Government is responsible for high unemployment and bad economy

We need to keep beating this drum, because if we don't, all we'll hear and read about are immigrants, mosques and same sex marriage. The main cause of high unemployment and the economic downturn is taxation, government spending and government protection of special interests at the expense of the middle class and the poor. Government has siphoned off limited resources from the private market, taxed away investment and saving and blocked small and medium size businesses from developing and giving the poor a way out of poverty. This has been going on for quite awhile, and it's being accelerated presently.

Government can help turn around the economy by abolishing or lowering taxes. The middle class and lower middle class pays taxes to support subsidizes going to the rich, such as farm subsidies and bank bail-outs and auto company bailouts and support of Fannie and Freddie. The stimulus was a misdirection of resources which could have helped a lot of people now out of work. The private market will invest capital in more productive ways than government stimulus. But lowering taxes is not enough.

We need to end all corporate welfare. We need to end the wars and stop the insane spending on the military/industrial complex. We need to make it easier for the poor and middle class to start their own small businesses. Once government cuts back on wasteful government programs, the talent now wasted in government -- scientists and engineers and such -- will be available for productive work in the private market.

We need to stop wasting resources on the UN and foreign aid which winds up in the hands of dictators. We need to go after corruption and waste in government with a vengeance. By doing all these things and by abolishing or drastically reducing taxes, we can expand the economy and produce new wealth. Producing new wealth is the only way out of our present economic crisis. Poverty will be reduced by creating more opportunities in the private market.

These are the concerns we should be talking about -- not whether a mosque should be built in NY city. Murray Rothbard and Frank Chodorov were recommending these changes decades ago, but now moreso than before, we've got to allow the private market to work. Something as simple as changing licensing laws so that peddlers can make a living and small businesses can be created without red tape will make a big difference, but it will require a comprhensive effort to get government out of the way.

The American public, and especially the poor, should be fighting for these changes. The poor, relatively speaking, have more to gain from a free market than the rich -- these changes will make a bigger change in the lives of the poor than the rich. A good job with good pay, or the ability to start a successful small business, can be life changing for someone in poverty, yet the status quo blocks this progress, and, instead, offers crumbs through the welfare state. It's time for a change, and this is what the professional politicians fear the most - prosperity and independence.

David Brooks' personality split

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks

If you follow this link, unless they've fixed the mistake, Bob Herbert's photo appears under this article which states it's written by Davd Brooks. It's really strange since Brooks is drifting into his young liberal, Democrat personality, wearing an old green jacket with a Hubert Humphrey button on it. I don't know if the Bob Herbert picture is a mistake or an omen leading Brooks to wholeness.

Brooks seems to be relating how he would think about the Democrat Party if he hadn't turned into a center-right something or other. But he's actually revealing how he thinks today, not imagining what he would think still as a Democrat. These are Brooks' real thoughts --

For example, everybody now hates the bank bailouts and the stress tests. But, the fact is, these are some of the most successful programs in recent memory. They stabilized the financial system without costing much money. The auto bailout was criticized at the time, but it’s looking pretty good now that General Motors is recovering.

-- but he's using a literary trick to hide them behind his young Democrat self. I have to say, I find this weird and a little disingenuous. Why can't Brooks just admit he's a modern liberal and be done with it? For instance, instead of having his younger self write --

We’ll point to high unemployment and propose spending programs too small to make much difference. The Republicans will blast us for bankrupting the country with ineffective programs, and the voters are so distrustful of government these days that they’ll side with the Republicans on that one, too.

--why not just admit he think the Democrats should spend a lot of money -- enough to make a difference, however much that is.

Instead of pretending it's another voice, why not embrace this --

It occurs to me that the Obama administration has done a number of (widely neglected) things that scramble the conventional categories and that are good policy besides. The administration has championed some potentially revolutionary education reforms. It has significantly increased investments in basic research. It has promoted energy innovation and helped entrepreneurs find new battery technologies. It has invested in infrastructure — not only roads and bridges, but also information-age infrastructure like the broadband spectrum.

These accomplishments aren’t big government versus small government; they’re using government to help set a context for private sector risk-taking and community initiative. They cut through the culture war that is now brewing between the Obama administration and the business community. They also address the core anxiety now afflicting the public. It’s not only short-term unemployment that bothers people. What really scares people is the sense that we’re frittering away our wealth. Americans fear we’re a nation in decline.

-- and declare his love affair with Obama is real? It's okay, really it is. If Brooks believes that the government interventions have been insufficient, and that braver, bolder initiatives are needed, then he should embrace it, own it, shout it to the heavens.

I'm beginning to think Brooks is coming apart -- he needs to find integrity, to accept his inner-Democrat and find peace. What good purpose does it serve to pretend a center-right position, when his heart is with the modern liberal crowd?

Government is setting a context for risk-taking and community initiatives -- yes, David, I hear the siren call -- follow your passion -- break free -- be the statist you are in your heart of hearts.

Update on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 12:35AM by M. Farmer

They corrected the picture of Bob Herbert below Brooks' article, but it was there before -- kinda funny.

The wrong argument on taxes

Steve Hayes made a brave defense this morning on ABC's This Week for not raising taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire for couples making over $250,000, but he got tangled up in the utilitarian argument of how many small businesses the tax hikes will affect. This is the wrong approach. The principled approach is to attack the validity of income taxes, period. I know, I know, he'll be branded as a radical and lose his status among his peers.

We need radical resistance to the State, not cost/benefit analyses. The State has hired some of the most brilliant economic "experts" around the country to defend its racket of confiscating money from the country's wealthy for the survival and aggrandizement of the State -- we'll never win that petty battle, and it wouldn't matter much if we did, the "experts" will find some way to convince the public that the State needs more money. The State always needs more money. When the State speaks of "sacrifice", it means more money will be taken from the private sector, and more money will be spent in government, and that a minority will benefit while the majority "sacrifices" -- just the opposite of what the government promises when they soak the rich.

Blame government, not Bush

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/americans-blame-bush-for-deficit-afghanistan-war-jobless-more-than-obama.html

While it's a good thing that the public is paying more attention to government and finally educating itself on the deterimental aspects of a over-reaching government, many people still misunderstand what got us in this financial mess. I suppose the media still has some power of persuasion -- they've repeated the blame-Bush narrative continously, and way too many people believe it.

If we anted to play the game of specific blame within government, we'd first look at the fact that congress is in control of spending, and the Democrats have been in control of congress for the past almost six years now. Presidents aren't kings and their economic agenda can have no power without the help of congress giving the blessing -- congress controls the purse strings.

But the reality is neither red nor blue, it's the dull gray of government -- our spending problems go back to the genesis of statism in American government. It was inevitable that statism would build to the point at which we find ourselves. Statism fails under the weight of its means of survival.  The welfare state was never susainable in the long run, and the efforts by governent to manage the economy led to economic disaster -- the bureacratization of the economy through political whims and social engineering is necessarily a direction which leads to bankruptcy, spending more than is generated in wealth.

In order to build a power base, both parties have manufactured dependents who demand more and more, then when government interference in the economy finally causes honest wealth creation to protect itself and confident expansion of production and employment to disappear, the money pours out to pay for subsidies and benefits and all the waste and corruption from a giant feeding trough -- revenues dry up.

Don't blame Bush -- blame government -- blame statism.

The need for a libertarian revolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/us/politics/27web-budget.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

It might be time to withdraw our consent to be governed by this government and form another one. This is how America was supposed to roll and it's time to re-read the Declaration of Independence.

What Obama's doing is exactly what got many individuals in financial trouble -- project a rosy income future and borrow like mad. With Obama, though, it's a con job -- they all know that the projections are whack -- it's just a matter of getting past objections to put his social engineering program into action.

We need a libertarian revolution and a reformation of government. This madness can't be sustained.

And, to be honest, it's not just Obama, but the whole government that has recognized an opportunity to take over the economy and they're going forward. Until I see the Republicans calling for a new government and rebelling like a gang of raging Jeffersons, I'll assume their marginal resistance is a show.