Mr. President, Please Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket

By David M. Bresnahan

Mr. President, you say that you want to help improve the economy and put more people back to work, but I do not understand how that will happen if you raise taxes and go deeper into debt.

Apparently you are not aware that every single person in this country pays taxes, regardless of their income lever. Consequently, when you raise the income tax of high income citizens you will cause everyone in the country to pay more out of their pocket than they do now.

The reason this happens is fairly simple to understand. Consumers buy goods and services from businesses and businesses pay taxes to local, state, and federal governments. Those taxes are a cost of doing business and the money to pay those taxes comes from consumers. In other words, we all pay taxes through the purchases we make. In addition to those indirect taxes the people of most states also pay sales taxes with each purchase. These taxes reduce the buying power of the dollar, and as those taxes go up the buying power of each dollar goes down. That is not a good way to try to improve our failing economy.

There is no such thing as a tax increase that will only impact the wealthy.

The rich people you seem to want to demonize, are often the owners of businesses. In fact, 80 percent of all employees work for a small business, according to the Dept. of Commerce. Taxes are a cost of doing business, and a higher cost of doing business means higher prices to the consumer. This means even the poorest people in the country are paying taxes when they buy goods and services.

I have heard you claim that a tax cut will not result in lower consumer prices, but that is not true. Capitalists know that to make a profit they must compete, and to do so they must provide the best quality for the lowest cost. Consumers will demand it and they will take their money to the company offering the best deal. Let capitalism work.

Our country is deep in debt because we spend more money than we take in. If we do that as businesses or individuals we will get to the point where banks and lenders will shut us off. Our credit limit will be reached and we will be forced to live within our means, or go bankrupt.

Mr. President, may I ask what makes you think that going deeper in debt will do anything other than make the financial problems of our country any better? Where is the logic in that? With all due respect, Mr. President you have reached our nation’s credit limit.

You may think your academic friends have greater credibility than myself of the average American. There are economists and people with lots of letters after their name who have spent many years taking classes in top colleges that would bore me to tears. However, life has taught me some basic principles that might be helpful to you. So I respectfully suggest that you consider this simple solution to your problems…

Cut spending, cut taxes, cut the size of government, and most of all cut all the political fighting and bickering and put this country back on track to greatness before we go belly up.