Colorado Amendment 59 vs. liberty and prosperity

Ari Armstrong has written two good posts against the proposed Colorado Amendment 59 here and here.  He writes:

Those wishing to forcibly transfer more money from those who earn it to those who want it constantly review the benefits (real or imagined) of higher tax spending. What they generally ignore are the costs.

Sure, when the government transfers money from Alice to Ben, Ben gets to spend the money on something he wants. But Alice has less to spend on her needs and those of her family, and those with whom Alice does business also suffer.

When people evaluate economic opportunities, they tend to move to where they can keep more of what they earn — to spend, invest, or give away as they see fit — and live and work as they deem best, rather than as politicians demand. We Coloradans enjoy a relatively strong economy in large part because it remains a relatively free economy. Higher taxes threaten to alienate vibrant businesses, entrepreneurs, and young workers.

Higher taxes also reduce liberty. People have a right to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Regardless of whether politicians and activists mean well in forcing some people to surrender their money to others, the practice is morally wrong.

As Ben DeGrow points out, Education Week has written that

State Treasurer Cary Kennedy (no relation to RFK Jr.) said that Democrats would win a ballot initiative to “drive a stake in the heart” of the state’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights…

Funny that she uses a vampire metaphor to describe the Taxpayers Bill or Rights, which limits government’s ability to tax.   Wouldn’t appropriation of people’s wealth through taxes be analagous to a vampire’s sucking blood? (Thanks to Ari Armstrong for pointing out the irony of the metaphor.)

Also, check out Barry Poulson’s Issue Backgrounder and video critique. The Cauldron also has an amusing narrative.

McCain’s principles: blowin’ in the wind

From Reason’s Matt Welch:

As the Sarah Palin choice epitomizes, John McCain has been willing to sacrifice any principle to become president. …

If you are, as John McCain has been in his writings, prepared to alter your entire personality in the greater case of your own political ambitions, then previously ironclad policies that were once dressed up in the highest of moral dudgeon are liable to be as malleable as butter in a microwave.

Read the rest here.

A President, not a Savior (non-partisan)

Cato’s Gene Healy had an excellent article in the Christian Science Monitor last week.  Some excerpts (emphasis added):

What moved Barack Obama to seek the presidency was “the basic idea of empathy” and the notion that if “we see somebody down and out … we care for them.” Republican John McCain explained that he was running “to inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest.”…

Noble sentiments, to be sure, but in the original constitutional scheme, the president was neither Empath-in-Chief nor a national life coach. His role was to faithfully execute the laws, defend the country from attack, and check Congress with the veto power whenever it exceeded its constitutional bounds. …

McCain vs. individual liberty

Reason magazine editor Matt Welch‘s column in the New York Times (published in March) summarizes John McCain’s opposition to individual freedom:

Behind any successful politician lies a usable contradiction, and John McCain’s is this: We love him (and occasionally hate him) for his stubborn individualism, yet his politics are best understood as a decade-long attack on the individual.

Read the rest here.

Welch has also written “Be Afraid of President McCain: The frightening mind of an authoritarian maverick.”

Should the president “manage the economy”?

No.  And it’s not possible, anyway. But apparently people think that’s part of the job.

Obama: “We’re all in it together”!!

Senator Obama’s op-ed on Social Security begins:

In this country, we have always believed that a lifetime of hard work and honest living should be rewarded with a secure and dignified retirement — and Social Security is the cornerstone of that social compact. Last week, as we celebrated its anniversary, we reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring that Social Security is a safety net that today’s seniors and future generations of Americans can count on.

Reward by whom?  What social compact?  If Senator Obama want to set up some kind of reward program, then he should go out and do it.  Find people like him, find donors, customers, etc.  Set up a charity of some sort that “rewards” people for their years of hard work.  Don’t continue to force everyone into the Ponzi Scheme that is Social Security.  That’s just robbery.

If you work hard for a lifetime, and save some of your paycheck, you’ll have quite a nice savings when you’re done.  How much?  Let’s call is 12.4%, which is the sum of the employer and employee contribution of the FICA tax.  (Yes, your employer passes on his share of the tax to you, so your wages are lower.)   Put that percentage into a compound interest calculator and see how much you’d have after a lifetime of hard work.  It’s quite a bit.

Even a paternalistic forced-savings program (like a mandatory 401(k) or 403(b)) would be a huge improvement over Social Security.  At least then you’re forced to save for your own retirement, and you’d be able to bequeath it those you choose.

Obama also speaks of “mutual responsibility,” rather than personal responsibility.  Nothing new here, but it’s still disturbing.

Obama’s op-ed ends:

We need to reclaim the idea that in this country, we’re all in it together. That is America’s very promise — and Social Security’s very guarantee.

Oh. My. God.  Did he really say that “we’re all in it together”?  Yes, he did.  In what?  Holy Collectivism, Batman!

In terms of social security, I guess this means that people in power (Obama and his pals) can determine how to “reward” people by spending other people’s money.

“We’re all in it together.”  America’s promise?  Is this guy for real?  What about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  On liberty, Jefferson wrote:

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. –Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.

In this context, Social Security is the tyrant’s will.  It obstructs our right to save or spend our money as we see fit, and instead forces us to spend it on what the authorities want.

(Ht, <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/08/questioning_a_t.html”>Arnold Kling)

Crashing Gore’s Global Warming Party

An amusing video from Americans for Prosperity:

Via Reason.tv.

Obama will “ask us” to serve

In his speech at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Barack Obama says he will “ask Americans to serve” and “ask for your service.”  But will he ever actually ask?  Sure, he can ask for our vote, and there a point where all eligible voters can choose to vote for him or not.

But when will Americans have the choice to serve or not? In his speech he outlines several new government-run tax-funded service programs.  But when do we have the choice whether to fund these or not?  When does he ask us, and when do we have a chance to say “no”?  Or is Obama saying he wants to take our money without asking, and then with it create government programs that give others the opportunity to serve?  If so, why doesn’t he say that?

Infant voters & narcissist candidates

From George Will’s Newsweek review of The Cult of the Presidency, by Gene Healy:

If you can name it, presidents are responsible for it. The name for this is infantilization. “The average American,” said President Richard Nixon, “is just like the child in the family—you give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something.” Vice President Al Gore said the government should act like “grandparents in the sense that grandparents perform a nurturing role.”

Such demented talk encourages presidential candidates to make delusional promises—energy independence in eight years (Mike Huckabee), “an excellent teacher in every classroom” and “every school an outstanding school” (John Edwards, who presumably knows how every school can stand out when all are outstanding), a “perfect” nation (see above) and so on.

The last presidential candidate to talk sense about the office was fictional. In an episode of NBC’s “The West Wing,” the Republican candidate, who was not the hero, was asked, “How many jobs will you create?” “None,” he replied, adding: “Entrepreneurs create jobs. Business creates jobs. The president’s job is to get out of the way.”

An occupational hazard of the inflated presidency is a hazard to the nation. It is what Healy (borrowing a term from psychiatry) calls Acquired Situational Narcissism. As repositories of absurd expectations, and surrounded by sycophants, presidents become deranged. Inevitably, the inflation of expectations causes what Healy calls an “arc of disillusionment” that diminishes one president after another.

For a summary of the book, see Healy’s article in Reason magazine.

McCain & Obama: live for the State!

David Boaz of the Cato Institute points out that neither candidate for Life Coach of the United States (or is it Daddy, High Priest, or Santa Claus) has much respect for individualism. Rather the derive meaning from our own personal life goals and priorities, we can do so only with service to something, anything, so long as it is not ourselves, as we were ants living for the sake of an ant colony. He concludes:

The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is “self-indulgence,” that building a business is “chasing after our money culture,” that working to provide a better life for our families is a “narrow concern.”

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

The article is here.