저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
요약 보기
정부 개입이 문제를 만들고 키운다는 주장이 중심이며, 자산 가격 전망 발언은 거의 없다. 교육 대출: 학자금 대출 문제는 정부가 대출을 제공해 대학 등록금을 끌어올린 결과라고 주장한다. 정부 개입이 없던 과거에는 아버지처럼 여름 아르바이트로 등록금을 충당할 수 있었다고 설명한다. 시장 해법: 대학 등록금, 의료비, 휴대폰 가격처럼 정부 개입이 큰 곳일수록 가격이 높거나 품질이 낮다고 보고, 자유시장 경쟁과 정부 축소를 해법으로 제시한다. 정부 역할: 정부는 개인의 자유와 사유재산 보호라는 제한된 역할에 머물러야 하며, 그렇지 않으면 피해가 편익을 넘는다고 본다. 세금 부담: 미국 연방·주·지방세를 합치면 고소득층의 실효 세율이 매우 높다고 주장한다. 주세와 시세, 지방소득세를 더하면 일부 고세율 주에서는 소득의 50% 이상이 세금으로 나간다고 설명한다. 주·지방세 공제 한도(1만 달러)가 세부담을 키웠다고도 말한다. 인플레이션: 재정적자를 메우는 방식이 사실상 인플레이션이며, 이는 대중에게 부과되는 숨은 세금이라고 주장한다. 식료품, 임대료 등 생활비 상승분을 추가 세금으로 보라고 말한다. 자산 관련: 영상 제목에서 금·은 매수를 언급하지만, 본문에서는 구체적인 가격 방향이나 목표가 발언이 확인되지 않았다.
다듬은 글
that is the problem with government. They make every problem they try to solve worse, but what's even worse is that the problems they're trying to solve were generally created by them in the first place. Look at what they're doing now. I was just listening to some politicians this morning talking about the student loan problem, about all these student loans, and how they're trying to solve that problem. Well, the government created that problem. Students wouldn't have loans if it weren't for the government student loan programs. Colleges couldn't charge such high tuition if the government didn't loan all that money to the kids and bid up prices. The government created that problem.
Before the government got involved in college, it wasn't that expensive, and you didn't have to borrow money. My father grew up in a lower-middle to upper-lower class family. His father was a carpenter, he had seven sisters, and his father had no money to send my dad to college. My dad didn't have any money either, so he had a summer job waiting tables. That's all it took. He didn't borrow any money. He paid for tuition, room and board, got an accounting degree, and just worked as a waiter over the summers. Most of his friends did the same. There used to be an expression in America: "I'm working my way through college." People worked their way through college. Now they borrow their way through college, and when they graduate they have a mountain of debt.
And now the government says, "Oh my god, students have so much debt, we need a government solution." No, we don't. It's a government-created problem, and we need a free-market solution. We've got to get the government out of higher education. We've got to get the government out of student loans, whether it guarantees them or makes them directly. There can't be any more money loaned to anybody to go to college. We need to force colleges and universities to cut prices. Why would they cut prices when the kids have all this government money to pay whatever price they want? Bring some free-market forces into college. Can you imagine if everybody got government loans to buy cell phones? How expensive would cell phones be right now? Why are they so cheap? Because the capitalist system brought the price down. If you don't get a government loan, the price has to come down. Wherever the government is involved, it's the same with health care. Why is health care so expensive? Because the government plays such a big role. Wherever you see high prices or low quality, it's because of an excess of government involvement, and the only solution is to get the government out so free-market forces can come in. The government is creating the crises. It's like they light a fire and say, "Okay, see, now we'll put it out. We'll protect you from this fire that we lit."
I do believe government is a necessary evil, but the problem is that sometimes it becomes too big a burden, where the negatives outweigh the positives, and that's pretty much the case now. Governments can add to the overall well-being and prosperity of a society if they stick to their limited mission of protecting individual liberty and private property, and that's it. If they can create an environment where I'm more likely to keep the fruits of my labor, then I'm going to labor harder and produce a bigger bounty from which everybody can benefit. That's the beauty of capitalism. I don't get rich unless I enrich other people in the process. But when the government gets so big that the harm it does outweighs the benefit it provides, then it's time to get rid of the government. That's what the Founding Fathers said: you have to dissolve the government when it becomes so bad. Unfortunately, we're way beyond that point.
If you go back to the American Revolution and look at what King George was doing in England, it's nothing compared to what we're doing to ourselves. King George, in his wildest imagination, wouldn't even have conceived of the IRS. He wouldn't have conceived of an income tax. The Founding Fathers objected to a sales tax on tea. Imagine how much they would have objected to an income tax. What if the colonists had to go around keeping records of everything they spent and all their deductions, come up with a tax return, and send it over to King George? How long would that have lasted? Only about a third of Americans were in favor of the revolution. If King George had an income tax, everybody would have been in favor of the revolution. There would have been no holdouts. So we've already gone way beyond what King George did. If any of the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would be leading the revolution to overthrow the government we have right now.
When you compare the U.S. tax rate to most other countries, if you live in most countries your national tax rate is your tax rate. Most cities don't impose another tax. Americans may say, "Oh, we have a 37 percent tax rate in America," but if you live in Florida, that's one thing. What if you live in California? What if you live in New York? Now you're looking at the high 40s. Then add the Obamacare 3.8 percent tax on top. There are a lot of Americans living in high-tax states who pay north of 50 percent of their income in tax, and that doesn't even count property taxes, sales taxes, and things like that. So when you compare the marginal income tax rate in America to Germany, France, or Japan, you have to add in state and local taxes. New York City imposes its own city income tax on residents. If you live in New York City, you're paying federal tax, state tax, and city tax. And by the way, they can't deduct those taxes anymore. There's a $10,000 cap. It used to be unlimited, but that changed under Trump, which made those taxes an even bigger burden because they're no longer deductible against your federal tax. You just add it right on top. So I think America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world on a marginal basis.
Now, we do have ways to avoid that. For example, carried interest: if you're a hedge fund manager or private equity guy, you don't have to pay that top rate; you can pay the capital gains rate. But most people can't take advantage of that carried interest loophole, which, by the way, was preserved in the Inflation Reduction Act. They made sure to take care of the hedge fund and private equity billionaires. They didn't want to go after them, but they got 87,000 IRS agents to go after the middle class. Even though we're one of the most heavily taxed countries, we're not taxed enough, because we're running $2 to $3 trillion a year in budget deficits. That's how much higher taxes would have to be if the government were fiscally responsible. They would pretty much have to double our tax rates to collect all the money they're spending.
But the real measure of taxation is spending. Every dollar a government spends is a dollar the public is on the hook to pay. In reality, the way we're paying for these budget deficits is with inflation. Inflation is actually a tax, a tax on the public to provide for government spending. So to see how much you're paying in taxes, you have to add all these big price increases to your income tax and your property tax. If your grocery bill, your rent, and your food costs mean you're paying an extra $10,000 a year more than you were last year, that's just $10,000 in taxes. That's really all it is.
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