Liberals' Class Warfare Takes Aim At Our Way Of Life
by Michael D. Hume, M.S.
Let me explain why I think every American family should have at least one good, solid entrepreneurial venture going these days.
When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992 against George H.W. Bush, he responded to reporters who fretted he might not be able to unseat the president who'd successfully prosecuted the first Gulf War: "It's the economy, Stupid," he said. His assertion was that he could convince Americans that the economy was a wreck, and he did so... by claiming that the free market wasn't doing a good job of "income redistribution." Class warfare, as a political weapon, enjoyed a good season.
Since shortly after Clinton claimed that "the era of big government is over," and through his replacement first by a fiscally-liberal Republican and later by a Democrat who can only be described as a socialist, the government has grown by leaps and bounds, as has its addiction to massive spending. Today, the big three entitlements - Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security - have built-in, automatic annual spending increases and total 60% of the government's outlays.
Big government, and big spending, are the roads to economic wreck and ruin. But these days, every institution that influences American public opinion (the government, the media, the entertainment industry, labor unions, and academe) are pushing for both. They want you to believe "the rich" are getting away with murder, and they holler this accusation every time a conservative so much as whispers about such heretical ideas as cutting government spending or reducing our sky-high tax rates. If you have half a brain, you can see where they're heading with this: the bigger the government, especially through entitlement spending, the more dependent you are on the government for handouts... and the more control over your day-to-day life the government (and those other institutions) then would have.
Gerald Ford said "a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have."
It's really all about their power, Stupid.
So what's the alternative? you ask. Are you really suggesting we have TAX CUTS for the RICH?
Yes. Yes I am. Because, as others have pointed out, you are never going to get a job from a poor person.
Every single time tax rates have been slashed in a serious way (especially when accompanied by spending cuts), the economy has boomed, jobs have become more plentiful, the number of taxpayers has increased, the number of tax receivers (through government "entitlements") has decreased, and the actual amount of tax money paid to the government has gone... UP. A lot. Calvin Coolidge cut taxes sharply, and between 1922 and 1929 (the "Roaring Twenties"), America's economy grew 4.7% per year, unemployment fell all the way down to 3.2% (about a third of today's rate), and tax revenue collected from "the rich" (yes, the same group which Coolidge had provided with tax cuts) soared from $300 million to $700 million per year. When Ronald Reagan repeated the tax-cuts-for-the-rich act in 1981, though he was slammed by the media just as rudely as today's conservatives are, the nation entered the longest and most robust period of economic growth in its history.
In contrast, every single time the collectivist/statists have had a chance to move the nation away from job-creating free enterprise and toward big-government socialism, the opposite has happened in every case. In America, Herbert Hoover wanted to feed the whole world, and he loved to play the class warfare card. Within months of his taking office as president, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Franklin Roosevelt grew the government big-time, and exteded the Depression while everyone was distracted by World War II. And those have been mild nudges toward socialism in comparison with the collectivist experiments tried elsewhere. The trouble with socialism, as Maggie Thatcher once famously said, is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money... and, typically, when collectivist states have started to run out of money, they've had to go to war to try to take other nations' resources (see Nazi Germany), or they've had to simply go out of business (see Soviet Russia).
Now, look beyond what the media are trying to sell you these days, and simply ask yourself this: down which path is your government currently trying to take you? I think you know the answer. The Democrats are pressing the socialist pedal to the metal, and the Republicans seem powerless to do more than craft weak compromises to try to slow the "progressive" march toward economic ruin. So experts say things are going to get MUCH worse before they get better, and we are likely soon to see hard times that make the Great Depression seem like the salad days.
So start a business. Run an internet business on the side, if nothing else. You need some kind of escape hatch when the crash comes, and our eventual recovery will depend upon entrepreneurship... so start building your entrepreneurial muscles NOW. And invest in precious metals, as a hedge against the hyperinflation that will finish wiping out all worth once assigned to the Almighty Dollar.
America will rise again... but it will take a devastating period of economic disaster to convince a new generation that capitalism beats socialism every single time.
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