including big oil companies, $4 billion worth, that’s money out of the system.”

“The system.” What is this system to which Senator Obama referred?

This system is the federal government’s budget — the hub of Obama’s American economy – the center of the nation’s financial universe — the core of the American enterprise. It’s the federal government’s taxing system.

The center of his economic universe is the budget of the federal government.

The looming “depression”

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Joel

I just read a really great article on WSJ.com about how bad a shape we are actually in economically. When you look at the mortgage “crisis” in terms of the economy as a whole, it doesn’t even make a ‘blip’ on the radar.

What Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently estimated as a $100 billion loss on subprime loans would represent only 0.1% of the $100 trillion in combined assets of all U.S. households and U.S. non-farm, non-financial corporations. Even if losses ballooned to $300 billion, it would represent less than 0.3% of total U.S. assets.

Are we to believe that our the financial machine that is the U.S. economy can be tanked by the loss of .3% of total U.S. assets? This is madness! This is just irresponsible on the part of our politicians and press to hold the ‘R’ word over our heads day-in and day-out… and for what purpose? Could it possibly be that all this horrible economic news is somehow related to the upcoming election? Could it possibly be that the media have an agenda? This is not just some conspiracy theory here, the numbers don’t lie; and if you are going to start spreading doom-and-gloom based on .3% (not 3%, POINT THREE PERCENT) of the U.S. economy, one cannot help but to question the motives behind such news.

The author goes on to point out that if our economy really could be tanked by a downturn in .3% of our total assets… then our problems are much bigger then any stimulus package could ever fix.

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