“Obama: U.S. economy cannot afford [a government] shutdown.” Unless the government continues “making key investments in things like education, infrastructure [and] innovation,” we won’t “win the future.” [Transcripts]
This dyed-in-the-wool statist needs the aid of Lego or some sort of pop-up children’s model to figure out that dolling out unemployment benefits, state aid, and government jobs programs, all necessitate the seizure of private wealth through taxing, borrowing, and printing paper.
That cannot create wealth! The fact that some individuals will get wealthy or be “helped” leaves out the unseen; the overall poverty and misery he, his minions and their schemes create.
There is no big secret about “creating” jobs. Government can’t do it. Unless it sucks more capital and credit out of the private economy, it has only the capacity to consume wealth, not create it.
Here’s a simple, crude model for Obama the statist. Play with it with the First Girls. Recommend it to your Fabian friends, Mr. president:
Put 10 blocks in box A. Take 5 blocks out of box A and place them in box B. The owner of box A is 5 blocks poorer, the owner of box B is 5 blocks richer. Total number of blocks: still 10. Total blocks added (or wealth created): 0.
Come on BO, you can do it.
The best BO can do is take a hike; go on a 4-year vacation; walk the plank; just GET OUT OF THE WAY!
“We are not part of the picture” [in Libya], Ehud Barack told Greta van Susteren, who recounted to him the familiar war-for-Israel-and-oil accusations circulating in some Arab quarters vis-a-vis the offensive in Libya. This, even as the US commits itself to furthering the whims of the seething Arab Street—whoever it comprises, wherever it is, and whatever it wants. American warriors, in arms and in armchairs, seem to believe that repeating the word “rebel” enough times will transform the shady ragtag factions we are fighting for as a princess’s kiss transforms a toad.
Ehud Barack, Israel’s Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister (bio information), has politely applauded NATO and the US for rescuing the Libyans, but he also expresses a conscious thought about the feel-good operation, the kind of thought that will never be floated stateside:
“It’s up to the Arab people to struggle for their rights; to change regime or impose corrections and new procedures in their internal political life.”
If indeed we’re subsidizing “freedom” for [the Libyans] and are fighting their battles—then we’ve also increased their impotence and diminished their initiative. Subsidize individuals because you believe they are helpless—and you’ll get more learned helplessness.
Besides, what are these people? Wards of the American state? Whatever happened to fighting your own revolutions?
“For evidence of the power of the teachers unions acting out on the streets of Madison, Wis., look no further than your property taxes. Almost 50 percent of mine are garnished for ‘Local School Support.’ ‘Port, Fire, Hospital, Library’ constitute a miniscule 5 percent of the property-tax bill. Law enforcement is not even itemized. Other states confiscate even higher percentages from their propertied taxpayers in the service of government-employed teachers.
Yes, do use the term ‘government unions,’ won’t you, as ‘public sector’ or ‘public servants’ implies, incorrectly, that these people serve the public. Besides, have you seen these slackers? In his path-breaking book, ‘The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education,’ Peter Brimelow left us with a lasting mental image of our children’s over-sated role models, attending one of the National Education Association’s annual meetings. The same apparition is everywhere apparent in Madison, as teachers ‘wobble and waddle through the teeming crowds of [supporters] … thighs like tree trunks, bellies billowing, jowls jiggling.’
Over and above the property tax – the federal income tax claims from those who pay it more monies for the educational oink sector. Whether the taxpayer has children in the system or doesn’t, whether he chooses to homeschool his offspring or pays for a private school, whether he approves of the job government pedagogues are doing or doesn’t – he has to pay them, even go into hock for them.
To compound it all, America has a most progressive tax code. According to USA Today, the number of Americans who owe no federal income taxes, and do not share in the cost of government, stood at 47 percent in 2009, and is increasing. What has come to pass John C. Calhoun predicted in ‘A Disquisition on Government,’ where he described the devolution of a democracy in which all private property is, eventually, subjected to the vagaries of majority rule. …”
UPDATE (Feb. 26): Tom DiLorenzo points out the power of the monopoly that is the government union:
The enormous power of government-employee unions effectively transfers the power to tax from voters to the unions. Because government-employee unions can so easily force elected officials to raise taxes to meet their “demands,” it is they, not the voters, who control the rate of taxation within a political jurisdiction. They are the beneficiaries of a particular form of taxation without representation (not that taxation with representation is much better). This is why some states have laws prohibiting strikes by government-employee unions. (The unions often strike anyway.)
Politicians are caught in a political bind by government-employee unions: if they cave in to their wage demands and raise taxes to finance them, then they increase the chances of being kicked out of office themselves in the next election. The “solution” to this dilemma has been to offer government-employee unions moderate wage increases but spectacular pension promises. This allows politicians to pander to the unions but defer the costs to the future, long after the panderers are retired from politics.
As taxpayers in California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and many other states are realizing, the future has arrived. The Wall Street Journal reports that state and local governments in the United States currently have $3.5 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. They must either raise taxes dramatically to fund these liabilities, as some have already done, or drastically cut back or eliminate government-employee pensions.
By the look and sound of the striking educators on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin (here), the kids (plenty stupid in their own right), are not missing much. Chaos theory aside, the public sector was never supposed to be able to strike; that’s a later socialistic privilege they were granted (See “Regulation of unions and organizing.”) The absence of these coercive cretins in the classroom is no loss. Still, The government education cartel should not be permitted to hold taxpayers hostage. Collective bargaining in general ought to be outlawed unless workers and employers are free to associate and dissociate from one another at will. Otherwise, it’s extortion. Here, the monopolist has, in effect, the right to shake down the taxpayer, who has no recourse; cannot opt out of the abusive relationship, or protect himself from the extortionist.
THIS IS THE LAW OF RULE, NOT THE RULE OF LAW.
(To clarify: The only true monopolies are government monopolies. A company is a monopoly only when it can forcibly prohibit competitors from entering the market, a feat only ever made possible by state edict. In the free market, competition makes monopoly impossible. A large market share is not a monopoly.)
I would have no objection to unions were they voluntary, non-coercive associations that looked out for the needs of workers without trampling the rights of other non-aggressive parties.
While we’re meting justice (in theory, at least), government employees, politicians included, should not be allowed to vote. This is because they are paid from taxes garnished by force from taxpayers, and will always vote to increase their own powers and wages. They have always so voted! The other option is that they keep the vote and accept volunteer, unpaid status.
The moochers and the looters are upon us. Moochers “will claim your product by tears” and manipulation. The rioters among them will “take [your product] from you by force.” Both versions have been loosed upon us.
During the Greek wilding, I warned (as many others) that it was a minor event compared to the events that’ll unfold should we quit funding our federal behemoth’s bacchanalia. The sound and fury of the American public sector unions is going to be like Tyrannosaurus (T-Rex) tearing through Jurassic Park.
But Barack wears many hats. And today, he responded to the “oink sector”strike in Madison, Wisconsin, as a union man, a man beholden to “Organizing for America, the successor to President’s Obama’s 2008 campaign organization. It helped fill buses of protesters who flooded the state capital of Madison and ran 15 phone banks urging people to call state legislators.”
UPDATE II (Feb. 20): Larry Kudlow on a “European-style revolt”:
The Democratic/government-union days of rage in Madison, Wis., are a disgrace. Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan calls it Cairo coming to Madison. But the protesters in Egypt were pro-democracy. The government-union protesters in Madison are anti-democracy; they are trying to prevent a vote in the legislature. In fact, Democratic legislators themselves are fleeing the state so as not to vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts.
That’s not democracy.
The teachers’ union is going on strike in Milwaukee and elsewhere. They ought to be fired. Think Ronald Reagan PATCO in 1981. Think Calvin Coolidge police strike in 1919.
The teachers’ union on strike? Wisconsin parents should go on strike against the teachers’ union. A friend e-mailed me to say that the graduation rate in Milwaukee public schools is 46 percent. The graduation rate for African-Americans in Milwaukee public schools is 34 percent. Shouldn’t somebody be protesting that?
UPDATE III (Feb, 22): PEW AND THE PUBLIC. Pew Research cautions that “it is not clear whether the public nationally will support Wisconsin Republicans’ efforts to prevent government workers from unionizing. In the Pew Research survey, which was conducted before the Wisconsin protests drew national headlines, people were asked for their reaction when they hear of a disagreement between a labor union and a state or local government: 44% say that when they hear of such a dispute they side with the unions while 38% say they side with the governments.”
Here are Reagan’s memorable remarks on the air traffic controllers’ strike. Note this president’s clear reference to the burden the oink sector imposes on its fellow citizen; notice his allusion to the government’s monopolist position. Reagan was capable of clearly articulating the principles of freedom, and, in this case, he also acted on these principles.
