"They Shouldn't Be Allowed"

By Douglas V. Gibbs

I was talking to a friend about Hillary Clinton's plan to tax corporations as they exit the country.  Providing a less-hostile environment towards business never seems to cross the mind of the liberal left Democrats.  They do not consider working with businesses.  In their eyes, it should be criminal for these businesses to do what they can to pay less taxes.  The world is supposed to be static.  The non-politicians are supposed to just do what they are told, and perform or pay as government directs - Freedom be damned.

As I said to my friend, businesses don't see taxes as taxes.  They see them as an expense.  The goal of owning a business is to keep expenses as low as possible, and profit as high as possible.  Quality products, and quality service also plays into the equation.  They don't pay taxes, the consumer does.  As taxes rise, the cost of doing business goes up, so the price of the product of service increases, and the quality of the product or service may suffer.

If wages are increased, business owners have to figure out how to reduce that expense in other ways.  McDonalds is installing automated ordering systems, and then are laying off the excess employees who are demanding higher minimum wage because those employees are simply not needed anymore.  If taxes increase, then the way to reduce expenses usually have to do with either reducing the cost of materials, eliminating employees, raising prices, or seeking a route to reduce the taxation.

The threat of an exit tax will only encourage more companies to leave the country.  An exit tax is a sign that taxation against businesses increasing is the norm, and corporations, seeing the writing on the wall, won't be able to get out of the country fast enough to avoid any new taxes beyond the exit tax that politicians have in store.

My friend replied, "They shouldn't be allowed to do that.  There should be a law keeping them in the country."

"So, I asked, are you recommending that laws should be passed eliminating a business owner's freedom regarding the location of his business?  Are you saying that government should be able to dictate how a business owner runs his own business."

"Yeah," the person honestly replied.  "Individuals can't be trusted to do the right thing."

"But power-seeking bureaucrats can?"

You can't reason with the unreasonable.  But the conversation brought up an important point.  We can argue politics all day, but in the end it comes down to individualism versus collectivism.  He said that "individuals can't be trusted."  It all comes down to one question.  Can you, as an individual, be trusted to run your own individual life, or your own individual business, or should a collective of power-seeking elitists make those decisions for you?

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Clinton offers new exit tax on US-foreign company merges - Yahoo News