As Margaret Thatcher once noted, sooner or later socialists run out of other people’s money.
Obama and his Democratic Party deny they’re socialists. But they’re no different in principle or practice from socialists, so the label doesn’t matter.
Their premise is: Raise taxes on “the rich,” and the budget will balance. Of course no such thing is true. Economists agree that raising marginal income taxes will only put a dent, at best, in the deficit. And even this assumes (1) government will not continue to increase spending (it will); and (2) tax increases have no impact on economic growth (they do).
Similarly, Obama’s answer to the $16 trillion (and growing) national debt is: Simply get rid of the requirement that the President must have permission to raise it. This is the equivalent of a known heroin or cocaine addict telling his credit card company, “Remove any and all limits on my credit card. And stop requiring me to pay on it, while you’re at it.” No individual would ever have such power. Obama wants this power for himself. America has reelected a dictator.
The madness and irrationality of all this — even on its own terms — is almost too much to write about. Our government has literally gone insane. They’re going through the motions of acting like civil and sane persons, but nothing they contemplate or discuss has any connection whatsoever to reality.
If it did, then this would mean that it’s possible and desirable for the government — at will — to simply wish away debt and wish into existence money out of thin air (or Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke’s computer.) If this were true, we never would have needed a private economy in the first place. There never would have been a need for capitalism, or socialism either, for that matter. All we ever needed was a government who cared enough to simply say, “Where wealth is needed — let there be wealth.” And where there is debt, let it simply be wished away.
The American people are, by and large, wrong-headed and evasive about all this. But even the worst of them are not as insane as our politicians. The problem is that American people want (1) fiscal responsibility and (2) unlimited spending. In principle, or in the abstract, a majority are saying, “Cut spending. Tax increases are not enough.” This is sane. But when it comes time to cut any particular spending — most especially, the spending that devours most of the government, Medicare and Social Security — the reply is, “Don’t you dare.”
Most Americans are contradictory. They want incompatible things. They want fiscal responsibility, relatively low taxes, and government programs far beyond what any government — even one allowed to impose a 100 percent tax rate on the population — could ever afford. Most Americans still labor under the delusion that the politicians can “somehow” fix it, if they put aside their petty, personal and ideological differences and just “get it done.”
You cannot “get done” the impossible. You cannot make a circle a square. You cannot sign a piece of paper, or press a computer key, and wish away a debt. You cannot have unlimited growth in an unlimited number of social welfare programs, with spending constantly expanding, and still have a prosperous economy that grows at 8 percent a year (like a totally free market probably would) or even 3-4 percent a year (like our mixed economy has often done).
Sooner or later, Americans have to face facts. America was a special and unique place because the American people — more so in earlier times than today — faced facts on a daily basis. Today — not so much. And not at all, at least with the great majority, when it comes to politics.
Most still like to assume that politics doesn’t really matter. But politicians are the ones we put in charge to run our economy. If you’re going to let someone else run the whole show — and under Obama’s Democrats that is now more the case than ever — then you had better pay attention to what they’re doing. These people we have entrusted with literally everything are not even sane, not in the realm in which we’re empowering them to operate. Americans continue to detach or ignore all of this at their peril.
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