Monday, July 28, 2014

Economic Patriotism & Spitting Vodka Through Your Nose

The best part of an Obama administration is the never-ending stream pseudo-intellectual terms coined to shroud their ridiculous ideas in the cloak of credibility. The newest one is "Economic Patriotism." This one should win some sort of prize.

If I didn't know the source, I might think that economic patriotism meant acting in a way to drive the best possible economic outcomes. Fostering optimal growth, low unemployment, prosperity for all those willing and able to work for it. That sounds like economic patriotism to me. I think we should all drink to "economic patriotism"...as long as we are drinking Kentucky bourbon and not Russian Vodka.

However, president Obama and his team aren't all that interested in economic growth, low unemployment, and prosperity for all and they have 5+ years of economic results to prove it. When President Obama suggests that Americans support economic patriotism, he means that corporations should pay more taxes than required by law. Why would they do that? It doesn't seem very economically patriotic to me. Why does making 95 cents a share for my stockholders, when I could have made 97 cents, make me economically patriotic? If I am following the tax code, which by the way the Obama administration had two years of unfettered opportunity to write, why would I pay more taxes than required? The answer is I wouldn't and companies aren't, so the president is trying to shame them into paying more into wasteful government coffers by declaring that firms using the tax code to their advantage are being economically unpatriotic. It is delicious irony that the administration that has no shame is using it to alter the behavior of corporations that actually create jobs, wealth, and prosperity.

One a personal note...after the Obama tax increases kicked in last year and I had to write a big stinking check to those scalawags at the IRS, I didn't feel all that fucking patriotic.

Economic patriotism is a charade straight from the faculty lounge and not the faculty lounge of the business school. A corporation that does not use the tax code and all the other rules of the road set by Washington to its advantage in the marketplace isn't a corporation very long...it's a bankruptcy filing and a class action law suit. The most impressive part of this latest missive from the president is that he can say it with a straight face and all the indignation of a guy who just got bumped from first class to coach.

CEO's must have a good laugh behind closed doors when the president gets on his high horse and declaratively lectures us on things that he doesn't understand and that make no sense outside the Obama circle of sycophants. I wonder if Vladimir Putin spits Stolichnaya through his nose laughing when he reads the shit Obama dreams-up.

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