"Money it's a crime. Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie."- Pink Floyd
Years ago I lived in Bolivia. One of the major sources of wool there comes from llamas and to a lesser extent from alpacas. In order to harvest the wool from the llamas, the farmers usually kill and skin it. For the llama, giving wool is a one-time deal. You could say the llama gives up everything to provide wool to the farmers.
I always thought this was a strange way to gather wool, since I knew about the process of shearing sheep. Shearing preserves the sheep which can provide wool for many years. I wondered, why kill off the llama when you could just sheer the wool? (Since I left Bolivia, I learned that some farmers did indeed sheer the llamas instead of skin them.)
We are at an interesting crossroads in the United States. For the first time we have a statist liberal in the White House, a heavily statist Congress, and statist control of the Democratic party. What this means for the country, is that radical liberal ideals have very few impediments in the federal government. Radical liberal ideals include funding giganormous welfare programs, redistributing wealth, punitive taxation, leveling income, and, of course, increasing government control over all aspects of our lives.
Liberals have always sheared the American people through taxes, which raises money for a grossly obese government, controls spending and the society in specific ways (for example, by giving tax breaks to married people to encourage marriage), and punishes certain segments of the population (for example, those deemed to be too rich).
However, with this new administration, the wool shearers have turned into llama skinners. Instead of preserving some Americans to give wool for another day, these llama skinners are content to kill off a segment of the population in order to provide enough money to fund their version of government and fulfill their statist agenda.
President Obama made his infamous comment about "spreading the wealth" during his campaign. In cahoots with Congress, that translates into overtaxing those who make $200,000 (or is it $150,000? or maybe $100,000?) or more. The plan is to raise the top tax rate to 40% and there is talk of a "surcharge" on the rich of 5% to 6% as well. Capital gains taxes will rise. FICA taxes will increase as well for the rich. Corporate taxes take their share. For business owners, withholding and unemployment taxes take another cut. Cap and trade taxes could cost more than 5%, increasing year by year. Health care taxes will add to current medical spending and will grow unwieldy toward the rush into bureaucratic overload (think Medicare). States, forced to an ever increasing demand, have raised their top income tax rates to 10%. Added together, these taxes could take a hefty 70% from the wealthy to pay for the new slew of social and environmental programs at the core of liberalism.
The question remains, who are these "rich" whom liberals demonize as the greedy elite who destroyed the US economy? Who will fund the ever-controlling government and pay for welfare? Are they all CEOs of Enron or AIG? Are they all Wall Street moguls? In other words, who are the llama skinners going after and what is the harm in gathering wool from those who can afford it?
Most of the Americans on Obama's hit list are small business owners. They own and operate businesses and are the top employers (apart from - surprise - the government) in the United States. As an example of a small business owner, I know quite a few printers. Some are very successful and are, according to Obama, rich. Let's say one of these successful printers employs 20 people in his print shop and makes $200,000 a year. Along comes the Obama tax scheme and takes 70% of my friends's salary, leaving him $60,000 a year.
How does my "greedy," rich friend react? He cuts back on spending. He cuts the number of employees, increasing unemployment. He doesn't buy new equipment and press manufacturers go out of business. He finds his "new" salary inadequate to pay for the home he's lived in for 15 years and is forced to move. He doesn't buy a new car and the government has to take over another automobile manufacturer. He cannot afford a new computer, cell phone, iPod, or plasma TV. He thinks to himself, "Why should I work so hard anymore since the government is going to take my money anyway? I can work half as hard and make $100,000 and keep more of it than when I made $200,000." Cutting his income reduces the amount of taxes the government takes in and reduces government income.
Now think of not one, but tens of millions of business owners who will be affected by the statist government tax scheme. The "poor" didn't have any federal tax increases (let's pretend here) yet the federal government has succeeded in killing off small business and, by extension, the economy of the United States. Government has switched from shearing to skinning.
This is the essence of our llama skinning government. In the name of Robin Hood redistribution, the spending and taxing scheme created by this statist government will have a few unintended consequences - it will skin small businesses - the backbone of our national economy - and kill them off.
Write your congressional representatives and your senators today and tell them you do not agree with their radical liberal ideals to sock it to the "rich." Do not let our government shearers become llama skinners. There are better ways of maintaining the economy and funding government programs than having small businesses give up their skins to the government.
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