Something that seems to be entirely missing from the understanding of many Americans, (particularly those who are regularly duped into voting for bloated, "progressive" government and the statist agenda) is the concept of value in the economy.
Value is measured in many ways. We attach a number by stating value in dollars or in ounces of gold or silver. Some state value in terms of food. One definition I've read of value is, "the importance or preciousness of something."
As consumers, we attach value to various things by what we are willing to pay for those things. For example, some of us are willing to pay $2.50 for a gallon of gasoline, or $40.00 for a tank of gasoline. Others may switch to walking or riding a bike when the price exceeds $2.25 per gallon. They value the gasoline and the possession of the cash differently. So, price indicates value but does not define it. Value is defined by our individual preferences, needs and wants.
When we think about this, it seems fairly obvious. What seems to escape many people is the absolute fact that everything the government touches, loses value. The loss moves in every direction from the point of government contact. This is because the government is entirely inept and inefficient in meddling in the lives of citizens. In fact, we've seen gross inefficiency even in those activities for which governments are uniquely qualified, like defense (remember the $800.00 hammers and crazy costs for toilets in the Pentagon?).
The reason that government is such a drain on value throughout the economy is that it produces nothing! The only things that government can do are to impose regulations and restrictions or impose taxes. In every such instance, value is drained from the economy.
Initially, I had launched into a detailed description of how this happens, but I don't want to be responsible for boring you into a coma. In short, we can see in dramatic fashion everywhere a product is exchanged, how government extracts value from that transaction.
Every time we exchange our labor for a sum of cash, the government takes a portion of that cash, de-valuing both our labor and the cash paid for it by the employer.
Every time we pump a tank of gas at the station, we have arrived at a point where more money goes to government than to the company that actually took on the astronomical costs of compliance with mind-numbing government regulation, limits on production capacity and actual production of the fuel! In some states, government takes more than twice what the company gets in profit for its products. Think of it! If you or I were to go to our neighbor and, at the point of a gun, take the money he had earned for his labor, we would be properly jailed. Not so with our benevolent politicians.
In fact, they make the process so easy and so painless for us. They offer to simply withhold money from each paycheck to simplify that process. Over time, we've come to view our income in terms of net rather than gross. Likewise, at the pump, we grumble about the "price of gas" without noticing the the ridiculous taxes included in that price!
Consider for a moment how differently we'd view those taxes if, on each payday, we were required to go to a desk at the bank and write a check for our taxes prior to depositing our pay. What if after every gasoline purchase, we were required to write a separate check for the taxes? In some cases, that would mean the price of gas at the pump would be around $25.00 and the taxes would be about $20.00! If we had to write one check to "Big Oil, Inc." and one to the US government (and, in most cases, one to our respective state government), would we be more engaged and informed as to where and how that money was being spent? Would we be a little more inclined to hold our representatives accountable for their behaviors with our money?
But here's where we find ourselves. We are blind to the astronomical impact of government intrusion on our formerly free-market economy--an impact that is increasingly untenable. At every point of government contact and extraction of value, the loss of value reaches in every direction. It impacts the producers and consumers--the buyers and sellers. Sadly, the value is horrendously diminished by the government's gross inefficiency in spending it, even!
So, when statists are in control and move the government toward excessive growth and increasing intrusion into our lives, there is a corresponding loss of value from the economy and it is significant in our time.
But statists are always ready with the easy lie to comfort us and tell us all is well, even when we can clearly see it is not! For the past several years we've been assured that when taxes were cut and unemployment was under 4% that we were in a "deep recession." At the same time, we were assured by the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd that Fannie and Freddy were in great shape! Now, that the economy is hurtling down the road to oblivion, with unemployment holding steady at over 10%, we're being assured that the recovery has been underway for some time! We should trust the Statist-in-Chief and his gaggle of communists, socialists and fascists in the administration.
When times get tough, fire up the teleprompter! Give the people "soaring oratory" to assuage their pain. Tell the people to tighten their belts while we [the government] spend like money is water! Nationalize and ration health care, while maintaining a totally unreal health care establishment for the political elite in DC. Raise taxes on the American people who actually produce, and guarantee elaborate and lavish benefits for life for the most useless and value-less politicians in the world's history with those taxes! When companies have been run aground through similarly lavish benefit packages for increasingly useless union workers, seize their stocks from legitimate and lawful investors and donate them to the unions, then artificially inflate their value through a disproportionate injection of tax dollars.
These are the "answers" and "solutions" to present problems being offered by our statist overseers to date.
The good news, of course, is that the American people are awakening again. Having forgotten the abysmal policies of Jimmy Carter and getting Carter-Cubed in B. Hussein Obama, we're catching on again, that the founders and their ideas aren't so out-dated after all! Liberty works! Freedom works! Individuals pursuing their dreams works! Smaller, less intrusive government... well... doesn't harm as much.
Rabbi Harold Kushner observed:
"There is a part of us, especially in times of stress, that wants to be cuddled and taken care of, to be told, 'There's nothing to worry about; I'll take care of everything for you.' ...There is a part of us that wants somebody else to step in and do all the hard things that we are supposed to do, relieving us of responsibility....
"...Erich Fromm, after fleeing from Nazi Germany to the United States, tried to understand how a cultured, educated people like the Germans could have let a man like Hitler come to power. In his book Escape from Freedom, he suggests an answer. Sometimes, he says, the problems of life become so overwhelming that we despair of ever solving them. Should someone come along and say in a loud, confident voice, 'Follow me without question, do everything I tell you to, and I will lead you out of this,' many of us would find that a very tempting offer. When life becomes difficult, we want someone to say to us, 'Don't worry your little head about it. Let me do it for you, and all I want in return is your gratitude and total obedience.'" (Harold S. Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Is Not Enough (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 128-129.)
Hence the dictum of Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a crisis go to waste."
But Americans have proven very different through its history. We've traditionally been the ones to throw off such assurances and demand that we handle our problems (and frequently, the world's) on our own.
But the warning is a valid one. If we cave to the negative messages of the statists, if we buy into the notion that we can't do it without their intervention, if we despair in whatever "crisis" they cook up or inflict upon us, all is lost.
But, again, I firmly believe that the resilience of the American spirit and the American people will win the day.
The statists, at their core, are cowards. They view the world through the lens of cowardice and they falsely presume that everyone else is as cowardly as they are. They are wrong, of course.
And while it took so little for them to give in to the lure of statist philosophies and false assurances, America--AMERICANS-- have successfully resisted that siren song and will continue to do so, I believe, for the foreseeable future. The greatest and most enduring store of value in the world is the resilience, the determination, the innovation and the sheer grit of the American people. And that store can never be fully destroyed by the best or worst efforts of the statist, absent our consent.
Real hope and real change are in the air again! Once again, as Ronaldus Magnus observed, "It's morning in America!"
Value is measured in many ways. We attach a number by stating value in dollars or in ounces of gold or silver. Some state value in terms of food. One definition I've read of value is, "the importance or preciousness of something."
As consumers, we attach value to various things by what we are willing to pay for those things. For example, some of us are willing to pay $2.50 for a gallon of gasoline, or $40.00 for a tank of gasoline. Others may switch to walking or riding a bike when the price exceeds $2.25 per gallon. They value the gasoline and the possession of the cash differently. So, price indicates value but does not define it. Value is defined by our individual preferences, needs and wants.
When we think about this, it seems fairly obvious. What seems to escape many people is the absolute fact that everything the government touches, loses value. The loss moves in every direction from the point of government contact. This is because the government is entirely inept and inefficient in meddling in the lives of citizens. In fact, we've seen gross inefficiency even in those activities for which governments are uniquely qualified, like defense (remember the $800.00 hammers and crazy costs for toilets in the Pentagon?).
The reason that government is such a drain on value throughout the economy is that it produces nothing! The only things that government can do are to impose regulations and restrictions or impose taxes. In every such instance, value is drained from the economy.
Initially, I had launched into a detailed description of how this happens, but I don't want to be responsible for boring you into a coma. In short, we can see in dramatic fashion everywhere a product is exchanged, how government extracts value from that transaction.
Every time we exchange our labor for a sum of cash, the government takes a portion of that cash, de-valuing both our labor and the cash paid for it by the employer.
Every time we pump a tank of gas at the station, we have arrived at a point where more money goes to government than to the company that actually took on the astronomical costs of compliance with mind-numbing government regulation, limits on production capacity and actual production of the fuel! In some states, government takes more than twice what the company gets in profit for its products. Think of it! If you or I were to go to our neighbor and, at the point of a gun, take the money he had earned for his labor, we would be properly jailed. Not so with our benevolent politicians.
In fact, they make the process so easy and so painless for us. They offer to simply withhold money from each paycheck to simplify that process. Over time, we've come to view our income in terms of net rather than gross. Likewise, at the pump, we grumble about the "price of gas" without noticing the the ridiculous taxes included in that price!
Consider for a moment how differently we'd view those taxes if, on each payday, we were required to go to a desk at the bank and write a check for our taxes prior to depositing our pay. What if after every gasoline purchase, we were required to write a separate check for the taxes? In some cases, that would mean the price of gas at the pump would be around $25.00 and the taxes would be about $20.00! If we had to write one check to "Big Oil, Inc." and one to the US government (and, in most cases, one to our respective state government), would we be more engaged and informed as to where and how that money was being spent? Would we be a little more inclined to hold our representatives accountable for their behaviors with our money?
But here's where we find ourselves. We are blind to the astronomical impact of government intrusion on our formerly free-market economy--an impact that is increasingly untenable. At every point of government contact and extraction of value, the loss of value reaches in every direction. It impacts the producers and consumers--the buyers and sellers. Sadly, the value is horrendously diminished by the government's gross inefficiency in spending it, even!
So, when statists are in control and move the government toward excessive growth and increasing intrusion into our lives, there is a corresponding loss of value from the economy and it is significant in our time.
But statists are always ready with the easy lie to comfort us and tell us all is well, even when we can clearly see it is not! For the past several years we've been assured that when taxes were cut and unemployment was under 4% that we were in a "deep recession." At the same time, we were assured by the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd that Fannie and Freddy were in great shape! Now, that the economy is hurtling down the road to oblivion, with unemployment holding steady at over 10%, we're being assured that the recovery has been underway for some time! We should trust the Statist-in-Chief and his gaggle of communists, socialists and fascists in the administration.
When times get tough, fire up the teleprompter! Give the people "soaring oratory" to assuage their pain. Tell the people to tighten their belts while we [the government] spend like money is water! Nationalize and ration health care, while maintaining a totally unreal health care establishment for the political elite in DC. Raise taxes on the American people who actually produce, and guarantee elaborate and lavish benefits for life for the most useless and value-less politicians in the world's history with those taxes! When companies have been run aground through similarly lavish benefit packages for increasingly useless union workers, seize their stocks from legitimate and lawful investors and donate them to the unions, then artificially inflate their value through a disproportionate injection of tax dollars.
These are the "answers" and "solutions" to present problems being offered by our statist overseers to date.
The good news, of course, is that the American people are awakening again. Having forgotten the abysmal policies of Jimmy Carter and getting Carter-Cubed in B. Hussein Obama, we're catching on again, that the founders and their ideas aren't so out-dated after all! Liberty works! Freedom works! Individuals pursuing their dreams works! Smaller, less intrusive government... well... doesn't harm as much.
Rabbi Harold Kushner observed:
"There is a part of us, especially in times of stress, that wants to be cuddled and taken care of, to be told, 'There's nothing to worry about; I'll take care of everything for you.' ...There is a part of us that wants somebody else to step in and do all the hard things that we are supposed to do, relieving us of responsibility....
"...Erich Fromm, after fleeing from Nazi Germany to the United States, tried to understand how a cultured, educated people like the Germans could have let a man like Hitler come to power. In his book Escape from Freedom, he suggests an answer. Sometimes, he says, the problems of life become so overwhelming that we despair of ever solving them. Should someone come along and say in a loud, confident voice, 'Follow me without question, do everything I tell you to, and I will lead you out of this,' many of us would find that a very tempting offer. When life becomes difficult, we want someone to say to us, 'Don't worry your little head about it. Let me do it for you, and all I want in return is your gratitude and total obedience.'" (Harold S. Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Is Not Enough (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 128-129.)
Hence the dictum of Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a crisis go to waste."
But Americans have proven very different through its history. We've traditionally been the ones to throw off such assurances and demand that we handle our problems (and frequently, the world's) on our own.
But the warning is a valid one. If we cave to the negative messages of the statists, if we buy into the notion that we can't do it without their intervention, if we despair in whatever "crisis" they cook up or inflict upon us, all is lost.
But, again, I firmly believe that the resilience of the American spirit and the American people will win the day.
The statists, at their core, are cowards. They view the world through the lens of cowardice and they falsely presume that everyone else is as cowardly as they are. They are wrong, of course.
And while it took so little for them to give in to the lure of statist philosophies and false assurances, America--AMERICANS-- have successfully resisted that siren song and will continue to do so, I believe, for the foreseeable future. The greatest and most enduring store of value in the world is the resilience, the determination, the innovation and the sheer grit of the American people. And that store can never be fully destroyed by the best or worst efforts of the statist, absent our consent.
Real hope and real change are in the air again! Once again, as Ronaldus Magnus observed, "It's morning in America!"
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