Many of us have had the idea we should just let the Democrats tax all they want -- and let the 52% repent of their ways seeing the outcome... If the majority of the youth in this country want to vote for a man who is running up debts that THEY will pay -- why not just let it happen. I share that temptation -- I for one, think I can make money with Obama in power, but we MUST not give into it -- having failed to retake the House, it would probably be Plan B for Obama who will now face an incredible challenge -- avoiding the recrimination of a populace that will now face all of his policies that he delayed until after the election. In a recent NY Times article, they talked of Obama's "mandate" in the second term -- quite ironically, their argument was that his victory was great because he won DESPITE a bad economy (psst... NY Times: that HE caused). Think about the substance of THAT argument.
When Obama swept to power in 2008, he very vocally pointed out that there were no red states of America or blue states of America, but that he was President of the United States of America. As with most of Obama's grand rhetoric, his emphasis usually rests most heavily in areas where he means exactly the opposite. There is reason why Obama is the first President since Andrew Johnson to win reelection with fewer electoral votes than he took at his initial election -- which is such a rare occurrence we will likely not see it again in our lifetimes. From the very beginning, Obama's strategy was to strengthen his hold over the blue states and hang on in the battleground states. While many in the Red States who were responsible for the space program noted this when he took all the shuttles and moved them to SOLID blue states with no involvement in the space program -- this is an underlying theme in all of Obama's activities. While New York and New Jersey may feel slighted realizing Obama only appeared there for a 90 minutes photo-op after the Sandy disaster... think of poor Red State Missouri that never got a visit after the Joplin disaster. The moral of the story would have been that while Obama is President you damn well better not have a disaster outside of a battleground state -- but now that he doesn't have to demean himself to try and win over minions, that may not even help you much.
His first effort was to raise the billion+ dollars it took to convince Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Virginia to willingly take on economic enslavement to prop up the unproductive, overly unionized Blue State economies. Fortunately for Obama, while his economic policy has led to exactly what any astute, independent thinker would expect, he actually succeeded by failing from the beginning of his term. While most of the pain of Obamacare was delayed until 2013, there is enough job-killing already in the bill to keep up high unemployment in and of itself -- and this will soon become MUCH worse. After killing the crux of job creation, Obama and his allies set to extend unemployment, then rollback welfare reforms, and encourage food stamps. Ironically, these poor souls suffering most in the Obama economy overwhelmingly supported him -- Romney after all, just wanted their money (yeah, he has plenty but we're talking lib-logic here). Yeah, it seems absurd -- but looking at Nov. 6th, we see it DID happen. In any case, the "new normal" and lowered expectations were created that would allow Obama to survive his own record. Another important factor in the Obama strategy was the Occupy Wall Street movement -- while we see Wall Street doing quite well with a thriving 1% under Obama, Occupy Wall Street gave Obama free advertisement for his class warfare strategy.
Class warfare is a longtime strategy used by the Democrats -- but previous administrations were amateurs by comparison. In Obama's first term, he continued to call the tax levels the "Bush" tax cuts so they could be rolled back with greater support in the future, but he opted to keep them in place. This was to prevent a recession while his stimulus money went to work. Why is Obama changing his mind now and calling for "investment" in America with higher tax rates? Because the collapse of the capitalist system has slowed. Let us first look at tax rates versus tax revenue; it is a non-linear curve between the two. In a thriving economy growing at 4 to 5% as we have become accustomed to since Ronald Reagan, the thriving economy has extra money that can be siphoned off -- increasing tax rates generates a near linear increase in tax revenues. However, taken too far, the tax rates slow the economy and the curve flattens and then goes the other way. Increase the tax rates to 80% for an extreme example, and the economy will come to a standstill and generate less money than a 20% tax rate. This curve is ignored completely in the rhetoric of class warfare for a reason -- Democrats have less interest in tax revenue than they do in increasing the government share of the economy. If you truly want to help the poor, you cause economic abundance and then you could reasonably consider tax hikes if needed -- but they usually aren't because in thriving economies run by cold-hearted Republicans, poor people decrease in number. No, the reason liberals love to raise tax RATES is that by raising tax rates and slowing the private sector, government becomes more powerful. As job creators face drops in profit, they find themselves unable to maintain the same number of employees... who in turn become unemployed and statistically more likely to support the Democrat machine. While this provides the Democrat party with power, it also hinders GDP which for the last 4 years have hovered just above recession levels. For the past 40 years, we have had many recessions, but they were always followed by recoveries about as robust as the recession within a year or two. Even when we had double-dip recessions, the recovery would be that much stronger when it finally came. The benefit of a recession is that it culls out ineffective businesses and causes employees to retool by learning new skill sets and becoming more productive. This pendulum has been short-circuited by the Obama administration. By using stimulus money to prop up the failing automotive industry for example, he has kept in-place antiquated systems and ongoing payments to unions to keep them as loyal voters. They also prevent GM from fielding competitive cars at similar prices to their competitors. The latest redesign of the GM Malibu is the only car in its field of competitors to get worse scores from Consumer Reports than the previous design. It has a shorter not longer wheelbase for example. GM DID go through bankruptcy, but rather than going through the normal court process where it trimmed and release from the process more ready to do business -- GM was recreated into the fantasy image of Obama and his liberal think-tank friends... this is why we have exploding electric cars that nobody outside of the 1% can afford. "Someday, I hope to get rich and drive an Impala!" said nobody EVER.
Back on November 6th, if Republicans had won the presidency but lost the senate -- they would have been in big trouble. Unable to repeal Obamacare or even get Harry Reid to produce a budget, their weapons for creating recovery would have been limited. While Romney could have likely improved the GDP with removal of Obama's executive orders and by reigning in a runaway EPA, it is unlikely that the economy would thrive with Obamacare still in place. With the help of the liberal media, we would likely be heading for a future of incessant "Blame Romney" without any liberals being able to actually recall anything Romney did. There is a chance that we would have won the senate in 2014 and been able to really generate a robust recovery -- but we'll focus on the bright-side of losing. Obama now faces a similar though opposite problem by not having control of the House. In the last several days, Obama has been further limiting energy development to mitigate the economic boom that might create while Obamacare is starting to become a layoff machine -- it is difficult to imagine a huge number of people having to keep 2 part-time jobs because of Obamacare NOT being a problem for the President. In the past, Obama has avoided this in blue states by giving waivers to unions and other allies. This may not be enough to avoid public outcry in the near future -- and may just anger more those not benefitting from the waivers, especially in the red states. Obama does have control over the monetary system via the fed and will be printing money at a rapid pace -- which hurts the future of the country but makes short-term problems less apparent, but the monetary tools to prop up an economy have largely been exhausted during Obama's first term. Interest has been 0% for a good while, and we can't pay people to borrow. On top of that, the huge borrowing of stimulus money has not only lowered the nominal credit rating, but the actual credit security of the country -- it is harder for banks to loan when the financial system is leveraging itself beyond sane levels. This will further retard economic growth. The last resort would be to raise "taxes on the rich" which would both make Obama look like a hero to those suffering under his policies -- and further lead to increased unemployment and welfare use. This would have in turn be blamed on rich people laying off employees because they are cold bastards -- we already see this with the flurry of companies that have had to lay out tens of thousands of employees as Obamacare is becoming the law (curse) of the land. On a side note, I hope the medical device needed to save YOUR life was already invented before Obamacare or you may be @#$@ out of luck. With an economy in utter failure and the populace in need of a savior, that would be the time for Obama to step in with government buying more and more of the failing private sector as was the case with GM. That said, his power to do so is limited -- while Obama can use Sequestration as blackmail to get some of his way -- and may just as happily embrace Sequestration... it is unlikely that even John Boehner will cave enough to give Obama enough new wealth to continue his socialization strategy.
While many, including myself, have had thoughts of letting the Democrats have their tax hikes so the 52% that supported Obama can feel the pain of their decision, I have had second thoughts based on the aforementioned process. Considering the absurdity of the bias in most of the media, raising taxes and plunging the country into a recession will end up being blamed on the House, and if the government ends up "rescuing" more of the destroyed economy, it will be praised as "savior". Looking at the electorate from 2012, we can no longer count on educated Americans to think far ahead and understand below-the-surface complexities in issues. We see the Democrats enacting early voting and possibly even EMAIL voting so that an uninformed, unmotivated electorate can have just as much or even MORE power than those who understand the under-workings of policy. Seeing an electorate vote itself into economic slavery while simple-mindedly and naively patting itself on the back, even praising itself for not being a "bigot" like the other side -- is the biggest alarm for this country since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The most likely scenario where this trend reverses and the masses flock to the Republican tent -- is that which we saw in 1980. Jimmy Carter had the same economic genius of Barack Obama and had the same results -- limited to one term, his damage was likely minimal to what we will see in the next four years. The best hope for this country is that in 2016 we end up with a President who throws off the economic shackles as Reagan did in 1980. We saw the youth surge to the Republican party after that event -- and a similar scenario is likely in the next 4 to 8 years... BUT, we cannot allow the further socialization of the country which would effectively innoculate the country from resurging again in the future. In order to do that, we MUST hold the line with the House of Representatives. This is no time for surrender -- the majority of the country may fail to appreciate it, but they now need us far more than ever.
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