Obama's war on Capitalism

Peggy Noonan sees a John Galt moment coming:

This week the New York Post carried a report that 1.5 million people had left high-tax New York state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of them from even higher-tax New York City. They took their tax dollars with them—in 2006 alone more than $4 billion.

You know what New York, both state and city, will do to make up for the lost money. They'll raise taxes.

I talked with an executive this week with what we still call "the insurance companies" and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.' " He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."

He felt government doesn't understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they're human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they're all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)

Speaking of the Chamber, Jeb Bush told it that ""I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism."

There are days it sure seems that way.

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

Well, this is the same capitalism that drilled a $6TR hole in the US economy and damn near melted down the world's economy.

Us conservatives have some 'splaining to do.

Jeb Bush is almost as dumb as his brother.

And please can that "brain surgeons and entrepreneurs will quit if taxes go up." My 35 years of experience says other wise.

There has to be a balance somewhere.

[Brian]

Reaaally? An Effective marginal tax rate of 55% would be a *war on capitalism*?

The Prof's point is well taken that we should be wary of the business environment we create going forward, but please tone down the rhetorical panic.

Unwise? Sure. Battle for the soul of the free world? Hardly.

[Taxer]

I'm actually don't see why a 60% marginal tax rate, if set at a high enough level (say $5-10 million per year), would be a problem. After all, most people aren't going to make nearly that much, so they would have every incentive to keep working. And how much do people who make that much -- as opposed to people who do what they do because they love it -- really achieve for society? It seems to me that most people who make that much simply shuffle money around. If we had less high priced investment banking, would that be so bad? (Or would we have less risk of a financial melt down as a result?)

It seems to me that economic inequality is enough of a problem, and the need for revenue so that government can do things that the private sector won't (such as affordable health care for all, as a basic right of citizenship), that a very, very high marginal tax rate would do more good than harm.

[y81]

This what Peggy Noonan voted for, and she deserves to get it good and hard. What a moronic clown.

[Alan]

Ayn Rand called Capitalism "the Unknown Ideal," in her book of that title. This country has never had a completely free market and far from that since early in the 20th Century. The regulation, pork-barrel favoritism, and confiscation that is emblematic of American politics is not a failure of the free market, it's a failure of government intervention.

Obama has stated that his explicit goal is the redistribution of wealth -- by force -- and laments that the Constitution, by means of separation of powers and the Supreme Court, disallows this. That's what he got from his college education?

Those who have no problem mandating public healthcare and carbon caps on the basis of govt-manufactured crises and pseudoscience funded by govt grants have no interest in reality and the truth. Debate (e.g. w/ a Pelosi or Waters or Obama) is impossible. Time to vote these bums out.