Conservatives understand that for regular folks to have the opportunity to achieve they need to be free to do so. As GrokTALK! guest Joe Mendola in segment two and three, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Cuban, Lady Ga Ga, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, almost every great success story in modern America who has an influence on current popular culture started out as a 99 percenter. They were just like you or I, but they had a dream or an idea, ambition, drive, and the personal and economic freedom to pursue it.
Democrats (Progressives, Liberals) insist that government must be free to deny personal and economic freedoms at will. That it must control wealth creation and distribution, that it must use taxation, and force, even arbitrarily, to create economic equality. The fact that it has never worked, except to create poverty from which violating the law (crime) is the only means of economic improvement, does not disuade them.
As Joe pointed out in his guest segment, it does not make the pie bigger; it just slices the pie we have into smaller bits; a pie that, by the way, can only get smaller and smaller, leading to less and less.
Andrew Mellon, Calvin Coolidge’s Treasury Secretary, observed (not being the first nor the last to see this truth) that “If Income taxes are so excessive that a man of ability must work three days a week for the government and has but three days a week for himself he will become discourages and decide that the result is not worth the effort.”
This rule does not just apply to income taxes. It applies to every barrier to entry from the cost of permits and fees to meeting regulatory requirements. It applies to the ongoing costs of compliance. EPA, IRS, DHS, OSHA, Unions, ObamaCare, every state and local agency, with its rules, regulations, fees, and requirements, places downward pressure on every activity of growth and commerce. Any and all of these burdens discourage “a man of ability” from choosing to take risk in pursuit of what was once the American Dream; the ability to come from nothing and to achieve everything.
The risk of litigation and costs associated with potential lawsuits related to any activity, be they brought by individuals or the state for failing to know, understand, or comply with thousands and thousands of pages of rules, act twice as heavy upon the backs of anyone who dreams of doing what Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and others started in their garages.
The end result of all of this stagnation, fewer jobs, lower wages, higher prices, less opportunity, and for the benefit of our grow-government friends, a declining spiral of revenue to feed their government beast. The lefts policies are little more than political and economic end of life therapy for the American Dream, destined to lie in ruin as the vaccum of promises meet reality.
When they run out of other people’s money, or the debt on their borrowing exceeds their ability to pay, those who believed that the government could create economic equality, as well as those who did not listen or pay attention, will have it; they will be equally penniless with no where to go and no way to relieve their condition but to use personal force to deny others of whatever might be left.
The conservative promise is limited regulation and governmnt oversight that encourages innovation by protecting the benefits of investing yourself in pursuit of the American Dream. A dream that creates wealth, jobs, opportunity, and makes the pie bigger. The progressive promise is a lie that ends in an empty, discarded pie plate, crime, and chaos; and the longer you choose to beleive the lie–or simply ignore it hoping it will go away– the more unlikely that we can do anything to stop it. It will have turned the American Dream into a nightmare.
