Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Progressivism, Statism, Taxes | Tags: It Never Never Works, Occupy Wall Street, Redistribution of Wealth
photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman
The Occupy Wall Street crowd, Zuccotti Park chapter, are indignant! Their wealth is getting redistributed. Somebody is stealing their stuff, and they don’t like it one bit! Their iPods and iPads and iPhones are getting ripped off by thieves in the night. Snort. I find this endlessly amusing.
Gosh, here they are demanding that “the rich” give them their wealth so they don’t have to pay for their college loans and work at jobs they don’t like, and when their own wealth gets redistributed, they don’t grasp the hypocrisy at all.
They talk idealistically about their feeling of belonging, being part of a community— but don’t recognize that in the vast array of human nature, people aren’t perfect and some are real lemons. “Community” in the idealistic sense, where you all agree, is a fantasy and communitarian societies end up executing those who don’t toe the line. There are lots of examples— the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Cuba, North Korea and more. Proof? More than One Hundred Million mass graves.
Well, the revolution is not arriving fast enough. They are not getting enough attention. They’re wondering if they should take on the World Series, streak on the field and demonstrate at the gates. There’s a reason why people find the Occupy “movement” pathetic, rather than inspiring. Life is hard, and we are incredibly fortunate to live in a country where freedom and opportunity are so readily available.
Sorry folks, there is no such thing as social justice. They lied about that too.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Liberalism, The United States | Tags: Economic Incompetence, Obama's Record Spending!, The Most Since We Defeated Hitler
Washington D.C. has wrapped up its biggest spending year ever for a new record! We’ve really gotten somewhere with all our complaints about spending. This is a record — the government spent an astounding $3.5 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office. This beat the $3.52 trillion in 2009 when the Democrats began their ill-informed effort to spend America back to prosperity.
All that whining about the impossibility of cutting back on spending — they were apparently right. Federal receipts grew a little by 6.5%, which would have been bigger if Obama hadn’t gone for that temporary payroll tax cut, which cut the social insurance revenue by 5.3% but didn’t do anything for the jobless rate. The budget deficit was bigger than any year since 1945, and if I remember correctly there had been some important things to spend on that year, like defeating Hitler and ending the war with Japan. Take a good look at these numbers. The budget was nearly balanced in 2007. Receipts were higher that year than in any year since, with the same tax rates.
Obama has been adamant that there is nothing in the entire government that can actually be cut. In the past three years he has racked up the largest deficits ever, and he just can’t find anyplace to cut. He’s out campaigning in the Beast — the enormous presidential campaign bus — but he can’t even pay for that out of the campaign, instead claiming that because he is talking about jobs, it is simply presidential duty of talking to the people. Three trillion six hundred billion dollars and he can’t find anything to cut.
Governments cannot spend their way to a growing economy. You don’t create jobs and then get growth as a bonus. It’s the other way around. You have to create the conditions for growth, and the jobs will happen. Growth means more jobs, more revenue, more creativity, more risk taking. more new businesses. I guess spending is exciting for the people who get to do the spending. President Obama has certainly looked like he’s having fun looking at all those solar panels and sitting in the new electric vehicles.
American Elephants 