Income Inequality Received Disproportionate Discussion

By Greg Harvey, Treasurer
Published in The Voice on February 27, 2014

Of all the needless bickering in Washington, none is more pointless than that over income inequality. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most popular: President Obama, along with many major politicians, has spent considerable time discussing his “solutions” for inequality. However, income inequality is not actually an issue for the American economy.

Politicians routinely point to the country’s inequality as proof of the American Dream being dead and say that only rich children can ever be rich. However, according to The Equality of Opportunity Project, people born into low-income families today have nearly the exact same chances of becoming high-earners as anyone born since 1971. The chances for “rags-to-riches” success stories are no less now then they’ve been. 

Furthermore, statistical tests performed by Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that, for an area, “the size of the middle class…or the gap between the richest and poorest” people in the community has no effect on its level of mobility. Instead, per capita income growth (or overall economic growth), the number of single mother households (more single mothers correlating with less upward mobility), and local government spending levels (likely on schools, though with a much weaker correlation) were the main factors affecting mobility.

So the idea that income inequality ruins the poor’s chances of advancing in life are merely political, not supported by economic data. And because the basic premise for the argument is wrong, most of the proposed “solutions” are troubled as well.

First, increasing the minimum wage historically does little to lessen the income gap. According to the CATO institute, the vast majority of studies on the topic have found that raising minimum wages reduces employment primarily in the unskilled sector. Likewise, because any increases in demand for goods are neutralized by the higher prices businesses are forced to charge, CATO found “that past minimum wage hikes had no effects on poverty levels.”

The other approach to bridging the gap is to tax the rich more and give the increased revenue to the poor. However, this poses a few problems. First, the rich are the job creators in America. Instead of making their money from hedge funds, inheritances, and beating up poor people, as their reputation says, the majority of the notorious top 1% of earners are actually executives in small to medium sized companies. As these sized companies collectively employ over half the workforce, taxing entrepreneurs has a good chance of hurting the overall economy.

Another problem with increasing the rich’s taxes is that of fairness: the rich already pay a disproportionate amount. According to IRS data, the top 1% alone contributes for over 36% of the income tax burden; the top 5% pays over 58%. You can see, then, why the notion of making the rich “pay their fair share” is absurd; they already pay much more than their “fair share.” For the record, the bottom 50% of earners pay only 2% of the total income tax. Thankfully, the government has rich people to tax.

Overall, our current inequality is not detrimental to the future of America. The poor have just as many opportunities for advancement than ever before, and it’s hard to argue that we haven’t gotten consistently richer over time. Today, according to the Heritage Foundation, most Americans below the poverty line have “a car, multiple color TV’s,” and “[t]he overwhelming majority of poor Americans are not undernourished.” When you consider the harsher lives of our grandparents, our relative fortune is clear. History has shown that attempts by a government to forcibly make people richer, or more equal, don’t work. Just look at the Soviet Union.

The Alleged War on Women

By Amber Glasglow, Vice President

Published in The Voice on February 13, 2014

Go ahead liberals, set up a straw man. We all know that if you want to destroy the reputation of an enemy, set up a straw man. It’s easy to knock down. Setting up the straw man is an argument that is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. Accusing the Republicans of waging a war on women is setting up a straw man.

           

Governor Susana Martinez

In politics, there are organizations and websites that seek out weaknesses of the opposition, and then create a spin story, a talking point, that your minions can use to assail the positions of the adversaries. Recently, the liberals have been trotting out the expression “The War on Women” as often as they can.

           

When Mike Huckabee made a speech to Republicans describing women as, “smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do…” that quote was ignored by liberals. When he said, “Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women,” that quote was also ignored.

           

Huckabee made a mistake. The comprehensive thought he was expressing was too long for a sound bite. It was more than one sentence long. It had complex concepts that require thinking. This was a mistake, because the liberals in the media wouldn’t follow the whole thought. They got stuck on one tiny sound bite, “they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system,” and they took it totally out of context, and accused all Republicans of being misogynists.

Dana Loesch

           

Well, maybe the liberal women who are all up in arms should be accused of misandry.

           

A recent editorial here accuses the Republicans of allowing uneducated, chauvinistic statements to govern their policy agendas and ideals. This is ridiculous. No examples of a Republican misogynist policy was given, because there are none. Instead, the attention was drawn to only 20 % of the elected officials are women. What connection does that have to Republicans?

             

Let’s look at the governors.  There are five female governors in the United States, and four of them are Republicans.  There are plenty of Republican women who must not have gotten the memo that there is a war on them.  Many US Representatives including Michele Bachman (MN), Renee Elmers (NC), Virginia Foxx (VA), Kristi Noem (SD), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), US Senators Kelly Ayotte (NH), Susan Collins (ME), Deb Fischer (NE), and Lisa Murkowski (AK), Governors Jan Brewer (AZ), Mary Fallin (OK), Nikki Haley (SC), Susana Martinez (NM), and outspoken conservatives like Deneen Borelli, Ann Coulter, Dana Loesch, Sarah Palin, Phyllis Schlafly, and yours truly have managed well during this alleged war.

           

Asians earn more than whites.  Does that mean they have some advantage, or that whites are being discriminated against? In the NBA 80% of the players are African-American, while in the NFL that number is 65%. Ninety-seven percent of the pre-school and kindergarten teachers are women. Should we feel bad about any of that?

           

Ninety-two percent of the dieticians, nutritionists and nurses are women. Ninety-nine percent of the brick masons and septic tank cleaners are men. Wage inequality is everywhere, but people choose their own careers. I don’t want to be told I cannot be a veterinarian because there are too many women in the field. I don’t want to clean out sewage pipes. I do want equal opportunity for all, so that the man who wants to teach Kindergarten can do so, and that the woman who wants to lay brick can do so.

             

Freedom and equal opportunity for all made America great, and this is what Republicans stand for.

Obamacare: A collapse of the Progressive Movement

by Zach Moore

Since 2009, Bill and Hillary Clinton have piggy-backed off of President Obama’s attempt to build a progressive platform for a liberal America. For obvious reasons, this is something that the Clintons feasted off of. Why did they do this? Hillary would love a bid in 2016. Moreover, they saw an opportunity to take advantage of progressive America; a system of big, careless government that is in control of dependent individuals. You see, President Obama has created this dependent America, not for reasons of sympathy in which he tries to display, but for strictly politically motivated ideals. If the majority of Americans are dependent on the Democratic Party to feed them out of their hands, they are never going to vote against them.

So what do the Clintons do? They endorse Obamacare. Believing it would be a success, they knew that Americans who enroll would be dependent on Hillary getting elected in order for their “free” care to continue. Therefore, sadly, they believed it would be a sure win for the Democratic Party in 2016. This is just another clear example of the left taking advantage of progressive America, as they use it as nothing but political leverage. This can be seen clearly as Bill Clinton endorsed the Affordable Care Act in September of this year, again as a mere attempt to get his beloved wife elected.

Was this a successful strategy? Of course not. Obamacare was a dismal failure just as many people in the United States expected. In addition, Bill and Hilary Clinton endorsed an individual who lied to the faces of American people on multiple occasions. To be precise, President Obama stated, “If you like your health care plan you can keep it....period”. This, as agreed upon by the majority of Americans is not only deceptive, but an outright lie. Bottom line is, the Clintons endorsed a now perceived liar. They tarnished their reputation (even further), and President Obama quickly became a political liability to their campaign. So what do they do? They run from the disaster and distance themselves from President Obama.

Today, October 12, 2013, Bill Clinton decided to make his distance well known to the American people by saying, “I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to these people and let them keep what they got." Hold on a second Bill, during many speeches you attended and endorsed, the president contradicted what you just said. Did you raise a red flag then? No. Even though you knew it was wrong, you let it go all in a mere attempt to deceive the American people just at the president did. If anyone in the world thinks this revelation of Clinton’s beliefs on the Affordable Care Act is anything more than an attempt to run as far from President Obama and the Affordable Care Act as possible, they are completely wrong.

Bottom line is President Obama has become a political liability to anyone in the Democratic Party who supported the Affordable Care Act. Even further, his presidency and the Affordable Care Act is a ticking time bomb that will surely destroy the reputation of his supporters in government. Thanks to him, Republicans now have a very distinct opportunity to lay this “progressive” movement to rest for many decades to come. So, from all Republicans in America, thank you Mr. President for proving that your “landmark” legislation was in fact, a total disaster.

On the Medical Device Tax

by Zach Moore

A part of the "First Word, Last Word" column on the The Voice
Originally published on 10/31/13 and available here: http://www.buvoice.com/opinion/2013/10/31/first-word-last-word.html

(Advisor's note: this submission was required to be "about 500 words", but the subsequent rebuttal from a writer of The Voice totaled 637 words)

Since the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency, an image has been painted for the American people of a universal, problem-free health care system that offers affordable or even “free” care. Based on the president’s rhetoric, one would believe that there is a magic money tree placed in the north lawn of the White House that miraculously drops leaves of one hundred dollar bills right into the pockets of Obamacare. Although this sounds excellent and the president somehow has fooled many Americans into believing this fairy tale, it is far from the case. An American who thinks based on logic understands the sad truth and reality, which is that President Obama has drafted a piece of legislation that is destroying the economy. Where does $60.1 billion of funding for the Affordable Care Act come from over the next decade? Sorry, not from the money tree the president is hiding from us all, but from the all too familiar 2.3% medical device tax.

Pacemakers: About to be way more $$$

Before jumping into the medical device disaster that the president has pursued, I believe it is important for readers to understand the importance this industry has in health care. Pacemakers, chemotherapy and defibrillators, just to name a few, are products that the medical device industry is responsible for. In order to produce and sell these products, research and development is key. A 2.3% tax on all revenues now significantly threatens the ability of this industry to devote money to innovate new products that could save lives.

Although many understand the effects on price and demand based on tax rates, it is obvious that the president does not. It is common sense for one to know what happens when tax rates increase on the revenues of a company: The price of goods go up in order to counter act the lost revenue. Therefore, what the president said would be more affordable, actually becomes less affordable. The price of medical devices goes up, therefore, making health care less affordable than it was before. What happens when these prices increase? Sales decrease, leading to a downward spiral of demand and lost revenues for one of the largest employers in the U.S.

Currently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the medical device industry employs 400,000 U.S workers directly, and another two million through supply and distribution. A 2.3% tax on this industry threatens many of these employees’ jobs. By cutting revenues by $6.7 billion annually, companies simply will not have the ability to maintain the size of their workforce. This is seen already, as, according to the Wall Street Journal, medical device companies have cut their workforce by 10% in order to brace for the impact.

This frivolous tax is something that the people of this country can not continue to ignore, nor can we as American’s continue to fall victim to the blinding image of something the president portrays as being free. Funding $60.1 billion comes from somewhere, and in this case it comes from thousands of lost jobs, increased costs for consumers, and irretrievable innovation that could have potentially saved lives.

Society and Murder

by Grant Murrow
published by The Voice on October 17, 2013
in response to "Taking Control of Gun Control", published by The Voice on September 26, 2013

Many things have occurred in America in the past 20 years that should cause every American to question where our country is heading in terms of culture, and how we behave as a society. Several very important occurrences that should incite curiosity are mass shootings and massacres. April of 1999: two students at Columbine high school open fire and kill 12 classmates.  April 2007: student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 15 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.  January of 2011: Jared Lee Loughner opened fire killing six and injuring 12 others including the now recovered Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona.

All three of these events remain firmly engrained in the minds of those there to witnessed them, and each caused a stir in its own right. After each of these shootings, national arguments were sparked over the controversy that is “Assault Weapons” and how their regulation along with other firearms regulation could help stem the tide of such events from occurring. Something that may surprise you, however, is that only one of the four shooters involved in these deadly events used what the media refers to as an assault weapon during their spree.

That person was Dylan Klebold of the Columbine shootings and he was in possession of a TEC-9 semi-automatic machine gun, with three 30 round magazines (which he used the least out of his three weapons). Otherwise, every shooter used weapons that do not fall under the “Assault Weapon” category. Both Cho and Laughner used pistols, and the other Columbine shooter Eric Harris used a 12 gauge double barrel shotgun, all of which were purchased legally or taken wrongly from someone who had legally purchased them.

While “Assault Weapons” remain an issue of heated discussion, many people overlook the actual number of murders committed with these weapons. According to the FBI statistics for the years of 2007-11, less than 1180 out of 46,320 total gun murders were committed with rifles or long guns throughout the United States, which includes the firearms that fall under the now infamous term “Assault Rifles.” Also, according to the Department of Justice, only 2% of state and 3% of federal inmates were armed with the newly branded “Assault Weapons.” So comparing our firearm murder rates to other countries’ rates doesn’t exactly bring the true issue to light. In fact, examining our gun violence points to a very different trend, one in which “Assault Weapons” are not the main culprits.

So if it’s not the availability of firearms, what could it be that causes people to commit these murder sprees? Is it trends in society towards violence? Lack of mental healthcare availability? Or are these shooters overly glamourized and given too much attention by the media after committing these atrocities? Perhaps it’s all of the above.

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, only about 50% of adults with a serious mental issue receive treatment, and the largest group to have these illnesses falls between the ages of 18-25. Combine that with classic trending violence in American movies, TV shows, games, etc., the amount of attention given to the shooters whom commit these atrocities, and the availability of firearms and you have a deadly combination. But people seem committed to removing only one, rather than spending the time and money needed to correct and prevent mentally sick persons from both obtaining firearms and putting them on the road to recovery.

With only a few years and a small investment of money, and who knows? One day events like these can be a distant, but not forgotten memory.