If we only taxed the rich...
A constant liberal talking point is that the top one percent of American have exploited the rest of the country to acquire their wealth. It’s simply not true. These claims are based on outdated statistics that haven’t adequately changed as the country has changed. James Pethokoukis has an excellent analysis that defines five reason why income inequality is a myth.
“Remember when even upper-middle class families worried about staying on a long distance call for too long? When flying was an expensive luxury? When only a minority of the population had central air conditioning, dishwashers, and color televisions? When no one had DVD players, iPods, or digital cameras? And when most Americans owned a car that broke down frequently, guzzled fuel, spewed foul smelling pollution, and didn’t have any of the now virtually standard items like air conditioning or tape/CD players?”
No doubt the past few years have been terrible. But the past few decades have been pretty good—for everybody.
My guess is most of these trust fund types haven’t never wanted for anything their entire life. Their faux outrage is based on a rich yet empty life filled by guilt. By almost any measure most Americans are better off now than they were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. The trust funders should dedicate themselves to helping the poor to ease their guilt instead of asking the state to do it. That’s the point, though; they don’t want to do it.
Obviously rich kids aren’t the only ones protesting. The other people are union members, hipsters and wannabe hippies. The non-union working class has no time for a movement that absolves the government from any blame. These occupiers are woefully led astray by bad statistics and bad leadership. Sadly, so is much of the left.
“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see…”
As time goes by I become ever more convinced that we’re living in America’s twilight years. The tide is turning from a nation of go-getting, productive and unabashedly ambitious people to one of whining crybabies, paralyzed by the fact that life can be a real bitch, with all due respect to my neighbor’s dog. Americans have lost all sense of proportion, and it gets worst each passing day.
While there are people being slaughtered in other parts of the world simply because of their beliefs, we’re worried about finding a WiFi hot spot in Starbucks so we can Tweet about Demi Moore. Yet many of our fellow countrymen have decided that America is awful and the epicenter of all that is wrong in the world. They pine for an America that’s more like a cross between Denmark and some basket-case third-world backwater.
The Magical Mystery Tour is hoping to take you away... Hoping to take you away.
The Occupy Wall Street (and other cities across the nation) crowd is a spectacular example of bratty baby talkers who apparently want Big Daddy government to take care of their every need. They are the Entitlement Generation, spawned by the Worst Generation, a.k.a., Baby Boomers.
While compared to the Tea Party by the media, the Occupy “movement” has nothing in common with those protests. Where the Tea Parties are civil, law-abiding and respectful, the Occupy urchins are uncivil, profane and law-breaking. They are, in short, the definition of a mob.
The Tea Party’s message was for government to back off and allow us the freedom to take care of ourselves. The Occupiers’ message, as far as anything cohesive can be discerned from it, is more government, more intrusion and more entitlements, all paid for by everyone but them.
The element of the Occupiers that irks me most is the college grads who sunk tens of thousands of dollars into a pointless education, expecting to immediately emerge as middle-class urban hipster dufuses with loads of disposable income.
The first thing they should have learned at school was that it might help to have a marketable skill. I’m sorry, but constructing and using a beer bong or rolling a joint doesn’t count, nor does all the progressive multicultural claptrap that passes for scholarship at our increasingly irrelevant universities.
While other developing nations are focusing on engineering and technology, American universities increasingly focus on regressive nonsense. For instance, the mission statement of the University of Texas’ Center for Women’s and Gender Studies says, in part: “The mission of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS) is to create committed communities that address the challenges faced in the areas of gender, sexuality, diversity, and equity.”
Note that the Center’s mission is not to impart useful, practical knowledge that someone could apply to be a productive member of society, but to “create committed communities.” In other words, its entire mission is propaganda.
I assume that someone who graduates with a BS degree in Women’s and Gender Studies could get a job as a diversity manager at some corporation, creating rules and red tape that hinder and harass those who have real jobs at the company. It’s no wonder that America is becoming less competitive in the global market.
Moreover, while these graduates may be well-versed in Gay and Lesbian Literature and Culture (an actual class in the Center’s curriculum), they will be perplexed by the most basic of economic principles. Because they don’t understand economics, they will assume governments are instituted to secure their right to a flat screen TV, round-the-clock WiFi Internet access and health care, among others, without having to do anything to get whatever goodies they might want… Strawberry Fields Forever.
Unfortunately, there’s something called reality that smacks all of us in the face, and that reality is human nature. As I’ve written here a million times, all people, and I mean all people, are selfish. Whether you want to call it Original Sin or Natural Selection, it is an incontrovertible fact.
America’s founders worked human nature into the fabric of the founding documents in order to protect the people from the people who would govern them. According to the founders, governments are instituted for a very simple purpose: To secure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are not instituted to take money from someone else and give it to you so that you live a more comfortable life.
But in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world that is 21st Century America, lawless, unproductive wussies take to the streets to protest the fact that hard-working Americans are making money. They say the system is rigged, and I agree; it’s rigged to reward those who work hard and aren’t afraid to start at the bottom of the ladder and work their way up.
There is no other nation in the history of the world that has allowed so many from the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to become wildly rich and successful. This is not possible in the fantastical dream world Magical Mystery Tour of the Occupiers and their ilk, who would love to destroy the pillars upon which our nation’s success was built and lead us into the Strawberry Fields of universal poverty and despair… Forever.
“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary… The great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Occupy Wall Street and its spinoffs are 99 percent hipster dufus; naive, economically illiterate babies who believe that storks bring them their iPhones, clothing, transportation and coffee beans.
I continue to puzzle over the notion that people turn into angels when they’re elected to public office or become part of the machinery of government. It’s not my notion, but it seems to be a dearly held belief by those who are politically left of center. Why else would one vote for a Democrat, particularly now?
There are those on the left who claim to be skeptical of government. They’ll say things like, “Well, they’re all corrupt,” or, “We should throw them all out of office,” and so forth. But then they’ll turn around and vote Democrat, the party dedicated to making government larger and more intrusive.
I sometimes agree with the sentiment that it would be nice to throw all the bums out of office, but barring that I vote Republican simply because a Republican will at least grow government more slowly. Even Republicans, supposedly dedicated to limiting government, can’t help themselves and the relentless march away from limited government and toward limitless government continues.
I suppose a limitless government would be fine, “if men were angels,” but they’re not, regardless of whether they work in the private or public sector. Again, “if men were angels,” there would be no need for government in the first place.
Every human being has a self-centered profit motive. There are exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions do not reside in Washington, D.C., Madison, Sacramento, Denver, Austin, or any other seat of power. Self interest is a powerful motivating factor and the consistently aberrant behavior of our representatives is a constant reminder of this fact.
Duke Cunningham, the former Republican California congressman, used his office to enrich himself as much as possible. He resigned after pleading guilty to accepting bribes in the neighborhood of $2 million. Cunningham was also the Navy’s only flying ace in the Vietnam War. He served his country well and honorably, but once given the power that comes with public office he succumbed to the temptations.
I use Cunningham as an example because there’s no need to get into a tug-of-war debate about which party is more corrupt. Corruption crosses party lines and can grasp those who were once honorable and ethical. That’s because the seed of corruption is in each of us.
Therefore, it seems quite logical to me that, as Madison warned, government is under an obligation to control itself. Government is not controlling itself when it spends a gazillion dollars on “jobs” bills and whatnot. Who in their right mind believes that money is being well spent? These bills are thinly disguised as legislation, but are designed to launder tax dollars through connected political interests in order to find their way back into campaign coffers.
Meanwhile, economically illiterate hipster dufuses protest because corporations have a profit motive. People who run corporations and those who work for them have the same propensity toward corruption as anyone in government. The difference is that I’m not forced to buy a corporation’s product. I am forced to buy the government’s product, whatever it may be and however much it may inconvenience me.
I’ll admit it. I’m in the tank for corporations because they serve my interests. The irony of free market capitalism is that in serving its own interests, a corporation must serve mine. Just a quick glance around the room tells me they’re doing a damn fine job of it, too.
Let’s see, computer equipment from Dell, HP and Cisco, landline courtesy of AT&T, cell phone courtesy of Verizon, semi-electric guitar and amplifier by Fender (thanks Henshaw!), re-writable DVDs from Memorex, stapler from Swingline, furniture by some corporation somewhere, camera from Canon, and on and on and on it goes.
You can’t get away from the evil corporations! That’s how evil they are! They made me buy all this stuff to make my life more convenient! Wait a minute… I chose to buy that stuff, and I hope each and every corporation I mentioned is making a huge profit.
Where do these hipster dufus protesters think all of their modern conveniences come from? Do they think that if government planned and ran our economy that products would be self innovating and appear magically at our doorsteps? It’s religious to believe all will be well when government takes over and the evil corporations are punished for making things easy for us. Big government is suddenly Jesus feeding the multitudes from five loaves and two fishes.
Let’s say one of the corporations from which I buy products makes a really bad investment in a solar energy company. In order to recoup the half billion they wasted they then raise the prices of their products. Chances are I’ll find a competitive corporation from which to buy those products. I love what they make, but I don’t love it that much.
Then let’s say the federal government makes a really bad investment in the same solar energy company. They raise my taxes, so I move to Honduras? That’s my only choice, because government makes me pay dearly for its mistakes and throws me in jail if I don’t pay for its mistakes.
Let’s further postulate that the product I love is actually manufactured in China. I think it’s supposed to bother me that it’s made elsewhere, but I get a great price and have more disposable income. Our government’s product, which I suppose is the growing number of overpaid bureaucrats, are made and paid in the USA. Yeah! Only… they’re overpaid because their union negotiated with the government to ensure not only a fantastic paycheck, but one helluva benefits and pension package.
The same people who negotiated with the union and come up with new bureaucracies to employ even more public employees get kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions to help ensure the cycle continues. Oh well, at least my money stays in the USA, except for the foreign aid that’s likely remodeling some penny ante dictator’s personal castle.
I leave you with Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue discussing greed and capitalism back in the day, a day that was apparently more civil than ours…
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
There’s a simple truth about economics: Market forces could care less about your skin color, your sex, your sexual preferences, your ethnicity, or anything else that superficially divides us as human beings. Did it matter much that the Soviet Union incorporated a rainbow of ethnic groups in its national mix? No. The economic system sucked, and still sucks. The same goes for Cuba, Venezuela, Greece and any other wannabe spread-the-wealth worker’s paradise.
This is one of many reasons I can’t comprehend the left’s fascination with race, ethnicity and identity in general. I figured the election of someone with a mixed racial background would finally end the nonsense, but it’s gotten worse.
America is not a racist nation. It was a racist nation, but systemic racism has been all but eradicated. Sure, there’s still racism (now mostly found on the left; more on that below), and there always will be. As long as there are people there will be hatred and strife. It’s just a fact of life, but if you live in a Utopian dream world filled with rainbows and unicorns, I suggest you bring yourself back to earth and read some history.
Free market capitalism turns humanity’s weakness – its overriding selfishness – into a strength. Economic central planning does the exact opposite; it exploits humanity’s weakness to reward the select few.
Let's send someone to the White House who is less likely to favor cronies and identity groups and more likely to allow Americans to exercise their liberties.
What does this have to do with race and identity politics? Two words: Herman Cain. I am endorsing Mr. Cain for President. Am I supporting Mr. Cain because he’s black, or because I’m excited about someone who’s not part of the traditional political structure and who actually speaks truth to power?
I’m exhausted by career politicians with degrees from Yale and Harvard who tell us they’re going to fix everything for us because they’re so damn smart. They may be “smart,” but they’re also arrogant, and the combination is toxic (see Enron, see also the Financial Meltdown of 2008).
Cain is smart, but he also has common sense, something you find in short supply in the rarefied air of Harvard, Yale, Lehman Brothers and the Beltway. He believes in limited government, personal responsibility and that all people are created equal, which is the only sensible way to govern a free people. Free people expect little from their government. Free people prefer to be treated based on the common denominator of their humanity rather than the vagaries of whatever identity group into which they may fit.
Our government was instituted to protect citizens from foreign and domestic enemies so they can pursue life, liberty and happiness. It was not instituted to provide life, liberty and happiness. Cain understands this, and the concept that the larger the government, the smaller the citizen.
The left, however, sneers at Cain and his accomplishments. They call him an “Oreo” and an “Uncle Tom”; he is a traitor to his race and not authentically black. Remember, these are people who call themselves “progressive.”
What of Dr. King’s dream? “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Progressives, however, prefer to live in a nation where we are judged by the color of our skin, not the content of our character. This is progress?
Unlike the left, I judge Herman Cain, and Barack Obama for that matter, by the content of their character. I can’t stand Obama’s politics, but I have nothing against him personally. And again, I could care less if he’s black, white, purple or blue. Note that the left demonizes its opponents, labeling them as evil, stupid or both. Rather than debate policy positions, the left personalizes and polarizes.
The difference between the two men – Cain and Obama – has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with philosophy. Two divergent backgrounds produced two opposing philosophies. Obama worked hard and succeeded through academia and politics. He lived a life of social theory and never had any practical experience in the real world.
Cain also worked hard, but excelled in business, despite rising in the ranks during a time when racism was much more prevalent. Cain has practical experience. He’s met a payroll, as the pundits like to put it. In other words, he’s more likely to understand how big government impacts the average person negatively because he’s been there. People like Barack Obama have never been there and are far less likely to understand basic, real-world economics.
But because Cain’s real-world view that government’s coddling of victim groups, which leads to dependency and poverty (you can look it up; Google “poverty black family since war on poverty”), he’s a racist traitor, according to the left. Back in the real world, Cain is exactly right that just because white liberals and big government treat you like you’re stupid and lazy, doesn’t mean you are.
The left seeks to divide. By dividing, they conquer. And when they conquer, they destroy. E Unum Pluribus!
If you treat people like animals, there’s a good chance they’ll reciprocate in kind. The latest example of de-evolutionary regression can be found in the UK rioting. It is a microcosm of a bigger problem wrought by years of leftist policy nonsense.
The entire leftist ideology is predicated on an assumption that people cannot be trusted with liberty and freedom. While it is not stated quite so starkly by leftist ideologues, if you dig beneath the façade you’re left with the left’s contempt for the individual.
This contempt is papered over with euphemisms like “choice, social justice and fair share,” all meaning that our betters know better than us how to conduct our lives. In other words, the Average Joe is too stupid to make good choices, choices that lead to the success that comes from individual application and achievement.
Once the incentives for enterprise and virtue are stripped away from the individual, vis-a-vis the nanny state, the number of productive people necessarily shrinks. There are fewer people producing the means by which the unproductive live.
Moreover, less production means less output and less jobs. In turn, the unproductive riot and protest the fact that the productive aren’t providing them with the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. Coupled to this is the left’s insistence on moral relativism, which promotes vice over virtue as a virtue in itself, leaving behind a vast wasteland of children left behind by parents who selfishly foist a mixed, dysfunctional family structure on their offspring.
John Adams prophetically warned: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
The left, in fact, celebrates the wholesale destruction of the family. For some reason, this is seen as “progressive,” since it deconstructs what’s perceived as the patriarchal nature of the family. Instead of finding a balance between the family of the Middle Ages and the modern family, the left prefers to bring down the entire edifice. They celebrate the “single mom,” the paragon of virtue, when in fact the single mom as a general statistical rule leaves poverty, crime and despair in her wake.
What’s left is an unruly, undisciplined, immoral class of people who wonder why the gap grows between the haves and the have-nots. This gap is not a function of American-style capitalism; it is a function of leftist economics and relativism. Where else in the world have immigrants risen from abject poverty to wealth? It’s simply not possible in any other system devised by man. Yet the left insists that we move away from this objectively successful model and toward one that has proven time and again to fail and fail miserably, at least for the average citizen.
The government-oriented model does not fail for those who run it; they make out like bandits at the expense of the citizen. A cursory glance at the abuses perpetrated by our “public servants” should tell you everything you need to know. It’s no wonder they insist on creating more dependents; it expands their wealth and power.
They see economic upheaval and rioting as an opportunity, an opportunity to inject more government, thereby increasing their power base. After all, animals are a lot easier to control than free-thinking, independent human beings.
I’m not afraid of fear itself, nor am I particularly fearful of the latest market upheaval. What I am fearful of is the government reaction to all this. My greatest fear is that the government will double down on its out of control spending and economic monkey business in reaction to the “crisis.”
It’s about time government let the market do its thing and leave us alone. Every time government gets involved it succeeds only in saving powerful cronies from having to sell their second home in Aspen. What do we, the average America citizen who gets dinged for all this crap, get in return? Nada. Zilch. Nothing.
Oh, but we do get something. We get to pay more taxes and deal with more regulation! Then, we get all the wonderful unintended consequences that go along with it. Those consequences then create another “crisis” that must be once again fixed by government. And so it goes.
Perhaps our beloved representatives will finally learn that they can only take so much from the productive and pile up only so much debt, but I doubt it. As Mark Steyn puts it in the subtitle to his latest tome, After America: Get ready for Armageddon.
Current day politicians could learn a lot from Calvin Coolidge.
Late last night Congress struck a budget deal. This has been a brutal process. The Democrats avoided passing a budget in 2010. It was an election year and the party lacked the courage to pass anything. The new budget isn’t perfect, but it’s an improvement over the past decade. In the grand scheme of things this budget does little to address the long term problems we face.
As I wrote yesterday liberals are completely clueless about the current fiscal nightmare. It’s laughable to see the left’s reaction to the compromise. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein beleieve this miniscule cut will harm the economy.
Right now, the economy is weak. Giving into austerity will weaken it further, or at least delay recovery for longer. And if Obama does not get a recovery, then he will not be a successful president, no matter how hard he works to claim Boehner’s successes as his own. Clinton’s speeches were persuasive because the labor market did a lot of his talking for him. But when unemployment is stuck at eight percent, there’s no such thing as a great communicator.
The government has been running up debt for thirty years. If the government is the source of economic recovery why is the economy in the doldrums? Liberals suffer from this romantic idea that the government is the solution for every problem. How can we blame them? They all went to college and all they learned about economics is that FDR saved us in the Depression (BTW it’s a little more complicated).
It’s been three years of unprecedented spending by Obama and company and none of the meager growth the nation has experienced over the last six months can be attributed to the government. Calvin Coolidge once said that “the chief business of the American people is business.” This quote was used by New Deal historians to twist Coolidge’s legacy into a pro-business President who didn’t care about about Wall Street squashing the Forgotten Man. Coolidge gave that speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. on January 17, 1925. Here is the last paragraph of the speech:
We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.
There is a cynicism on the left that believes that the individual person is unable to prosper without the help of the State. Statism is based on the idea that wealth isn’t created, but that it is gained at the expense of someone else. This isn’t an idealistic philosophy. In fact, wealth redistribution has been used all over the world for two centuries by totalitarians and tyrants. I have called the idea Utopian because it is an impossible outcome.
Wealth isn’t stolen. It’s created by the hard work and the magnificent imagination of individual people. Almost all of the big ideas of the last three centuries didn’t come from the government. Calvin Coolidge was right. Americans are idealistic. I am an idealist. The American ideal is that free individuals can govern themselves more efficiently that citizens controlled by the state.
What about large corporations? In most cases unchecked corporations arise from poor government regulation. The government has given us the rules for energy providers in the United States. The same could be said about telecommunications, airlines, banks, and farming. None of those are free markets. They’ve been regulated into corruption. Can someone please point me in the direction of a nation that has an ideal situation with corporations? Why do we think copying other nations is the key to success?
The American idea is the exception to the rule. The American left longs for the United States to adopt the long standing statue quo. The arguments are simple: “If we only had European health care.” “If we had a work like the French.” “If we only had cheap drugs like the Canadians.” These simple ideas overlook the fact that Americans have subsidized Western Europe’s way of life for a half century. It’s the American idealist who paid for Europe’s defense. It’s the American idealist who paid for Europe’s health care.
Tomorrow’s grand idea isn’t free health care or high speed rail. Free entitlements aren’t new ideas. They’re legislative candy given to citizens who no longer think for themselves. The State creates a citizenry that doesn’t look inwardly for solutions, but instead looks to the state for handouts. The grand idea is that there is no perfect form of government. Their is no fair system. Mankind is flawed. A strong State is a flawed state. The men who created our government weren’t perfect, but they understood these basic truths. The path to prosperity comes from the individual and not the government.
The most depressing part of the whole budget battle in Washington is the left. Even if the Democrats cave to the Republican position on the budget the severe fiscal problems facing the nation aren’t addressed. The Democratic party and most of the people who vote for them are simply in denial. Or maybe they’re simply ignorant. I really don’t have an answer for it.
The main talking points from the left are raise taxes on the rich, cut the defense budget, and that Republicans want people to die. Here is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s take on the situation:
“Republicans want to shut down the government because they think there’s nothing more important than keeping women from getting cancer screenings. This is indefensible and everyone should be outraged,” Reid said on the Senate floor.
How can liberals complain about Rush Limbaugh, FOX news, or Glenn Beck when the Democrat’s leader in the Senate makes such idiotic statements? Reid’s statement is outrageous and detached from reality. Oh, but there’s more. MSNBC professional race baiter Jesse Jackson compares the current debate to the American Civil War.
“[T]his really is a Civil War fight,” Jackson said. “This is making the federal government dysfunctional on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. These guys will support three wars. They’ll support tax dodgers. They’ll support the wealthiest Americans getting tax breaks. They want to cut into education and health care. This is an ideological battle.”
Jackson said those trying to shut down the federal government are doing so to make an “ideological-religious point.”
“This is a Civil War fight,” he said. “I think Time magazine has it right. This is the 150th anniversary of the 1861 Civil War. Now those are determined to shut the federal government down to make their point — their ideological-religious point.”
It’s it a little odd that a man who calls himself a reverend is talking about an “ideological-religious point?” I wish I could say that I’m picking some random nutjobs on the left, but these are respected liberals who are willing to say whatever it takes to cash in some political points. I don’t think Americans are listening to this garbage any more, but the same cannot be said of the left. The liberal echo chamber is creating a group of willfully ignorant condescending people. They don’t want to debate. They don’t want to be informed. They just want their Utopian worldview justified.
The anti-war left has their talking points: “Bush lied people died,” “Neo-con,” and “Haliburton.” The big government left has their economic talking points: “Reaganomics,” “Voodoo Economics,” “Tax the Rich,” and “The Shrinking Middle-class.” Ask a liberal to explain any of these nonsesnical terms and they’ll change the subject.
If we only taxed the rich more and got rid of our defense department the world would love us, we would have free health care, and every child would be a super genius because they would have free high speed internet. It’s all so dumb, but that’s the reality on the left.
During Hosni Mubarek’s rambling speech in which he refused to give up the presidency the day before he actually did, he referred to himself as a “father” and the people of Egypt as his “sons and daughters”. Really?
This, however, is not an unusual delusion for penny-ante dictators throughout history. Totalitarian states are notorious for being overbearing parents to their rambunctious children, and we know, or should know, the results of that relationship.
Concentrate wealth and power in Washington, D.C., and this is what you'll get.
That’s why I have such a hard time understanding Progressive ideology, which seeks to solve all of our perceived problems with big government. Some call it the “nanny state,” but it’s going beyond nanny and straight to evil stepmother. Cinderella is progressively harassed into submission whilst the sisters enjoy special favors. That’s how Evil Stepmother government works.
Hosni Mubarek emerged a billionaire from his 30 years of parenthood. He geared Egypt’s economy to enriching himself and his friends, family and political cronies. Mubarek’s version of central planning was less Keynesian and more Cinderellaian. But that’s the problem when you concentrate too much wealth and power in one central body, whether it’s a single dictator or 500 or so politicians.
Witness the spending spree over the past few years. People wonder why this supposed Keynesian approach to stimulating the economy didn’t work. Maybe it’s because, like Hosni Mubarek’s Egypt, it was Cinderellaian.
The bailouts and Obamacare were mainly pork-laden monstrosities meant to benefit the politically connected. Why else would groups who pushed for the health care bill suddenly receive waivers to shelter themselves from the ramifications of the bill? I sure as hell didn’t get a waiver, but I’m not part of the Teamsters Union or any other politically-connected group.
This is one of the primary reasons I’m conservative. I do not trust the Federal government to be my parent, which is why it’s shocking to me that those who consider themselves “liberal” do. I understand liberalism at a local and even a state level, but I don’t get it at the Federal level. Logically, Progressives should also be for a limited Federal government and enact their Utopian dreams locally.
Boulder, Colorado, for instance, is the model progressive state. There are cameras all over the place and you can barely breathe without some official breathing down your back about what you’re eating, smoking (unless it’s pot) or thinking. That’s fine, but it’s also why I don’t live there.
What happens when the values of Boulder, and the laws which follow, are force-fed to the rest of the nation? Is that really fair? I don’t think so. Let California go bankrupt after its failed experiment with Cinderella state socialism, but leave Colorado alone (except for Boulder)! Why else do immigration patterns in the U.S. show people fleeing blue states for red states? Maybe it’s because progressive parental policy is a big, fat failure.
Productive people prefer to help people directly, either through a charitable organization or one-on-one. Productive people don’t like having their money siphoned through the evil stepmother, who first hands it to the evil stepsisters and then gives the crumbs to someone who, more often than not, needs to get off their butt and get a job.
The problem is that Americans are becoming more dependent on the state than ever before. When nobody has fathers anymore, and they’re taught that fathers and parents are irrelevant, the state slips in and supplants the family. It’s been one of primary strategies of tyrants throughout the ages and is an effective means of ensuring a parent-child relationship between state and citizen.
Therefore, we should see in Hosni Mubarek and others like him a warning for us. If we limit government, we reap freedom and liberty. If, on the other hand, we decide that a large central government is the answer to all that ails us, we will reap a childish serfdom. The evil stepmother will dispense her favors through a humorless bureaucrat behind a window at some federal agency. The stepsisters will get the cash directly.
Welcome to the New New Deal, which means that economic bad times last at least five times longer than they should.
“The effect of the people’s agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.”
-Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
That’s right, I said it, and I don’t care if you think I’m a racist, homophobic child-hater. Obama is at least part Keynesian, and I don’t need a birth certificate to prove it. Simply witness the unending Stimuluspalooza.
Mr. Obama’s spending spree is based on a Keynesian/Field of Dreams model… Spend it, and they will come. Unfortunately, there’s not one example in the history of the world where this works. If FDR’s New Deal popped into your mind as a good example of spending your way out of a bad economy, congratulations, you likely received a government education.
The simple economic fact is that central planning and artificial economic inputs in the form of government spending actually have an adverse effect. It skews supply and demand, making booms and the subsequent busts much more severe, while causing the bust to last far longer than it would if the markets are left to heal on their own.
As an example, witness the Internet boom and bust of the late ‘90s. Though there was some economic hardship because of the bust, it was mainly relegated to the Hipster Dufuses who traded reality for imaginary stock options. And, though it caused some short-term pain, the government didn’t interfere and bail out companies that made bad decisions. Without government interference, and despite a crippling attack on 911, the economy rebounded nicely. By the way, tax cuts do not count as artificial economic inputs.
You may argue that the entire financial system was at risk this time around, and thus any comparison is apples to acorns at best. I would argue, however, that the short-term economic problems would have been more severe, but that the market would have corrected itself. There’s always some enterprising soul ready to pick up the pieces and make it even better. You don’t find those enterprising souls in centrally-planned economies.
The problem with central planning of any stripe, even minor tinkering in the market, is that it’s inherently unfair, rewards bad behavior and cannot possibly adjust for the complexities of the economy. In the example of stimulus and bailout spending, companies that made poor decisions were rewarded. Other companies that suffered because of those poor decisions and weren’t politically connected were left to die. Is it government’s job to hand pick which companies survive and which don’t? I don’t think it’s a good idea. There’s too much potential for corruption and cronyism. If you voted Democrat this election, congratulations, you’ll help ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Thanks a lot!
In case you received a government education, here’s a quick economics lesson… It’s based on supply and demand. When the government, which has no clue what consumers want, starts monkeying with the supply side of the equation, it throws the whole thing off-kilter. The free market is organic and reacts to foreign bodies (central planning) like any other organic system; it either gets sick or it dies.
These basic concepts appear to be lost on the “progressive” left. Perhaps they’re really not lost on those with enough money and political connections to not only be shielded from the effects of their policies, but are rewarded handsomely in the process.
So, while Mr. Obama pursues a Keynesian economic course, I would suggest opening your mind a bit and reading up on the Austrian School of economics, starting with Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
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