Colin McNickle takes on the misdirection of liberals:
To fully comprehend liberalism, one must fully understand deception. For that is what contemporary liberalism has become -- one long series of clever deceptions.
Liberals -- more "progressives" and rank socialists than anything remotely resembling liberalism's original meaning, rooted in free individuals and the free markets required to sustain them -- will dismiss such a contention as "more conservative bloviating." Hardly. The proof surrounds us early and often in this new year. The liberals' playbook for Social Security "reform" is a good place to start.
Whether it be liberal politicians, think tanks or media, the public is being bombarded with this supposed "truth" -- private accounts are a nonstarter that will leave the poor destitute and abandon our elderly. Tax increases must be enacted if we are to "save" the Rooseveltian entitlement program, they say. The liberal tax increase of choice is one on "the rich." Social Security taxes -- 12.4 percent of total wages; half paid by the employee with the other half matched by the employer -- were not collected after incomes reached $94,200 in 2006. (The amount is indexed annually.) Liberals, and the legions of the gullible who play the class-envy game, paint this as wrong. The rich must pay their "fair share," they huff and puff and snap their braces.But there's a dirty major truth liberals are loath to discuss.
Workers who do not pay Social Security taxes on income over the limit -- often referred to as "the cap" -- also do not receive benefits for income over the limit, reminds Peter Ferrara, director of entitlement reform at the Institute for Policy Innovation and a senior fellow at the Free Enterprise Fund. Thus, "If the taxable limit is raised, more income will be counted toward future benefits as well, leaving little net gain over the long run," he wrote recently for National Review Online. If liberals get their way -- raising the taxable Social Security income cap to up to $150,000 -- Mr. Ferrara says those wage earners could pay as much as $7,000 more in annual taxes. It's a killer for small businesses and the self-employed.Lifting the payroll cap cancels out the Bush tax cuts. The outcome will "retard the economy and produce less tax revenue than expected," he says. After all, the more something is taxed, the less of it is produced. Should liberals be successful in rescinding those tax cuts, it would be an unparalleled, growth-killing double tax increase. The liberals' Social Security "reform" of choice is nothing more than populist pap that, sold as a "fix," actually sets up the economy for years of negative "returns."
In real numbers, as the Cato Institute and Carriage Oaks Investments calculated it (and as reported by The Wall Street Journal), low-wage workers could double their annual income in a long-term private account (based on investing 10.6 percent of one's paycheck over 45 years). A Social Security benefit of $8,500 a year would be $17,000 annually from a private account. An average wage earner could more than double his annual retirement income in a private account ($15,200 vs. $39,000). A high-wager worker would more than quadruple his annual retirement income in a private account ($22,600 vs. $94,000). Simply put, liberals are lying about Social Security reform. It's a shameless act of self-preservation aimed at perpetuating the Dependent Society. It is a moral bankruptcy that liberals are trusting the general public's ignorance will shield. And thus far, sadly and tragically, the liars are winning.
Then there's the liberals' much ballyhooed plan to allow Medicare to negotiate "lower" prices for the far too large prescription drug entitlement that they want to be even larger. The liberal spiel is that those big, bad, dastardly pharmaceuticals will be forced to stop "gouging" the public and lower their prices if forced to negotiate lower prices for the government's big-block purchasing.
Sorry, but it simply isn't so. In fact, exactly the opposite would happen. And it's a textbook lesson in the "seen" vs. the "unseen," straight from the teachings of Frederic Bastiat. Proffered the 19th-century French economist: "In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them."
And our purses are less tapped if government relies on economic laws instead of political expediency. But that seldom happens. And it's certainly not happening with liberals in the prescription drug "negotiation" debate. As David Hogberg, a Ph.D. scholar with the National Center for Public Policy Research, notes, "Drug companies will have all the incentive to push their prices higher in the private sector, since higher prices in the private sector mean a higher 'average' price and, hence, bigger reimbursements from Medicare." There's ample evidence this is true. Average prescription drug prices are 7 percent to 10 percent above what they otherwise would be, says Dr. Hogberg, citing research by the government's own National Bureau of Economic Research.
The bottom line -- the "unseen" -- is that "insurance companies will have to charge higher premiums to cover the costs of those drugs," Hogberg says. "Higher health insurance costs mean that it will be harder for employers and individuals to afford health insurance, and a higher number of uninsured will be the result." And liberals say it's conservatives who are in bed with Big Drug, eh?
As was noted in "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli: "Men are so simple and yield so readily to the wants of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer himself to be tricked." Liberals at the forefront of the Social Security "reform" movement and those pushing for negotiated "lower" Medicare prescription drug prices are lying to justify their existence. It is a trickery that is a treachery that must not be allowed to prevail.
Perhaps calling liberals "lieberals" is a good place to start the fight.
Any Questions?
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