Читать книгу Obama and the Crash of 2013 - Peter Ferrara - Страница 4

MOST PEOPLE do not know that already enacted in current law for 2013 are increases in the top rates of virtually every major federal tax. That is because the tax increases of ObamaCare become effective that year, and the Bush tax cuts expire, which Obama has refused to renew for the nation’s small businesses, job creators, and investors.

As a result, if the Bush tax cuts expire just for singles making over ^$200,000 per year and for couples making over $ 250,000, in 2013 the top two income tax rates will jump nearly 20 percent, the capital-gains tax rate will soar by nearly 60 percent, the tax on corporate dividends will nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax will leap by 62 percent for those disfavored taxpayers.

This is on top of the U.S. corporate income tax rate, which is virtually the highest in the industrialized world. The federal rate is 35 percent, with state corporate rates taking it close to 40 percent on average. But even Communist China has a 25 percent rate. The average rate in the heavily socialist European Union is less than that. Formerly socialist Canada has a 16.5 percent rate, which will go down to 15 percent in 2012.

U.S. corporate tax rates leave American companies uncompetitive in the global economy. Yet under President Obama, there is no relief in sight. Instead, he continually proposes still further tax increases on American business.

Higher tax rates mean producers can only keep a smaller percentage of what they produce. So tax-rate increases reduce the incentive for productive activities – such as saving, investment, starting businesses, expanding businesses, job creation, entrepreneurship, and work – resulting in less of each. And that is what Barack Obama’s tax tsunami for 2013 is going to do, which will swamp the weak economy.

Most small-business profits are reported from households earning more than ^$200,000 / ^$250,000 per year, and those small businesses produce more than half the new jobs. So Obama’s 2013 tax tsunami effectively targets small businesses and the nation’s job creators. That will hurt working people the most because they will lose the jobs and the wage income they need to maintain their basic standard of living.

U.S. corporate tax rates leave American companies uncompetitive in the global economy.

It is incentives to produce that drive the economy, which was the insight of Reaganomics. Expand the incentives, and the economy will recover and boom. Weaken those incentives, and the economy will fall into further decline.

Obamanomics is based instead on the old-fashioned Keynesian economics of the 1930s to the 1970s, which holds that government spending and deficits are the foundation for economic recovery and prosperity. If that were true, then America would be enjoying its strongest economy ever right now. Government spending and deficits do not lead to economic growth and prosperity. Just the opposite.