The Annoyed Man wrote:Sure. Talk to the small businesses that have moved out of California to save their businesses, which is how I came to live in Texas.Zee wrote:These sentences are stated as fact. Can they be qualified in any way?
[RANT]
In California, thanks to liberal policies, we had to pay an annual use tax, equivalent to the sales tax, on every piece of equipment we bought. We were a printing company. If we bought a $100 desktop printer, we had to pay an $8.25 sales tax; but then we also had to pay an 8.25% use tax on the value of the printer every year until it depreciated to zero. Not that big a deal when you're buying $100 desktop printers. But when you buy a $500,000.00 printing press (not that much money for a press), you not only pay the sales tax of $41,250.00 at time of purchase, you also get to pay the use tax of $41,250.00 of the value of a half million dollar piece of equipment. Printing presses depreciate very slowly because they are barely broken in after millions of impressions. So every year, for YEARS, you get to pay the state 8.25% on a very slowly depreciating $500,000 for the privilege of using a piece of equipment, without which you have no business, and for which you have already paid the sales tax, and for which you are also making payments to the bank.
LIBERAL democrats in California thought up that particular piece of anti-capitalist nonsense, not conservative republicans, nor libertarians.
Similarly, you pay property taxes right? And among other things, your property taxes pay for your fire department. But in Los Angeles County, where capitalism is baaaaaaaaaaaaad (notice how that sounds like a sheep), a business pays property taxes, AND it pays an additional assessment for fire service, above and beyond the property taxes. Those taxes, like most states, are based on the value of the property. If you think home prices are high in California, price out some commercial properties. So you pay a ton of money to the county in taxes, which are supposed to cover your fire service, but then you have to pay for the fire service all over again.
LIBERAL democrats in California thought up that particular piece of anti-capitalist nonsense, not conservative republicans, nor libertarians.
And then there are the workman's comp issues. Workman's compensation insurance in California costs easily 4 or 5 times the price in any other state. I personally know a man who closed his printing business because of his workman's comp costs. His business was 2 generations old, and in that time, they had a couple of incidents. It was also a much larger business back then. Anyone who knows the printing business will tell you that it is a tough business, with very tight margins. He struggled to stay in business, and over the years he gradually laid off workers until he was down to 3 or 4 employees. At that point, his business stabilized, but because of state laws passed by LIBERAL democrats in California, he had to still pay the same worker's comp insurance rate as he did when he was a much larger company. He couldn't afford it, and so he finally gave up trying and closed his business down. My company bought his customer list. His 3 or 4 employees were now jobless. Because of liberal democrat policies.
I don't think that liberals evil; just wrong. But I have yet to meet one who didn't think that the path to "social justice" was to rape small businessmen and large corporations at every opportunity. I have yet to meet one, including ALL of my own family members back in California, who didn't think that being stinking rich wasn't somehow evil... ...unless it was their own wealth we were talking about. But other people's wealth is fair game. How do I know this? My mother is stinking rich, and I get to hear her moan and groan ever year about her tax bill. But in the 27 years that she has been an American citizen (she is French by birth), she has never voted for anyone who wasn't a far left democrat. It figures. She's a college professor. At Caltech, no less. I love my mother, but when it comes to understanding the fundamentals of capitalism, it is hard to believe how incredibly dense she is.
She doesn't understand that it is (or was, until she retired) the engine of capitalism that makes all those very generous endowments possible which Caltech receives, and which paid her salary. Believe me, it wasn't the tuition. People don't go to Caltech to study French literature. They're all there for the engineering/physics/astronomy/math. Neither does she understand that most employers have to trim the dead weight wherever possible. Neither does she understand that most employers do not grant their employees tenure.
She says she understands... but then she keeps reflexively voting for people who work to destroy the economic engine which paid for her salary when she worked, and which continue — through the stock market and other investments — to fuel her very comfortable retirement; a position from which she continues to picture capitalists as grasping, thuggish, amoral crooks.
So yeah, I would say that many liberals have a fundamental ignorance about how the engine of capitalism is what makes their comfortable lifestyles possible. Not all of them by any means. But many of them do, and they vote. And the ones who do show some understanding of it still continue to vote for politicians who don't, and that baffles the heck out of me.
Significantly, in my own family's case, my two younger brothers are self employed, and are much more subject to the vagaries of the economy than is a sheltered and pampered California university professor, and it has made them drift to the right. My middle brother is now more what I would call slightly left of center, and my youngest brother has made the transition to libertarianism. But my middle brother still reflexively votes for candidates that make it harder for him to be in business. How smart is that? And he's the one with the degree from UC Berkeley. You'd think he'd know better.
I could go on, but I doubt it would make a dent.
[/RANT]
There it is!
