If taxes only concealed hidden costs of what we buy, we’d be lucky, but taxes are destructive in another hidden way. Suppose I want to hire you to repair my computer. Having the work done is worth $200 to me, and performing the work is worth $200 to you. The transaction occurs because we have a meeting of the minds. Suppose Congress imposes a 30 percent income tax on you. That means that if you repaired my computer, you would receive not $200, what it was worth to you to do the job, but instead $140 after taxes. You might say the heck with repairing my computer; spending time with your family is worth more than $140.

You might then offer that you’d do the job if I paid you $283. That way, your after-tax earnings would be $200 — what doing the job is worth to you. There’s a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $283. So it’s my turn to say the heck with it.

A former Soviet economist told me, “it’s easy to be a socialist in America. There’s always food on the shelves in the grocery store. The Soviet Union stretched 8 time zones but couldn’t produce a light bulb.” The moochers don’t care to understand that it is capitalism that produces everything they have and consume. AWD thought it was a sure sign of the death of America when Obama’s campaign chair Stephanie Cutter said of Mitt Romney, “it’s clear that while Romney was at Bain, he was only concerned with profits rather than creating jobs.” I crap you negative. The campaign chair of a sitting US President has zero idea about how wealth is created in America. But neither does her boss. Because neither has ever nor will they create one penny of wealth in their miserable lives! Academics and community organizers…professional moochers who live off of the wealth of others!

So who are these billionaires that we should tax the hell out of? Mostly, they are Democrats. Of the richest 10 counties in America, 8 of them voted for Obama in the last election. What should their reward be for their votes and millions in Obama campaign contributions? Pay up, you greedy suckas! There’s lots of redistribution of wealth to be done!

Raise taxes to the 91% tax rate on the super wealthy that moron who writes for the NY Times called for last week! Make it where douche bag Warren Buffet (who always complains about not paying enough taxes) has to siphon gas from his neighbor’s plane to leave Omaha! No left-wing Hollyweird movie star needs more than one house, the greedy bastids! And they won’t be able to afford it with a 90% tax rate! But think of all the ObamaPhones that can be put into the hands of poor chirren and Democrat voters in Cleveland and Detroilet! Make these big-mouth socialists finally put their money (and lots of it) where their pie-holes are!

SPIEGEL: You’ve been the leader of a very successful state for a long time. Returning from your time in China, are you afraid for Singapore’s future?

Mr. Lee: I saw it coming from the late 1980s. Deng Xiaoping started this in 1978. He visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in November 1978. I think that visit shocked him because he expected three backward cities. Instead he saw three modern cities and he knew that communism — the politics of the iron rice bowl — did not work. So, at the end of December, he announced his open door policy. He started free trade zones and from there, they extended it and extended it. Now they have joined the WTO and the whole country is a free trade zone.

SPIEGEL: But has China’s success not become dangerous for Singapore?

Mr. Lee: We have watched this transformation and the speed at which it is happening. As many of my people tell me, it’s scary. They learn so fast. Our people set up businesses in Shanghai or Suzhou and they employ Chinese at lower wages than Singapore Chinese. After three years, they say: “Look, I can do that work, I want the same pay.” So it is a very serious challenge for us to move aside and not collide with them. We have to move to areas where they cannot move.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Mr. Lee: Such as where the rule of law, intellectual property and security of production systems are required, because for them to establish that, it will take 20 to 30 years. We are concentrating on bio medicine, pharmaceuticals and all products requiring protection of intellectual property rights. No pharmaceutical company is going to go have its precious patents disclosed. So that is why they are here in Singapore and not in China.

SPIEGEL: But the Chinese are moving too. They bought parts of IBM and are trying to take over the American oil company Unocal.

Mr. Lee: They are learning. They have learnt takeovers and mergers from the Americans. They know that if they try to sell their computers with a Chinese brand it will take them decades in America, but if they buy IBM, they can inject their technology and low cost into IBM’s brand name, and they will gain access to the market much faster.

SPIEGEL: But how afraid should the West be?

Mr. Lee: It’s stupid to be afraid. It’s going to happen. I console myself this way. Suppose, China had never gone communist in 1949, suppose the Nationalist government had worked with the Americans — China would be the great power in Asia — not Japan, not Korea, not Hong Kong, not Singapore. Because China isolated itself, development took place on the periphery of Asia first.

Honey, You Didn’t Build That

Has Fatah made the difficult transition from terrorist group to mafia? Don’t bet on it. It’s possible to be both.

Most of us know by now that the Palestinians receive more foreign aid money, per head, than any other group, Most of us also know that that money doesn’t necessarily land on the heads of the average Palestinian. From the days when Yasser Arafat controlled the PLO by keeping his hands on the purse strings and stole-borrowed-misplaced about $1.3 billion till the days when Mahmud Abbas and his family took only about $200 million, corruption, at all levels, has played a part. The monopolies established by the Arafat are still very much in place. further handicapping the Palestinian economy. Among the many unique and hopefully inalienable features of the Palestinian condition is that normal economic rules don’t apply.  Corruption and monopoly are major handicaps for the Palestinian economy.

I’m vaguer about the financial mess in Gaza but all indications are they are just as corrupt. The Gazans blame the blockade for their woes and they have a point,  although barely. The Gazans play tunnel tax and that does raise the price of goods. Israel’s decision to allow the import of cars was condemned by the Gaza car dealers because it left them with an inventory of over-priced vehicles.

There is, indeed, such a thing as cultural superiority, and I, for one, think it’s racist to be unwilling to speak about it. It’s racist to pretend that you’re living up to your potential when you’re not. And because I’m no racist, I’ll allow myself the liberty of pointing out why you’re wrong.

Was Mr. Romney really a “racist” to point out that Israel’s success is not an accident? I think not. Israel’s economy is the product of an open-minded commitment to education. Israeli education needs to improve, but still, consider the culture of the Middle East. In Egypt, one study suggests, 45 percent of women are illiterate; in Israel the figure is about 4%. Is Egyptian female illiteracy also a result of the occupation? Or is it the result of culture? Am I a racist for pointing to those numbers?

Or consider universities. Israel, a tiny country with a tiny budget, ranks far beyond all Arab and other Muslim countries, including those of the Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia, which have virtually limitless assets. In a 2009 ranking of the world’s top universities, the Hebrew University ranked No. 102 (shortly thereafter, it climbed to No. 57 on the strength of an award received by a professor of mathematics), Tel Aviv University was No. 114, and the Technion (Israel’s equivalent of MIT) ranked 132.

Yet in contrast, in that same study, there was not a single university in any Muslim country anywhere that made it into the top 250. King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia ranked highest among them at 266, and it was followed by the National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan… at No. 350!

Others are ranked far lower. Is the failure of the Muslim world (parts of which have no budgetary constraints at all) to produce even one single worldclass university the result of the occupation? Or is this a matter of culture? Is one a racist to point this out?

Or what about Fareed Zakaria, himself a Muslim, who had this to say: “In the last 50 years, the West progressed and parts of the non-Western world also began modernizing… [But] the Arab world stayed stuck in primitive political and social arrangements. Arab politics is not culturally unique; it is just stuck in a time warp.” Is Zakaria a Muslim racist?

To begin with, it is the efficiency of capitalism that benefits most people. Among other things, it raises everyone’s living standards and quality of life; expands consumer choices; boosts innovation that reduces the share of low-paying, mind-numbing manual jobs; increases the pool of well-paid professional jobs; gives the poor access to things that only the rich could enjoy a short while ago; promotes the creation of new cures of diseases; extends life expectancy and makes old age much more enjoyable.

The alternative to capitalism — whatever one would like to call it — is the loss of freedom, loss of choices, government corruption, and moral decay. What do we get in return? The vague promise of economic equality.

But in human reality, complete economic equality cannot be achieved. A century of collectivist social experiments around the world has proven three undeniable facts: One, government-enforced economic equality results in a forced inequality of a powerless, impoverished populace ruled by a corrupt elite. Two, the main obstacle to economic equality is human nature. Three, human nature cannot be changed, no matter the effort to re-educate, indoctrinate, or punish the violators.

An essential part of everyone’s human nature is what collectivists are maligning as greed. Generally speaking, it is a normal desire of all humans to achieve a better life for themselves and their children. In a free capitalist system, “greed-driven” achievers engage in lawful productive work, start businesses, and build things. In a restrictive socialist system, to achieve a better station in life, one must either join the corrupt government apparatus, or become part of the criminal underworld with its vast shadow economy. The alternative is to succumb to misery and, very likely, alcoholism or worse. In the end, capitalism brings out the best in people; socialism brings out the worst.

How worthy and moral can an ideal be that punishes achievement and criminalizes human nature?

A report by the Heritage Foundation paints a devastating picture of how politicized the bailout of GM truly was. Heritage notes that even if one accepts president Obama’s premise that the bailout out GM was necessary to prevent massive job losses, “the government could have executed the bailout with no net cost to taxpayers. It could have–had the Administration required the United Auto Workers (UAW) to accept standard bankruptcy concessions instead of granting the union preferential treatment. The extra UAW subsidies cost $26.5 billion–more than the entire foreign aid budget in 2011. The Administration did not need to lose money to keep GM and Chrysler operating. The Detroit auto bailout was, in fact, a UAW bailout.” (Note that the subsidies are higher than the total loss currently attributed to the auto-maker.)

The preferential treatment had two primary components. Despite the fact that the UAW had the same legal status as other unsecured creditors, they recovered a much greater proportion of the debts GM and Chrysler owed the union. And even though bankruptcy typically brings uncompetitive wages down to market levels, UAW members took no pay cuts.

In short, the UAW an Obama administration picked both the “winner” in the deal–the UAW–and the “loser,” aka the American taxpayer.

From the late 19th century, Arab populations grew and prospered where Jews settled (Tel Aviv, Hebron, Jerusalem) and remained stagnant and poor where they didn’t (Gaza, Nablus, Nazareth). Many Arabs found the presence of Jews a great advantage. Thus the Palestinian diaspora is among the best-educated and most competent in the Arab world—and under Israeli rule (the notorious “occupation”) the West Bank was one of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world in the 1980s.

Other Palestinians, however, found Jewish economic leadership an unbearable blow to their pride. Said one to the British Peel Commission in 1936: “You say we are better off: you say my house has been enriched by the strangers who have entered it. But it is my house, and I did not invite the strangers in, or ask them to enrich it, and I do not care how poor it is if I am only master of it.”

Sooner rule in hell than share in heaven. These actors have dominated Palestinian political culture, and terrorized Israeli and Palestinian alike, for generations.

In calling Mr. Romney’s remarks “racist” and blaming Palestinian economic difficulties on Israel’s “occupation,” Mr. Erekat illustrated one of David Landes’s major points: Blaming others for one’s own failures prolongs failure. Even though his own government daily chooses a culture of death, not life, Mr. Erekat wants to blame Israel for Palestine’s woes; no admission here that he and his colleagues might have some role in the suffering of their own people.

Far from being victims, the Palestinians have been coddled by the international community for more than two decades. The Palestinian Authority has not been held responsible for corruption and squandering money, behavior that had no effect on the flow of proportionally huge cash payments.  Nor have they been punished politically for their incitement and intransigence. And it refuses to resettle people from refugee camps into regular housing. Only Palestinians in all the world receive refugee status and UN welfare payments over many generations.

While Israeli economic pressure has played a role, Israel has also transferred millions of dollars of customs and other payments to the PA while always opposing cut-offs in international aid because that might destabilize the Palestinian regime and lead to even more violence. Moreover, World Bank and International Monetary Fund reports have repeatedly said that such pressures werea relatively secondary factor in comparison to the internal flaws of the Palestinian governments and economy. In other words, the Associated Press has dishonestly misrepresented the contents of the reports.

And finally there is one simple, decisive argument. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, for example, have not been under Israeli occupation. So why haven’t they flourished?

Whining eternally that you are a victim and putting your priority on getting sympathy and hand-outs gets in the way of doing what’s necessary to start being successful. Those Third World peoples and countries who have learned these lessons have done well; those who haven’t done so have become basket cases.

Friedman’s economics worked because he had worked. Friedman explained to fellow economists in the 1950s that “theory is to be judged by its predictive power for the class of phenomena which it is intended to ‘explain.’” He rejected ideas that worked in smart men’s heads but failed in working men’s lives. Former Obama cabinet member Austan Goolsbee (Skull & Bones ’91) can afford his bad ideas; his most famous forebear on the University of Chicago faculty couldn’t. The future Nobel Prize winner scooped ice cream in his parents’ in-home parlor, sold fireworks by the roadside, waited tables in exchange for lunch, and peddled clothing and books to his fellow Rutgers undergraduates. Friedman came from the real world. So did his economics.

Friedman sought to persuade adversaries, not demonize them. Friedman shifted from New Dealer to libertarian. If he could be won over, then others could, too. He converted without condemning, and he debated adversaries with unfailing patience and graciousness. When conversing with progressives, the modern-liberal-turned-classical-liberal found it easier to offer counterproposals (e.g., a negative income tax to replace welfare) than to use a word—“no”—that progressives don’t appreciate. “If someone wants to achieve something, it’s easier to say ‘here is a better way of achieving your objectives’ than to say ‘you’re wrong,’” Friedman’s son David, also an economist, told me. “He made arguments that people found hard to answer. He made them politely, and without implying that the people who disagreed with him were stupid or wicked.”

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” If the World’s Greatest Orator turns out to be a one-term president, it is likely to go down as the most memorable utterance of his career. Mitt Romney certainly hopes that happens. HotAir.com’s Ed Morrissey has highlights of Mitt Romney’s response, in a speech yesterday at Irwin, Pa.:

The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn’t build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it’s wrong.

And by the way, the president’s logic doesn’t just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself [sic] up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who have, may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it. . . . The president would say, well you didn’t do that. You couldn’t have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn’t have gone to school without teachers. So you didn’t, you are not responsible for that success. President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that.

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?

There’s a website called didntbuildthat.com with a variety of hilarious treatments of the Obama philosophy. Of course, whoever’s running the site didn’t build that. As he acknowledges, Al Gore did. And hey, remember Julia, Barack Obama’s composite girlfriend? At 42, she starts a Web business. Under President Obama, she didn’t build that.

Anyone who believes in something for nothing is already half on the road to being swindled. Today millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people have reached such a pitch of education that they can believe what Oh’s wife in her simplicity could never credit; that there exists  something for nothing.

Sure there does.

How many people you know are convinced that free government health care, free government cheese, permanent government jobs are only a vote away? How many people you know are eager with excitement, as Oh was trembling in anticipation,  at the glittering prospect of “fundamentally transforming America”. If you had a dollar for every one.

But surely it must be true. It can’t possibly be the case there’s no stash at the end of the rainbow? No political class could be that dishonest, because they’re Americans too and they can’t be lying?

I dream of a day when vintage media covers the important issues, such as how the president’s policies are permanently condemning the nation’s poor to lives of misery.

I wrote last year about the way in which welfare programs lead to very high implicit marginal tax rates on low-income people. More specifically, they lose handouts when they earn income. As such, it is not very advantageous for them to climb the economic ladder because hard work is comparatively unrewarding… Thanks to the American Enterprise Institute, we now have a much more detailed picture showing the impact of redistribution programs on the incentive to earn more money.

…Needless to say, there’s not much reason to earn more income when living standards don’t improve. May as well stay home and goof off rather than work hard and produce… This is why income redistribution is so destructive, not just to taxpayers, but also to the people who get trapped into dependency.

And which candidate continues to press for more and more dependency?

[Does the name] Julia ring a bell … ? If you guessed Obama, pat yourself on the back. Why just yesterday he gutted the Work Requirements From Clinton-era Welfare Reform. As the chart indicates above, there is NO incentive to work and get off the government crutch and the Democrats are pushing forward with agendas to add more.

The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that eventually, you will lose many taxpayers as they give up the ghost and join those already on the teat of government. The reason will be that it is no longer worth having to work over 6 months of the year just to make enough to pay your taxes and then have only a few months of pay to spend on everything else.

Some call the inevitable result ‘Going Galt’. Professor Glenn Reynolds describes it as ‘Middle Class Anarchy’:

When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy…

TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry—the upright citizenry—throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore. If a big enough proportion of the populace—not even a majority, just a largish chunk—decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered…

The whole idea of “The Cloward-Piven Strategy” may seem far-fetched for readers unaccustomed to the idea of a fifth column working — within the government — to collapse the financial system.

I think we have assembled more than enough proof: record use of food stamps (even Spanish language advertisements hawking the benefits of food stamps, presumably to illegal aliens), record use of welfare benefits, record dependence on government-funded health care, and much, much more.

Combined with annual trillion-dollar deficits, the only possible scenario is one of collapse. The laws of mathematics aren’t partisan. The numbers are what they are.

And this president appears bound and determined to “fundamentally transform America” — his words — achieved via an economic catastrophe.

You and I have but one chance to stop this madness on November 6th.