Whether coming from the right or from the left, from conservative talk radio or from liberal blogger land, you have heard some form of the following:
Please let me point out something so apparently ridiculous no one else is saying it: AIG -- and all its American employees -- are taxpayers! Over the years AIG has paid the US Treasury billions if not trillions of dollars in taxes; if anything, AIG, and companies like it, have been keeping the United States government afloat for decades. The common taxpayer, that man or woman who is not the owner of a massive Blue Chip company, is able to pay taxes to the Treasury -- the very taxes used to help struggling companies like AIG -- because he or she has earned money as an employee of a company like AIG: it's businesses that make taxation even possible. The American "taxpayer" is nowhere if someone is not generating wealth that creates the jobs that enable that "taxpayer" to pay taxes.
Moreover, AIG, being a taxpayer, also is a member of that taxpaying set that has paid for the bailout: AIG is also a shareholder in that "80 percent" of Americans who "own" AIG. In other words, AIG has bailed out itself, and it owns both public and private stock in its own company.
The shrill cry that AIG is somehow holding cash that is not its own but entirely someone else's is simply ludicrous. Yes, one can argue that AIG is holding some cash that belongs to the American people, but it is absurd to construe this bailout scenario as if AIG is neither a taxpayer nor essential to the viability of the Treasury and the American people. Lost, too, is the very real fact that Barack Obama is bailing out these companies in large part because he knows -- as all thinking Americans know -- that the government does not make wealth that is then returned in taxes: private business and industry provide the Capitol with capital, so to speak. All of Barack Obama's budgetary plans are contingent on thriving businesses: the bailouts are designed to stimulate the economy so the government can collect MORE revenue through taxes from businesses and employed citizens. This proves that economies and markets are not contingent on the state; the state is contingent on economies. The chicken and egg riddle is easily answered here: the state DOES NOT come first. Simple history proves this: the American government was not first established and then economies and wealth followed. The markets and economies of this continent were vibrant and potent, and hence provided the infrastructure upon which a government could be built. The American people, living freely, privately and in personal contract, produce the wealth of this country, the very wealth Washington seeks. Washington is the result and not the cause; Washington is the recipient and not the source of wealth.
So, in short, we have before us a strange, paradoxical riddle: AIG has bailed out itself. Thus, it should be allowed to do with its bonus money as it sees fit.
But listen to the Democrats rush toward punitive, confiscatory taxes to take back money they believe they "loaned." That rushing sound is the true sound of incompetence, failure -- and greed.
Amazing. And sick.
Peace through dissent.
[Addendum: It's time that the talking heads set, the talk radio set (including the "heavyweights" like El Rushmo), and the blogging set quit this insanity. (I have not heard Rush Limbaugh, Michael Graham, Jay Severin, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Laura Ingraham, or anyone else, get this right.) The common locutions, like "taxpayer money," "your hard-earned tax dollars" and "our money," need to stop. Such phrases and terms are fine for fomenting outrage and envy; they make for great radio ratings and political boilerplate. But they are intellectually embarrassing. Ayn Rand is screaming from her grave, and this despite the fact that she denied any afterlife. Seriously, this whole manufactured outrage over AIG is embarrassing enough to stir the atheistic dead.]
©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
AIG has taken "taxpayer" money and given it away in ridiculous bonuses. Such avarice is unconscionable. American taxpayers have bailed out a company that deserved to fall into bankruptcy or receivership; this whole scandal is the rewarding of failure and incompetence. The American people now own 80 percent of AIG, and hence should be entitled to dictate how AIG is to spend taxpayers' hard-earned cash. America is sick of keeping such companies afloat, companies that flagrantly disregard the expectations of those who have come to their rescue.With all due respect to the American "taxpayer," let me gently admit that I have never heard such abject lunacy. The whole world has indeed gone mad, losing both a sense of proportion and the rudiments of logic. Right-wing nutjobs believe that AIG should have just failed, that AIG had no right being bailed out by "taxpayers" in the first place. Left-wing moonbats rage at AIG's alleged greed and crass materialism, and denounce the distribution of "taxpayer" funds for unjustifiable compensation.
Please let me point out something so apparently ridiculous no one else is saying it: AIG -- and all its American employees -- are taxpayers! Over the years AIG has paid the US Treasury billions if not trillions of dollars in taxes; if anything, AIG, and companies like it, have been keeping the United States government afloat for decades. The common taxpayer, that man or woman who is not the owner of a massive Blue Chip company, is able to pay taxes to the Treasury -- the very taxes used to help struggling companies like AIG -- because he or she has earned money as an employee of a company like AIG: it's businesses that make taxation even possible. The American "taxpayer" is nowhere if someone is not generating wealth that creates the jobs that enable that "taxpayer" to pay taxes.
Moreover, AIG, being a taxpayer, also is a member of that taxpaying set that has paid for the bailout: AIG is also a shareholder in that "80 percent" of Americans who "own" AIG. In other words, AIG has bailed out itself, and it owns both public and private stock in its own company.
The shrill cry that AIG is somehow holding cash that is not its own but entirely someone else's is simply ludicrous. Yes, one can argue that AIG is holding some cash that belongs to the American people, but it is absurd to construe this bailout scenario as if AIG is neither a taxpayer nor essential to the viability of the Treasury and the American people. Lost, too, is the very real fact that Barack Obama is bailing out these companies in large part because he knows -- as all thinking Americans know -- that the government does not make wealth that is then returned in taxes: private business and industry provide the Capitol with capital, so to speak. All of Barack Obama's budgetary plans are contingent on thriving businesses: the bailouts are designed to stimulate the economy so the government can collect MORE revenue through taxes from businesses and employed citizens. This proves that economies and markets are not contingent on the state; the state is contingent on economies. The chicken and egg riddle is easily answered here: the state DOES NOT come first. Simple history proves this: the American government was not first established and then economies and wealth followed. The markets and economies of this continent were vibrant and potent, and hence provided the infrastructure upon which a government could be built. The American people, living freely, privately and in personal contract, produce the wealth of this country, the very wealth Washington seeks. Washington is the result and not the cause; Washington is the recipient and not the source of wealth.
So, in short, we have before us a strange, paradoxical riddle: AIG has bailed out itself. Thus, it should be allowed to do with its bonus money as it sees fit.
But listen to the Democrats rush toward punitive, confiscatory taxes to take back money they believe they "loaned." That rushing sound is the true sound of incompetence, failure -- and greed.
Amazing. And sick.
Peace through dissent.
[Addendum: It's time that the talking heads set, the talk radio set (including the "heavyweights" like El Rushmo), and the blogging set quit this insanity. (I have not heard Rush Limbaugh, Michael Graham, Jay Severin, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Laura Ingraham, or anyone else, get this right.) The common locutions, like "taxpayer money," "your hard-earned tax dollars" and "our money," need to stop. Such phrases and terms are fine for fomenting outrage and envy; they make for great radio ratings and political boilerplate. But they are intellectually embarrassing. Ayn Rand is screaming from her grave, and this despite the fact that she denied any afterlife. Seriously, this whole manufactured outrage over AIG is embarrassing enough to stir the atheistic dead.]
©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
