This article was also published in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette this morning. It was also sent out by the author, Len Mead. I received it in my e-mail this morning.
The economic truth hurts
Did you think Republicans would “raise your payroll taxes” starting in January if no deal had been reached? Do you think unemployment just dropped to only 8.6 percent?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, the Main Street media has succeeded in deceiving you — and most other busy readers and viewers. Like our economy, truthful journalism has sunk to lows unseen in our lifetimes.
Fortunately, dear reader, you have me to help you correct these misconceptions. Let me guide you — through truth — to understand what’s really happening as we celebrate what blessings we have left this Christmas and Hanukkah.
Let’s start with the bogus “payroll tax reduction” issue. You’ve been told if the current reduced amount isn’t “extended,” 140 million plus workers will have taxes raised over $1,000 next year. The truth is this payroll withholding is simply not a tax. It is an amount fortunate working people have set aside for their own retirement to fund Social Security.
So, when it was “cut” last year, it just further short-changed funding for promised Social Security payments which, not surprisingly, were insufficient to cover pay-outs last year for the first time in history.
The truth is that payroll withholdings for Social Security was never a tax, and it never should have been reduced, because now 40 cents of each federal dollar paid to existing Social Security retirees has to be borrowed.
When you buy groceries, do you borrow 40 cents of each dollar for food? That’s the truthful state our current retirement system has fallen to.
Real tax cuts are federal income tax rate reductions implemented by presidents like John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
These real tax rate reductions all resulted in sharply higher tax revenues collected by the government due to a growing economy, with more jobs and more people being hired to pay taxes.
One could argue that the so-called payroll tax cut reduction implemented in the past was an intentional destabilizing effort by Democrats to make citizens further dependent on government — similar to now bankrupt Europe. But hey, we’re bankrupt, too, with a national debt topping — hold your breath — $15 trillion (see usdebtclock.org). Not ready to pay this debt bill? Well, surely your children and grandchildren are, eh?
The Main Street media is criminally negligent in not reporting this serious truth to us.
Moving on to the bogus reported “reduction” in unemployment: Folks, it just ain’t so.
True unemployment is rising — horribly. The “official unemployment rate” of 8.6 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not include desperate citizens who have given up looking for full-time work after months or years of failure. For example, if the same number of people were looking for work today as were looking for work when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11 percent.
But the true unemployment figure is even worse.
The more accurate Labor Department unemployment figure is not the “U-3” 8.6 percent figure but really 15.6 percent, which includes “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.”
Estimates of the number of unemployed by this measure exceed 25 million desperate people in the U.S. out of about 153 million working. Again, the Main Street media seems criminally unwilling to report this truth to us, or to report the possible solutions for improving our economy and thus the number of available jobs people wanting to work could seek.
Fortunately, many sources for these truths exist for curious, open-minded citizens anxious for real solutions to the problems of our economy.
Solutions include real reductions in government spending and regulations, lower and certain taxes for the future, and the repeal of Obamacare, which is a cancer on businesses who simply cannot hire anybody without knowing what future real costs will exist with each new hire.
When these steps are taken, our great free economy will again explode upward — with new jobs, new tax revenues for public needs, and real new hope for the future. Our still-free republic is still our greatest blessing now at year’s end.
Len Mead can be reached at mead1720@gmail.com