‘Biden’s’ Budget: America’s Road to Serfdom

It’s time to kill the massive tax and spend slave bill.

F.A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom in 1944 as a response to the Russian communists and the German and Italian fascists of the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s, as well as to those in other parts of the West that might be tempted by the allure of a society based on total security or equality.

Hayek worried that the impulses for planning and power by the intellectual elite and the desire for security and equality by the people could be ruinous to free societies. He believed that those who argue most for giving the public freedom and security by increasing the power of the state would be the very individuals who would put the public on the road to serfdom. It is impossible for a society to work toward one end, for example equality or material security, and to keep its freedom. In the end, according to Hayek, the masses will become serfs, serving those who hold the power in government. (more here)

Choice quotes:

“…the promise of greater freedom has become one of the most effective weapons of socialist propaganda … what was promised to us as the Road to Freedom was in fact the High Road to Servitude.”

“…the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us.

“The common features of all collectivist systems may be described, in a phrase ever dear to socialists of all schools, as the deliberate organization of the labors of society for a definite social goal.”

“…democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.”

“The [classical] liberal argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are.”

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another.”

“…socialism means the abolition of private enterprise, of private ownership of the means of production, and the creation of a system of ‘planned economy’ in which the entrepreneur working for profit is replaced by a central planning body.”

“Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.”

“By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.”

“The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit is immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.”

“Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian regimes which horrify us follow of necessity.”

“It is essential that we should relearn frankly to face the fact that freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifices to preserve our liberty.”

Biden’s Budget: The Road to Serfdom

It’s Time To Kill the Tax and Spending Bill

By Lawrence Kudlow, Special to the Sun | September 18, 2021

In President Biden’s budget speech Thursday, he referred on eight separate occasions to “pay their fair share.” He just kept repeating it. Some left-wing pollster probably told him that it plays well in progressive precincts. As you may have guessed, this performance and its content got under my skin. Mr. Biden is always blaming businesses and wealthy successful individuals.

Always blaming them. And it’s a lie. It’s a big lie. Just like any left-wing propagandist. Say it enough, and it becomes true. It goes way beyond cognitive dissonance. It is just a big lie. Let’s look at some facts. This is from the Internal Revenue Service as analyzed by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

First, the United States has the most progressive tax system in the world. That;s according to an OECD study several years ago.

Progressive means the upper end pays far more than the low end. So here are some facts, according to IRS data from 2018, the most recent numbers available. The top 1% of taxpayers paid $616 billion, which is 40% of all the income taxes paid.

Ok, let’s stop there. The top 1% pays 40% of all the income taxes. One addendum: The top 1% earned 21% of the income but paid 40% of the income tax. I’d say that’s twice their fair share. There’s more. The entire bottom half of taxpayers who earned 11.6% of the income paid a scant 2.9% of the income tax.

Some more facts: Six in ten households receive more in direct government benefits than they pay in federal taxes. Another fact, over 53 million low and middle income individuals pay no income taxes because of refundable tax credit, which are effectively a form of federal spending through the tax code.

Another fact, according to Congressional Budget Office data for 2017 the lowest quintile of the income groups actually had an income tax rate ofnegative 10.9%. The second lowest quintile had a negative 1% income tax. That means they received more benefits from the government than they paid in taxes.

If that isn’t progressive, I don’t know what is. We have a more progressive tax system in this country than all these socialist systems in Europe. The idea propagated by Mr. Biden that the top earners don’t pay their fair share is a flat out lie.

Here’re some more facts: The U.S. tax system is essentially dependent on American business. American business pays or remits 93% of the nation’s taxes. As far as the Trump tax cuts created these big deficits Biden talked about yesterday, the CBO’s latest estimates show that corporate tax revenue is projected by CBO to match the pre-tax cut level by 2023.

In other words, right on schedule. There’s an initial dip in revenues and rise in the deficit from the tax cut but then as the tax cut generates faster growth, lower unemployment and higher wages, the revenues catch up quickly.

Tax avoidance also declines. So there might have been a delay in the estimates from the pandemic shutdown, but in 2021 the recovery in corporate profits and corporate taxes is back on schedule. This is of course something President Biden won’t tell you. It’s part of his big lie. No matter how many times he and his allies repeat the mantra ‘pay your fair share,’ it will never square with these inconvenient facts.

What Mr. Biden did Thursday was pure left-wing progressive woke propaganda. His agenda is totally transparent.

He wants a whole new generation of big spending welfare plans, and he wants them financed by taxing successful earners and businesses. It’s nothing but wealth and redistribution. He has no interest in economic growth.

The President and his people know full well that study after study shows that raising the corporate tax will lower wages and depress the economy. Some 70% of the economic consequences of a corporate tax hike fall on the blue collar middle class, the backbone of the economy’s workforce. Singling out small businesses for even more tax penalties is an effort to crush the heartbeat of the American economy.

Mr. Biden’s welfare plan’s 12 weeks of paid family leave — costing $500 billion by the way — increase subsidies for dependent care, childcare, even more monthly payments for the child tax credit, boosting Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. These European style entitlements move us further down the road to serfdom.

No work requirements, complete government dependency striking at the heart of America’s social fabric. In many ways this non-work welfare dependency is even worse than raising taxes. Not because of deficits and debt, which at these levels raise even my eyebrows, but because of the transformation of the culture that the Biden woke left wants to undermine free enterprise capitalist work and put big government socialism in the driver’s seat.

It’s a triumph of woke over work. In our nation’s social and economic history, this is Armageddon, but the solution is simple. Save America. Kill the bill.