Equality and the Redistribution of Wealth

GOVERNMENT & THE STATE

UNITED STATES

History of Freedom - 1850 to Present

Substitute for the term “employee” in one of our new laws the term “serf,” even do so mild a thing as to substitute the traditional term “master” for the word “employer,” and the blunt words might breed revolt.

[I]f you add all debt accumulated in our country by 43 Presidents in 220 years of our history through 2008, President Obama's budget will double that over the next six years.

All the checks and balances, in fact, have ceased to function, and there is no effective obstacle to any imaginable sort of government excess.

...lately it seems like the news media are acting like the public relations arm of government...watch the evening news - any night, any network. Here’s what you will see: One society problem after another. Crisis after crisis. And always at least the hint of a solution - another government regulation, another bureaucracy, a little more taxpayer spending.

FARRAH, JOSEPH, The Free Press in a Free Society, Whistleblower Magazine, May 2002

We have subsidies for housing, subsidies for farmers, subsidies for power, subsidies for shipping, and subsidies for the aged. We take one man’s property to give to another and think it is right simply because it is accomplished by majority vote. We have adopted the Marxist principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to need.”

We have outright government ownership of hundreds of enterprises. We have government interference with the right to contract in practically every area of economic activity. In many areas such interference is so great that the free market, freedom of economic choice, is gone. We have allowed ourselves to think that a little socialism will not hurt us, but the acorn has now grown into a giant of the forest.

If this good old US of A was any other country where it's new leader started ruling by fiat (executive order) rather than by changes in law, nationalized it's banks and largest industries, null and void the concept of a legal contract and devalued it's currency we would invade to re-establish to freedom of the people and overthrow the new leader.

For three generations now, America has needed a blunt confrontation with the policies that have been leading the nation toward dictatorship and into bankruptcy. Such confrontations were stillborn in 1940, 1964, and 1980 because in each case Republicans failed to stand up, on principle, for capitalism, liberty, and individual rights. Republicans repeatedly collapsed into the quicksand of compromise and accepted the welfare state principles of their opponents while arguing about the “proper” amount of government coercion they would enact. The trend toward statism continued, because the incremental steps accepted by Republicans obscured the stark difference between America’s founding vision and its statist future.

JOHN DAVID LEWIS, "Obama's Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda,” Fall 2009, The Objective Standard

The [civil] war did enable Lincoln to “save” the Union, but only in a geographic sense. The country ceased being a Union, as it was originally conceived, of separate and sovereign states. Instead, America became a “nation” with a powerful federal government. It initiated a process of centralization of government that has substantially restricted liberty and freedom in America.

MILLER, JR., DONALD W., The Economic Roots of the Civil War, Liberty, October 2001

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America forbid protectionist tariffs, outlawed government subsidies to private businesses, and made congressional appropriations subject to approval by a two-thirds majority vote. It enjoined Congress from initiating constitutional amendments, leaving that power to its constituent states; and limited its president to a single six-year term. When the South lost, the stage was set for the United States to become an American Empire ruled by a central authority.

MILLER, JR., DONALD W., The Economic Roots of the Civil War, Liberty, October 2001

Isn't it interesting that, 20 years after declaring victory in a 45-year Cold War, we've decided we were wrong after all and are now implementing the very ideals we railed against to the world for so long. And that our former enemies have largely turned their backs on.

There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern years they still sound reasonable. They still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the present federal government of the United States... how about: “... has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance” “...has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies” “...has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws.”

Then this government...goes butting into our business. It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars and how fast we can drive them, bosses us around about retirement, education and what’s on TV; counts our noses...decides whether the door to our office or shop should have steps or a wheelchair ramp; decrees the gender and complexion of the people to be hired there; lectures us on safe sex; dictates what we can sniff, smoke and swallow; and waylays young men, ships them to distant places and tells them to shoot people they don’t even know.

[A] document of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers became in short order a document of effectively unenumerated powers, limited only by rights that would thereafter be interpreted narrowly by conservatives on the Court and episodically by liberals on the Court. Both sides, in short, would come to ignore our roots in limited government, buying instead into the idea of vast majoritarian power - the only disagreement being over what rights might limit that power and in which circumstances.

PILON, ROGER, Before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives (May 15, 1997), as cited in Powell, Jim, FDR’s Folly, Chapter 15

New Dealers always seemed to be comparing actual capitalism with ideal government. They judged capitalism by its apparent effects and government by its announced intentions.

Blacks have fared the worst with Social Security. The rate of return for black males has been negative for the past four decades, since 1960.

Marketing orders, authorized by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 as amended, continue to restrict production and marketing. They are the most blatant type of interference with U.S. agricultural markets, a throwback to medieval times when guilds determined who could work in various trades, how much they could charge, and how much they could produce.

Many environmentalists consider the TVA to be America’s most notorious polluter. It expanded far beyond its original mandate, as bureaucracies tend to do, and built coal-fired power plants. The discharges from these make the TVA the biggest U.S. violator of the Clean Air Act.

After Americans had suffered through a catastrophic contraction for three years (1929-1933), FDR supported policies like the National Industrial Recovery Act that promoted further contraction. His executive orders helped enforce higher consumer prices when millions of Americans were unemployed and needed bargains. FDR approved the destruction of food when people were hungry. FDR signed into law higher taxes for everybody, so consumers had less money to spend, and employers had less money with which to hire people - during the worst depression in American history. New Deal labor laws empowered the most racist unions to exclude blacks and had the effect of making it illegal for many employers to hire blacks. The power of the Federal Reserve became more centralized, but this meant that the mistakes of a few people (members of the Federal Reserve Board) were likely to harm millions across the United States; and indeed the Fed’s mistakes were a major cause of the depression of 1938 as well as the monetary contraction of 1929-1933. After having throttled competition with the National Industrial Recovery Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Bituminous Coal Conservation Act, Robinson-Patman Act, Retail Price Maintenance Act, Federal Communications Act, Civil Aeronautics Act, high corporate taxes, and other measures, new Dealers posed as defenders of competition and filed a record number of antitrust lawsuits against private employers, one effect of which was to further discourage investment needed for growth and jobs.

FDR imagined that government spending programs would end the agony of high unemployment, but he ignored the fact that government spending comes directly or indirectly from taxation, and people taxed have less money to spend or invest, offsetting the effect of spending programs.

Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right--the right to life--and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion, for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom--then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What is there left to protect?

Government is no longer contained behind the walls of the Constitution. It roams where it pleases, throughout every walk of life and throughout every department of business. From workers to wages to materials to products, the government is everywhere.

MANION, CLARENCE, Dean Emeritus, Notre Dame College of Law, Address to National Small Businessmen’s Association in Washington D.C., 1952

[Y]ou should read the ten points of the Communist Manifesto and see how close we have come to achieving them right here in America. It’s amazing.

Today the federal budget accounts for nearly 30% of GDP – the most since WWII. Add in the highly regulated and highly subsidized health care industry and you've got the government in control of nearly half the economy. Now add in the banking system – which couldn't exist without the FDIC, which would already be insolvent without the backing of Congress. Now add in the insurance industry, which will surely collapse next (I explain why below). Now add in all the state governments' spending and employees. Most Americans don't understand: The government is now running most of the economy, by a wide margin.

If you were trying to devise a political plan to destroy the country, this is the route you'd take: make it harder than ever before to produce anything, devalue the currency, and raise taxes by 50%.

[C]apital inevitably moves to where it is treated best. For decades, that was America – which grew tremendously rich and powerful. Our leaders have grown arrogant. They've forgotten what made America great. They seem to believe God bestowed wealth upon our country. They've borrowed an unfathomable amount of money – confident they'll be able to tax future generations of Americans. But in fact, the wealth of our country is almost completely owned by individuals. And right now, these individuals see nothing but endless decades of additional government deficits, rising taxes, and a paper currency that's being destroyed. They see the free market system being corrupted. And most importantly, they see a nation that used to espouse the ideals of limited government and personal liberty heading down the road of a socialist experiment, led by an inexperienced, charismatic , and wildly popular leader.

We know all of these new taxes on the "rich" will prove to be popular with Dufus americanus. Meanwhile, of course, his standard of living will continue to decline as more and more of the productive assets of the country are confiscated or controlled by the government. Old Dufus americanus is going to get what he deserves, not what he expects.

You don't need $150,000 to live well here – not when the average income is $40,000. Yes, you've been lucky to do so well in your life... and that's why you should be happy to give back to your community. After all, wasn't it Amerika that provided you with all of the opportunity you've taken advantage of? It's the country that's really responsible for your success, Jerry. Hard work wouldn't have gotten you very far in Russia. I'm tired of hearing all of you "rich" people moaning about taxes... OBAMA!'s new top 39.5% rate – even if it applied to your entire $150,000 wage – would still only be $58,500 in taxes. That leaves you with $91,500 – that's A LOT OF MONEY! Of course, there's state income tax in most places. Even after you've paid those (5%), you've got $86,925 left – more than twice the average wage. Of course, you also have to pay 12% of your gross compensation for Medicare and Social Security. Yes, it's a lot of money ($18,000) – but surely you wouldn't want to see anyone go without medical care in a society that's as rich as ours. Besides, that leaves you with $68,925 – which is more than enough to live on...With a gross income over six figures, you've probably got a $1 million house. States usually charge about 2% of the current value for real estate taxes. (Someone has to pay for the roads and the schools you know.) Now you've got $48,925 after tax. Assuming your wife doesn't work – 'cause you're so rich – that leaves each of you with about $25,000 per year. Assuming you both have medical insurance, you're probably spending about $800 per month in premiums... so you've still got more than $15,000 each – just to spend on yourselves. That's $296 per week... Before sales taxes, gas taxes, your grocery bill, your mortgage bill, your car payments, your electricity bill, phone, water, cable... and investment newsletter subscriptions. I'm sure you have plenty left over for charity and retirement savings. You're doing great Jerry. You lucky bastard. You've got no right to complain about taxes...

Americans share an awesome burden and moral responsibility. If liberty dies in the United States, it is destined to die everywhere.

Our way of living together in America is a strong but delicate fabric. It has been woven over many centuries by the patience and sacrifice of countless liberty-loving men and women. It serves as a cloak for the protection of poor and rich, of black and white, of Jew and Gentile, of foreign and native born. Let us not tear it asunder. For no man knows, once it is destroyed, where or when man will find its protective warmth again.