From the Beaufort Observer.

Is he for releasing Guantanamo prisoners, or not?

Is he for higher taxes, or not?

Is he for Israel, or not?

This excerpt is a good summary of why higher taxes and ‘stimulus’ spending just don’t work:

Also, he said that Obama has plans to raise taxes on US companies by $190 billion. And there’s when I quit, just gave up. If Obama raises corporate taxes, who does he think will pay them? Big companies don’t pay taxes. They just add them to the product they manufacture and pass it on down the line, When Wal-Mart receives that product, they add on a bit for profit and an extra bit to cover the higher cost and then stack it on the shelves. Then Susie Shopper comes along and buys it, paying the accumulated taxes along with the store’s profit. Or maybe Susie doesn’t buy it ’cause the extra few cents make it too expensive for her budget.

When gas was so high last year, the price of Georgia peaches went up. The price went up because the price for the gas to run the truck to bring the peaches to the grocery store went up. I knew the reason – all of us shoppers knew it. Raising prices at one end of the process simply raises the cost of the product when it gets to the consumer. It doesn’t take a math genius to realize that raising taxes on companies will raise the price of the end product and consumers will have to pay that price to get the product. Maybe the President just never shopped for groceries. Maybe the President just doesn’t understand how things work after all.

I would add that there are two other things companies can do in response to higher taxes (and therefore less cash available to run their business).

1.  They can reduce the number of employess, which creates more unemployment. Which means a greater burden on the tax payer.

2.  They can reduce profits, which means less income for superannuation funds, which means more need for government support for retired people. Which means a greater burden on the tax payer.

The same observations apply equally in Australia.

My advice to President Obama and Kevin Rudd, and Gordon Brown: If you don’t understand something, leave it alone.

Ill-planned tinkering in the financial system caused this crisis to start with. More ill-informed tinkering is not going to get us out of it.