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“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

This poignant quote from America’s third President, Thomas Jefferson, summarizes the guiding principle behind the resounding success that capitalism has brought to the advancement of society, freedom, and happiness. In total opposition to socialism and communism (which assert the premise of equality in outcome), capitalism purports the supremacy of equality in opportunity.

Evidently, according to a recent study published last month in the journal Science by researchers at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, this seemingly self-evident concept of fairness, whereby all individuals within a society are granted the same opportunity to succeed or fail, actually becomes understood as an individual matures and grows out of an egalitarian-based view of justice and equality.

The intriguing results from this study have been summarized in a wonderful article from the June 2010 issue of Reason magazine titled ‘Do Liberals Suffer from Arrested Moral Development?‘.

Here is the premise from the Norwegian study, as presented in this Reason article:

The Norwegian researchers studied about 500 children beginning in the fifth grade through the 13th grade (ages 11 through 19) as they played modified versions of the dictator game. In the standard dictator game, a sum of money, say $100, is divided up between two players. The dictator decides how much to keep and how much to give the second player, the responder. Interestingly, research shows consistently that most dictators do not keep all the money.

Interestingly, as conveyed by Reason, the researchers discovered that the younger the average age of the test subjects, the more likely they were to evenly distribute the money to both players, regardless of contribution or merit.  However, the older subjects were more prone to reward a larger sum of money to the individual who worked the hardest and/or contributed the most.

Reason stated the results in the following manner:

It turns out that as people move from childhood through adolescence to young adulthood they become increasingly meritocratic, that is, they come to believe that people deserve unequal rewards based on their individual achievements.

The results from this small survey parallel the results from the on-going global exercise called ‘civilization’.  Societies maximize their wealth, harmony, and happiness as they embrace free markets, free trade, and merit-based economic structures.  Simply compare a political map of the countries on this planet to a map ranking gross national product, freedom, life-expectancy, birth rates, or happiness.

Sometimes correlation does mean causation.  Even if Leftists have not matured to a level that enables them to accept this fact.

This week, as the citizens of Oregon go to the polls to vote on two ballot measures attempting to dramatically increase taxes upon the state’s only revenue generators (private employers) and upon its hard working families, Reason magazine brings to light, in an informative article titled ‘More Than Zero’, the driving force behind the state legislature’s pursuit to redistribute wealth.

The intentionally obfuscated purpose for trying to raise taxes under the guise of “won’t someone think of the children” is fully exposed in the following statement from this Reason article:

Wherever you see a politician or public servant warning about “draconian” cuts to public services, you almost certainly are witnessing an agency whose employees have negotiated a sweetheart pension deal within the last decade.

As Reason thoroughly details, public-sector unions are “are brazenly gobbling up two, three, and even 20 times the amount that they were taking just a few years ago—on guaranteed contributions to their pension plans alone”.  However, advocates of the two tax increasing measures in Oregon claim that the reason for raising taxes during these challenging economic times is to ‘protect schools, health care, and public safety’.

Never mind the fact that sponsors of these measures fail to identify specific solutions that will be achieved through these tax increases.  They also won’t admit that the state’s bloated Public Employee Retirement Systems (PERS) pension obligations are the real reason for extracting more assets from its revenue-producing businesses and its struggling families.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to read this eye-opening Reason article:  More Than Zero.

This month, in the midst of our great nation’s most challenging economic times, the state of Oregon is attempting to dramatically INCREASE income taxes on both its citizens and its revenue generators.  Here is an open letter sent to all employees at EngineWorks that identifies the potential impact of this ill-conceived ballot measure:

Attn: Team EngineWorks

This e-mail is to encourage you to choose to exercise your right to vote on Oregon Ballot Measure 66 taking place on January 26, 2010.

Oregon Measure 66 will increase the amount of money forcibly extracted by the State from hard-working individuals such as our team members at EngineWorks.  Currently, the Government withholds your Federal income tax, Oregon state income tax, Social Security Tax, Medicare tax, and Workers Benefit Assessment tax from your paycheck every month.

Currently, Oregon’s personal income tax ranks the HIGHEST among ALL STATES levying an individual income tax.  Oregon’s 2006 individual income tax collections were $1,513 per person, which ranks 5th highest nationally.

In 2009, the average American worked more than four (4) months to earn enough money to pay their taxes.  Since all of this pay is given to someone who did not earn it, you are in essence being forced to work with no personal gain for more than a third of the year.

Even if none of our team members is currently in the tax bracket targeted in Oregon Measure 66, don’t you hope someday you will be?  (I hope this for all of our team members.)  At that time, I am confident you will desire to keep more of what you earn (as you should now).

Additionally, in today’s mobile economy, individuals, small businesses, and top-producing corporations have the ability to relocate to states and countries that offer the most favorable business conditions.

Measure 66, by INCREASING the HIGHEST state income tax rate in the county, will retard the performance of our state, and ultimately hurt Oregon families and companies.

Therefore, I once again encourage you to choose to vote on Oregon Measure 67.

Thanks.

(Source:  http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/52.html)

“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” – Albert Einstein, physicist

– Sean

_______________________________________
Sean J. McMahon
President
sean@engineworks.com

Today, the current leader of the free world was selected by a five-member committee from the Norwegian Parliament as the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace.  We, at EngineWorks, recognize this as a tremendous advancement for the advocacy of individual rights, individual liberty, and individual responsibility.  Each citizen of our great country can feel genuine pride in this worthy recognition from our Scandinavian ally.

‘Peace’, according to the 2009 American Heritage Dictionary, is defined as “a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, especially in personal relations” and as “the normal non-warring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world”.  The wonderfully moral and basic tenet of laissez-faire capitalism is that it is a social-economic structure based upon the free exchange of value, between willing parties, in the absence of force.

In a democratic, capitalism-based system, individuals choose to put-forth effort, time, or assets in order to receive other desired assets (with the operative word in this sentence being ‘choose’).  No other social structure exists – or has ever existed – that fosters a greater state of mutual harmony between individuals within a society.

As the late American philosopher and author, Ayn Rand, astutely identified, there are two irreducible causes of evil in the world, faith and force.  The introduction of force into any social economic system, whether originating from a governing body or individual, poisons that system with the pursuit to annihilate the values of individual rights and individual freedom.  This, in turn, becomes the primary impetus for non-peaceful conditions.

In recognition of the continuous peaceful pursuit of our nation, the Nobel committee praised our President’s creation of “a new climate in international politics”, and stated that Barack Obama had returned multilateral diplomacy to the center of the world stage.  In fact, Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland justified the awarding of this prestigious award to the President of the United States of America by exclaiming, “You have to remember that the world has been in a pretty dangerous phase, and anybody who can contribute to getting the world out of this situation deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Not since the fall of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has the peaceful tenets of capitalism been placed on such a global stage.  Given that fact, we extend are sincere congratulations and appreciation to our current President!

Capitalism.  Truly, the purest form of peace.

As an advocacy site for the advancement of free markets and individual rights, it’s important for us to provide the definition (according to The American Heritage Dictionary) for the system that flies in the face of these moral standards:

so•cial•ism (sō’shə-lĭz’əm) n.

1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Having formally spelled-out the exact meaning of socialism, we encourage you to read the following article by Daniel Gross from The Slate.com, and ask yourself, “what structure of government do we have in the United States?”

Citi’s $100M man wants his check now

Energy trader Andrew Hall’s contract entitles him to a $100 million bonus. Should the company, which is partially owned by taxpayers, stiff him?

The controversy surrounding the bonus promised to Andrew Hall, the phenomenally successful energy trader at Phibro, a unit of Citi, is coming to a head.

Hall’s contract entitles him to a $100 million bonus. But in order to make good on the deal, Citigroup, which is now hugely supported and partially owned by taxpayers, must get the blessing of Kenneth Feinberg, the Solomonic attorney who administered the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund and is now the Obama administration’s Wall Street pay czar.

Feinberg will have to consider whether it is proper for an institution that, without substantial taxpayer support, couldn’t pay $100 bonuses to pay a $100 million one.

There’s another question he should consider. Do Citi’s shareholders benefit from owning what is, in effect, a hedge fund? Citi’s management argues that it needs Phibro because it has been profitable over the last many years. The more it makes, the better off the company’s shareholders — including reluctant shareholders like us taxpayers — will be. But the last few years have taught us that such gains don’t always find their way into shareholders’ pockets.

Why is this issue even being addressed by our Federal government?  How far away from the tenets of our Founding Fathers has this century’s U.S. administration gone?  What will it take to reverse this ill-fated free-fall into socialism?

As noted in our previous post, our federal government continues to emulate Venezuela’s dictatorial President Hugo Chavez through its pursuit of the massive redistribution of wealth from hard-working tax payers to failed corporate executives.  This nationalization of private enterprises includes the unfathomable reality that the United States government currently owns more than $5 TRILLION worth of home mortgages, partial ownership of the nine largest financial institutions in the country, and has loaned more than $13 billion in taxpayer money to General Motors and Chrysler . . . all without any statutory authority.

In yet another superbly crafted article titled Illegal. Illiberal. Ill-fated.  Why Washington Shouldn’t Run Detroit., Reason Magazine reveals the amazingly unconstitutional, un-American, and most importantly unlawful aspects of our federal legislators’ current corporate bailouts.

We encourage you to forward this eye-opening article to all your friends and associates who are concerned about our Country’s treacherous path towards Socialism.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

Words put forth by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana that most of us have heard and understand . . . even if our Federal government does not.

As our current administration continues to embrace its socialistic pursuit of blending pubic ownership of private enterprises (including having ownership of more than $5 TRILLION worth of domestic mortgages, and partial ownership of the nine largest financial institutions in the country), Reason Magazine published an important article that draws a direct correlation between the disastrous governmental response to the economic catastrophes that occurred in Japan during the 1990s, and the shocking statist actions of our Federal legislators.

The July 2009 article titled Turning Japanese features the sub-title Japan’s post-bubble policies produced a “lost decade”.  So, why is President Obama emulating them?.  Here is a the most important take-away from this insightful article:

The Japanese experience shows that when the government is an active participant in the market, many firms would rather accept state support than initiate the inevitable financial reckoning.  Such a status quo does not provide a sustainable foundation for the economy.  Instead, it restricts economic growth and creates a cycle of stagnation.

I highly encourage you to read this article.  In addition, if you perceive that individuals within your social circles will be enlightened by the poignant historical observations of the editors at Reason, please make them aware of this blog post.  Let’s not let our government fail to learn from history.

Given the real-world results of every socialist scheme ever forced upon a society, is anyone surprised by the failed attempts by our brilliant bureaucrats to “bail-out” the domestic auto industry?

Our current administration now states that it is in the best interest of our country to let market forces determine the fate of General  Motors and Chrysler.  If this is the case, why couldn’t they see this obvious fact BEFORE throwing BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of tax-payers’ money at these diseased carcasses!

An extremely poignant article today on SmartMoney.com titled “Uncle Sam’s Heist: Deficit Spending and Inflation” points-out that (whether we like it or not), you and I will be paying for these catastrophic bail-out attempts.  The article also correctly identifies that you and I had nothing to do with our current economic situation by stating,  “Private citizens and corporations don’t cause inflation; only government has the power to destroy the purchasing power of millions of its citizens without as much as laying a finger on their checking accounts.”

As conveyed throughout this site, the Constitutional purpose for our government is to protect our country’s national sovereignty, protect its citizens from other citizens, and create laws to maintain these protections.  I highly recommend that you read this astute article from SmartMoney to see how far our current administration is from the ideals put forth by our Founding Fathers.

The purest definition of capitalism is an economic system that presents the same opportunity to succeed or fail to all entities without hindrance or support from the government.  Arguably, our nation has never been further from this ideal than we are at start of 2009.  In fact, with the current administration of the United Socialists States of America taking ownership of more than $5 TRILLION worth of mortgages (of which, more than $1 trillion are sub-prime loans) by nationalizing home lending behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is evident that we have crossed into the Rubicon of fascism.

In addition to the obscene amount of debt placed on the federal government’s books by this massive mortgage bail-out, the Bush-backed Bolsheviks are not done yet!  The American government (which is actually you, me, and all other tax paying individuals) now has partial ownership in the nine largest banks in our country.  They (or “we”) also committed more than $200 billion to guarantee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debts, put up $85 billion to nationalize insurance giant AIG, and extended hundreds of billions of dollars through banks to make short term loans to certain institutions.

However, the most egregious transgression that this administration has committed is the fact that, through all of their fascist activities in the final half of 2008, they have absolutely no argument for not providing the inability of failure to all commercial entities.

In a December 19, 2008 article titled “As More Companies Seek Aid, ‘Where Do You Stop?’”, CNBC.com put forth that the US government could be entering a “bottomless pit of bail-outs if it starts propping up failing companies outside of the financial sector’.  This article, published prior to the bail-out of the Big Three automakers, went on to state that “many economist are against the idea of a bailout for the auto companies, saying that propping up Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler will open the door to a taxpayer rescue of virtually any major company with cash problems”.

It is this premise that flies in the face of laissez-faire capitalism, and moves directly into the realm of fascism.

A well-crafted article posted to ThisCantBeHappening.net brings to the forefront that as the government of China rapidly extricates itself from ownership of commercial companies, the current US administration is spiraling into statism, corruption, and stagnation.  The following excerpt from this article titled “America and China Joined at the Hip” summarizes our country’s slippery slope into a government controlled economy:

The essential point of commonality is that big enterprises—especially banking enterprises—are being allowed to operate as fail-proof yet operationally opaque adjuncts of the state. Their business decisions—whom to lend to, what risks to take, etc.—are made with the goal of enriching the key managers and shareholders, and probably also key government officials and bureaucrats—with no thought to the impact on the larger economy or the larger population of the respective countries.

The purpose of our EngineWorks.org site is to promote the supremacy of free markets, and therefore, it is important to offer alternatives that would have been better than the fascist actions of our current administration over the past several months.  The following market-based strategies are solutions our Founding Fathers would have endorsed:

1.  Eliminate, lower, or extend the current capital gains tax rate,
2.  Eliminate, lower, or extend the current dividend tax rate,
3.  Eliminate all Roth IRA contribution limits,
4.  Raise the capital ratio for government sponsored investment banks.

Finally, if our government is (for some reason!) unable to get away from spending almost $1 TRILLION on a bail-out plan, then return our tax payer money in the form of a $5,000 check to each 191 million of us.

As I watched a congressional sub-committee addressing our national energy policy on CNN this past weekend, a freely-elected member of the U.S. senate actually made the statement that our government failed to prevent the current gasoline crises by not raising taxes on gas during the past several years to a level equal to European taxes.  He postulated that a coerced pricing of $8.00 a gallon would have benefited our society by forcing consumers to change their behavior.

Of course, inextricably wrapped into this vocalization of thought is this elected official’s view of the proper role of government.

In this land of ours, which was founded upon the laissez-faire concepts of free markets and free minds, our meteoric rise to the position of the world’s greatest economic power has been fueled by novel reasoning that markets can more efficiently advance the well-being of a society than the best intentions of kings, queens, statist dictators, and/or social planners.

The government of United States has been created to ensure that the supply and demand of goods and services moves freely to meet the desires, wants, and needs of its citizens.  Not to direct the outcome of this movement.

Ayn Rand eloquently punctuates this fact in the first few paragraphs of an August 1962 article which ran in the Los Angeles Times titled ‘Let Us Alone!’ in which she stated:

Since “economic growth” is today’s great problem, and our present Administration is promising to “stimulate” it – to achieve general prosperity by even wider government controls, while spending an unproduced wealth – I wonder how many people know the origin of the term laissez-faire?

France, in the seventeenth century, was an absolute monarchy. […] Colbert, chief advisor of Louis XIV, was one of the early modern statists.  He believed that government regulations can create national prosperity and that higher tax revenues can be obtained only from the country’s “economic growth”; so he devoted himself to seeking “a general increase in wealth by the encouragement of industry”.  The encouragement consisted of imposing countless government controls and minute regulations that chocked business activity; the result was dismal failure.

Colbert was not an enemy of business; no more than is our present administration.  On one historic occasion, he asked a group of manufacturers what he could do for industry.  A manufacturer named Legendre answered: “Laissez-nous faire!” (“Let us alone!”).

As Ms. Rand went on to convey, it was evident that this French businessman had a better understanding of human nature and economics than the politicians of his day (and of our day as well!).  He grasped that government “stimulus” is just as disastrous as government oppression, and that the only way a government can benefit national prosperity is by protecting the market system, not manipulating it.

The proper role of government is to protect a country’s national sovereignty, protect its citizens from other citizens, and create laws to maintain these protections.  Other than that . . . it should keep its hands out of the personal lives of individuals (and their gas tanks!).