It’s 1787 all over again, and this coming General Election may well determine what kind of country the United States will be, as did the men meeting in Philadelphia.
Or, to keep it simple, as Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” described, we have Builders (those who actually “make things,” employ workers, and pay taxes), and we have Bureaucrats (those who would “manage” the country, and “oversee” the Builders, collect taxes and direct the spending paid for by those taxes). And, yes, we have the Workers, but outside of voting and paying taxes, they have little to say about running a country.
Builders produce a product or service that a person desires at a price that is reasonable to that person. Bureaucrats manage, tax, and impose regulations and then interpret and enforce them; they also grow bureaucracies and levy penalties. Joe Biden is increasing the IRS employee base by 87,000; they will earn their pay by collecting taxes, not just from the rich. Of course, we are assured by several left-wing journalists that, due to attrition and such, this may “only” increase the IRS audit and service staff by 20,000 to 30,000 employees over the next decade.
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Our Founding Fathers were educated men well-versed in the history and governments of the world. And a grasp of human nature. They proposed the idea that all people are created equal and that these people have fundamental rights, such as liberty, free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law, and freedom of assembly. They also believed in limited government, republicanism, Western political ideology, checks and balances, partially self-governing states, separation of powers, the Rule of Law, and popular sovereignty— all created and sustained by the will of the people.
But where are we now? A huge bureaucracy (2.99M federal workers) is in place, using whatever resources and penalties it can to remain in power and grow. Government “Lawfare” is on full display, as exemplified by the multiple, coordinated legal assaults on Donald Trump.
Remember that, until the early 1900’s, the U.S. government was funded essentially from the excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Although Lincoln implemented a tax on income to finance the Civil War, the tax ceased when the war was over. Our modern income tax system originated in 1913 and grew into the beast it is today.
We have all seen how the overall revenue to the government grew– in FY2017, government revenues were $3.32T . . . by 2023, after the pandemic, tax revenues had grown to $4.44T – a 34% increase in revenues – the American Free Enterprise Capitalistic System at work. And yet, the political left never acknowledges that our capitalistic economy has made the U.S. “number one in the world.”
We are told that Kamala Harris wants to raise our corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%. Let’s see: only three countries in the European Union of 27 members have a corporate tax rate near or above 28%. The world average of 181 countries is 23.4%. China’s corporate income tax rate is 25%, and China hands out subsidies to its corporations.
The bottom line is that a Kamala Harris presidency will make the U.S. even less competitive on the world stage than it is today. If we desire a Free-Enterprise Capitalistic country, a socialist-styled form of government will kill that. All we need to do is look at stagnant Europe and the results of that form of government in Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.
In November, we will decide which road to take, and one road leads to destruction.
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