Politicians who know nothing of how hard it is to be an entrepreneur

From SovereignMan.com

May 23, 2017

Santiago, Chile
This morning I read a stinging open letter written by a small business owner in the Land of the Free named Don Chernoff.
Chernoff imports and sells luggage, and he pulled no punches in voicing his disgust for the phony support and failed policies that constantly make his life more difficult.
I’ve edited his letter for length below; the full version is available here.
----
You all love to talk about how much you support small business; the reality is the opposite. The economy is changing rapidly and is vastly different than just a few years ago. Many of the factory jobs in this country have gone and will not return.
Computer technology and automation will soon eliminate thousands more jobs (think truck drivers, taxi drivers, office workers, etc…).
Because there will be fewer middle-class jobs, many people who never considered working for themselves will be forced to become sole proprietors or open a small business. It is therefore critically important that you make it easier for these people to do so.
Right now instead of creating incentives for people to start their own small business, you create nothing but hurdles, allow me to give some examples.
Excessive health care costs

I work for myself and have to pay my own medical expenses. Before the “affordable care act” I was paying about $200 per month for a high deductible policy. It was far from perfect but it got so much worse under the “Affordable” care act.
I now pay over $400 a month, my deductible went from $5,000 to over $6,000 and my out of pocket costs for care have skyrocketed.
At this rate, I will go broke soon, and I am healthier than average. I don’t know how any normal working family or small businessman can possibly afford these rates without going bankrupt.
Income Tax Filing

I have to spend dozens of hours and thousands of dollars for a tax accountant each spring to prepare my taxes because I cannot possibly understand how to do it myself, and I have a master’s degree in engineering.
I also have to remember to pay quarterly estimates, even if my income in not predictable or fluctuates (which it does for most small businesses) or else I get dinged with penalties.
This is a time and cost burden that makes it very hard to run a small business. . . The current tax code is an abomination and should be scrapped.
Excessive import duties
There is a lot of talk lately about a “border adjustment tax” (BAT), a fancy name for an import duty on imported products. I design luggage and I need to contract out the manufacturing to companies that specialize in making luggage. All of these factories just happen to be in Asian countries.
Because of this I am charged almost 18% on my cost of goods for all my imported luggage. Last year these fees came to over $100,000.
The only reason I can see for these fees is government greed.
There is no luggage manufacturing industry in the USA that is being protected. This is another huge burden that makes it difficult to survive in the ultra-competitive luggage business.
Congress and President Obama had a chance remove this burden last summer, and they did what they do best: nothing.
If you do impose a border adjustment tax, will it be on top of the 18% I’m already paying? If so you will put me out of business.
Excessive customs inspection fees for imported products
My company designs luggage that is made in Asia and imported by ship to the USA. It is sold at all Men’s Wearhouse stores and Jos A Bank stores.
A recent shipment was delayed for almost 2 weeks at the port of Los Angeles for extra customs inspections.
The container was first x-rayed, and since that apparently wasn’t good enough, it was then opened and inspected by hand.
There was nothing in the container but the same luggage I’ve been importing for 15 years. I was then charged over $2,000 for this “privilege,” in addition to the 18% import duty I already pay.
This is not the first time I’ve had to pay for extra inspections that were unnecessary.
I understand the need for security but I’m a known importer of the same products for almost 15 years, and this is a terrible cost burden for my small company.
Excessive Social Security burden
Many years ago when I quit a perfectly good job to start my own small business, I was shocked to learn that I had to pay both my share and what had been my employer’s share of Social Security.
If you wanted to create the perfect disincentive to discourage people from taking the leap to start a small business or become self-employed, it would have been difficult to invent a better one.
Capital Gains taxes
So you’ve busted your butt for 20 or 30 years running a small business or sole proprietorship, now you’d like to retire and enjoy life.
Between state, federal and local taxes you’ve probably paid 50% or more of your income in taxes, but that’s not enough for politicians.
If you’ve been lucky enough to have created a business you can sell, now you’ll get to enjoy paying another tax on the capital gain from the sale.
It’s just another penalty imposed on hard-working folks by politicians who don’t think we are paying “our fair share.”
The word “entrepreneur” is endlessly tossed around by politicians who know nothing of how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. You all love to say you encourage entrepreneurship, but the reality is you stand in the way.
Most small businesses either fail or stay small because it is really hard to grow a business, and because of all the burdens you put on us.
Quit your job and try it yourself if you don’t believe me.

Until tomorrow,

Simon Black

Founder, SovereignMan.com

Why Vote?

Many Americans have intuitively recognized that government is the problem and have stopped voting. There are at least five reasons many people do not vote:

1. Voting in a political election is unethical. The political process is one of institutionalized coercion and force. If you disapprove of those things, then you shouldn't participate in them, even indirectly.

1. Voting compromises your privacy. It gets your name in another government computer database.

1. Voting, as well as registering, entails hanging around government offices and dealing with petty bureaucrats. Most people can find something more enjoyable or productive to do with their time.

1. Voting encourages politicians. A vote against one candidate—a major, and quite understandable, reason why many people vote—is always interpreted as a vote for his opponent. And even though you may be voting for the lesser of two evils, the lesser of two evils is still evil. It amounts to giving the candidate a tacit mandate to impose his will on society.

1. Your vote doesn't count. Politicians like to say it counts because it is to their advantage to get everyone into a busybody mode. But, statistically, one vote in scores of millions makes no more difference than a single grain of sand on a beach. That's entirely apart from the fact that officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want, once they are in office.

Some of these thoughts may impress you as vaguely "unpatriotic"; that is certainly not my intention. But, unfortunately, America isn't the place it once was, either. The United States has evolved from the land of the free and the home of the brave to something more closely resembling the land of entitlements and the home of whining lawsuit filers.

The founding ideas of the country, which were highly libertarian, have been thoroughly distorted. What passes for tradition today is something against which the Founding Fathers would have led a second revolution.

This sorry, scary state of affairs is one reason some people emphasize the importance of joining the process, "working within the system" and "making your voice heard," to ensure that "the bad guys" don't get in. They seem to think that increasing the number of voters will improve the quality of their choices.

This argument compels many sincere people, who otherwise wouldn't dream of coercing their neighbors, to take part in the political process. But it only feeds power to people in politics and government, validating their existence and making them more powerful in the process.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-26/democracy-overrated-doug-caseys-top-5-reasons-not-vote

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

Sinclair Lewis

If the US presidential campaign conveys a flavour of unreality, that may be because it is rooted in fiction. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis sat down to write a novel about political radicalisation and social upheaval in the depression-ravaged US. What emerged after four months of feverish work was It Can’t Happen Here, a runaway bestseller that quickly sold more than 300,000 copies.

Lewis was alarmed by what was taking shape in the country. The New Deal had delivered a false sense of optimism to the Federal Reserve, if not to the millions queueing at the soup kitchens. The money supply was tightened in anticipation of a sustained rally, government spending was cut and taxes were raised. As a result, the US was pushed to the cusp of a double-dip depression, with manufacturing back to its 1934 level and unemployment up by 5%.

Read the story at: The Guardian

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

Sinclair Lewis

The Democratic Party has turned its back on working people and now pursues policies that actually increase inequality

Thomas Frank

The first piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then, which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever see. Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.

Thomas Frank

Chung Kuo

Chinese culture is ingrained with the Confucian work ethic, which is quite similar to the Protestant work ethic that helped the West get where it now is. The difference is that the West has become a group of flaccid welfare states, morally weakened by its own prosperity, pretty much as Joseph Schumpeter predicted.

Doug Casey

Please click the image below to read the Casey Research article.  At the bottom of the article there is a link to a really first class, well done presentation. Worth watching…especially if you have succumed to the normacy bias.

Casey Research

The aim of tai chi is not to strike first to gain dominance over an opponent, but to wait and hit at the right moment.

Guo Guangchang

Thank God for government waste

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.

Milton Friedman

Along the lines of Government waste:

According to a report released by Dr. Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Brown University, spending by the United States Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Veteran Affairs since 9/11 is now close to $5 trillion USD. Before we have the chance to ask how a country that has racked up over $19.3 trillion USD in debt can spend $5 trillion USD on war, the focus of this article is to ask: What has all of this spending achieved?

As Reader Supported News reported at the end of last year, terrorism has increased 6,500 percent since 2002 (they probably should rename it “the war of terror”). In 2014, the outlet noted, it was reported that 74 percent of all terror-related casualties occurred in Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Syria. As stated by Paul Gottinger, a staff reporter for Reader Supported News, out of the aforementioned countries, “only Nigeria did not experience either U.S. air strikes or a military occupation in that year.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/us-war-terror-has-cost-5-trillion-and-increased-terrorism-6500

The core of America is not racist. It is not hostile to women. It is increasingly offended by gay bashing. Yet it abhors government waste. It believes strongly in fiscal responsibility such as balanced budgets. It is pro-economic growth. It is concerned about the environment. It is intolerant of people on welfare who disdain the notion of work. But it wants poor kids to have school lunches and it wants to spend money to have good schools. In sum, most Americans are sensible, good-hearted, and prudent. The issue, then, is whether there is a political party that can welcome them home.

Paul Tsongas

Those times are gone.  They’re now either pathetic and struggling or deplorable (couldn’t resist).  Just in case you didn’t see the entire quote…

You know, just to be grossly generalist, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said, according to BuzzFeed News. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up."

"That other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for a change," she said. "They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Hillary Clinton

Truth, Lie, or Crazy

The only two things that scare me are God and the IRS.

Dr. Dre

Please watch this 12 minute video and make up your own mind.  The premise is that a Federal Judge required a women to swear to a lie (in her mind).  What do you think?

https://youtu.be/IagZzFIIymw

The IRS! They're like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

Jerry Seinfeld

Man as an individual is a genius

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

Charlie Chaplin

Is this sppech from the great dictator relevant today?  As we continue to progress into the Owellian 1984 police state, much rings true…

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Charlie Chaplin

Interesting Speech

This is a speech from Marine Le Pen at the European Parliament.  Interesting…

https://youtu.be/BO29xfBJ6KQ

It still amazes me that the US wants to fight a “war on terrorism”.  We haven’t won a “War on…” anything.  Education, drugs, poverty, all a mess with a drain on the economy and obvious corruption, unconstitutional policies, and bureaucracy. 

Why in the war on terrorism do we still support the developers, funders, supporters, and recruiters of Jihad?  The US since the 1950’s has stirred foment in the Middle East.  Now we are affected by the blowback.

Most of the Christian sects had lived in the region since long before the Moslem conquest, and felt a perfect moral right to live in what was, after all, their home. In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, for example, half the 18th century population was Christian. The Assyrians of Northern Iraq claimed to have been converted to Christianity in the 1st century by Saint Thomas. In the mid-20th century they were a strong community – a true nation. Today there are almost none left. The survivors are in Sweden. In Egypt, the minority Copts, descendants of the original Egyptian population, held important positions in trade, the universities and in politics, with more than a few appointed ministers.

Throughout the region, the Jews were absolutely essential to society and commerce. Of course, Jews had lived in Iraq since the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. But they had also made up much of the population of Alexandria in Egypt ever since it was founded by Alexander the Great – it was in Alexandria that the Old Testament was first translated from Hebrew to Greek. Elsewhere, in all the great historic cities of the region – Cairo, Istanbul, Damascus, Aleppo – Jewish communities made up the network through which different peoples traded with each other.

Each community was an intrinsic part of the social system, and the result was a diverse and resilient society. Of course, once in a while there were problems, such as the Damascus pogroms at the end of the 19th century. But the authorities had little patience with trouble-makers, and quickly restored order.

Today, however, for the first time in history, there are no longer any Jews on the southern shores of the Mediterranean and, outside Israel, few in the Levant. Christians of all denominations have either disappeared, or are under severe pressure, with the Egyptian Copts facing daily attacks. The old social order has broken down completely. The question is: Why?

Interesting essays from John Mauldin’s Outside the Box Thanksgiving amid the Threats

I haven’t heard this on the news…

Paris Attacks: William Engdahl Explains the Past, Present and Future of the War in Syria

https://youtu.be/ukHpYWkgfyo

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

Beck

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

https://youtu.be/xuAAPsiD768

Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open.

Bernard Kerik

ISIS is on the run?

The horror in Paris begs these questions: Since 2009, have the vital interests of the United States been advanced in the world or has the United States been in retreat? Have President Obama, former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, enhanced America's security, or not. You decide…

Ferguson says the U.S. has been constrained by four deficits: "... a fiscal deficit (in the sense that spiraling welfare entitlements and debt must inevitably squeeze the resources available for national security), a manpower deficit (in the sense that not many Americans want to spend very long sorting out hot, poor countries), and, above all, an attention deficit (in the sense that any major foreign intervention is likely to lose popularity within a four-year election cycle)..."

The forth deficit cited by Ferguson is the "...history deficit: the fact that the key decision makers know almost nothing, not just [about] other countries' pasts, but also [about] their own. Worse, they often do not see what is wrong with their ignorance. Worst of all, they know just enough history to have confidence but not enough to have understanding..."

William Hamilton

http://www.central-view.com/default.asp

https://youtu.be/MNRCTC1ElXQ

Uh-Oh Scheduled for rush hour tonight…

Don't you Remember,
The Fifth of November,
'Twas Gunpowder Treason Day,
I let off my gun,
And made'em all run.
And Stole all their Bonfire away.

Thousands of protesters are expected to take to the streets today in over 670 cities across the world wearing Guy Fawkes masks, as part of the anti-establishment Million Mask March.

The march, organised by Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group linked to cyber-attacks against governments, multi-national corporations such as Visa, the Church of Scientology and the BNP, is expected to be the group’s largest since the so-called, “Anonymous Army” began its rallies four years ago.

The Independent (UK)

The fifth of November, since I can remember,
Was Guy Faux, Poke him in the eye,
Shove him up the chimney-pot, and there let him die.
A stick and a stake, for King George's sake,
If you don't give me one, I'll take two,
The better for me, and the worse for you,
Ricket-a-racket your hedges shall go.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.

Milton Friedman

Quotes on Milton Friedman’s 103 birthday

Gain of Modern Man

The main gain of modern man has been the weakening of governments.  Unfortunately, that process is now reversed, not only in Europe, but also in America.  There is a constant accession of government authority and power.  It works inevitably toward the disadvantage of the only sort of man who is really worth hell room, to wit, the man who practices some useful trade in a competent manner, makes a decent living at it, pays his own way, and asks only to be let alone.  He is now a pariah in all so-called civilized countries.

H. L. Menken

Thanks Bruce.  To the readers, Bruce is on a Menken tour recently.

The Hegelian Dialectic

For those strongly ‘left’ or ‘right’ How do you step out of the box of thesis – antithesis? This is the root of all politics – not creative synthesis, control. The end game is described by Marx:

It is possible that I could disgrace myself. But there's always a bit of Dialectic to help out. I have naturally expressed my statements so that I am also right if the opposite thing happens.

Karl Marx

G Funk (LimeJuiceToTheEye)

I’ll be right back

Stop Thanking Me

I have to admit, whenever I find myself in the midst of a large public gathering (which fortunately isn’t that often), and the token veteran or two is called out in front of the masses to “honor” I immediately begin to cringe as a result of a massive internal conflict. On the one hand, I recognize that the veteran(s) being honored is most likely a decent human being. Either poor or extraordinarily brainwashed, the man or woman paraded in front of the crowd is nothing more than a pawn. Even if their spouse hasn’t left them; even if whatever conflict they were involved in didn’t result in a permanent disability or post traumatic stress disorder, this person has been used and abused, and thirty seconds of cheering in between ravenous bites out of a footlong hotdog from a drunk and apathetic crowd isn’t going to change that. I don’t harbor negative sentiments toward the veteran.

On the other hand, the entire spectacle makes me sick. I refuse to participate in the superficial charade for many reasons, but the primary one is that I don’t want to play any part in the crowd’s insatiable imbecility. It’s the stupidity and ignorance of the masses that the corporate-state preys upon, and that’s precisely what’s on full display at these tired and phony imperialist celebrations.

Rory Fanning, US Army Ranger

Zero Hedge

It might be more worthwhile if we stopped wringing our hands and started ringing our congressmen.

Author Unknown

Few things blind human beings to the actual consequences of what they are doing like a heady feeling of self-righteousness during a crusade to smite the wicked and rescue the downtrodden.

Thomas Sowell

Thanks Bruce

Philadelphia, Pa. (CBS DC/AP) – Vice President Joe Biden told Democrats Friday that the past six years have been “really, really hard” for the country and the Democratic Party.

Speaking at the House Democratic Caucus retreat in Philadelphia Friday morning, Biden stressed that “really tough decisions” have faced both Democrats and the country as a whole.

“To state the obvious, the past six years have been really, really hard for this country,” said Biden.

“And they’ve been really tough for our party. Just ask [former DCCC chair] Steve [Israel],” continued Biden. “They’ve been really tough for our party. But together – and together — we made some really, really tough decisions — decisions that weren’t at all popular, hard to explain.”

BBS-DC

http://youtu.be/3O_Sbbeqfdw

OK It’s MoveOn.org but…interesting points.  Anything that the Government tries to hide and fast track can’t be good.  Might be worth a call to your representative.

House.gov Senate.gov

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.

Woodrow Wilson

Really?.

Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it.

Benjamin Lichtenberg

Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.

Polish Proverb

I hope Americans don’t find out…strange truth from Congress.  Figure the odds that it’ll pass.

H. RES 41

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill