The House of Representatives voted today for a big increase in the taxes paid by the large oil companies. It also voted to subsidize clean green alternative fuels.
The oil companies will face a burden of $16 billion levied by our economics-challenged representatives. Are new taxes supposed to make our oil companies more productive? Are new taxes going to give America the leading edge in oil production? Or is this new policy simply designed to appeal to the envy vote?
Democrats not only propose and pass economically illiterate bills, they also devise them to appeal to the irrational voter - and there are plenty of those to go around. People who cheer on this kind of legislation don’t bother to look at the investments found in their 401k mutual funds. It doesn’t occur to them that anti-business legislation is also anti-abundance.
Democrat legislators and the people who vote for them operate on the scarcity principle. They see the world as having a limited supply of everything, whether it be food, shelter, resources, or jobs. Their solutions, based as they are on irrational fears, only exacerbate the problems they seek to avoid with their attempts to mandate success and control individual enterprise, so that Everything Shall Be Fair.
In his book he Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Bryan Caplan lays out the case that an ill-educated electorate inevitably chooses representatives that “foment” irrational beliefs and expectations in the voters who choose them.
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That’s why Nancy Pelosi says the thing she does - not because she’s stupid herself, but because she wants to be the Speaker of the House. When congressional arrogance and ambition intersect with voters’ fearfulness and insecurity, we have the reality of Pelosi’s political machinations.
The following is from the editorial blurbs on Amazon.com regarding Mr. Caplan’s book:
Why democracies so often make a hash out of economic policy is one of the great questions of political economy. Bryan Caplan suggests some provocative, and highly original, answers… Voters lack incentives to become well informed about political controversies…and their policy choices tend to be based on deeply, persistently, and systematically mistaken models of reality. Caplan’s findings lead inexorably to the conclusion that democratic governance can be improved only through reforms based on realistic assumptions about human cognition…Poorly informed voters are a big problem in democracy, and Caplan makes the interesting argument that this is not necessarily a problem that can be easily fixed —it may be fundamental to the system. Caplan thinks that voting itself is the problem.
But Mr. Caplan does not go far enough: it is not just voting that is the problem; it is also the very limited pool of ambitious politicians who choose to “serve”
The punishments meted out to electric companies in the form of requirements to use “renewable” energy - which is both bad science and bad economics - will be passed on to us in the form of higher prices for electricity. And who will be blamed? Why, the greedy utility companies, of course.
The higher taxes which will burden the oil industry will trickle down to us. Not only will we pay more to drive our own cars, we will also find the cost of living going up in the form of higher food and clothing prices. Meanwhile, the pious Democrats tell us how much they have done for us as the interest drops on our 401k mutual funds.
Nancy Pelosi actually said, “It’s about our children, about our future, the world in which they live…” unfortunately for us and for our children, speaker Pelosi lives in La-La Land and she insists that we live there with her.
These clowns would be funny if they weren’t so expensive.
Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer?
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother — they’re here.
I wrote this post using the voice-recognition software that comes with Windows XP for use with Word. I cleaned it up using the Baron’s enslaved fingers. — D
8 comments:
I found the link to your blog on "Western Heart", and I like your take on that. The socialists never cease to wizz in my wheaties when it comes to doing whatever is exactly WRONG for America.
I did my own grunt's-eye-view rant on that but, as retired Infantry, my language tends more toward the "picturesque"...LOL
TouchStone's Jests
All of this is perfectly explainable. Democrats in Congress are focused on retaining and expanding their power, which they believe is tied to two sources: their "base," and their special-interest allies.
The "base" is crazed, pure and simple. Its driving forces are hatred of the Republicans, hatred of capitalism, and corrosive envy of those of us who've made good by our own efforts. Envy-powered legislation, that seeks out the productive and weighs them down, has an immense appeal for the "base."
The special-interests are rationally evil. They seek their gain by conniving at others' loss. Some of those interests will indubitably have figured out how to profit by this new millstone around the oil industry's neck.
Given the complete absence of any moral constraints from a Leftist politician's psyche, why wouldn't he play to forces such as these? Especially since no one of wholesome character would give him the time of day.
D, I have only one small nit to pick. You wrote, "People who cheer on this kind of legislation don’t bother to look at the investments found in their 401k mutual funds." I doubt that people who favor this sort of legislation have 401(k) plans. I suspect that none of their income is saved and a large part is spent on various psychoactive substances.
That's the trouble with democracy: If everybody can vote, then at least half of the voters can be expected to have an IQ below than the median. In America, it seems that more than half of voters are retarded.
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 08/07/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Gringo_malo--
Au contraire. I have met many a socialist leftie (though they don't know enough economic theory to be able to identify their philosophy) who have 401K plans, union pensions, etc., yet who preach the kind of punitive fundamentalist taxation that hurts their own investment.
THey are economically illiterate and they do not vote out of enlightened self-interest but from fearfulness. These are the ones who believe in global warming catastrophes,...used to believe in the coming Ice Age.
As Francis said, they are not rational...and many of them are teaching our children.
Thanks frightening, D. Perhaps I lead a sheltered life. Most middle-class people of my acquaintance are gun-toting conservatives. Of course, I live in Texas and work with engineers. Maybe that accounts for it.
Yes, Gringo_Malo, that accounts for a lot of it. I would be one those engineers too.
Those idiots don't understand that every business (I mean EVERY business) passes on all taxes to the consumer by definition.
Of course it works out for these clowns to save gas since they can drive to Congress, 17 people to a Prius.
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