Daniel J. Summers » Charter Member of the VRWC

This past weekend during Sunday School, we briefly discussed the raid of the polygamist compound in Texas. During this discussion, one very good point was raised - those handling this situation need wisdom. Previously decided cases hold a lot of weight in the judicial realm, and while, by all accounts, what was going on at that ranch was illegal and immoral, they are claiming it is part of their religion. It is good that those people have been stopped - however, what is to stop the government from deciding that something most mainstream churches do is illegal?

That led the discussion to this story about a photographer in Albuquerque, New Mexico who refused to photograph a “commitment ceremony” between two people of the same gender. There are lots of ironies in this story, and I would expect that this decision would be quickly vacated / overturned / made null. Can you really legally force someone to photograph an event that’s illegal by nature? However, if it stands, there are much more troubling questions, some of which we have already seen. In California, a Catholic-run hospital was sued for refusing to perform gender reassignment surgery, and the state has sued the US government over a provision that strips Federal funds from states that force medical practitioners to perform or refer abortions.

During the course of the discussion, I took the (somewhat unpopular) opinion that a business should have the right to refuse service to whomever the business owner wanted. (I also did that a bit strongly at one point - if you’re reading this, sorry about that.)  Someone asked “What if they say they’re not going to serve Jews?” My reply was that, if that was their stance, the word would get out, and those who found that abhorrent would also not patronize them, and they would go out of business. (And yes, I think I did actually use the word “abhorrent” in class… heh…) In further discussions with other people, including my wife, my position continued to be unpopular. I heard things like “What about people in the South not serving blacks?” and “I just think discrimination is wrong.”

I still cannot see the government requiring a private business to serve, sell, or perform any good, service, or person that the owner does not want. Why should I invest my money and time in an enterprise if the government is going to come and mandate to me how I do it? However, by the same token, I also feel that racial discrimination is bad. However, for anyone to say, unqualified, that “discrimination” is wrong simply doesn’t realize how much discrimination occurs on a day-to-day basis.

Let’s imagine I’m a photographer. I don’t like trying to get kids posed for a picture, so I create a policy of no more than one child per pose. That’s discrimination - I am discriminating against large families (though not completely - they’re just not going to get an entire family portrait from me). Maybe I don’t want to photograph some people because I feel they’re unattractive - do “Uglo-Americans” have a right to have me photograph them? Maybe I’m a really popular photographer, and I can’t be in two places at once. I’ll have to be discriminating in how I set up my schedule. There simply isn’t a scenario that convinces me that the government has an overriding interest in forcing me to photograph someone I don’t want to. The “right to photography” is nowhere in the Constitution.

Now - let’s put the brakes on that and look at the government. While I believe that a business owner has the right to discriminate pretty much however he or she feels like, I also just as strongly believe that the government should not be in the discrimination business. Equal protection under the law should be just that - equal. Firefighters should (and do) respond just as quickly to fires in desirable neighborhoods as they do to fires in undesirable neighborhoods. Everyone should (and does) have access to their legislators, and the right to vote for the ones they think will best represent them. Everyone should have access to government-run educational facilities, with the same requirements for everyone. (OK, we need to work on that last one…) The bottom line is, government should not discriminate on anything other than merit and scarcity (i.e., we can’t give everyone $1k if we don’t have it).

But, in reality, this isn’t the way it is; I alluded to it above regarding education. When the government starts trying to play identity games, “level the playing field,” or any other sort of tinkering, they invariably get it wrong. According to the NM government, this photographer “violated human rights” by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. Would the pastors of my church be guilty of the same if they refused to officiate one? In finding this photographer guilty of discrimination, the state is, in effect, discriminating against her free exercise of religion. (See? Every choice is discrimination!) This is the danger of giving the government the power to decide what’s “good” discrimination versus what’s “bad” discrimination.

The solution? From my view, I believe that there are very powerful forces at work in the economic marketplace. Eliminating “Jim Crow” laws was a good thing - they were a violation of the equal protection clause. Forcing state-run universities to integrate was a good thing - again, equal access to government resources. Forcing businesses to cater to those to whom they do not wish to cater? That’s bad. Sure, I believe that businesses shouldn’t discriminate based on race - but is it the government’s place to tell them they can’t? Some people think that discrimination based on gender is wrong; in fact, a few years back, there was a big kerfuffle over Augusta National not allowing women to become members. How many of those people would advocate my joining Curves? It’s all perspective, and because one person’s perspective may be different than another’s, the government should stay out of it.

To me, this is a heart thing. Sure, you can pass a law and make people comply, but all you’ve done is made people upset by forcing them to do something that they didn’t want to do. I believe in giving people enough rope so that they can hang themselves (figuratively speaking, of course) - if someone wants to open a racially-discriminatory business, that’s their own stupidity in eliminating a big chunk of their potential customer base. If someone wants to open the “No Purple Pants Club” and refuse to admit anyone wearing purple pants - well, it’s their money and time they’re pouring into the business. And, if someone wants to refuse to provide their goods and services to those they find morally reprehensible, more power to ‘em.

In each of these cases, one of two things will happen. One, they may flourish as a business, which will prove there was a market for their goods and services, even without the people they excluded. Two, they will fail, and learn via the “school of hard knocks” that they shouldn’t restrict their pool of potential customers. Either way, the business owner gets out of his business exactly what he put into it, and I really don’t have a problem with that.

John Kerry and John Edwards (”Kedwards” hereafter) are making some significant claims about their plan for this country, and using some pretty strong but rather hackneyed rhetoric to get their point across. The term “demagoguery” is defined as “impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace.” Democrats are renowned for this, from the “New Deal” to Clinton’s famous “I feel your pain,” Democrats base a lot of their policies on what they can spin to appeal to emotions, rather than facts. Let’s take some of these areas, specifically some of those having to do with economics, and see why, I believe, Kedwards is wrong for America.

Tax Cuts for the Rich - This has been a favorite claim of Democrats for ages, and it shows a basic lack of understanding regarding basic economic principles. The biggest thing that Democrats have wrong is their belief that taxes are the governments, to be “given back” to the people. Taxes are the people’s money, given to the government to fund needed programs, such as national defense, highways, etc. Tax cuts are not “giving back,” they are letting people keep more of their money.

Another problem with their rhetoric is that speaking of taxes in dollar amounts is inherently going to sound skewed to someone who isn’t paying attention (which, sadly, represents a lot more of our current electorate than we’d like). Imagine that there are two people - one makes $10,000 a year, and the other makes $200,000 a year. In this imaginary world, everyone pays 10% taxes. This means that person A pays $1,000 in taxes a year, and person B pays $20,000. Now, here come the media reports about a budget surplus, and Congress and the President decide to cut taxes by 1%. Person A saves $100, and person B saves $2,000 - in both cases, a 10% reduction in the total amount of taxes they have to pay. If you use Democrat thinking, person B got 95% of the tax cut.

Tax cuts benefit everyone. Those who make more, by virtue of simple mathematics, will receive a larger amount reduction whenever tax rates are lowered. However, these are also people who will use this money to reinvest in our economy, either through business expansion (which leads to more jobs), investments in stocks and bonds (which helps fund the economy), or through charitable donations (which improves the quality of life in local communities).

Another point on tax cuts - sometimes a reduction in the tax rate can actually increase tax income. If done correctly, tax cuts don’t have to be “paid for,” they pay for themselves. If a gas station lowers its price for unleaded gasoline by $.02 a gallon, they will more than make up for their $.02 loss with their increase in volume. Taxes work the same way - when the rates are reduced, the economy grows; so, while we all pay less rate-wise, we pay more in real dollars. Everyone wins.

Minimum Wage Increase - Yet another favorite topic, and another place that Democrats don’t understand economics. A wage is a negotiated contract between employee and employer. Most often, all negotiating is done on the part of the employee, as an employer would say “Here’s a job, and here’s the pay - want it?” Very few people are raising families on minimum wage, and in their “average annual minimum-wage salary” statistics, the Democrats are including teens, college students, and spouses who work as secondary wage earners in their household. When the government interferes in business by forcing them to pay their entry-level workers more, what do the businesses do? There are either fewer entry-level jobs, or the products and/or services the company produces begin costing more.

There is one segment of the population who benefits from minimum-wage increases - union members. Many union contracts stipulate their wage in relation to the minimum wage - when it increases, their wages increase as well.

Corporate Tax Loopholes - Again, more cries of how these evil corporations are trying to get out of paying their taxes. And, yet again, this is a place that the Democrats don’t just get it. They miss it because, economically, there is no such thing as a “corporate tax”. There is a finite amount of money in this country, and corporations only have money if they extract it from the general public. The most common method is by providing a good or service for which people will give their money. With this money, they have to cover their operating expenses, the cost of the good or service itself, the cost of paying their employees, and what is left is called “profit.” Under the current structure, they also have to pay taxes with that money, which eats into profits. The company sets their price based on a few factors, two of which are desired profit, and the market value of their good or service.

With that, what happens when the government takes more money from the corporation? Who pays that tax? The general public, that’s who. Corporate taxes make everything cost more, while giving no benefit to the economy whatsoever. All they do is penalize success.

(Things have been pretty crazy here lately - lots of work and family events, with little free time. I hope to have time to attack some other lines from Kedwards in the next few days.)