Grey Matters

Addressing the Democratic national Convention tonight, Joe Biden said: “My mother’s creed is the American creed. No one is better than you, everyone is your equal and everyone is equal to you.” Now Joe passed on this tidbit in order to make us believe that he believes this steaming pile of socialist folderol. 

Really, Senator Biden? You’re really no better than anyone else? So what are you doing in the U.S. Senate? Why are you chauffeured around in limousines and given Secret Service protection? Because you’re just like me, right?

It would have been more believable if Joe had said that we’re all equal before the law. Of course, that would not have been true either, but it would not have been as big a whopper as “We’re all equal.” 

I’m not ashamed to say it: I’m better than a lot of people. I’m better than the dad who runs out on his family or cheats on his wife. I’m better that the guy who drinks his paycheck then goes home and beats his wife. I’m better than the guy who holds up liquor stores and, yes, I’m even better than the guy who uses a sick day to go fishing.

People are very different one from another, Joe, and the Democrats’ determination to make us all the same is idiotic and destructive to society. Treating a welfare cheat or an alien illegally in this country the same as you’d treat an honest, tax-paying citizen is not a virtue, Joe. It’s a travesty and a cryin’ shame.

Democrats believe that illegal aliens are just as “entitled” to emergency room treatment or an education at taxpayer’s expense as are Americans. They believe that violence used in defense of yourself is just as bad as the violence which required you to defend yourself in the first place. They believe that Adolph Hitler and Ronald Reagan were morally equivalent. 

Joe Biden’s creed is the Democrats’ creed. Excellence and achievement should be discouraged, even punished. “Need” is the only criterion that matters. Everyone is entitled to cradle-to-grave security. No one is entitled to special treatment, even if they pay for it themselves. 

You need only look at Democrats’ policy proposals and pronouncements to see the truth of their creed.

During this presidential campaign season, there’s going to be much talk about the government’s need to “do something” about the economy. To a large degree, the economy we have now is the result of government doings.

Government, you see, cannot actually do anything to help the economy. Government can only hurt the economy; it can tax and it can regulate. That is, it can take away money that might be better left in private hands and it can impose costs on businesses and individuals. Neither of these can aid an ailing economy. You cannot tax your way to prosperity. 

At best, government can hurt the economy less. Government functionaries call this “helping” the economy. This is like the schoolyard bully twisting your arm somewhat less and then taking credit for making you feel better. One can’t help but think that we’d have been better off without the arm twisting altogether.

“Government is the great Naysayer. The only things government can do are regulate and redistribute, prohibit and penalize, confiscate and command. Are these the things that liberty is made of? Somebody else’s money and an endless list of Thou Shalt Nots?” — James Bovard, “Freedom in Chains” ISBN 0-312-21441-3

The kinds of things that help the economy are starting businesses (which creates jobs) and providing needed goods and services. Government cannot do these things. More correctly, government can only do these things by preventing someone else from doing so. That is, to provide government services, government has to take money from the (private) economy and spend it.

Once removed from the (private) economy, that money cannot be used for what it might otherwise have accomplished. The previous owner of taxed-away money has lost the opportunity to invest it as s/he would have preferred. See “opportunity cost”

Government at all levels in the USA taxes away between 40% and 50% of every dollar earned in the economy. And that’s why this article is titled Government v. The Economy.

I just listened to Michelle Obama addressing the Democratic nation Convention and she was so proud of the fact that she and her fellow Democrats have the vision to remake the world from the way it is now to the way “it should be.” When she said it, I was immediately struck by the fact that “the world as it should be” was responsible for much of what’s wrong with the world.

On the surface, revamping the world to make it “as it should be” sounds very high-minded and noble. But reshaping the world means reshaping mankind — the people that make up the world. The problems are manyfold. To begin with, we cannot agree on what the world “should be” like. There are as many different visions of the future as there are ideologies. Thus the struggle to transform the world, even if it succeeded, would distress large numbers of people. 

Changing the world means changing mankind. That never works. (Remember the New Soviet Man?) 

Changing the world cannot be done cheaply, and that means more taxes for us all. This means that making the world “as it should be” will require force of arms. At bottom, that’s what government is: people with guns, ready to enforce the laws and regulations that shape the world to our leaders’ liking, ready to collect the taxes, ready to force compliance of those who do not share the same vision of “the world as it should be.”

Hitler tried to reshape the world, as did Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung,  Saddam Hussein and countless others before them. Fundamentalist Muslims are right now trying to remake much of the world (and succeeding) and would enforce a theocracy if they could. Each and every world reshaper believe s/he is making the world a better place. Every time I hear of someone wanting to force their world view upon me, I cannot help but get nervous.

I think the world has had enough of us trying to reshape it. Maybe we should try accepting others as they are and not try to force them to accept our personal visions of how they should be.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson defined good government as: ”A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

His opinion was informed by the study of history. We would do well to heed Jefferson’s words. Government should not be trying to re-make the world in some utopian vision. This never works out and has caused much grief. If anyone really wants to make the world a better place, I suggest leading by example, not utilizing the power of government to force everyone to behave as you desire.

The Soviet Union fell because it was over-extended, financially. The USSR was supporting, in addition to itself, countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Cuba, South America and so on. Given the obvious inevitably of world-wide communism, the Soviets saw no problem with fomenting Communist revolutions all over the world. That takes a lot of money.

Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, made it clear to the Soviets that the U.S.A. would win the arms race. The Soviets, trying to keep up in the arms race plus support Communist insurgents everywhere, simply could not afford all that overhead. 

As it turns out, Communist dictatorships are better at divvying up loot than they are at generating wealth. I guess that’s true of socialists, generally. If they understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists in the first place.

In any event, the Soviet Union collapsed because it could not afford to continue paying for all its pet projects. 

This will be America’s undoing as well. The U.S. simply cannot afford all that we have committed to do and it will bankrupt us. No, we’re not fomenting democratic revolutions all over the world, though we do have 800 military bases on more than 140 countries world-wide. (Yes, we have blown a bundle on the Iraqi fiasco.) But we are over-extended at home.

The current national debt, as I write this, in roughly $9,577,373,138,799.00. The rate at which we are accumulating debt is increasing. The National Debt took over six years to rise from $5 trillion to $6 trillion. It then took less than 2 years to reach 7 trillion and another twenty months to reach 8 trillion on October 18th 2005. Now we’ve added another $1.58 trillion since then.

It should be obvious that the interest payment on a debt of 9.5 trillion dollars is a significant portion of the federal budget. In 2007, interest on the national debt was 430 Billion dollars. It wasn’t all that long ago that the entire federal budget was less than that.

But the government keeps coming up with more and more programs, providing more and more services, costing more and more of your money. When the federal budget is in deficit, which is most of the time, the debt continues to climb.

It is not, of course, just the national debt which is of concern. Due to massive “entitlement” programs, government pensions and all manner of spending for which the U.S. is already obligated, there are more trillions of dollars which we call ill afford to spend. As P. J. O’Rourke once quipped, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait ’til you see what it costs when it’s free.”

The bottom line is that America’s bottom line is very much in the red, and that will be our undoing.

Written 2008-07-17

This should be a very interesting presidential campaign because both the Republicans and Democrats are running candidates who, historically, can’t get elected.

Republicans don’t win by running liberal candidates. It takes a big C Conservative to win. The Democrats always lose when they run liberal candidates. For a Democrat to be elected, the candidate must move to the center and become more conservative, at least in terms of campaign speeches. 

McCain is no conservative. He’s so liberal that much of the primary vote that got him the nomination was cross-over Democrats and liberal independents. McCain, historically, cannot be elected president of the United States.

Obama is no moderate. In 2007, he was the most ‘liberal’ senator in the U.S. Senate, judging by his voting record. Obama cannot, by historical precedent, be elected President of the United States.

So it promises to be a very interesting presidential election. Perhaps the choices of running mates will be a significant factor. Maybe even the deciding factor.

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass from your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.” — P. J. O’Rourke