Get a Clue High School Students!

This article appeared in my school newspaper last month, some of the info may be a little dated.

The coming election and two hotly contested runs to win the nomination make knowledge more important than ever. Despite this fact Pleasant Grove students seem to know little about what affects their lives, but much about things that don’t.
In a recent poll 68% of students correctly answered who won the super bowl and 55% knew how many children Britney Spears has, but barely six percent could correctly answer the amount of experience leading democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has.
German Poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.”
In an attempt to correct this, the following article will cover four subjects: the constitution, the economy, the leading candidates, and other issues.

The Constitution

Perhaps, one of the most common misconceptions around is that the United States is a democracy – also wrong is that the United States should export democracy. It says nowhere in the constitution or the Declaration of Independence that the United States government is a democracy, Woodrow Wilson was the first president to even mention democracy in his state of the union. In fact, founding father Benjamin Franklin said, “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.”

Next, is income tax which will hopefully become a big issue in the near future. Other than during the Civil War there was no income tax before 1914. As a matter-of-fact income tax was ruled unconstitutional, and congress republicans tried to kill a bill starting income tax by refusing to vote in favor of it unless a constitutional amendment allowing income tax was added.

A bill is currently in congress that would correct this and stop the government from stealing the money of the citizens with the withholding income tax. It is called the fair tax, under the fair tax a 23% sales tax would be added to all items and services sold in the United States – currently 22% is the average amount of tax embedded in the price of all goods and services, so the average price of goods and services would not be inflated in the long-term.

This would jumpstart the economy by allowing Americans to take home 100% of the paycheck while the government would receive the same amount of revenue. For more information of the Fair Tax bill visit fairtax.org

Finally, an explanation of the electoral system is needed. US citizens do not have a right to directly vote for the President or Vice President. Electors are chosen by party in the state which holds the majority, these electors than vote for the president.

The Economy

The Economy is the system of activities related to the production and exchange of goods and services in a country. Basically, it is the flow of money in a country.

The poll asked what affects the economy, of the 77 students polled only four answered taxes which is perhaps the most debated factor between liberals and conservatives.

Liberals tend to try to inflict voter’s emotions by stating that tax cuts serve just to help the rich and add to the national debt. Whether it is their own ignorance or blatant dishonesty this stance alone should prove the candidate to be faulty, but back to the article.

When the government cuts taxes taxpayers get a refund on taxes originally withheld from their paycheck. The taxpayers then go out and spend the money refunded to them by the government; this influx of money into the economy creates a greater demand for goods which in turn causes employers to hire more employees in reaction to the increased demand. This leads to economic growth and in the end greater tax revenues to the government.

This theory was put in action and proved during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, while he was president tax rates fell from as high as 91% to 28%, but by the end of the 1980’s the tax revenues had doubled.

Trade deficits are another tactic liberals use in an attempt to play with voter’s emotions. According to the liberal ideals trade deficits with China and India are sucking money out of the US economy and the outsourcing of jobs is hurting Americans.

This subject was mentioned by eight of the 77 polled, who called it imports or exports, a trade deficit is when the imports from a country exceed the exports to that country.

A common analogy used by Free Market Economists to combat the liberal viewpoint is this: Should a doctor find what his trade deficit is with every restaurant in town and then change his eating habits so that all his money isn’t suckled up by the restaurants? Obviously not, his trade deficit with the restaurants is offset by his trade surplus from the hospital where he works.

In the same way the US trade deficits are partially counterbalanced by surpluses with places such as Australia and Hong Kong.

The net deficit could not stay that way forever, because dollars are used to pay for goods from other countries they have to somehow make their way back to the US economy – unless someone is just hiding them all under his bed, they don’t disappear – if they don’t the exchange rate between the two countries will eventually rise to the point that it would be more logical to buy products from a different country.

Finally, the stock market was named by eight people as a factor which affects the economy. The inverse is true: the economy affects the stock market. Each stock is partial ownership in a corporation, the stock price rises and falls as people will pay more or less to own part of the company. The sentiment of people who want to buy the stock is because of their view of how the current economy will affect the stock in the future, their positive or negative views push the stock price in the corresponding direction.

Leading Candidates

Currently, it looks like Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate and John McCain will be the Republican candidate. Conservatives too quickly follow the whims of talk-show hosts and authors and think McCain is liberal while Liberals make up for the fact that Obama has no experience or record to speak of by explaining their rationale of voting for him by calling him the second coming which could be the most ridiculous statement uttered yet this political season.

First, to tackle McCain’s ‘liberalism.’ McCain has never voted for a tax increase, has the most pro-defense spending stands, and according to the Cato Institute is one of just 16 free traders in the senate – all conservative views.

In fact, other than McCain’s strange hate for the first amendment and global warming stance he is conservative. The fact the liberally biased press likes McCain and calls him a ‘Maverick’ is most likely the reason behind conservative talking-heads calling him a liberal.

This, however, does not mean McCain is a great candidate for president he has a strangely strong like for Teddy Roosevelt and seems to want to got to war with every country that crosses the US. Also, he supports one of the biggest waste of money in government history – using congress to evaluate steroid use in baseball.

Obama is frankly, a joke. He has little experience – only four years operating at the federal level he was a state senator before – and has no legislative record to speak of. His stances are pretty much no different than that of Dennis Kucinich and though he advocates ‘change’ one would have to search long to find any difference in his positions than those of the democrats for the last forty years.

In his speech after winning the Iowa caucus Obama mentioned that the government needs to stop saving money for the rich while adding to government debt with unnecessary tax cuts. There are two things strongly wrong with this statement: One, as before shown tax cuts do not add to government debt. Secondly, why should the government punish the rich for being more successful than the poor? Higher tax rates on the rich serve only to force them to attempt to lock-up their money in low tax investments – instead of investing it in ventures that could help the economy.

Whether Obama is too incompetent to realize this or if he is being dishonest to play with the emotions of voters he does not belong in the Oval Office.
The other candidates aren’t exactly great alternatives:
· Huckabee knows next to nothing about foreign affairs
· Hillary is a socialist who could possibly be a bigger threat to Americans than terrorism
· Ron Paul has extreme views that turn off a lot of America
· And the Libertarian candidate may be too quick to pull American forces out of foreign countries

Other Issues

First, there is a misconception the author would like to dispute. Many people like to blame the high gas prices on oil companies saying they are price gougers - Hillary Clinton even went as far as saying she would propose legislation that would take the income form oil companies and put it into a government run fund to find alternatives to oil if an ordinary citizen did this he would be in jail for the rest of his life, but according to Hillary the government could do it, the definition of this is socialism. This is completely false. Oil company Exxon-Mobil has a profit margin of just 9.5% (this means that for every dollar of sales Exxon only gets 9.5 cents after all expenses and taxes). This margin is lower than much of the S&P 500 and a third of Microsoft’s.

However, Microsoft does not deal with calls from newspapers and politicians of price gouging.

Health care is a big issue in the coming election – Hillary Clinton talks about it a lot. Politicians talk about a way that the government could make health care available to all citizens. But, instead of taking money away from tax payers and using it to pay for others medicine, there is a better solution – one that does not have the same risks of government scandals.

The solution is less government – not more. If the government were to kill restrictions on midwives and nurse practioners and make the health care market more free it the prices would correspondingly fall on competitive pressures.