The Free Market Project

Good Lord, there it is again! From the SOTU:

When it comes to the deficit, we’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more, and that means making choices. Right now, we’re poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

This section of the speech, which also contained the bullschnizzle about Warren Buffet’s secretary, is so easy to debunk it is hardly worth doing. Except that it has to be done because this frickin’ guy is banking on people not understanding the meaning of what he says.

The 2 trillion in cuts? In the future, when nobody is actually held accountable for making them. They are smoke and mirrors. As I said in a post below, I could pass a spending bill that spent a trillion more tomorrow, but also said we will reduce the budget to zero five years from now to more than offset the additional trillion and to actually take a bite out of the debt. The trillion would be spent this year. The president and Congress in five years would be under absolutely no obligation to zero the budget, would not zero the budget, and chances are good that the trillion spent this year would become part of the baseline, so that in five years it would actually be five trillion additional money spent. THAT is Washington math.

But the one that really gets me is: “…we’re poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.” You see, by NOT taking more of someone’s money they are “spending”. So who does that money belong to? In Obama’s philosophy it belongs to the government and they are spending it when you get to keep it. EVERYTHING belongs to the government and those elites allow you to keep some of what you earn. This is the philosophical difference maker. It has to be pointed out. Do we have a candidate who is willing and able to say, “Wait a minute. When you say that allowing people to keep the money they earned is ‘spending’ by the government, you are implying that all money rightfully belongs to the state and that the state is ‘spending’ when it lets people keep their earnings. Is that what you believe, Mr. President? Does the government have first claim on all income and property? Does the government own it and simply allows people to keep some of it? That is what you are saying when you call people keeping more of their own money ‘spending.’”

Please read my book: The Tamarack Conspiracy. Here is the link to my post about it, which also contains a link to the digital form of the book.

Three years ago, at the beginning of the Obama administration, I wrote a book called The Tamarack Conspiracy. It’s fiction. In it, the government spending, taxation, redistribution of wealth, and regulation have caused the economy to collapse. Businesses simply can not stay in business. Many little things add up, putting extra weight on business, until they simply can’t bear any more. As one sector begins to collapse, the loss of that sector begins to bring down others. The government tries to compensate, but each attempt to fix the problem puts more burden on the businesses still struggling to stay afloat. Soon, this huge, interconnected, complex economy simply begins to crumble.

The government, naturally, can not blame their own policies. They need demons. The rich (the business owners) are blamed. Politicians are unable to see that the same people they are demonizing, the same people they are now going to bleed dry, are also the only people who can rescue the economy. The government hatches plans to manage the economy, but without dynamic interactions and the processing of all the information necessary to make the economy really thrive (“the invisible hand”), all the government can really produce is a fiction–an appearance of an economy, not a real economy.

A group of entrepreneurs is sick of being demonized and bled of their ideas and their assets. They are unwilling to live as government cronies, and unwilling to live in a situation where there is no longer personal and economic freedom, there is only dependence and government dictates. They conspire to defy the government. They will try to beat the collapse and the increased power of government to dictate allowable income, wealth, and even movement to get out and try to rescue free market capitalism, and the hope of the world.

The story is told from the perspective of Sean Murphy, the son of one of the conspirators. Sean was fascinated by his Marxist college professor and, like so many people, had thought that all of the good plans of the government would make the world a better place. He is stunned to see the result of all of the wonderful government plans. He begins to see that his father was right all along.

Naturally, the larger, more powerful government produces corruption. Bureaucrats utilize increased government power to increase their personal power. A thuggish bureaucrat sees ruling over companies and taking down the conspiracy as his way to consolidate his power. Sean finds himself working to protect his father and the fellow conspirators from this thug, while at the same time learning what motivates the conspirators to take such a risk. What is it that they believe that makes them willing to risk their money, their freedom, and even their lives?

When I wrote the book (as I said, it was at the very beginning of the Obama administration) I thought I was writing fiction. Now we have out of control spending without even the nicety of producing a budget, massive subsidies for political cronies which makes it look increasingly like a command economy is taking shape, a huge jump in regulation and the power of regulatory agencies, and demonization of the rich (the 1%) and on capitalism itself on an unprecedented scale. Did I write fiction, or simply a forecast?

I specifically wrote it in the spirit of Atlas Shrugged. People will even recognize the homage to Atlas Shrugged. However, I wanted it to be short and easily digestible. There is a lot of philosophy in it, but there is also humor. I wrote it before there was a Tea Party, but I wrote it for the believers in free market capitalism and small government that would become the Tea Party. I also wrote it for those who are the moderates, who need to learn why those of us who believe in small government and robust capitalism believe the way we do.

The book is now available in an inexpensive digital form at Amazon (for the Kindle), Barnes and Noble (for the Nook), and at Smashwords (for the iPad, the computer, and other e-readers). I’ve priced it at only $3.99. Less than four bucks for a book that will validate your beliefs and entertain you, and will also present the case for capitalism and small government to your friends and family members who need to understand the direction we’re headed if we don’t change course soon.

My question to Democrats is: “Why do you trust government?” What makes Democrats think that government is pure and above reproach? Why would they want more power in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians? Corruption is a term used to describe abuse of power and influence by government officials. Why do you suppose we need a particular word to describe something like that? It is not because corruption is so rare, it’s because it’s commonplace.

Further, why would government (politicians and bureaucrats), whose incentives are so very different from the incentives of the private sector–where you make money by actually producing something wanted and needed by others, where you must serve your customers in order to succeed, be more trustworthy than people in the private sector. For example, in the private sector more people being more successful means bigger markets (more potential customers), so private sector actors want success and a healthy economy; by contrast, government gains power when people are unsuccessful and become dependent on government, thereby giving politicians a constituency to pander to and bureaucrats a reason for keeping their jobs.

Listen as you watch this short video, to the question Milton Friedman asks (ht to Power Line which also posted this video today):

Milton Friedman On Greed

Here’s a refrain that should send chills down the American peoples’ collective spines: “While the tax increases were real, Congress never delivered on the spending cuts.” (From Steven Hayward’s post This, That, and the Other Thing at Powerline.)

We need to understand, the taxes are always NOW, and spending cuts are always pushed to some future time when the Congress that passes them can’t force the new Congress to make them. It’s a charade. It is, to be blunt, a LIE that we should not let our elected representatives get away with. Yet, thinking back, all of the spending cuts during the last three years have been of this “future” variety. That’s how you get trillion dollar deficits.