From The Ash Heap of History
It seems like just a few years ago people were commenting that Communism and Socialism were discredited and flung onto the ash heap of history. I suppose that it is fitting that it’s Halloween because like the living dead, the zombie of socialism is rising from that ash heap to suck the brains of the free market, and the lifeblood of America.
Look at that ash heap. Estonia and Lithuania, Baltic republics, once fully integrated into the U.S.S.R. shed collectivism and redistribution with alacrity and embraced the free market, including a flat tax, and low corporate tax rates. Add to that the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. Places where socialism has been tried have largely failed and are embracing democracy and the free market. Sweden is hailed as a socialism success, but is it? A more detailed analysis says no.
Even China, where the collectivism of Mao’s Communist Party still reigns supreme, has evolved to a hybrid capitalist system with practitioners who put the worst robber barons of the United States to shame. Clearly profit motives trump any sense of responsibility to the collective society. A sad example of the failed tenets of socialism being steadily abandoned in favor of pure, unadulterated capitalism.
The world has cast its vote and the ideals of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, and V.I Lenin have been dismissed. They don’t work no matter how lofty the motives and how deep the ethical foundations. The process is as important as the goals.
So now we are engaged in an election, testing whether the last holdouts of collectivism and income redistribution, emaciated idealists from the 60’s, can prevail. One keymaster, riding the discontent directed towards an embattled President, lubricated by liquid Harvard consonants and with a fluidity of principles contorted to mean whatever the listener believes, stands at the gate. And behind him the zombies wait.
- Reparations for slavery
- Your income redistributed in accordance with what a ruling class with an agenda deems appropriate
- The end of right to work States
- An equality of outcomes not of opportunity
- Jobs lost as companies flee to Estonia and Ireland
- The end of Wal*Mart as their free-trade lifeblood is sucked dry
- Meatless Tuesdays for Americans again as grain and gas prices rise
- The end of nightclubs and bars as energy taxes make them losing propositions
America is the land of opportunity. America is the shining beacon on the hill that attracts people from all over the world who want that chance to succeed where they couldn’t in their motherland. America is a land of entrepreneurs and of creativity — people who do for themselves and solve problems rather than sit and petition the government for redress. And for the most part, people who aren’t opposed to others making millions because they know that these same people demonstrate conclusively that the opportunity is there. When the richest man in the world is a computer geek, and two college kids can create a business with $500 billion in capitalization, America is demonstratably a land of opportunity.
So how can elected officials not understand what drives America? Are they so firmly wedded to their ideology that the raw fish slap in the face of economic fact is interpreted as a sea breeze from the shores of Finland? What does it say about Americans who let people like Speaker Pelosi, Rep. Barney (Ruble) Frank, Rep. Waxman, and Senator Reid achieve the highest legislative offices of the land when they don’t have a clue about what makes America great, what America’s fundamental strengths are, and how we came to be the world’s only super power.
October 31, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I got this in an e-mail a while back, and have been waiting for a good post to attach it to. Here it goes:
“Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20′, declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right’, exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’
‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.”
-ADE