Government economics and free markets
Can our free market economy survive the federal government? The president and Congress may get to learn what C.S. Lewis meant when he defined experience as “that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
Hopefully, you do learn, but not always, which leads us to the economic theories of Vice President Biden. With sincerity, he claims that even though the stimulus package failed to do what the administration promised, it was still a success because it created jobs and slowed the rate of job losses. The same Joe Biden also advanced the revolutionary economic theory that the only way to prevent bankruptcy is to spend huge sums of money.
Mr. Biden claims the $787 billion stimulus helped the free market economy by saving or creating 2 million jobs, only $394,000 for each job created or saved. But this is just the claimed number; the real number of jobs is much less, the cost for each job created or saved much more.
Retiring Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who comes from a family of Democrats, said, “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.” Might his be the most honest assessment of the stimulus so far?
Discussing the spending of the previous administration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” and Sen. Harry Reid said it was “the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country.” Since they avidly support the current administration, should we assume it is more fiscally responsible?
President Bush expanded the federal budget by an unprecedented $700 billion; President Obama will add another $1 trillion. President Bush added over $2.5 trillion to the public debt; President Obama will double that in 5 years and triple it in 10.
The triad of the administration, the Senate and the House of Representatives is unconstitutionally tumbling us into overt socialism. I looked up the word “triad” to see if I was using it correctly. It is either a “group of three people or things” or a “secret society involved in organized crime.” You decide.
The free market will work, but only if it is a free market. The administration cannot keep interfering, giving huge sums of money to select companies while cutting deals with unions, literally paying them for their support. If you or I did that, wouldn’t it be bribery and illegal?
The free market cannot survive as a welfare nation, whether personal or corporate. Welfare is welfare. Thomas Jefferson warned us saying, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
A false claim of this administration and Congress is that in two years all the new welfare spending will lapse, returning spending to pre-stimulus levels. They and we know this is blatantly untrue. President Reagan accurately described short-term government programs when he said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
Corporate welfare, if needed, and individual welfare, if needed, should be short-term stopgaps, not lifetime and generational guarantees. Is it right for welfare to be a career choice for the individual or a permanent line item in the budget of a corporation?
Maybe the president needs to stop telling us about his vision for our future and deal with the present, listening to Winston Churchill who said, “The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.”
In collusion, the president and Congress are turning a warning from Thomas Jefferson into prophesy: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”
The government, Democrats and Republicans alike, is not only out of control it is outside the Constitution. It is our job to rein them in and we do so in the voting booth. It is our government. It is our choice.
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