"If I wanted America to fail..."

[Ritty77]

freemarketamerica.org/if.html

[philunderwood]

Our Nation's Future

By Walter Williams

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Our nation is rapidly approaching a point from which there's little chance to avoid a financial collapse. The heart of our problem can be seen as a tragedy of the commons. That's a set of circumstances when something is commonly owned and individuals acting rationally in their own self-interest produce a set of results that's inimical to everyone's long-term interest. Let's look at an example of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon and then apply it to our national problem.

Imagine there are 100 cattlemen all having an equal right to graze their herds on 1,000 acres of commonly owned grassland. The rational self-interested response of each cattleman is to have the largest herd that he can afford. Each cattleman pursing similar self-interests will produce results not in any of the cattlemen's long-term interest — overgrazing, soil erosion and destruction of the land's usefulness. Even if they all recognize the dangers, does it pay for any one cattleman to cut the size of his herd? The short answer is no because he would bear the cost of having a smaller herd while the other cattlemen gain at his expense. In the long term, they all lose because the land will be overgrazed and made useless.

We can think of the federal budget as a commons to which each of our 535 congressmen and the president have access. Like the cattlemen, each congressman and the president want to get as much out of the federal budget as possible for their constituents. Political success depends upon "bringing home the bacon." Spending is popular, but taxes to finance the spending are not. The tendency is for spending to rise and its financing to be concealed through borrowing and inflation.

Does it pay for an individual congressman to say, "This spending is unconstitutional and ruining our nation, and I'll have no part of it; I will refuse a $500 million federal grant to my congressional district"? The answer is no because he would gain little or nothing, plus the federal budget wouldn't be reduced by $500 million. Other congressmen would benefit by having $500 million more for their districts.

What about the constituents of a principled congressman? If their congressman refuses unconstitutional spending, it doesn't mean that they pay lower federal income taxes. All that it means is constituents of some other congressmen get the money while the nation spirals toward financial ruin, and they wouldn't be spared from that ruin because their congressman refused to participate in unconstitutional spending.

What we're witnessing in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and other parts of Europe is a direct result of their massive spending to accommodate the welfare state. A greater number of people are living off government welfare programs than are paying taxes. Government debt in Greece is 160 percent of gross domestic product. The other percentages of GDP are 120 in Italy, 104 in Ireland and 106 in Portugal. As a result of this debt and the improbability of their ever paying it, their credit ratings either have reached or are close to reaching junk bond status.

Here's the question for us: Is the U.S. moving in a direction toward or away from the troubled EU nations? It turns out that our national debt, which was 35 percent of GDP during the 1970s, is now 106 percent of GDP, a level not seen since World War II's 122 percent. That debt, plus our more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, has led Standard & Poor's to downgrade our credit rating from AAA to AA+, and the agency is keeping the outlook at "negative" as a result of its having little confidence that Congress will take on the politically sensitive job of tackling the same type of entitlement that has turned Europe into a basket case.

I am all too afraid that Benjamin Franklin correctly saw our nation's destiny when he said, "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

[philunderwood]

Entrepreneurs, not politicians, build the nation's prosperity

By Star Parker

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

I think it's a sport for President Barack Obama to make outrageous statements like "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen," which he said in a recent campaign trip to Roanoke, Va.-- and then watch Republicans go predictably bananas.

Certainly the multimillionaire business supporters of the president on Wall Street and in Hollywood know this is absurd. Anyone with the mildest understanding of business and capitalism knows this is absurd.

Yet the president struck at the heart of what makes capitalism tick -- individual freedom and personal responsibility -- without his polling numbers in the week that followed budging and his re-election probability on Intrade.com actually ticked up two and half points.

We are reaching dangerous critical mass of those in our country who have enough stake in big government -- whether they are employed by it, collecting benefits from it or businesses getting favors from it -- that political protection is commanding a higher premium than freedom.

If Americans want prosperity, we need a grand reawakening to the incontrovertible fact that its source is entrepreneurs unfettered by meddling politicians.

Apple Inc. is now the most valuable company in the world. Its recent stock price puts its valuation at around $560 billion, more than $150 billion more than America's biggest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp.

Fifteen years ago, in 1997, when Steve Jobs returned as CEO of Apple, the company was worth less than $3 billion, about half a percent of what it is worth today. Estimates then were that Apple was several months away from bankruptcy.

John Lilly, a former Apple employee, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, blogged after Jobs' death about a talk that Jobs gave to employees shortly after his return. Apple was losing money, its stock was languishing, there were rumors about the company being acquired and Jobs was asked about a suggestion that the company should just shut down.

He concluded his response with: "If you want to make Apple great again, let's get going. If not, get the hell out." The blogger continues, "I think it's not an overstatement to say that just about everyone in the room loved him at that point, would have followed him off a cliff if that's where he led."

In the following year, according to the account in "Steve Jobs," Walter Isaacson's book about the entrepreneur, 3,000 employees were laid off and Jobs reviewed Apple's entire product line, pruning it from 15 products to four.

Now Apple is the most valuable company in the world, with innovative products no one would have dreamed of in 1997.

In September 1997, Apple had 8,437 full-time employees.

Today, according to its website, Apple has 70,000 employees worldwide, of which 47,000 are in the United States. The company estimates that 514,000 jobs have been created as a result of employment at Apple, at companies supported by Apple and the economy created by Apple products.

Suppose, when Jobs revamped and shrunk Apple's product line, he needed employees to vote in order to get rid of each product? It, of course, would have been impossible.

But this is what we have when government goes where it doesn't belong, getting into businesses like providing retirement services, health care, housing and education. Even if programs work for a while, times inevitably change. Businesses can adjust. Government can't. Changing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education and government housing policy today is about politics, not good economic decisions.

So we're stuck pouring billions we don't have into programs that don't work.

Capitalism is not about being "on your own," as we hear so often from liberals. It's about entrepreneurs, like Steve Jobs, being free to create prosperity by serving their fellow citizens with innovative ideas and products.

And it's about government doing its proper job -- protecting life and property -- so this can happen.

[philunderwood]

Lenin Quotes:

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

The goal of socialism is communism.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.