2013: Less Pizza, And More Evil Bureaucrats

Why  is Barack Obama so absolutely adamant about raising taxes on the wealthy, despite the negligible effect it will have on the debt/deficit and the possible negative effect it will have on the economy as a whole?

P.J. O'Rourke (whose Parliament of Whores will turn the truest believer into a hardcore cynic) isolates better than anyone the odd quirk in Obama's economic illiteracy that makes tax hikes almost a matter of religious faith:

...But the worst thing that you've done internationally is what you've done domestically. You sent a message to America in your re-election campaign. Therefore you sent a message to the world. The message is that we live in a zero-sum universe.

There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney's argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we've got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners.

In this zero-sum universe there is only so much happiness. The idea is that if we wipe the smile off the faces of people with prosperous businesses and successful careers, that will make the rest of us grin.


I suppose, in a nation of people who no longer wish to work and no longer see production as a moral value, the race to get the biggest share of what's left (since precious little can be created, under the Obama regime) is the only sporting event left in town.

And of course, those who actually decide who gets what (call them the bureaucratic class, or perhaps the media/political class) become the most powerful people in the universe.  Which suits them just fine, as that's been the endgame all along.  They have spent their whole live advocating the position that they are better able to control your lives than you are.  Hence their need to take more of your money, control your health care costs, determine what car you drive, and decide where your children should go to school, what they should learn, and what they should eat.  All while demanding you disarm yourself - and shut up, lest you be labeled a racist.

(Via  CBC)


So how's that working out?  Michael Goodwin, in the New York Post:

Americans are in a panic. Crowds throng gun shows and shops. Blue-chip companies fast-forward next year’s dividends to this year. Investors cash out profits, estate planners report a rush of people trying to beat higher inheritance taxes and lobbyists line up for favors.

What these people share is the goal of avoiding or benefiting from government actions. More than ever, the “invisible hand” of free markets is being replaced by the visible hand of bureaucrats. The political class is the new master of the universe....

Each day brings plans for added regulations and new ways to rob Peter to pay Paul....The combination creates a huge cloud hanging over every family and business...

The certain result will be an economic pie that doesn’t grow fast enough, which will lead to new demands for more redistribution under the guise of “fairness.” Always, the government redistributes by taking the first bite for itself.

Claimed he was only a mere bureaucrat...

O'Rourke, no shrinking violet or kisser of the political ass, calls a thing what it is:

The evil of zero-sum thinking and redistributive politics has nothing to do with which things are taken or to whom those things are given or what the sum of zero things is supposed to be. The evil lies in denying people the right, the means, and, indeed, the duty to make more things.

Or maybe you just find it easier to pursue a political policy of sneaking in America's back door, swiping a laptop, going around to the front door, ringing the bell, and announcing, "Free computer equipment for all school children!"



Sounds insane,  But we voted for it.  And boy oh boy, are we gonna get it.

Gonna be a hell of a 2013...