Drudge Report this morning…
100 Days Until Taxmageddon
Sunday will mark the start of the 100-day countdown to “Taxmageddon” – the date the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2013:
In this economy? We need somebody as president who understands business in this country. We need somebody who has been successful as a businessman. We can debate politics all day long but at the end of the day we need customers coming in the door who have money to pay us. If the government is going to take more of their money via these new taxes then what is this going to do to our businesses?
When you hire someone and increase employment does that raise or lower your taxes? The arguement that higher taxes on the wealthy hold back employment is nonsense.
The taxes do not impact us as operators? Do our businesses operate in a vacuum? Every dollar that goes to government is a dollar that could be spent in our restaurants (speaking in a very narrow sense). For instance, A 3.8 percentage tax on every house sale after the first of the year? That is a ton of money taken out of private hands by itself.
There is a four year history to look at concerning the approach to the ills of this economy. Name on thing that has been done to encourage and help business? Starting from the top we have the highest corporate income tax in the world. Would a big corporation look at that and not be influenced when they select a country in which to do business? Our energy costs are going to escalate significantly because coal mines are going out of business due to new EPA regulations. The government has done everything they can to discourage, deter and stop oil drilling in this country while incidentally giving 2 billion to Petromas in Brazil to help them drill offshore. A pipeline from Canada has been stopped that would have provided thousands of jobs and brought natural gas into the southern U.S. Meanwhile the administration invests taxpayer dollars in 8 green energy companies that have gone bankrupt after they made some political donations of course. Is there a possibility that the higher energy costs are going to effect our businesses and the income of our customers? Oh, and what about General Motors? Obama mentioned recently that the bailout was so successful that he is thinking about using the same formula for other industries. Look at GM’s stock. Note that they still owe 45 billion to the taxpayers. Note that GM has asked the government to remove themselves from their picture because they are having trouble hiring the best people now because the government is so involved in GM’s affairs. All the while GM is shifting more and more of their investment funds and business to China and taking jobs with them. Ditto General Electric.
What is the current state of credit facilities available for business? My business does not have any loans but I am ready to do a fairly significant remodel. Because cash is king a tough economy I made a call to a firm we have dealt with over the years. Usually we can borrow up to about 200k without a lot of hassle or paperwork. Nothing has changed with regard to our balance sheet and our locations are profitable. We were told we could get 75k but we would have to go through all the hoops just as if we were applying for a big loan and as if we were a new business to them.
Did anyone notice the headline today about a business poll that was taken? It was reported that 55% of all small businessmen would not start a new business today mainly because of the economic uncertainty of this government.
Rising energy costs, increasing regulations, tight or no credit even for creditworthy customers and a new healthcare system that is going to be costly to say the least.
What in the past four years gives us any clue that business conditions are going to improve in the next four years if things do not change?
And medical costs are going to up regardless of the spin that it is not. The original estimate was 850 billion and the latest estimate is 1.8 trillion. They have taken 750 billion out of medicare already to help pay for Obamacare. And all this malarky about being able to keep your own private policy. Watch out what happens when the first big company drops their insurance and transfers their employees healthcare to the government. Every other company will have to do the same or they will not be competitive. No choice. I have several medical doctor acquaintances. None of them are happy. Any that do Medicare related work are having their payments from Medicare reduced. In this country today according to information I have read, we have just about enough doctors and we are short nurses. What do we think the addition of (estimate range) 20 to 30 million more patients is going to do?
Someone suggested that I stop listening to Fox News. Well, on one hand one might say the problem is listening to any of major media who, according to the majority of the public via the latest poll, think that they are very biased. But one might suggest that developing one’s opinions from the media at all is dangerous. There is a tremendous amount of information out there if one wishes to access it. On one hand it is easier to access and on the other hand our schools are doing such a poor job of teaching students how to think for themselves that maybe accessing the information would not do any good. Students cannot think for themselves; they come out of school pre-disposed to a particular philosophy. They know so little of the history of our country which is so important to our understanding of events today. Many of our founding fathers talked about things that we should be aware of in the affairs of government. They expressed their fears and warnings that if we did not read, think, participate and work to keep freedoms that we would lose them. It happens so slowly that most people do not hardly notice. One day it will be to late unless we again begin to pay attention to who we elect and what they do after we elect them. If they promise to do certain things when they are asking for our votes then we should hold them accountable for those promises. We should hold our elected officials to a higher standard than the common man in the street. If he or she betrays our trust they should be removed from office no matter to which party they belong.