Posted by
Curt Short (nom de cyber) on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:28:00 PM
Barak Obama has a LinkedIn Account. For those unfamiliar, LinkedIn is a business networking site that allows folks to ask professional-type questions, in order for a self-appointed expert to opine. I always cringe when I see a legal question posted; it practically begs you to call your Malpractice Insurance carrier if you even think about answering. Well, this time I couldn't help myself. The secular messiah posed as his query:
"In a recent speech, I proposed a new competiveness agenda centered
around education and energy, innovation and infrastructure, fair trade
and reform.
You can watch it, and read the full-text, at [link intentionally deleted]. What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead?"
This was my answer, off the cuff, or, as the kids say, IMHO:
Americans need to be (1) saving more, (2) investing more, and (3)
giving more to help others. The way to achieve that is not by taking
from them in order to save for them (the farcical sales pitch of old
Social Security), to invest for them (Freddie Mac, other
anti-competitive government incursions into the private sector), or to
redistribute wealth. The way to do that is to get the government monkey
off of their back.
1. Saving more: I personally don’t care if I never retire. I love work,
and I think the day I can no longer work will be near to the day I shed
this mortal coil. So why would I save my money? For a rainy day? That’s
why I have insurance and a smallish amount as a buffer if tough times
hit. For retirement? No. The reason I, and many people (I hope I am not
foolish to presume), save, instead of consume, is to pass on to the
next generation. That’s a noble reason! But then down swoops the vulture
of death (estate) taxes. Why work, scrimp, defer, and do without, if
the government decides to take greedily from what I worked for (and
already paid taxes on when I earned it!), before I can pass it on to my
own kith and kin? What a perverse result! Between death tax and the
weakening of the currency, we’re on our way to an American Weimar
Republic of desperate consumption and consumptive desperation.
2. Investing more: This is the same (ill-heeded) no-brainer it’s
been for a generation: Get rid of the capital gains tax and cut our
Marxist corporate tax rate down, at least to be competitive with the
weak-kneed crypto-socialists of Europe. Unchain American ingenuity and
entrepreneurship! It’s not even a socio-political experiment anymore;
it may as well be Newton’s Fourth Law. “We are all [anti]-Keynesians
now.” To the extent the New Deal was ever new, it certainly isn’t
anymore. Economic liberty and governmental protection of property
rights are the future.
3. Giving and helping others: Forget starting a dialogue. Work with
the folks who have been fighting the good fight for millennia (or
centuries at least) and winning! Capitalize on the success of the
faith-based initiatives! If you absolutely must start a dialogue, start
talking to those oft-vilified corporations to partner with local
charities to reach the poor. Learn from history: Government can only
ever give a hand out; only people can give a hand up. And end the legal
war of attrition on organizations like Catholic Charities and the Boy
Scouts, the Central Union Mission in D.C. (I could go on); let them
serve as they were called to do! “Redeploy” that legal war against
worthless grant-sucking, expensive bureaucracy. Get the government out
of the private economy (which includes charity).
But most of all, introduce the disenfranchised to the real path to
socio-economic enfranchisement: the free market economy! Fifty years of
aid to South America and Africa (not counting all the help of European
colonialism—thanks a lot guys!) have proven that, as with Americans,
what makes people prosperous is what makes them free: a free market,
honest, impartial courts governed by law and not men, and government
protection of private property. (See _Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of
the Entrepreneurial Spirit_, edited by Alvaro Vargas Llosa.) Those
things, along with the freedom to worship their Maker as they choose,
are what will give them their G_d-given dignity back, even the very
core of their human spirit.
Just a thought.
-IRK!