The Kennedy Space Center, Freedom and Islam, Kennedy and Reagan and Obama

A few years ago, Cunegonde and I visited the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While walking the length of a Saturn-V rocket like the ones that put a man on the moon...  

...I had an unhappy thought: This is a museum, no different from the ones in old Europe, a display of lost glory. This is where we tell the world, and remind ourselves, "We once did great things."

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Freedom in the World is a yearly survey and report by U.S.-based Freedom House that attempts to measure the degree of political freedom and civil rights in every nation around the world. Their reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012 include rankings for 193 countries, including several you have almost certainly never heard of (Kiribati, Palau, Vanuatu, anyone?).

According to the PewResearch Center’s report of January, 2011, 46 countries have Muslim-majority populations.  Of those 46 countries:

• Twenty-nine - 63% - are designated “Not Free.”
• Fifteen - 33% - are designated “Partly Free.”
•  Only two – 4% - (Mali and Indonesia) are designated “Free.”

Another seven countries are 33% or more Muslim. Of those seven:

• Three - 43% - are designated “Not Free.” 
• Four - 57% - are designated “Partly Free.” 
• None are designated “Free.”

So in all: 

• Fifty-three countries - 27% of the world’s total - have either Muslim majorities or large Muslim minorities. 
• Of those 53 countries, 32 - 60% - are designated by Freedom House as “Not Free.” 
• Nineteen - 36% - are designated as only “Partly Free.” 
• Only two - 4% - are designated as “Free.”

Some more statistics: Freedom House designates 49 total countries as “Not Free.” So 59% (29 out of 49) of the countries in the world that are “Not Free” have Muslim majorities, while almost two-thirds of the world’s “Not Free” countries have either Muslim majorities or large Muslim minorities.

Do you spot a pattern here?

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From John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address:  Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Kennedy was speaking to our enemies – most notably the Soviet Union – and to our friends. He was telling everyone that our friends could rely on us, that our enemies should fear us, and that all should respect us. 

Ronald Reagan redeemed Kennedy’s pledge, supporting the survival and the success of liberty in small weak countries like Grenada and Nicaragua, and against large hostile ones like the Soviet Union.

How times have changed. Kennedy also said we were going to send a man to the moon and bring him back. Today we can’t even afford to send him into low earth orbit, and we will not do so again soon. Reagan demanded of a nuclear-armed adversary, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! Today we have a president who apologizes to the mob of a third-world country in a vain, shameful attempt to calm their fury at our very existence.

Today, almost two-thirds of the world’s non-free countries have one thing in common – a large population that adheres to a death-cult masquerading as a great religion. We once had presidents who would oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and success of liberty. No longer. Our enemies no longer fear us, our friends no longer believe they can rely on us, and neither respect us.

Once, we did great things. Once, we could proclaim for all to hear that we would stand strong for freedom throughout the world and that we would send a man to the moon, and no one doubted us. Today we can do neither because we have bankrupted ourselves. Kennedy challenged us to ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. Today he would be laughed at by a childish people who increasingly demand that government take more and better care of them.

We once did great things. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Mitt Romney's Taxes - And Yours

So all the communists are piling on Mitt Romney because his effective tax rate is only about 15%.

Romney can end the discussion and condemnation with a simple statement::

"My effective tax rate last year was about fifteen percent, which everyone understands by now is due to the fact that most of my income is in the form of capital gains, taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income."

"Now that you've all shaken your heads at the unfairness of it all, let me point out that even at the lower rate, I paid more in income taxes last year than all my opponents and President Obama combined."

(Pause for effect.)

"All of them."

(Pause)

"Combined."

"Now, you can argue that capital gains should be taxed at the same high rate as ordinary income. But when you make that argument, remember that the pension funds of police officers, fire fighters, and teachers get much of their income from capital gains. So do the mutual funds you have in your IRA and 401(k). The more government taxes those capital gains away, the less money you will have when you're too old to work any more."

"Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it - especially if President Obama is re-elected."

Head Down to the Welfare Office to Apply for Your Social Security

Your government hasn't made any official announcement yet, but you can now start calling Social Security “welfare.”

It happened at the end of 2011, when Congress failed to return the Social Security tax – what the media misleadingly kept referring to as “the payroll tax” in hopes that you wouldn't notice - to the 6.2% rate it had been until January, 2011. It had been slashed to 4.2%, President Obama claiming that it would help reduce unemployment. Of course, the unemployment rate stuck stubbornly around nine percent all year long. Did Congress decide, “Well, that didn't work, so we might as well return the tax rate to 6.2% and try to keep Social Security semi-solvent”?

Of course not. It's an election year. You don't raise taxes in an election year, dummy.

“But we've been hearing that Social Security is going broke,” you say. “Isn't this going to make it go broke even faster?”

Never fear. The smart guys in Congress have that problem covered. The money that the so-called Social Security trust fund is losing by the tax cut is being replaced by “general revenue.”

What's “general revenue?” Simple. It's ordinary income tax revenue, the kind the IRS gets out of your paycheck every week, and gets a little more of (or refunds some of) every April 15.

No problem, then, right?

Well, here's the problem, which starts with a little digression:

You may have heard that almost fifty percent of all households pay no federal income tax, or get all the tax they paid refunded. A lot of people – most of them taxpayers – think this is wrong. Half the country doesn't pay for aircraft carriers, public highways, veterans' hospitals, food and drug inspectors, TSA agents, environmental protection, bank and securities regulations, and on and on.

“Don't be such a hater,” the non-haters reply. “Maybe they don't pay income tax, but they pay Social Security tax, so stop complaining.” (I hear this argument all the time, from people who are actually permitted to vote and to breed.)

Yes, they do pay Social Security tax, if they're working. But they now pay 32% less Social Security tax than they used to, and you just know that Congress is not going to raise the rate back up to 6.2% soon. So the difference is going to continue to be made up by “general revenue,” or, in other words, more taxes on the people who do pay income tax.

So what do we have here? We have a Social Security tax cut for everyone who has a job, which is then paid for by the half of the population that pays income taxes.

In other words, half the population pays 32% of the Social Security tax of the other half.

“Well, they can afford it, so why shouldn't they?” you hear from the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

Well, lots of things, starting with the fact that it turns Social Security into a welfare program - money the government takes from you to give to someone else, not because they have earned it, but simply because they need it.

Millionaires generally don't get food stamps. They don't generally get public housing (the president and governors are the only exceptions that comes readily to mind). They don't get Medicaid (medical assistance for the needy, not to be confused with Medicare). And they don't get Supplemental Security Income (cash payments to needy aged, blind, or disabled people, not to be confused with Social Security).

They don't get any of these things, because those benefits are based on financial need. The money doesn't come from your IRA, or your ex-employer's pension fund. You get them, from the government (i.e. from other taxpayers) simply because you would otherwise be homeless or would starve or would sicken and die.

Social Security, on the other hand, once was paid to rich and poor, once they'd stopped working, and the amount they received was based on what they had paid in Social Security taxes over their working lives. But now you hear politicians on both the right and the left saying that one of the things we'll probably need to do to save SocialSecurity is to “means-test” it. In English, that means, if your income is too high, or your savings are too high, your Social Security check will be reduced. Or maybe cut out entirely.

So Social Security will be paid for by the wealthy, to the poor.

How does that make Social Security any different from welfare?

Next time you hear President Obama say everyone must pay “their fair share,” remember that. Half the people pay not only all the personal income taxes, but 32% of everyone else's Social Security tax. 

That's fair, right?

Kill Robin Hood

I swear, I'm going to bitch-slap the next jerk who complains that the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger all the time. Anyone who passed third-grade math can understand why, on the simplest level, this is wrong. And anyone who passed seventh-grade math can understand why, on the the more complex level, this is wrong.

Here's the third-grade explanation:

There is a limit to how poor you can get. That limit is known as zero. If you own absolutely nothing, you have zero. Even that panhandler asking for spare change that you just walked by has more than zero: he has the clothes on his back and the seventy-five cents in his pocket.

But there's no limit to how rich you can get. Everyone knows that.

So there's a limit to how little you can have, but there's no limit to how much. So the gap between zero and the max has to increase as long as people are creating wealth. The gap will only stop increasing when people stop creating wealth. If your income increases by ten cents next year and mine doesn't increase at all, OMG!!! More income inequality!!! Eleventy!!!111!!!11!

Here's the seventh-grade explanation:

Paul Poor is making $20,000 a year working the fry vat at the local Bun 'n' Run. Meanwhile Rose Rich is pulling down $100,000 as an IT program manager.

Rose and Paul both do their jobs well, so their bosses give them both a raise. Rose gets a two percent raise, while Paul gets five percent.

Wow! Paul's getting a much bigger raise than Rose! But if you do a little seventh-grade math, you see that Paul's five percent raise puts $1,000 a year more (before taxes) in his pocket, while Rose's smaller percentage raise gives her $2,000 more.

Dammit, the income inequality gap is still growing, even though Paul got a bigger percentage raise than Rose. Paul would have to get a ten percent raise to actually see as much extra money as Rose, or, alternatively, Rose would have to get only a one percent raise to get as little as Paul. Or maybe Rose should be sent to a re-education camp or be guillotined, as some have suggested (see link below).

This is the way things work in the real world.Some people make more than others, because the work they do is worth more.

What the complainers fail to mention is that, in the real world, Paul is probably significantly younger than Rose. That means he probably hasn't moved as far up the career ladder as Rose has. Rose didn't start out making $100,000 a year, even if her college degree was in computer science. And in the real world, Rose's opportunities for career advancement are probably a lot more limited than Paul's, simply because she's a lot higher up the career hierarchy (not to mention a lot older) than Paul is. In a couple of years, Paul well might be the manager of the Bun 'n' Run, making double or triple what he makes at the fry vat. Rose, on the other hand, is very unlikely to double her salary without becoming her company's chief information officer.

The complainers seem to think that:

• once you make a low salary, you will always make a low salary;
• once you make a high salary, you will always make a high salary;
• people who make high salaries somehow did it by stealing from people making low ones.

I don't want to live in a country where there is no income inequality. Because that's a country that says that everyone's work is worth the same, whether you're working the fry vat or managing an IT project. That's a country where people think the government should prevent income inequality by deciding how much people should be allowed to make. That was tried in a 75-year-long experiment known as communism, and the results were catastrophic.

(Roseanne Barr thinks this is a great idea, though she seems to be a little undecided as to whether we should emulate the French Revolution or Cambodia's Killing Fields...)

If Paul Poor doesn't like the fact that he doesn't make as much money as Rose Rich, he should learn how to do something that society values more than cooking French fries. Having a degree in something other than Native American Transgendered Women's Studies might help.