Raising and Cutting Taxes - The Wrong Question

The recent Democratic National Convention featured some talk about raising and cutting taxes for people of different economic status.

Rather than ask the question, should we raise or not cut tax for the wealthy, the middle class, the poor, etc, I think people should simply ask, is it right and OK to impose their wills and agendas on other people and force them to pay for their causes?

We have to pay taxes for government spending. Government spends money on things that are driven by people's causes and political agendas. Everyone pig piles onto this spit fire jockeying for their own cause to be paid for, which means forcing other people, likely even your friends and family, to pay for your cause, if your cause is one of the things funded.

That is one of the most selfish, self-centered, mean, manipulative, and evil things an individual can do. Force someone else to do something against their will. It flies directly in the face of liberty, and it is morally wrong and a despicable trait.

If a friend, through their manipulative ways, forced you to pay for some work to be done on their house or one of their family members' house, how would you feel about them? Would you want to keep them as a friend? Or would you think it fair?

This is what's involved with trying to get representatives of government to manipulate the purse strings of a centralized legally-enforced tax system and manipulate a central bank to do their bidding. Do you think that's ok? Or do you think it's selfish, manipulative, and evil?

We're in a Recession! (of useful information about the economy)

So, a recession means, per the National Bureau of Economic Research's definition, that there is a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months". Yet, when I venture out of my home, be it in Virginia, Kansas, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, as I have recently; or as I drove across country from California to Virginia last November, restaurants are always packed to the gills with people, people are out buying things at stores, shopping malls are packed, and most everyone I know is gainfully employed. And as a business owner, its damn near impossible to hire people, people are demanding higher rates, and people are negotiating versus just clamoring for jobs. Furthermore, my company has more and more work coming our way than we can handle.

None of these observations are indicative of a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months". And I don't live an isolated life. I venture out of the home and socialize with friends and family. I travel frequently for business so I get to see other parts of the country. I had the unique opportunity to take a long and leisurely drive across country from California to Virginia last year to see close up and personal how people were living. And I run a business that works with other businesses in a technology field, and thus I have a day-to-day up close and personal view of what the economy is doing at a micro-economic level for business. In other words, I'm not reading in a book or newspaper somewhere about what the economy is doing, I'm living in it.

Yet, I will occasionally hear that we're in a recession. Who's conveying this message? Most of where I hear this is coming from mainstream media. Is it true? An ivory white tower organization and bunch of pinheads can say we're in a "significant decline of economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months". But as I live and participate in this economy, it seems to me to be a bold faced lie. You can paint a picture however you want with facts and figures, but when it doesn't jive with reality of day to day life, you have to wonder about the source of this information.

I guess if stated enough times, people will start to believe it, and we'll start to behave as if we are in a recession. But then again, remember, it's an "election year". Come November, after the election, depending on the results, we'll magically have been transported into a new economy. And everyone will forget the dire straits we were in leading up to that day we all went into a building, pulled a few levers, and collectively erased from memory the fact that we were ever in a recession.