America’s Hope and Change

If Only

Romney Concedes Election and Admits Wealth is Created by Bankrupting Companies

Asked by Time’s Mark Halperin Wednesday why he wouldn’t push major government spending cuts in his first year, Mitt Romney responded as follows:

“Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5 percent. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course.”

If that’s what Mitt Romney believes, I suggest that he concede the election immediately and save us the trouble of watching him pretend that he can make a difference as the next President.  If he doesn’t believe those words, I want him to explain why they are wrong, so that we know he might at least try to make a difference.

Has he really adopted the governing philosophy that is based on the fallacy that ‘spending’ by either government or private parties is the same thing as economic production?  Does he really believe that buying things is the same thing as or has the same economic effect as making things?

Economic activity happens when someone deploys labor or capital, or both, to produce a thing or service for which someone else will pay with money he earns by being productive.  The trade of dollars for the thing or service makes the activity measurable, but the respective acts of producing are all that have any economic value or consequence.

Assume a government of a country of three men, Ted, Joe and Bill.  Having the government take money from Ted and give it to Joe to buy a widget from Bill IS NOT economic growth or activity.  If Bill makes another widget because he thinks there will another buyer, that IS economic growth/activity.  But, Bill will not do so if he thinks that the only way he will sell widget #2 is if the government lets or forces Joe to buy it (with Ted’s money again).  Bill knows that eventually Joe will have too many warehouses full of widgets, and Bill will not expend more of his labor/capital to make widgets that sit on a shelf.  He loves his labor and capital (a.k.a. his life) too much to waste it that way.

Furthermore, eventually Ted runs out of money, as does Bill, because nothing of value is being created in this exchange of dollars for widgets.  Ted shuts down whatever he did previously to earn the money the government took from him.  (If he were being economically productive, the government’s rationale for taking his money was flawed and immoral, right?)  Then there’s Joe, and since he’s busy storing useless widgets he bought with someone eles’s money, he is not busy producing something Bill wants to buy with all the stacks of money the government took from Ted for Joe to ‘spend’ on widgets.

Scoreboard:  Ted’s broke.  Bill has money but nothing to buy with it.  Joe has widgets no one else, including Ted, wanted.  (If Ted had wanted widgets, he would have bought them with his own money before the government took it from him, correct?)  That’s the end of the story, and it’s not a story of economic activity, it’s a story of lives confiscated and ruled by Mitt Romney or Barack Obama; lives wasted in favor of getting someone’s vote – Joe’s and Bill’s, probably not Ted’s.

If Mitt Romney believes that reducing government spending will reduce economic activity, then perhaps we know the reason he won’t or can’t defend himself against the silly accusation that he got filthy rich by bankrupting dozens of failing companies while running Bain Capital; maybe he believes that lie as well.  (I don’t > Why “Vulture Capitalism” is a big lie.)

Our choices in November aren’t inspiring much hope, are they?

Obama Insists That Only White Men Can Save Julia

I get it now; Julia has to have our help.  All these many years, I believed those words I memorized in 8th grade: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they [ALL men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Much to my new-found delight, the modern Democratic Party, particularly the Obama administration, has improved on what our selfish Founders wrote in July, 1776.  Our new national credo reads more like this: “all men, except most white men, are created equally needy” and “that among some people’s rights are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit and Fulfillment of Neediness.”  Whereas our Founders constituted a government to protect those inalienable rights that left them free to produce and trade with other free men, to modern Democrats, our Founders’ aim, production, the fruit of human endeavor, is a given, a constant.  So, to Democrats, the primary objective of human endeavor is fulfillment of needs by distributing more fairly the things that have been produced.  The right to consume, even what others produce, is the modern inalienable right.  Health care, shelter, decent food, seat belts, good grades, self-esteem, contraception and depression counseling are rights!  And, better yet, they are free of charge, if you’re the right age, creed, race, gender, or national origin or if your sex-life isn’t what used to be called normal.  Taking from Citizen A is justified by Citizen B’s right to fulfill a need.

And, I’ve decided Obama is right.  I used to believe that those consumables, those life-extending good things, are purchased as we exercise profitably our right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – as we earn our keep by living FREE.  I’ve argued that granting those things to some people presupposed that freedom could and would be taken from another person(s).  I was mistaken, and I credit The Life of Julia, the Obama/Biden campaign’s brilliant illustrated piece that teaches “Julia” (and me!) how the US Government can and will take good care of its dependents, from cradle to grave.  Julia proved to me, once and for all, that the lesser humans (women (including lesbians), gay men, blacks, hispanics, students, the young and the elderly . . . everyone except productive white men) need the federal government to provide for them and guard them against the higher beings among them.  Left alone, left free, left exposed to the complications of life and without help from the government, those frail, lazy, weak, inferior beings will be out-earned, out-smarted and generally bested by white men.

The mistake we freedom-loving Americans were making is our failure to recognize the inferiority of other people.  We thought women and minorities were our equals, that they could compete with us, head-to-head, and, sometimes, beat us.  We were wrong.  They can’t.  Just ask Julia’s creators.  All of the Julia’s desperately need, can’t make it, much less succeed, without big government’s power to take from the better, self-supporting humans so as to prop up Julia’s so-called life.

As I read it, there is nothing in Julia’s story that tells us she had an accident or some other acquired deficiency or defect.  She’s innately, genetically deficient.  Her problems and weaknesses are congenital and will not be overcome by effort, diligence, initiative, self-reliance, hard work, study and a little bit of good fortune.  She inherently needs, her life would collapse without, Uncle Sam.  Furthermore, she’s been indoctrinated with the self-evident truth that America is a male-chauvinist, patriarchal, racist and unfair place for her and her similarly inferior comrades to reside.  Consequently, she rejects the companionship and aid of a man who would subjugate her, use her for his own purposes.  Since that, in turn, leaves poor, little ol’ Julia alone, exposed to the travails of life, Uncle Sam sails in to fill the void, else she’d collapse under the weight of providing for herself.

So, come on, my fellow American white men.  Step up and embrace your superiority and start taking care of all those sad excuses for humans.  The Democrats have been telling us for years how much better we are than everyone else.  Be real men.  Say a polite Thank You for the compliment and give Barack/Biden your votes this November so they can take care of Julia for us!

Without rich white men, she has no Hope, and no Change.

Yes We Can.  Let’s help these poor, pitiful Julia’s.  They need us.  Men, man up.