Bernie Sanders Would Hurt America If Elected

{Round 2 - The Pro will briefly highlight flaws in some of Sanders’ main ideas and the Con will be attempting to argue against them.} Sanders’ Policies Raising taxes on the rich Has proposed a 90% tax rate - he went back on it but after all, he is a politician. Justifies this by claiming that back in the day, the top line tax was around this level. Conveniently leaves out the fact that the level of government spending as a percentage GDP has doubled since around 1950. This boils down to “the rich need to pay their fair share”, which is an emotional appeal, as opposed to a statistically-backed one. This appeals to one’s inner child; we were all taught as children, that if one child has taken more than the rest, then this is “unfair and fundamentally wrong”. Subsequently we believe that it is necessary for someone, a figure of authority, to step in. However, the nobody even entertains the notion that the State has an unfair amount of power, authority, etc.; but that is not the overall point here. Let us examine this whole “fair share” idea. The AGI stands for aggregate gross income; based upon this, we can look at the 2011 IRS data and see “who really is paying their fair share”. The top 1% account for 18.7% of the AGI, yet they pay 35.1% of all taxes. The top 5% account for 33.9% of the AGI, and pay 56.5%. The top 10% account for 44.5% of the AGI, and pay 63.8%. Fair share? Why are so few people being exploited as much as they are? Doesn't that seem like something that someone who fights for equality, should be speaking out against? Of course not, after all, the upper class is the class you are allowed to hate. If one said anything along the lines of, “let us have this central monopoly of force violently coerce poor people into paying twice the amount of the AGI that they hold, people would take issue with that of course; but it is the basic principle of appealing to greed and envy, to say that “this is the class that is not paying their fair share”. Every generation has had this hated class - Marx called them the “bourgeois”, Sanders calls them the “1%”. It is simply the class that one is allowed to despise, contrary to all empirical evidence against such unfounded claims; hatred of the rich is irrational. The LTV does not factor in risk in entrepreneurship - in fact, the only reason we have the ability to use our laptop or phones right now, is because of a rich guy. In ancient times, the richest person could simply pay for all actors, towns, and producers to come to his place of residence, and put on a performance. That would take thousands of years for poor people to view via television. 2. The Demonization of Capitalism Capitalism does very little for the rich. They can generally buy things that we need automated; capitalism exists as the great equalizer. For example, the automobile at first did not diffuse, until the Henry Ford’s Model T was introduced and could be mass produced and owned by many people, creating plenty of jobs as well as giving blacks a chance to move out of the South (which had been dragging them down for years of course). To a large portion, capitalism rarely receives the credit that it deserves, in many times in history and in modern society. We can look at the medical revolution. The reason that hundreds of millions of people are still alive today is because the existence of capitalism allowed medicine to diffuse into third-world countries, while socialism (albeit Sanders is a democratic-socialist) historically is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. 3. Inequality Sanders suggests that we as a nation have a major problem with wealth inequality. This has been the main go-to point for people like him who claim that the gun of government can be used for “equality”. What most don't realize, is that Sanders essentially wants a recreation of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty”. However, the rise of of the wealth gap largely began with the War on Poverty. In 1965, Johnson, the most prominent leftist since Franklin D. Roosevelt, gave the welfare state an unprecedented increase in size. Statistically, the rise in size of the welfare state began slightly after the declaration of the War on Poverty in 1965. The wealth gap has ballooned to the level we have today. If we look at the U.S. poverty rate, it decreased rapidly for years until Johnson’s Great Society legislation where the welfare and welfare state became staples of the American experience. The steep decline in poverty rate would slow and eventually stop. The poverty rate in the early 1970s was actually lower than it was after a full term of Obama, under whom it [poverty rate] hit a staggering 15%. The idea is that we as a country spent all of that money on a war on poverty, create the wealth inequality, and caused the issues we have today. To further look at the reality of this, median income has not increased with the extra spending in the war on poverty. Therefore, it is a poor investment that has actually failed so far. Though let us pretend for a second that Sanders is not spewing pure nonsense. Sanders’ plan says that he would manage to tax 530 billionaires who all have a combined net worth of about $2.6 trillion. Imagine that we tax them all at 100%, that is enough to pay off barely 10% of our national debt. We can not even get started on talking about funding all of the programs he wants - he would not even have enough to create a fair balance sheet. Therefore, claiming that the 1% will pay for just about everything, is just another random statement without any actual evidence. The basic thesis we can see him forming, is that via the theft-racket of the State, we can redistribute wealth from billionaires and spread it to the lower and middle classes in the form of welfare, and refer to this as an “investment”. This has been tried and has failed, but we can break this down by his theories and actual policies, to reach the conclusion that Sanders is the candidate with no real or good ideas, solely surviving off being a demagogue playing off your emotions. 4. Economic Model Let’s start out with his base theories, and how it would work out logically. As far as his tax plan goes, it is basically designed in a vacuum or fixed price model, where he does not anticipate potential reactions within the market amongst people, to start with the idea that he can simply tax the rich, take their money, and switch it over to the poor makes no real, logical sense. Let us say that there is a bank manager, and he is informed that tomorrow, that I (the government) intend to rob the bank. What Sanders would suggest, is that by doing this, the bank will automatically fall to their knees and fork over their money. However, in actuality, the bank manager would hire extra security, notify police, and transfer money out of his vaults to a third party location. Whatever happens, I would not be able to simply take money out of your bank because you know that I’m coming. It just is not going to be able to happen. That is the same thing with taxation. If billionaires are so evil, then why is it that one would expect that if a high-tax rate were to be shot at them, they would just immediately comply and fork over their money. That isn't how it is going to play out, If you tell me [corporation] that you are coming for my money, I’m hiding it, I’m hiring tax lawyers, I’m bribing your entire Senate, House of Representatives, and you can't do anything about it, because I know I need to fight back. Obviously, high taxes are not going to work; the “evil” CEOs are going to fire people, they are going to have to spend less so we get shoddy products, they are going to outsource, and we may see a rise in sweatshops. Why would we not expect that these corporations fight back? This also means that the competitors, small businesses, will take the brunt of the tax and will eventually collapse. As a result, the small businesses can no longer exist. See the “Laffer Curve” - when tax rates are changed, it changes people’s behavior. 5. “Tax-Payer Funded” The state has no money, it has zero money. The State can only tax, which is stealing, print money (inflation), which is stealing from people in the future, and borrow money, which again is a tax on the future generations. The State first needs to use violence in order to accomplish nearly anything. Therefore, whenever you say “Government should ought to do X”, what you are actually saying is that government should hold guns to taxpayers’ heads and demand more money to give them less freedom. This is highly immoral, and it creates a huge upper class known as the State - the group of people with absolute authority - and we have more artificial inequality than ever. That is Bernie’s idea, to use the guns of the State to take, without realizing, that you can't just take money or play with the market, and expect nothing to happen. Every single action has a reaction. This is inescapable, and this whole principle of government being benevolent, is entirely untrue. Sources: http://taxfoundation.org... http://www.sanders.senate.gov... http://www.forbes.com... http://www.economicsjunkie.com...