When is the last time you got a job from a poor dude?   Would you rather work for a guy with little money or some guy who is filthy rich?   Which man do you think might give you more opportunity?   Better yet, would you prefer to take all the rich man’s money, give it to government and use that money to hire some bureaucrat who knows nothing about business to be your new boss in your new government job?

If you search the net for causes of the great depression you will find a litany of ridiculous articles attributing the great depression to a disparity in income.   If I make $100,000.00 dollars per year and my neighbor makes 5 million dollars a year, how does that huge disparity cause recession or depression?

The average American salary is around $36,000.00 per year, and according to Democrats, because some hedge fund manager is making 100 million dollars in one year, America is a downright mean nation because George Bush won’t increase his taxes and this is causing recession.

While I couldn’t quite stomach class warfare speeches at the Democratic National Convention exalting Obama as America’s great hope, I did tune in bits in pieces to find nothing new or changing in their platform: Everything is the Republican’s fault, George Bush is evil, John McCain is George Bush, rich people are screwing the poor, and Barack Obama is a our breath of fresh air.

Obama is fresh air only if you think undermining Constitutional protections by appointing more activist judges to the Supreme Court is a better direction for our country.   If you think the right to privacy is more important than the right to life (ROE vs. WADE), that property rights ought to be denied private citizens and arbitrated by city officials (KELO vs. CITY OF NEW LONDON), that terrorist combatants ought to be tried in American civilian courts instead of by military tribunal (BOUMEDIENE vs. BUSH), and that Heller vs. District of Colombia was a bad decision that affirmed the absurd idea that Americans ought to be able to protect themselves and have a handgun in their own domicile.

To complement the rhetorical disdain Democrats hurl at Republicans, Obama still did inculcate his singular narrow theme, the disparity in income ostensibly created by horrible conservatives is unjust, and to be fair, America must increase  taxes!   Democrats and Obama just won’t tell you what this policy will do to middle and lower class workers who end up without jobs when small business owners in the gun sights decide they aren’t interested in working harder just to give government more money.

In the April debate between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, Charles Gibson thoroughly explained how in each instance where tax rates were decreased under Reagan and under Bush government revenues increased; conversely, when rates were increase revenues dropped.   Gibson went on to explain, given this, Why increase rates at all?

Obama retorted, What I have said Charlie is that I would look at raising taxes for purposes of fairness, we saw an article today that the top 50 hedge fund managers made 29 billion dollars last year   Obama then went on to say that these billionaires are paying less in taxes than their secretaries.

Of course Obama never suggests we ought to decrease taxes that secretaries must pay.

There are three hundred million people in the United States and Barack Obama wants to make policy that affects us all because he thinks fifty people make too much money, and then he blames it on fairness.

Obama’s tax policies will hurt the economy, and they will hurt the people he says he wants to help far more than the people he targets, whether or not 95% (which is a lie anyway) get a tax break.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure this out.

Imagine yourself a small businessman.   You are one of the small business owners in the country whose aggregate efforts are responsible for creating 75% of the new jobs in our American economy.   You started your business when you were thirty, give or take five years and now after nearly two decades in business you are starting to make upwards of that magic 250K per year Obama thinks ought to be taxed at a much higher rate.   You make that money by employing people.   For each person you train, you manage, you educate, and that you inspire your reward is about $10,000.00 in annual income.   Your people make an average salary (and gain talent and experience only a small business owner could impart), but as you add employees to your organization your income continues to go up disproportionately to theirs because while they are paid for their individual efforts you are paid for the synergistic productivity of the business’s systematic whole.  

Because you’ve lived a fairly modest lifestyle investing in your business maintaining the same house you’ve already paid off years ago, and have continued to drive old automobiles because they still do the job your wealth grows as you pursue a modest existence.

That’s the bio for the average small business owner.

I wonder, since these small business owners have so much, and it is only fair that others share in their good fortune, will they enthusiastically work twice as hard to employ more people now that they are only going to be allowed to keep six or seven thousand dollars, instead of ten, for each of the employees they must manage train and watch over because some elitist politician in Washington who has never run or managed a small business thinks the disparity of income he is rewarded with for his efforts is unjust?

Something tells me he won’t, but then I’m not some dazzling politician, I’m just a dumb small business owner.

Copyright 2008 Jim Pontillo