Vote NO on Amendent 69

I am writing to urge you to vote NO on Amendment 69, also know as ColoradoCare. This law would add an additional 10% tax on ALL Colorado income, more than tripling our state income tax and making it the highest of any state, in one stroke.

For employed persons, 1/3 would be paid by the employee and 2/3 by the employer. For many businesses, an additional 6.7% payroll tax could put them out of business. Also, since the employer can't give the same dollar to the government and to the employee, this is money that the employee will never see in the form of a raise. The employer is simply a conduit through which the employees money is funneled to the state. So the net effect is a 10% tax on everyone including employees.

This law would be a disaster for our state for the following reasons. There would be an exodus of businesses and jobs that are not location-dependent. Rental properties and retail stores can't move, so they are stuck with the tax. But infotech, biotech, and others can be anywhere. Would they move to or stay in a state with the highest state taxes?

But other people would move here. We would instantly become a magnet for the sick and poor; "free" healthcare and no state income tax because they have little or no income. The people who pay the taxes will be in the same queue with everyone else.

There will be fewer health providers because of the tax and because a state-run commission will be setting their fees. Fewer doctors and more patients. If it passes, it will take another constitutional amendment to repeal it, which will happen, but not soon enough to avoid serious, long-term damage to the Colorado economy.

Please vote NO on 69.

Socialism and Economic "Sustainability"

At the John Stossel luncheon I recently attended, I picked up a book entitled "The Morality of Capitalism," a collection of essays edited by Tom Palmer of the Atlas Network, a Libertarian organization.

 One of the essays is by a Black, South African economist named Temba A. Nolutshungu. It contains a paragraph that should be the talking point of every Republican presidential candidate:

 "Job creation is not the role of the state. For jobs to be sustainable(*), they have to be created by the private sector. Government generated jobs are at the taxpayer's expense and amount to subsidized employment. Being unsustainable, they have no positive economic consequence. The private sector is the main creator of wealth, and the state sector a consumer (of wealth)"

 * That's the kind of "sustainability" we should be talking about.

 As evidence of the proposition that prosperity is the result of economic freedom, Mr. Nolutshungu sites what happened in China when, in 1992, Deng Xiaoping pushed through broad economic reform. (Do you remember his famous remark, "It is glorious to get rich"?) Then he quoted economist Bertel Schmitt: "the United States picked up the socialist economic playbook that Deng Xiaoping was smart enough to throw away."

 God help us if this election leads to the adoption of even more of that playbook.