Tag: Socialism

Wealth Equity is Socialism

Wealth Equity is Socialism

If you are still struggling to really believe America is diving headlong into socialism, the House move this week should finally convince you. Speaker Pelosi is launching a new Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth. This is the latest step toward a leftist socialist culture after fomenting racism, revising history, promoting gender dysphoria, enacting moral depravity, and eroding confidence in elections–all straight from the official Marxist theories. Let’s look at what this Select Committee means to you.

The name of the Committee assumes there is a wealth gap that needs to be fixed. Yes, there is a wealth gap in America, and it is part and parcel to the basic concept of capitalism. The essence of capitalism is that wealth is gained by investment risk, hard work, smart work, equity management, job creation, and income growth for others. Desire for wealth creates incentive to start and succeed in businesses and to become more competitive for employment in the scarcer positions of the job market. This incentive drives the free market capitalism economy, and America has the most robust economy in the world, because we have the most successful free market capitalism in the world.

Business owners and executives supported by highly compensated educated and skilled managers provide jobs for the nation’s blue-collar middle class. These millions in the labor force, there by choice or capacity, are compensated better than the average labor force of any other nation. A gap, sometimes a wide gap, in earnings will naturally exist in a free market capitalist society. But almost everyone in America has a better quality of life than those in other countries.

Socialism, on the other hand, is the antithesis of capitalism. The government controls the economy resulting in a disincentive to invest, work hard and efficient, grow the economy, and provide jobs. Business owners and executives are prevented from growing personal wealth by forced distribution of that wealth to others with less wealth. Thus, there is no incentive for entrepreneurs and the highly educated and skilled to succeed and no incentive for laborers to progress in their careers. Be assured the new House Committee will be studying ways to transition our economy away from capitalism and toward socialism.

America is already moving to socialism by trying to overhaul the tax system to redistribute wealth from the business owners, executives, and investors who fuel the economy to the millions in the labor force who depend on the economy for jobs. The wealthiest 25% currently pay almost 90% of all taxes. This is simply America biting the hand that feeds it. The House Committee will be looking for ways to ensure that wealth is evenly distributed among the entire population. That is the definition of socialism and would be the end of America’s economy that benefits everyone.

Those Americans who seek greater wealth should stop advocating socialism which has failed every time it has been tried and start focusing on the job market. They should pursue the best paying job for which they qualify, increase their qualifications through education and hard work, and support free market capitalism which will ensure maximum opportunity for financial advancement.

Are there limited extremes that unfairly hinder the competition for wealth? Absolutely. There are some legitimate wealth inequities. And those rare extremes should be examined by this new House Committee on a case-by-case basis. However, instead, we can expect the Committee to make an assault on institutional wealth building and recommend more government tax-payer funded programs for the poor and middle class. In other words, they will advance socialism.

The government is never the best solution to legitimate wealth inequity. Benevolent hearts of the nation’s citizens who choose to relieve financial burdens of others is the real answer–and the biblical answer. Failing to meet the needs of the less fortunate on a one-to-one or organizational contribution basis will invite the socialism craved by the leftists.

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Dear Voter, It’s For Your Children and Grandchildren

Election for children and grandchildren

Elections are always overly focused on candidates and issues. But the consequences of elections have little to do with candidates and issues. Elections have everything to do with the direction of our nation and the shaping of our culture. Too often, we vote on today’s situations while disregarding the tomorrow our vote will create.

In this year’s presidential election, the vast majority of voters seem to be determined to vote based on their opinion of President Trump. Relatively few are really pumped about Biden, but many will vote for him just to get rid of Trump. Their vote is a referendum on Trump’s unpleasant personality, Covid-19 frustrations, and the current state of the economy. How tragic it is that so many voters will disregard the America that a Biden presidency will create for our children and grandchildren.

Regardless of one’s personal assessment of Trump, no one can deny that his pre-pandemic America was on a rocket launch trajectory. The booming economy was breaking all records, patriotism was returning, allies were stepping up to Trump’s demands for fairness, enemies were making concessions to his defense posturing, the nation was regaining its prominence, Constitutional freedoms were being reclaimed. Law and order were respected. In just three years, we had reconstructed a future for our children and grandchildren that would be even better than what we had enjoyed.

Regardless of one’s personal assessment of Biden, no one can deny that his post-pandemic America would be on a rocket reentry trajectory. The economy would weaken severely under Biden’s over-regulation of business, higher taxes, and the “Green New Deal.” His foreign policy would return to propping up wealthy allies and kowtowing to our enemies. Our military would be hamstrung again, and attacks on Constitutional freedoms would resurface. Law and order would be degraded.

The only checks to the radical socialist movement sweeping our nation have been President Trump and conservatives in Congress. If these checks were removed, we would be setting the table for a crippling culture inherited by our children and grandchildren. At an alarming rate, we are moving away from the traditional quality of life, growth opportunities, and freedoms we all have taken for granted. The exponential rate of movement toward Socialism in a four-year term led by Biden and the liberal Democrats would be devastating and probably irreversible. Is that really the America we want our children and grandchildren to credit us for?

Please take just a moment right now to imagine America as you would want it for your children and grandchildren. Then decide which candidates for the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives will lead America in that direction. Vote unselfishly for those candidates. Give little or no consideration for personalities or the current state of affairs which will ultimately be of little importance.

I will vote for an America even better than the America I enjoyed–for my children and grandchildren.

Please share this post with those you know who are struggling with this decision.

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Understanding Socialism

Bernie Sanders

One of the biggest mistakes of my generation was somehow allowing much of American society to degenerate from rational opposition to blind acceptance of socialism. We have sat idle while our replacement generation has lost sight of the grave dangers of this political and economic system. The best we can do now is to make a bold attempt to expose this evil for what it really is. This post is a move in that direction.

Socialism in a nutshell is giving up individual freedom and allowing the government to provide for our needs in exchange for making our decisions for us. It is an economic and political system that depends on a powerful, autocratic government. Socialism came of age with Karl Marx’s theories written as the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The socialist government can be totalitarian (a dictator), oligarchic (a powerful committee), or even democratic. Regardless of the structure, such a government determines what the people need and controls all business production and services to meet those needs. This results in an equitable distribution of wealth and material resources among all people with no competitive buying and selling in the market. Citizens are totally dependent on and subject to the government.

Prominent historical examples include the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, while current examples are China, Cuba, and Venezuela. Although some socialist governments have maintained a robust economy by controlling production, those countries’ citizens are ultimately oppressed and have little incentive to pursue a better quality of life.

In this election year, we are being told that the socialism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is not the failed socialism of the past but rather “Democratic” socialism. They point to the Scandinavian countries as examples instead of China, Cuba, and Venezuela. Sanders says he is not anti-business and declares he supports free elections. However, his proposed system of government is pure socialism. He advocates free health care, free college education, controls on income, and major government subsistence for low income earners. The astronomic costs of these government programs would be funded by huge tax increases on everyone. Oh yes, he says he will tax the rich to provide these comforts. The problem is these costs could not begin to be funded by taxing the top American earners at 100 percent. Taxes would be raised tremendously on almost everyone, which is exactly what socialism does. If the socialist government decides the people need more, it takes more from the people in the form of taxes. A democratically elected socialist government is still a socialist government that preys on its citizens.

The truth is that socialism has never worked effectively as a political and economic system…never!  Even in the Scandinavian countries, it reduces efficiency and initiative in production. It can easily take root in a poor country with a chaotic government looking for something different. When it does, it is usually the result of a revolution that leaves a trail of violence and death. But the “utopia” is short lived as the citizens figure out they are under oppression without freedom to determine their own destiny. Then it is too late. To bring socialism into a thriving economy under-girded with individual freedoms would be absolutely disastrous and absurd.

Free market capitalism has made America the richest, healthiest, most powerful, and most productive country in the history of the world. A recent study shows the poorest 20 percent of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries including western Europe. In other words, if America’s “poor” were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest. This is why we have such an immigration problem. Millions of people dream of coming to America. The greatness of America is the result of God’s blessing through two essential concepts: capitalism as the driver of our economy and individual liberty as the standard of our society. Both must exist simultaneously for the ultimate benefit of the people.

Granted, there are some downsides to capitalism. It does not ensure economic equality. Those who work hardest and are most productive will gain more wealth than others. Incentive is rewarded with better quality of life, while lethargy lessens quality of life. American capitalism, however, makes provision for the less fortunate with social programs supported by reasonable taxes of the more affluent. A cursory study of the American free market and individual freedoms proves that, despite some problems still needing to be resolved, our society is superior to any other in the world. Then why is seemingly half our population ready to trade that life for a much lesser life?

I believe the answer lies in two realities. First, the education of our youth, both parental and institutional, has largely avoided the socioeconomic truths that formed this great nation. Instead of factual studies of constitutional democracy, economic history, and comparative government, millennials and younger have been fed a scholastic diet of liberal psychology and social radicalism. They have learned the weaknesses of America but not its overriding strengths. Secondly, technology, liberal media, family breakdown, and the devaluation of discipline have produced a sense of entitlement, false security, and irresponsibility in our younger generation. Why wouldn’t they want more free stuff without regard to its source and ultimate cost to society? That is their experience, and they have not been taught the consequences. The reality that nothing is really free has been lost on most of them.

The future of America as we know it will depend on freedom-loving Americans showing up on election day to put down the revolution of socialism. We must also make every attempt to instill the truth in our children and grandchildren. We have to replace their indoctrination with factual counter positions. The future of our nation hangs in the balance.

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Choose for Yourselves This Day…

ContemplativeMan

Until recently, I lived in a society, a culture, a nation that thrived on diversity, respect, and appreciation. But I really don’t recognize the current state of the union. America is divided more than we have ever been since the Civil War. We are at a critical juncture where each citizen must decide on where he or she stands. No one can have it both ways. We must choose for ourselves this day whom we will serve.

After the hard-fought acquisition of the promised land of Israel by God’s chosen people, their leader, Joshua, made a profound proclamation. He charged the holy nation to, “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, …but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Now in our day, God has given us Americans the greatest nation in the history of mankind. Its formation and development have been nothing short of miraculous. Its victories, bought by the blood of thousands of brave men and women, were phenomenal and won only with the hand of God.

We are now experiencing a civil-war-like divide as a movement across the nation seeks to aggressively oppose our heritage, our morals, and our freedoms. It is a movement driven by external influences and void of godly perspective. The loudest and most persuasive voices of this movement are those who aspire to the objectives of foreign religions and and governments. They are bent on making America what it has never been and was never meant to be. They want to change almost everything that made us the great nation God intended.

America has persevered through many divisive issues since its founding–the level of independence, geographic expansion, geographic separation, dependence on slavery, financial crisis, social change, and other challenges that could have torn us apart. Instead, we came together to preserve a mutual way of life more important than our individual positions. However, today, we face a different challenge that is arguably the worst yet.

Seemingly, half of our nation is siding with a domestic force that will, if successful, lead us away from almost every influence that has made ours the greatest country on earth. America is being pulled toward socialism, atheism, relativism, and globalism. Who could have imagined that one of our main two political parties would be embracing the government-centric, socialist philosophy. Who would have thought that over half of Americans who no longer consider themselves religious have excluded prayer from public entities, supported abortions, outlawed crosses, and coddled foreign gods. Who ever thought that our law enforcement and courts would be focused more on situational ethics than on biblical principles. Who foresaw the day that much of America would be kowtowing to the United Nations and advocating unlimited immigration.

Unlike other times in our history, I do not believe saner minds will prevail in our present divide. Those who would take us further from our foundational beliefs and principles will not relent. We are in an era when our conversation, our financial support, our prayers, and our votes must reflect the faith and objectives of our nation’s founders. We must not depend on compromise. We must now, “…choose for ourselves this day whom we will serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

 

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Have Democrats Forgotten About American Workers?

tariffs-trade-war

If you had asked Democrats a decade ago what the soul of their party was, most would have said the working class. They don’t say that anymore.

Liberals for years marketed themselves as advocates for the blue-collar worker with a high school education, a union job, and the American dream. Nowadays, the Left has become obsessed with the socialism movement of cultural Marxists and the destruction of capitalism. In essence, the Democrat Party has lost its soul to the radical fringes of its base. And nowhere else is this trend more clearly illustrated than the Democrats’ most recent attack on President Trump’s increased tariff imposition.

For a half-century, America has ignored a growing trade imbalance with almost every international trading partner. Since the 1970’s the US has seen imports trending higher compared to exports except for small trade surpluses in 1998 to 2001. In 2018, our nation’s exports were valued at $2.5 trillion while our imports were valued at over $3.1 trillion, a deficit of over $600 billion. That equates to 3% of our GDP.

Over $400 billion of that deficit is from our trade with China, up from $34 billion in 1990. The bulk of the rest is from the Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Most of these nations’ businesses enjoy government subsidies and low labor costs. All of them levy substantial tariff taxes on most American goods and services while we levy much less or nothing on theirs. Thus, America’s appetite for cheaper foreign goods and services, although satisfying consumers, is taking jobs and higher wages from our workers. The great economy we are currently enjoying would be even more robust without the imbalance in tariffs.

While the Left has been more than happy to ostracize the American worker by ignoring tariffs, the Trump Administration has taken the opposite approach. The president has embraced workers in domestic commerce, defending our nation’s manufacturing from the corrosive policies of our international trade partners. As a professor of economics, I have long advocated free trade on a global scale. However, when other nations establish barriers to free trade, the US must respond in kind to remain competitive. Temporary declines in exports and imports due to our increased tariffs are a short-term price worth paying for an eventual level playing field that benefits both consumers and employees.

Here is one example. In 2018, the president approved relief for the U.S. appliance industry, specifically washing machines. After an independent investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) found that “US producers had been seriously injured by imports,” the president took action. He announced tariffs on foreign-produced washers to protect domestic manufacturers and, in effect, American workers.

Liberals were quick to try to delegitimize the president’s efforts to buttress America’s labor force. Last April, a trio of academics released a study attempting to demonstrate the economic harm caused by the president’s washer tariffs. Unfortunately for academia, the study was full of holes. The authors overlooked many glaring flaws to arrive at their preferred conclusion that the tariffs were harmful. Not only did the authors fail to consider the thousands of manufacturing jobs saved and created by the tariff, but they also failed to account for the more than 15,000 jobs indirectly supported by the president’s action.

President Trump’s administration is succeeding exactly where liberals have failed: in protecting America’s vulnerable blue-collar sector. While Democrats are increasingly content to advocate for socialist policies designed to attract the dependent segment of society, the president has shown his willingness to fight for the jobs of all Americans. It’s clear that Democrats in their push for social experimentation have forgotten about the American workers. Thankfully, President Trump hasn’t.

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The 2020 Election: Capitalism or Socialism

capitalism-socialism

For the first time in America’s history, the 2020 election will be a choice between capitalism and socialism as our future way of life. Most voters may think it’s still all about who will be President or the majority party in the House and Senate. But election results will more so determine whether we remain a free-market capitalist society or embrace the failed, oppressive socialist movement with which many Americans seem to be enamored.

Who could have predicted that America would ever be flirting with socialism? Yet, here we are, less than three decades from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, with millions of citizens being duped by the empty promises of socialist advocates. In a 2016 Gallup poll, 55% of respondents 18 – 29 said they hold a positive view of socialism. A 2017 YouGov poll asked millennials whether they would prefer to live in a capitalist, socialist, fascist, or communist nation, with 44% answering socialist. Nearly one-third of 22-37 year-old Americans responded to a Maru-Blue study by saying their political leaning was toward socialism. None of these polls defined socialism, leaving the question of whether our younger generation understands what socialism really is.

The deception is almost entirely from the Democratic Party. This is the party that once was a legitimate alternative to the GOP in debating labor, social, and economic issues. But they have abandoned these practical advocacies. Now, with openly socialist candidates, the ideological center of the Democratic Party has shifted to the far left in just the last few years. They are sugar-coating the philosophy by calling it “democratic socialism” as if it is just a spin-off of democracy. This has misled the hearts and minds of easily impressionable Americans who haven’t lived through the cold war or studied history seriously.

The tempting fruits of Medicare for all, guaranteed income, and free college tuition seem like heaven on earth. The leftists conveniently disregard the inability of a socialist government to produce prosperity and its reliance on oppression to control economic objectives. They neglect to mention how a socialist government dictates terms of life, education, career choices, family autonomy, travel, associations, and political dialogue. We need to look no further than the ongoing starvation and chaos in Venezuela or the present upheaval in Hong Kong to see clearly the “success” of socialism.

The history of American capitalism is not without faults and missteps, but it is what made this nation the greatest in the history of mankind. We who have observed and experienced the hopelessness of socialism must somehow help others see through its facade. The new generation of voters who have not lived through the threat of an encroaching “evil empire” and who give little attention to modern-day oppressive governments must be convinced that warning about socialism is not a “new McCarthyism.”

Listen carefully to what the 20-plus Democratic presidential candidates are proposing. It doesn’t take a political science major to perceive they are promoting socialism as the new direction for our country. A Democratic-majority congress and/or a Democrat in the White House will swing the door wide open for America’s rush to abandon capitalism. Make the next eighteen months a period of close attention to the voices and actions of our political candidates. Seriously consider what is at stake for you, your children, and your grandchildren.

 

 

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