Aid Is a Bumper Crop for Farmers
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One week before the presidential election, it passed a new $1.8 billion disaster bill to assist farmers hurt by bad weather. Two others followed in subsequent years, totaling more than $6 billion. Today, after a searing drought in the Plains, farm-state legislators are pushing for billions more in aid.
The result is that farmers often get paid twice by the government for the same disaster, once in subsidized insurance and then again in disaster assistance, a legal but controversial form of double-dipping, a Washington Post investigation found. Together, the programs have cost taxpayers nearly $24 billion since 2000.
Some politicians talk as though they respect capitalism. They claim to reject taxing people just to give that money to others. Yet they continually increase the debt (taxing our children and grandchildren) and make payments to corporations, farmers and others for no reasonable purpose, other than buying votes. In addition to payments to farmers the government pays those who build million dollar beach house when the predictable storm knocks them down. No rational capitalist or economist would support such behavior (a political consultant might if when voters reward those that buy votes with taxpayer money, which seems to be the case now).
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The estate tax is the most capitalist tax that exists. Capitalism, which some seem to think is based on people inheriting assets from their relatives, is not. Capitalism is based on the concept that each person gets to receive rewards for their work.
Long before Adam Smith, noble rich passed on their wealth to their heirs. It was not Capitalist then and it is not Capitalist now.
Unfortunately many seem to have skipped economics in school and accepted the claim that Capitalism is about protecting the rich. They seem to believe it is a tenant of Capitalism that those that have the gold make the rules. That is in fact a risk that Capitalists must protect the economy from, not something Capitalist approve of. Those who believe in the wealth being passed from those who earn it to those who they like, believe not in Capitalism but in the state not taxing the idle rich but instead taxing those who don’t have millions given to them. While many have come to believe that such idiocy is Capitalist, it is not. People should read the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith to get a much clearer idea of what Capitalism is about than those in Washington DC have.
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China to Raise Tariffs On Clothing Exports, from the Washington Post:
If the Chinese government must reduce the amount of the world textile trade that their country is taking, or face retaliation from other countries, this is a very smart move. Essentially China gets to tax the United States, Europe, etc. and be thanked for doing so by the governments of those countries. Such is the odd nature of international trade these days.
The Chinese government is going to tax textiles being exported by China. Therefore when an American picks up a shirt at the mall it will include a new tax to the Chinese government and this is seen as a good thing by the American government. An alternative would be for the American government to tax imports. Then the tax paid by the American consumer would go to the United States government instead. It seems odd that the American government thinks it is better to pay a tax to the Chinese government than to the American government but that seems to be what their policy and statements support.
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