Economics for Dummies

This article tells you pretty much all you need to know about economics. Why can't socialists get it?

Let’s start off talking about the entrepreneur with a brief discussion of the sources of income. Some of the rhetoric one hears gives the impression that income is somehow distributed – that there’s a dealer of dollars. Thus, one might think that the reason some Americans have more income than others is that the dollar dealer is a racist, a sexist or a multi-nationalist who deals out dollars unfairly. Alternatively, some suggest that the reason that some Americans are richer than others is because they got to the pile of money first and took an unfair share. In either case, justice requires that government take the ill-gotten gains of the few and restore them to their rightful owners – in other words, redistribute income. While no one actually describes the sources of income this way, the logic of their arguments for redistribution implies such a vision.

This is why I believe that taxes on income are immoral. This is why an income tax was not part of the original Constitution. Any tax on income, investments, estates, any attempt to redistribute income, any attempt to control people's behavior through taxation is un-American, immoral and should be illegal. There is no such thing as a "fair tax."

This country operated just fine without an income tax before the Civil War. Now, the country is getting too much money. The government seems to believe that taxpayers have bottomless pockets and spend accordingly. About 95% of what the federal government is doing is not specifically authorized in the Constitution. People are so accustomed to the government spending on anything and everything, that they criticize the President when he opposes funding something.

The current brouhaha concerns the funding of embryonic stem cell research. The President won't fund it ONLY because he is pro-life, not because he thinks it's unconstitutional for public funds to go into private research. It is not illegal to conduct such research. And if it is the miracle the scientific community predicts, the company that makes a breakthrough will become wealthy beyond anyone's dreams. So, why don't they fund it themselves? People have become so used to the big-spending government, that it doesn't even occur to them that there are other ways to fund things. Whatever happened to car washes and bake sales?