Things just go from bad to worse when we rely upon our government to fix it. They came to help, and spent $700+ billion. They had to help again and spent $400+billion. Lo and behold, it didn’t help at all. In fact, the incompetence of Tim Geithner the tax payers are currently on the hook for $165 million in bonuses to the should be defunct AIG. Now, that may not seem like a lot in the scheme of things, but to those of us living in the real world, instead of President Obama’s world where money seems to grow on trees, it is a tremendous amount of money. Let me put it this way, just give me that bonus money, and I am sure the economy will be stimulated just fine.
Now, to try to cover their black eye, the democrats are scrambling to try to tax the bonus money away from the AIG execs, and any other companies that receive bail out money. The disappointing thing is that many of the House Republicans have joined in on this pitchfork like assault on the company, without any thought of the consequences. Fortunately, this time it is Senate Republicans that are making the congress slow down and reconsider their actions. The democrats are trying to hurry the legislation through, taxing 90%+ of the bonus money.
According to an article posted at Fox News, the bill would not only tax bonuses in the future, but would be retroactive to January of 2009. Isn’t that a great idea? The government deciding that they can go back in time and take money away by taxes that you earned in the past? Now, I know that many people are upset about these bonuses, and I am one of them. But, can we not see the precedent that is set by this thinking? There are at least two principles that are very serious in nature here. First, the idea of the government taxing 90-100% of any one’s income is ludicrous. Secondly, the idea of taxing money that was made before legislation was passed. Simply put, if the government decides that you make too much money, then they can pass legislation to go back and get “their share.” Of course, we invited this kind of problem by electing a man that promised class warfare–taxing people more if they make more than a predetermined amount of money ($250,000 currently).
The bottom line here is that the government needs to stop helping. None of this would be an issue if they had not foolishly decided to spend nearly $800 billion to bail out companies that were practicing bad business and running themselves out of business. AIG would not have tanked the whole economy…they would have restructured, and cut the fat. They would have cut out the unprofitable sections of the business, and probably would have recovered. But, even if they failed, some other company would step up to fill the void. It happens every time if the government doesn’t decide to “help”. That is why we are a capitalist nation, not a socialist nation. If you haven’t figured it out yet, socialism has never worked, and the Obama Administration’s new flavor isn’t working either. It just causes more and more problems.
We do not need more legislation trying to fix a bad problem. This administration messed up. They appointed Geithner (who is supposed to be the smartest man in America, and yet can’t figure out how to pay his own taxes) to the Treasury Secretary. He has blown every opportunity to improve the economy, only making it worse. It is time to stop trying to fix things with bad principles. But, I know that probably isn’t going to happen. We will see more of the same in the months ahead. We will see the congress rushing to try to fix things that they “didn’t see coming” and yet are so obvious to the rest of us.
Note to companies: if you don’t want the government running you, don’t take their tainted money!
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