Liberty and Prosperity

This November’s choice between capitalism and socialism is not about whether you are rich or poor right now; it is about which of those two you wish to be tomorrow.

The inescapable lesson of economic history is that free market economies make everyone unequally richer, while state-controlled economies make everyone equally poorer.  Which do you prefer – rich or equal?  Free people overwhelmingly choose rich, which is why socialism can only be imposed by force or fraud. 

Nobel-winning economist F.A. Hayek’s profound insight was that socialism fails because all of the information needed to make rational choices for millions of people can not possibly be known.  Conversely, capitalism works because all of the information we need to make rational choices is known – it is known to us, and we make our own choices according to our own self-interest. 

Self-interest is not immoral; it is simply the public interest reduced to its smallest indivisible component part.  In fact, self-interest is the only kind of interest there is.  If it were possible to establish a public interest by government decree, we would not need divorce lawyers.  And if State power can not bind two people who love each other, how could we expect it to herd 300 million strangers?

The simple answer is we can’t, and we are proving Hayek’s theorems daily.  It has been nearly four years since the election of 2006 that gave control of Congress to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  No one will confuse them with Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman; their agenda is anti-capitalist and socialistic, if not definitively socialist.  The results speak for themselves: 15 million people have no jobs, the average work week for those who do has declined to 34.1 hours, property values have shrunk, the markets are still down, and the dollar has weakened.  We are getting poorer.     

People do not save, invest and produce in order to benefit the State; they do so to benefit themselves and their families.  That is why our economy has not, does not, and will not respond to the prompting of the President’s socialist economic agenda or the deceptive pleadings of his minions.  Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke finally spoke the truth last month when he told Congress that it will be years before the jobless situation improves - years.      

Chairman Bernanke is not clairvoyant; rather, he understands a basic economic principle: the bigger the rake, the less the take.  Having learned nothing from their failures, our socialists in Congress plan to impose the largest tax increase in the history of the world this fall when they repeal the Bush tax reductions enacted almost a decade ago.  This is the plan for reducing their deficit – to increase yours.       

Think about the effect that just one of those tax increases – the inheritance tax – will have on job creation.  The rate increases from 0% to 55%; children will have to sell the family business just to pay the death tax.  Now, do you think this will encourage more people to start new family businesses? Congratulations!  You and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve understand that people will not risk their life savings and work like a dog to bequeath their rewards to the IRS. 

However, our President and his socialist colleagues in Congress don’t get it.  They are obsessed with their own jealous resentments and  their brains are marinated in leftist economic gibberish.    

Confiscating earnings from high earners does not make the poor richer anymore than cutting the heads off of tall people makes short people taller.  All it does is increase government power and control over rich and poor alike, which is what the upcoming tax debate is really all about.  It has been what all of the debates have been about for quite some time, now.   

        

Recent polls show that 75% of Americans trust free markets, not government, to secure their prosperity.  Less than 30% believe the President’s economic stimulus plan has worked.  Less than 20% approve of the job Congress is doing.  Congress should listen to the People; we have it right, and they have it wrong.  Any fool can see that now, unless they work in the media or teach in a University. 

It is not complicated:  reduce taxes, cut spending, shrink government, de-regulate markets, and let us live free and prosper – that is the answer to our economic problems, not higher taxes and bigger government.  Prosperity is not an entitlement program; it can not be legislated into being and delivered by the apparatus of the State.  It is the product of free people pursuing their individual self-interest; engaging in voluntary economic cooperation and adding value in the marketplace.     

Liberty is prosperity, and vice versa.  Candidates who get this deserve your support in the upcoming elections, regardless of party affiliation or endorsement; candidates who don’t deserve to be shelved, regardless of party affiliation or endorsement.   

Want to save the nation?  Find a candidate who gets it and help them win their campaign for liberty.

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

      

You Can Call Me Ray

Recently it was reported that 70 Members of Congress belonged to the Democratic Socialists of America. The source was a bit dubious, but none of the “outed” legislators has denied the claim, either.            

A check of the DSA website reveals a political philosophy that is plainly anti-American.  They argue that Americans are wrong to “believe that their security results from personal responsibility and individual initiative.”  The socialists’ faith in government is equaled only by their disdain for Liberty.

The DSA reject our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and seek to impose a collectivist substitute called the 21^st Century Bill of Rights.  I present it here with amplification quoted verbatim, along with an italicized rebuttal commentary which is, of course, my own.  

1. Everyone has the right to a living wage job.   

“…government, at the federal, state or local level, will necessarily be the prime mover in creating jobs that meet the social needs of an advanced industrial society”.

Wrong.  Trusting government as the “prime mover” has left 15 million Americans without any job whatsoever.

2. Everyone has the right to a sufficient amount of nutritious and safe food. 

“The answer to this is federal funding…profit alone cannot be the standard for such a necessity.”

Oh, please. Look at the shapes of the workers exiting any federal government building at quitting time and tell me you want those people deciding what you should eat.  

3. Everyone has the right to affordable and safe housing.   

“The goal of affordable and safe shelter can be realized by government programs and subsidies with mandated targets and timetables. Then and only then…”

Hello? We tried this – it was called sub-prime lending and it broke the world, remember?

4.  Everyone has a right to preventive, acute and long term health care. 

“…and we must legislate the financing mechanism consistent with this belief: single-payer national health insurance.”

Relentless, like Chucky. Health care is the product of someone’s labor. You have a right to buy it; you don’t have a right to steal it.  

5.  Everyone has a right to free, high quality public education.  

 “…the institutions of tenure and faculty-shared governance must be defended…and the “business model” of the university must be resisted.”

You can’t be serious. I’m pretty sure when the Creator was endowing us with our equal and unalienable rights, university tenure was not on His mind.  But now we all know where these loopy ideas originate.

6.  Everyone has the right to give and receive care. 

 “The United States is unique among advanced democratic nations by making caring for one’s loved ones primarily a private burden.”

Are you guys smoking crack?  The 90% of Americans who are not socialist wingnuts do not view caring for our loved ones as a burden; it is our greatest joy.        

7.  Everyone has the right to income security throughout their life.   

“The result is a society that moves towards its economic potential and an economic policy whose goals are for all of us to live “wisely, agreeably and well.”

Ok, how about Lindsay Lohan?  I hear she is in a “transitional phase” – how much income does LiLo have a right to?  Let’s ask mom Dina what they would both find “wise, agreeable, and well” and then deduct it from Congressional pay.

8.  Everyone has the right to leisure time.   

“The pursuit of profits by capitalists is in direct opposition to leisure time.”

Alright, give me the pipe. Sure, let’s just chuck Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and go with Tenure, Early Pension, and Time Off. This is what happens when government workers write the specs for Utopia.

9.  Everyone has the right to a healthy environment.  “

Our posterity will inherit a healthy planet only if we end the profit-driven throwaway corporate economy…”

Excuse me, but the last time you socialists ended the profit-driven economy someplace, we got Chernobyl. Nobody washes a rental car, comrade.

10.  Everyone has the right to associate in whatever organizational form they choose.  

 “Only a major mobilization….could put enough spine in timid Democratic politicians to pass any substantive reform like EFCA.”

You mean the right to associate in any organizational form that is a union or ACORN.  What about my right to associate with tea partiers, libertarians, NRA members, non-unionized co-workers, stockholders, raw milk drinkers, smokers, drivers who don’t want to pay your stupid train fare, talk-radio listeners, and people who feel like endorsing candidates on Facebook?  I didn’t think so.

Well, there you have it, my friends – that’s the game plan.  Not a peep about speech, religion, arms, privacy, property, states’ rights, warrants, jury trials, or press freedom; in fact, there are no individual rights whatsoever - just a collective right to be a soulless and dependent ward of the State.   

And can you tell me the plank that President Obama or Speaker Pelosi would oppose?  Can you name the goal you have not heard them plead in their own words?  Whether or not there are 70 card-carrying DSA members in Congress is irrelevant; there are hundreds who gleefully carry the water every day.

I call them socialists because it is what they are; we should quit pretending otherwise.     

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Smokin'

Last weekend, we went to one of our favorite tavern-burger joints for the first time since Wisconsin’s smoking ban went into effect.  No ashtrays, no smoke, and no customers – nice going, do-gooders. 

This was a biker bar, past tense.  It is an empty bar now – soon to be a closed-down bar unless there is a federal bailout in the works for dives. It wasn’t the kind of place you would walk into by mistake, not a place to take your kids.  Nobody was inadvertently exposed to second-hand smoke.  It was dependably loud and nasty and smoky; every patron and employee walked in there of their own free will.   

The regulars perched on their customary stools; drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, telling jokes, telling lies, and ogling the Harley girls who came in dressed like they tell their teenager daughters not to.  Retirees and veterans, mostly; old guys who walked down from the neighborhood to watch a game or watch a race or just watch a well-pierced barmaid with the mouth of a Teamster bend over to grab another beer from the cooler.  This was not the Overture Center.   

Would it have killed you to leave these people alone?  

We just went there occasionally for the best steak sandwich on the planet.  Sometimes we took our 80-something moms and aunts there for lunch after church.  No one hassled us, even though we were dressed inappropriately in our Sunday duds. We coexisted, just like the bumper sticker says to.  It was diversity without the forms, legislation, trainer, and fines.  Gone now.

Our modern-day health fascists wouldn’t dream of walking into that joint before or after the ban, so they have gained nothing but the self-righteous satisfaction of depriving someone else their liberty and property.  Here’s a suggestion if any are reading this: pull that stick out and beat yourself  with it  the next time you feel an overwhelming urge to punish someone you don’t like.  Leave us alone.

Smoking-ban advocates insisted that the hospitality industry would boom afterward, when hoards of non-smokers would come out to frequent the newly liberated smoke-free establishments.  See for yourself how that is working out – take a drive up north on Hwy 13 or 45 and tell me how many of those tavern parking lots are full and how many are empty.   

I’ve heard the argument; the bar owners’ property rights and smokers’ personal liberty are small sacrifices for the greater good of society.  Wrong.  Liberty lost is never good for society; in the words of John Stuart Mill: “the danger which threatens human nature is not excess but deficiency of personal impulses and preferences.”   You will never discover your own true nature if you are denied the diversity of choices that requires you to form one.   

I don’t smoke – quit several years ago when taxes pushed a carton up over $30 and I didn’t feel like subsidizing hypocrites anymore. Recently an ad for Kools on sale at $67 a carton caught my eye – I’m told they are nearly $100 a carton in New York.  That is more than a day’s wages for the working poor who do most of the smoking in this country; a weekly smoking tax that is greater than the cost of health insurance.  No wonder so many are uninsured.  Maybe they should have just fixed that.

And weren’t we going to tax only the rich?  When did the rich start smoking Kools?  Do any white people smoke Kools? Clearly this is racially motivated and Nancy Pelosi should investigate the tea party.  Where is the liberal outrage over the Kool tax?  Where are Jesse and Al and Maxine and Barack?  For that matter, where is the conservative outrage? Heck, where is the libertarian outrage?  Silence.

This isn’t about smoking; this is about liberty and individual sovereignty and the tyranny of the majority.  Again, John Stuart Mill: “If all of mankind save one were of one opinion, they would be no more justified in silencing the one than he, if he had the power, were justified in silencing mankind.”  

One less Wisconsin business, one less business tax payer, a few less jobs, lower incomes for the commissioned vendors, one fewer choice for bikers and veterans and retirees and our moms, and cigarettes that cost more than dope.  To repeat: nice going. 

The Wisconsin smoking ban sacrificed Liberty on the altar of the public good, the false idol of our modern times.  The public did not become any “gooder”, but a little liberty died. 

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Are You Smarter Than A 20th Grader?

The magic number is $50,000 – the median compensation rate in the private sector.  The math is simple: for every $50,000 of cost laid on business by government, one job must be cut.

Government burdens businesses in three ways: taxes, mandates, and regulations.  Ultimately, these costs are passed to consumers in the form of increased prices; but in the short run, increased government burden must be offset with cost reductions elsewhere in the firm, and elsewhere these days almost always means job cuts.     

Who is surprised that businesses are cutting jobs again?  Are taxes going up or down?  Are regulations being added or removed?  Are mandates increasing or decreasing? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the 20 new mandates in the Health Care Reform Bill will increase employers’ benefit costs by 20% to 60%. What does that mean for jobs?  Let’s do the math.     

For a firm with 1,000 employees, a 20% increase could mean more than $1 million in additional benefit costs.  Divide by our magic number of $50,000 and you have 20 jobs that will be cut as a result of HCR.  That doesn’t seem like very many until you realize there are 80 million workers whose employers are learning the details of ObamaCare this “recovery summer” and buzz-killing Joe Biden’s victory lap. 484,000 Americans lost their jobs last week.    

Government economists don’t use simple math; they forecast employment changes using computer models that are vastly more intricate and complicated – and wrong.  This is why we constantly read news stories about economists being surprised at the dismal jobs numbers month after month.  Businesspeople are only surprised that the economists are surprised. 

The magic number works for new government spending too, as funds for public sector programs are taken from the private sector. Last week Congress passed a $26 billion bailout of states to “save” 160,000 government jobs.  That is $162,000 per government job “saved”.  How many private sector jobs will it cost to “save” them?  You know the magic number – do the math.  Plus one minus three is a net two jobs lost, so get ready to read about the President’s economists being surprised again.  

Fortunately, the knife cuts both ways - for every $50,000 of government burden removed from business, one new job will be added in the private sector.  President Kennedy knew this, President Reagan knew this, Prime Minister Thatcher knew this, and the American people know this; a recent Rasmussen poll showed that 2/3 of us think Obama’s economic policies have us headed in the wrong direction. 

Want to solve the jobs crisis?  Use the magic number.  Lighten the load on business by $500 billion – we would create 10 million jobs and drop the unemployment rate below 4%. Cut taxes, repeal mandates, and de-regulate; start by eliminating the corporate income tax, and try to avoid getting trampled by the millions of people going back to work.  It will be a beautiful thing.

And when that happens, the President’s Keynesian economists will once again be dazed and confused; according to their models, this shouldn’t work.  Reason enough to do it - these nimrods have been wrong about everything.  They are giving us 20^th graders a bad name.

Mr. Obama’s economic “Dream Team” has spent trillions after billions on one blunder after another that have only made things worse. Biden quit trying to spin it; Romer simply quit. Last Tuesday’s headline, “Dems Pass $26 Billion Jobs Bill” was followed by Wednesday’s, “Stocks Fall Sharply As Investor Gloom Grows.”  Ouch.    

Why did investor gloom grow?  Think of the economy as a family of four children:  three of them have paper routes, pick strawberries, run lemonade stands, shovel snow, mow lawns – they earn their own money and exchange with each other to build wealth.    

Then there is the fourth kid – he gets an allowance with money taken from the earnings of the first three. He spends all of his allowance on gifts for his friends, and then he borrows 60% more to buy even more gifts for his friends, racking up debt that the first three children must pay off.

When that fourth kid’s allowance is increased by $26 billion, do you think the other three children will be happy or gloomy?  Will they rush out and hire some neighbor kids, or cut a few of their current helpers to come up with the $26 billion?  

Congratulations, you are smarter than a 20^th grader.      

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

    

About Race

Here is one thing I have learned over 35 years in business: winners do not think of themselves as white or black, male or female, gay or straight, disabled or able.  Here is another: losers are obsessed with such things.

That is what’s wrong with liberals’ pre-occupation with race, gender, and class – they are teaching another generation of young people to think like losers, talk like losers, and act like losers.  When these young people grow up to be losers, it will be held up as evidence of more racism and sexism, and the government will subsidize the victimhood industry into perperuity.  

In the private sector, we have no time for such self-indulgent foolishness. 

We are rewarded and punished for our decisions and actions by the market - a market that is color-blind and gender-neutral.  Its judgments are swift and final; our choice is to please it or disappear. We win or we lose; it is a beautiful thing – pure.  No wonder free markets terrify people who expect a hug for simply showing up.    

What matters in business is competence, confidence, character, and trust.  These are not traits bestowed upon any specific race or gender; they are leadership characteristics that are found in individual persons. Winners have developed these characteristics, and losers have not.    

Winners act and learn, while losers hope and blame.  Losers hope for good things to happen to them, rather than making good things happen.  They blame others for their circumstances, and exaggerate every slight and injustice, real or imagined.     

In business, we teach our young leaders to recognize winners and losers by the language they use.  Losers will announce themselves with the “three F’s”:  – it’s not Fair, it’s not my Fault, and it’s not mine to Fix.  Waiting for someone else to cure one’s circumstances is the loser’s signature move.   

We should speak plainly about these matters.  Race is a cop-out.  Gender is a cop-out.  Orientation is a cop-out.  Disability is a cop-out. 

We are what we are, and none of us chose it; recognizing that fact is about as much thought as these subjects deserve.  What is important is who we have become, what we have made of ourselves.  The making of a self is an individual pursuit.

Over the past 35 years, I have worked with, worked for, supervised, promoted, and dismissed people of every age, race, gender, orientation, and physical ability.  The winners win and the losers lose, without regard to their skin color or reproductive equipment. It has everything to do with what they have made of themselves, and how well they apply themselves to the job at hand.   

And I will also say this: over those 35 years, I have witnessed more corruption, intolerance, harassment, favoritism, and overtly racist and sexist acts from the government employees who regulate us than I have from those of us who supposedly need to be regulated. Here’s the difference: in the private sector we fire our dipsticks, we don’t promote them to GS13 and send them to a class. 

I know many successful black, Hispanic, gay, and disabled men and women; I enjoy being in their company, working with them, competing against or cooperating with them as the case may be.  We don’t talk about their EEO status; we talk about their accomplishments, values, family, faith, philosophy, relationships, strategies, and dreams for the future.  Their dreams come true because the refuse to be defined by their skin or their genitalia.  They refuse to be defined, period; they define themselves.    

And I also know plenty of pathetic white male losers that blame their failure on preferences given to blacks, Hispanics, females, disabled, or veterans by government.  You want to have a dialog on race and gender?  That is all they talk about. Their preoccupation condemns them to a life of perpetual irrelevance just as surely as it does the minority teen whose head has been filled with the lie that she can’t succeed without government benevolence.      

The difference between the first (winners) and second (losers) set of acquaintances is not the color of their ears, or the loops that adorn them, or which side hosts the piercing. The difference is what is going on between those ears.  

Each of us has a brain of our own, a heart of our own, and our Creator’s emancipating endowment of free will.  We are not Leggo pieces to be sorted into neat piles by color and shape so that social engineers can more easily construct a society that pleases them.  

Rev. Jesse Jackson had it exactly right with “I am somebody”; singular, not plural.  It should all just stop right there.          

  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”