Tag Archives: Debt

News

Twinkies company liquidates due to demands of greedy labor union

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The Wall Street Journal explains.

Excerpt:

Hostess Brands is going to liquidate, a blow to lovers of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and Drake’s Coffee Cakes all around the globe.

But CEO Gregory Rayburn told CNBC today that as the company winds down its operations after failing to reach an agreement with a union, it will try to sell its various brands. There are 30 separate brands under the companies sugary umbrella.

[…]Rayburn, a restructuring veteran brought in for the bankruptcy, did not shy away from blaming the striking bakers’ union for the liquidation after the company put out an ultimatum earlier this week for them to return to work or face this consequence. He told the television network the union hasn’t “returned our calls in a couple of months.”

There is a silver lining to this story, though:

The reason: insurmountable (and unfundable) difference in the firm’s collective bargaining agreements and pension obligations, which resulted in a crippling strike that basically shut down the company… [the company] was unable to survive empowered labor unions who thought they had all the negotiating leverage…  until they led their bankrupt employer right off liquidation cliff.

[…]Hostess’ numerous brands will be bought in a stalking horse auction by willing private buyers, however completely free and clear of all legacy labor and pension agreements which ultimately led to the company’s liquidation.

Now that’s progress. But what causes union bosses to be so uninformed and ignorant of basic economics? How is it that they do not understand how businesses work?

Consider this quote from Richard Trumka about the looming fiscal crisis:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has declared there’s no fiscal cliff and any address of runaway government spending is just “a manufactured crisis.”

[…]”‘Take what the media are calling ‘the fiscal cliff.’ There is no fiscal cliff!” Trumka thundered at a National Mediation Board Conference Thursday, sounding like an alcoholic pleading for one last swig well before he hits rock bottom.

[…]”What we’re facing,” he said Thursday, “is an obstacle course within a manufactured crisis that was hastily thrown together in response to inflated rhetoric about our federal deficit.

“But all the deficit chatter has distracted us from our real crisis — the immediate crisis of 23 million unemployed or underemployed workers. It’s time to protect Social Security benefits. It’s time to protect Medicare and Medicaid benefits. And it’s time to raise taxes for the richest 2%,” he went on.

In short, Trumka is arguing that there’s no such thing as too much government spending, that deficits don’t matter and that entitlements cannot be cut. Such denialist thinking is beyond irresponsible in the face of a $16 trillion debt, highest on global record and a sign of an irrational agenda often followed by would-be tyrants.

Trumka is trying to intimidate congressional Democrats into intransigence on a debt deal with Republicans to restore the solvency of the U.S. Instead, he wants them to stand fast on the idea that the debt, deficit and entitlements can be addressed simply by taxing higher-income earners who already account for more than half of federal income-tax revenue.

This is the kind of irresponsible thinking that has triggered riots in Greece and Spain — a belief that the money is there and only the meanness of austerity is keeping the common man from his share.

In reality, the money is not there — the pot is empty. Medicare and Social Security are now on “unsustainable paths,” paying out more in benefits than they take in, with their trust funds projected to run dry by 2024 and 2033, according to their own trustees.

Socialism is meeting its natural end — which, in the words of former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is when it “runs out of other people’s money.”

Unions don’t make anything on their own, only businesses do. And they just don’t understand that. They don’t understand that at some point it is possible to suck too much blood from the host so that the host dies.

I feel bad for the conservatives who are forced to join these labor unions and pay dues to greedy union bosses who don’t understand capitalism or economics. My recommendation is that individual states pass right-to-work laws. Right-to-work states have created FOUR TIMES as many jobs as forced unionization states, since 2009. That’s what happens when you embrace freedom and capitalism.

News

Obama calls for $1.6 trillion of new taxes as economy faces a new recession

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Do you raise taxes in a recession? Obama once thought that raising taxes would hurt a recovery and hamper job creation.

Fox News reports on what Obama the President thinks now.

Excerpt:

President Obama, ahead of his first press conference since winning re-election and a meeting later this week with congressional leaders, staked out his starting point for fiscal cliff negotiations — $1.6 trillion in tax hikes. 

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made clear that the president is sticking by his original budget plan, which includes $1.6 trillion in new revenue, by raising taxes on households making more than $250,000. 

[…]Republicans, though, are adamantly opposed to raising tax rates, despite a willingness to deal on closing loopholes and deductions.

[…]On Tuesday he met with labor leaders and liberal groups, telling them he would stand behind his campaign pledge to make top earners pay more in taxes.

“We’re prepared to stand up to make sure there is shared sacrifice here, so the rich actually start paying their fair share and the middle class don’t get soaked for that,” said AFL-CIO labor union federation President Richard Trumka.

At issue is an annual U.S. budget deficit that now is routinely above $1 trillion and a national debt that has risen to near $16.5 trillion.

Washington politicians have just over seven weeks, including breaks for the Thanksgiving holiday next week and the Christmas holiday season, to avert the year-end fiscal cliff.

$1.6 trillion of tax increases won’t hurt the middle class?

This article from Arthur C. Brooks addresses that point.

Excerpt:

On average, failed attempts to close budget gaps relied 53 percent on tax increases and 47 percent on spending cuts. Successful consolidations averaged 85 percent spending cuts and 15 percent tax increases. Some of the most successful financial comebacks–like Finland’s in the late 1990s–involved more than 100 percent spending cuts, so that taxes could be lowered. The spending cuts by the successful countries centered on entitlements and government personnel.

Now let’s look at the moral argument against raising taxes. Why does the president want to increase America’s tax burden? You may think it’s just a way to increase revenues and reduce the deficit. But even the president knows he can’t solve the fiscal crisis by helping himself to bigger and bigger chunks of the income of America’s most successful people. Even if individuals earning more than $200,000 were taxed at a 100 percent marginal rate–and we confiscated their passports so they could not flee–the take would come to $1.27 trillion, or just 77 percent of this year’s deficit.

For the administration, it’s not about the money–as we have heard again and again, it’s about “fairness.” The president believes that we will be a better nation if we redistribute more money from those who have more to those who have less. How much more do we need to redistribute until our system is fair?

As you ponder this question, remember the facts: The wealthiest 5 percent of Americans already account for 59 percent of federal income taxes. Nearly half of our citizens pay no federal income taxes at all–yet two-thirds of us believe that everybody should at least pay something, even if just to remind ourselves that government isn’t free. The Tax Foundation reports that the percentage of Americans who are net takers from the tax system is nearing 70 percent.

Note that even if you confiscated the passports of the wealthy, as communists tend to do, they would not agree to work for free voluntarily – they would stop working and do other things with their time instead. Perhaps Obama’s plan involves forcing the rich to continue to work while confiscating the fruits of their labor to distribute to his non-working constituencies. That would be slavery, which is not surprising if you know your history of slavery in the United States. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, after all, and William Wilberforce was a Conservative.

The right way to solve this problem is with spending cuts and shutting down duplicate programs, waste and entire federal departments that are unconstitutional. But since we re-elected Obama, this is unlikely to happen. The Democrats are the party of big government and they will pass the costs of big government onto the middle class and their employers. When you tax the rich, you tax job-creating businesses and job-creating investors. You lose jobs. You make more people dependent on government. That’s what “making the wealthy pay their fair share” really means.

Commentary

How would raising taxes on the rich affect middle class working families?

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Investors Business Daily explains.

Excerpt:

Raising taxes on all those above $250,000 as Obama proposes would raise just $34 billion. That’s a whopping 3% of our $1.1 trillion deficit. Even if you seized all their income, it would only run the government for three months.

So the idea that taxing the wealthy will reduce the deficit is false. This is just class warfare, pure and simple.

Even so, Obama compounds the fib by going on to say his tax hike will have virtually no impact on small businesses. He notes, for example, that 97% of all small businesses would be untouched by his tax hike.

True, but irrelevant, as Treasury Department data show. For while there are 34.8 million small businesses in America, 30 million of those employ no workers.

Just 4.8 million, or 12%, employ workers. But an even smaller number — just 1.2 million — earn 91% of all the small business income. These are Obama’s “rich.”

But while they make up just 3% of all small businesses, they employ a stunning 54% of the total private U.S. workforce.

They are, in short, the nation’s job creators. And their owners, who report their small-business income on their personal income tax return, will be taxed at a higher rate by Obama.

So don’t be fooled. It’s not really the “wealthy,” as Obama says, who’ll get taxed. It’s small businesses. And it will have a devastating impact on jobs.

How devastating? A recent study by Ernst & Young noted that Obama’s tax hike, far from being “balanced,” would cost 700,000 people their jobs.

And it will no doubt kill hundreds of thousands if not millions more jobs in the future as would-be entrepreneurs decide not to start businesses in such a hostile tax and regulatory environment.

It’s important for us to realize that the people voting for Obama have no idea about these facts. A lot of people are annoyed that we lost the election last week. I think that if we want to win the next one then we have to start to think about becoming more persuasive with the people around us. We have to learn to deflate the slogans of those on the left with facts.