by Jack Lee
President Obama said creating jobs must be the nation’s number one focus. Fair enough. . . then government needs to get out of the way and let America get back to work.
As the most taxed people in the world, we’ve got an uphill struggle against the competition. Taxation and over-regulation is like a huge weight we’re forced to drag around the race track. Every day fedup businesses are moving jobs to some other country. Fact is we don’t make anything here anymore, if we can avoid it. Big government has made it too difficult. The motivation to take risks as entrepreneurs is undercut by the depth of our bureaucracy with all its assessments, fees, taxes, studies, permits, EPA hoops, DOT hoops, and other heavy handed federal oversight regulating ag to industry, drilling to developing, mining to medicine – it’s overwhelming progress and this is a far greater threat to our survival than Al Qaeda ever could be.
President Obama has acknowledged that Americans are “hurting,” which is hard to ignore when real unemployment is likely around 14% and the advertised unemployment is around 10%. It’s obvious to the unemployed that his election pledge of change has not materialized. He’s done nothing to curb a bloated, top heavy government. If anything, he’s added to it with his healthcare reform and the highly controversial big bank, big corporation, bail-out policies.
A proposed 5 year spending freeze from 2011 on would save us over $550B and that’s a start to reducing the monstrously large deficit which is expected to add another 1.5 trillion dollars by the end of this year.
Bob McDonnell, the governor of Virginia summed it up like this, he said the federal government was “simply trying to do too much” to help us.
Insight into the thinking behind Obamas fixes for jobs and our economic woes come from his new advisor, GE CEO Jeffrey Inmelt:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704698004576104172158318768.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Democrats and their partners in the corporate world do not get it. Government has no business being in the middle of business.
Good comment Tina and I agree with Jeff too. However, I have to give credit where credit is due. Obama is one heck of a good speech giver. He is poised, slick, confident and says what people want to hear…for the most part. He sounds very moderate. But, you know the old saying watch what they do not what they say.
“As the most taxed people in the world”
I didn’t know we were living in Denmark.
Sorry, I know you had bigger points to make, but it’s kind of hard to focus on them when you start off with such a massive, obvious lie.
As a guy at the bottom looking up, I can see a really good case for calling the United States the most taxed Country. I consider a tax being any money I pay to the local, state or federal government. I also consider any “service charges” or “fee’s” paid to anyone a tax. Look at your phone bill and your PG&E bill, you will understand what I mean. We have a lot of people in this Country who can ignore charges like this and just pay them. I am not one of those people, wish I were.
I feel that this is a reasonable point of view. I am looking forward to how others see it. All you have to do is stop and think of all the money you spend and get nothing for it. All those 1/4% and 1/2% and the nickels, dimes, quarters, pretty soon your talking big money.
Hell, look at parking meters. Your paying to park on a street that your tax dollars pay to build and fix so what are you paying for?
When you stop to add up all little taxes we got, just like you said Toby, we have one huge tax burden. On tires for example you pay sales, then you pay excise tax on top of the sales tax.
A fee is just another tax. We have so many hidden taxes it’s staggering when you add them all up.
I agree Jack, the President is an accomplished speaker, although at times his rythms grate on me. It makes his presentation seem trite even if it is not. (I approach this from a singers POV)
I didn’t think this was a very good speech, certainly not exceptional in any way. it was like the writers took a bunch of earlier speeches and cut and pasted them together. The response from the audience was lukewarm for the most part. Although there isn’t a lot to cheer about right now there was an opportunity to propose something dynamic that would inspire people to go out and make things happen. He failed in this regard but then, I didn’t expect any more than we got.
I’d just like to take a moment here say THANK YOU to all of the TPers and everyone else who made it possible for us to make so many gains both in Congress and around the country in state houses and governorships.
I get it, you guys think we pay too much in taxes. You may have a case there, but that doesn’t lead to the conclusion that we are “the most taxed people in the world.” In order to conclude that, you’d have to look at, you know, other people in other parts of the world, which neither of you did in your responses.
According to this website, we are the 12th most taxed nation in the world.
http://www.businessinsider.com/oppressive-tax-nations-2009-7
Jack was thinking of corporate taxes, I believe.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/03/us-states-lead.html
That was back in 2008. I dont think its changed since then. And people said Bush gave all the breaks to the big guysnot so.