Obama Declares War on Liberty and Property View 2011 0919

View 693 Monday, September 19, 2011

AAAARRRRRRRHH!! This be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Probably not the appropriate picture, but in looking for the right one I found this.

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

Apologies, I let this get away from me. A discourse on the latest financial plans from President Obama is in preparation and I’ll get that up in an hour or so. Today we had to go looking for American made washing machine and dryer – Maytag is still made in America – and that used up some of the day. And I discovered I had not recorded subscriptions for a while and got way behind; I am not caught up yet but I am getting there.  Apologies.

Yesterday I got up a View for last week and a good mixed bag of mail. I’m dancing as fast as I can.

The President of the United States in essence declared war on the traditional understanding of America today. He has put it all in very stark terms: there are people with money. The rest of us need it, for food, clothing, medical expenses, Christmas presents for the children, shelter from the storms of life. We do not have those things. Others have far more than they need. Therefore we shall take what we need from them.

Now of course he did not put this in quite such stark terms, but what he did say is that the rich must pay their fair share; if they do not, then we will not be able to have drug research, Medicare, education, and all those things which we need so much. And therefore we must make them pay their fair share.

There was no discussion of the Constitution or where in that document the Federal government derives either the obligation or the power to collect taxes and distribute largess; and indeed the original Framers of the document would have been horrified at the notion. The Constitution was intended to insure the blessings of liberty on ourselves and our posterity.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Of course it can be said that the President desires nothing more than to promote the general welfare, and the general welfare requires a reduction in the vast disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of us. Perhaps so: but note that the President does not offer the alternative of giving up some of the regulations and rules and the swarms of officers who harass the people and eat out their substance. It is not “raise taxes or we’ll have to fire bunny inspectors,” or “raise taxes or we won’t have all those education experts on the Federal payroll telling all the schools how to be great” (look how well the Federal government does with the DC schools over which it has absolute control)! It is not “raise taxes or the EPA will have to go out of business and leave all that environment and pollution stuff to the states and the local communities”. No. It is raise taxes or you will not get the goodies from the Obama Stash.

This is a fairly stark declaration.

Regarding discrepancy of wealth:

First, I don’t much like the concentration of power into fewer and fewer hands. I have less concern over concentration into the hands of individuals than I do over the creation of huge corporations and entities that are too big to fail. I have often said that an institution that is to big to fail is too big to exist; that there ought not be 5 Enormous Banks, but rather 50 Pretty Good Sized Banks; that the defense industry should never have been allowed to become as concentrated as it is; that the domestic automobile industry was far better off when we had Packard and La Salle and Studebaker and Nash; that companies ought to grow by giving better service or offereing better goods; that a steady profit with steady employment ought to be more important than “growth” and there ought to be enormous obstacles in the way of “growth” by buying up the competition. Were I emperor I would make it much harder to buy up the competition, and I would have tax policies that encourage stability over high flying “growth”. But that’s another story.

If we truly believe that great fortunes ought not exist, then confiscate them in the name of reducing the gap between rich and poor – but do not reward the government for doing it! Don’t pay the robbers for plundering the victims. I would far rather take Warren Buffet’s money and drop it in small bills from airplanes than to use it to pay unionized civil servants.

Of course it could be argued that Mr. Buffet will do more good with the money than if we confiscated his $50 billion and distributed it to everyone legally in the US at, say, $182.47 per person. Or perhaps we could be satisfied with confiscation all but a few million of his money so that we each get onl7 $175 or so. However we divide the spoils, I am quite certain that we would be better off letting him keep the money than we will be if we use it to hire unionized bunny inspectors.

And of course you can only despoil Warren Buffet once. Then you move on, to Bill Gates, and Paul Allen, and the thousand richest people in the US. After a while you discover that you run out of people to despoil. Once we have made it clear that anyone who has more than you is fair game, who’d next? And who is safe? But that too is another story.

The reason for resisting new taxes is not the taxes themselves, although it is difficult to see how there can be much economic recovery if those who are successful with their investments are to be taxed to subsidize those who are failures. Certainly the tax code it absurd, but this is not an attempt to reform it for rational reasons. This is simply a way to get more money for government.

The main reason to resist those tax increases is to force the government to stop the exponential growth of spending. A 7% exponential means a doubling in under 12 years. It is inexorable: and as government grows, those dependent on government become more so, and soon enough you reach the situation of Greece or Spain, where enough of the population is so utterly dependent on government that the people have no notion of how to get out of the situation: where they have little choice but to riot and make things unpleasant for all in the hopes that it can all continue for a few years more. Does anyone see a graceful way out for Spain? Much less Greece. The President would probably recommend Green Jobs for Spain, but those more familiar with Spanish investment in the Green Bubble know better.

Despair is a sin.

At the end of World War II, much of Germany was in ruins. Large parts of its infrastructure was attacked or bombed by the Allied Forces. The city of Dresden was completely destroyed. The population of Cologne had dropped from 750,000 to 32,000. The housing stock was reduced by 20%. Food production was half the level it was before the start of the war; industrial output was down by a third. Many of its men between the ages of 18 and 35, the demographic which could do the heavy lifting to literally rebuild the country, had been either killed or crippled.
During the war, Hitler had instituted food rations, limiting its civilian population to eat no more than 2,000 calories per day. After the war, the Allies continued this food rationing policy and limited the population to eat between 1,000-1,500 calories. Price controls on other goods and services led to shortages and a massive black market. Germany’s currency, the reichsmark, had become completely worthless, requiring its populace to resort to bartering for goods and services.
In short, Germany was a ruined state facing an incredibly bleak future. The country was occupied by four nations, and soon it would be divided into halves. The Eastern half became a socialist state, part of the Iron Curtain that was heavily influenced by Soviet policy. The Western half became a democracy. And caught in the middle was the former capital of Berlin, which was divided in two, eventually separated by what became known as the Berlin Wall.
But by 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was once again reunited, it was the envy of most of the world. Germany had the third-biggest economy in the world, trailing only Japan and the United States in GDP.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/german-economic-miracle.asp#ixzz1YRwTIuT4

There is a way out of this Depression. Our lands do not lie in ruins. Our fields are not cratered from bombs and filled with mines. Many of our idle factories still exist. Wonderful machine tools and laboratory instruments are sold at scrap value on eBay and at public auction. There is lots of unused productivity in this land, and we know the formula for prosperity. It is liberty. That has always been the secret of American exceptionalism. We had founders whose goal was to insure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. We have always known this. We know it still.