The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be – starting with the lawyers and enactors. Lao-Tzu (as embellished by Rebane)
George Rebane
The wisdom of Lao-Tzu was brought to my attention again by a friend and reader. Jeff Thomas, a true conservetarian, wrote ‘The First Libertarian?’, an important little essay on governance – its ills and desiderata. In it he distilled some more useful aphorism from the great sage.
Those in power are meddlesome.
The greater the restrictions and prohibitions, the more people are impoverished.
The more advanced the weapons of the state, the darker the nation … thus the virtuous attend to contracts, while those without virtue collect taxes.
Act before things exist, manage them before there’s disorder
Trickle down taxes is a specialty of the Democratic Party which it sells gift-wrapped in a couple of its perennial Big Lies – raising taxes does not impact economic behavior (the Laffer curve doesn’t work), and corporate taxes lower the tax burden on the working class. They correctly assess their constituents as being too ignorant to questions such lies, but they know both of them to be false. For example, Kennedy lowered taxes in xx to stimulate the economy. And corporations pay no taxes but pass that cost on to their customers in the form of higher prices, which quietly impacts most the poorest in the land. And a tax not even the Democrats want to talk about is inflation – always government induced (more here and here). The worker bees’ bigger paychecks don’t give them any more buying power, but do promote them into higher tax brackets (plus higher sales taxes) which surreptitiously increase their overall tax rates. But our leftwing elites have no worries about pushback from their Democrat voters, people who are totally oblivious to such economic factors, and continue to believe that their political leaders are making corporations and the rich pay their ‘fair share’.
[21sep21 update] Sorry ass Biden. I have been aware of presidential doings since ol' Harry was in office, and want to enter into the RR record that I have never seen such a terminally sorry ass elected President of the United States of America as Bumblebrain Biden. This idiot has done everything wrong that he could possibly do, as he continues to work on bringing about even bigger disasters for the country. The list of his failures gets rehashed regularly in these pages, and I’m sure that at some future date I’ll compile another list of them myself. Right now the bigger problem for our republic is that a huge share of our voting age citizens have shown themselves to be simply too dumb to maintain the blessed land we inherited. Ben Franklin’s admonition – “… a republic, if you can keep it” – has come true as ever more of our freedoms are stripped away daily. Nay, not stripped, we have now been reduced to compliant serfs who willingly give away our freedoms – no stripping required. And many of us even sing hosannas to the munificent wisdom of our socialist overlords so long as the checks keep arriving. They are buying our freedoms with our own money, and welcoming in millions more aliens, cum tomorrow's Democrats, who will guarantee our descent to tyranny.
[22sep21 update] Bumblebrain’s poll numbers are tanking and Republicans are happy dancing in the streets about next year’s election. That election is more than several political eternities in the future, and the not-too-bright electorate has a short memory. By next Fall things could easily be turned 180, especially if the Dems can pass more social legislation to increase the number and size of checks to the takers, while crowing that their massive tax increases will make the ‘rich’ makers and corporations pay their “fair share”. (Over 60% of US households pay no capital gains or federal income taxes.) Their constituents are dim enough to lap up all that kool-aid, especially if Republicans don’t have the balls to call it like it is – loudly and often – singing castrato doesn't cut it.
[23sep21 update] Biden denounces and repudiates capitalism and the US economic system. Bumblebrain made it clear in his speech last Thursday that, contrary to his professions of being a capitalist and not a socialist, he is indeed most strongly a socialist and not a capitalist. As Daniel Henninger underlines in the 23sep21 WSJ, “At no point in that speech did he acknowledge the private sector contributed anything positive to the life of Americans.” His work on $3.5T Democrat debacle, that is supposed to be the hallmark of his administration, has been assessed by the US Chamber of Commerce as being an “existential risk” to the US economy. Astute readers know that the USCC is far from being a rightwing propaganda organ. If Bumblebrain knows anything, it is that he has only a short time to put some mark, any mark, on his reputation and legacy. And so far everything he touched has turned to s#!t, so with what’s left of his cognitive abilities, he now thinks that locking America onto the path of irretrievable socialism is the only thing he can pull off with the Democratic Party that has already declared itself ‘all in’ for that fundamental transformation.
rebanesruminations.com 
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