The VP Debate

The VP Debate

I thought VP Joe Biden was more successful last night in getting his points across than Congressman Paul Ryan.  There are some very strong arguments that favor the Republicans that they never seem to make.  One is that they continuously let the Democrats get away with saying that President Obama’s inheritance of an economy in shambles was one that he got from President Bush.  

For the last two years of the Bush Administration the purse strings were fully in control of the Democrats.  A veto-proof Democrat Congress was seated in January of 2007 as a result of the 2006 elections.  That election turned on peoples’ weariness with the Mideast war, not the economy.  People tired of hearing about sons, fathers, brothers and sisters dying and being maimed in a war that looked like it would never end.  In January of 2007 the unemployment rate was 4.6%.  People were working AND PAYING TAXES.  That’s where the revenue comes from – not from raising the taxes that puts a dampener on business.  Fifty four months of economic growth would soon be coming to an end with the seating of that Congress.  But the real dampener to the economy – and the only one beside me that I ever heard mention it was Glenn Beck – was when OPEC declared economic war on us in 2008 and gradually raised the price of their crude oil to $147.00 a barrel.  Gasoline and all fuel prices soared.  It particularly stressed the transportation industries and every household and made it very difficult for people to manage the family budget and keep up with the mortgage payments on their houses.

Speaking of mortgage payment crisis, check out this link:

Home Mortgage Crisis 

When the Bush tax cuts expire on January first they will weigh even more heavily on an already suffocating business environment burdened with overwhelming regulation and taxes.  And if the nationalized health care law is not repealed and replaced by something more sensible it could be the coup de grace that would be the deathnell of the Republic.

There ought to be a system the taxpayers could be asked to pay for for those who cannot afford health insurance that really need it and leave the 85% alone who have been able to pay and have been satisfied with the programs they have had.  Of the fifteen percent that have not had insurance, only a portion of that percentage really needed it and couldn’t afford the cost of it.  That group included well-to-do people who chose to pay as needed and a category of healthy young adults that chose to take the gamble that not paying a yearly premium would be the better part of the gamble.  This group was choosing that over a ten or twelve year period of not paying premiums that paying for whatever medical expenses they’d have would be less costly than the insurance premiums.  It’s called “liberty,” the choice to take the gamble whichever way they wanted.

A young businessman friend of mine, who has about six people in his employ, is already thinking about shutting the business down and taking advantage of accepting a position open to him with a larger company.  How many other small businessmen/women are there that are thinking the same thing???  This does not help lower the unemployment rate.

There’s a lot of talk that the inheritance tax will be renewed or is under consideration to be renewed with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January.   I have one example in my memory book of why this 55% confiscation of a family’s business is so devastating to the economy.  When the tax was in play years ago, Wheatley Stables, a famous horse racing farm, had to sell off their property and whatever they had of their business to pay the taxes.  Thanks to the inheritance tax, employed people who were paying income tax on their earnings were now collecting unemployment insurance from the government and less money was in circulation by people who could afford to buy things.  So where was the benefit of the inheritance tax?  And how many other businesses went under and had the same effect as what happened when Wheatley Stables went out of business?