It is the hallmark of great men that they are intellectually considerate of thoughts beyond the realm of their own limited minds. Likewise, their study of history is unconstrained within the short span of their own brief lifetimes. The small minded man cares not what others have thought, nor what others have suffered to discover; bound in the box of his own self-conceit, he imagines himself to be the ultimate repository of sublime genius.
We are taught to avoid the discussion of religion and politics, the two subjects that should all but monopolize our conversations. And so we create within our own imaginations grand systems of religion and politics devoid of the instruction and experience of others, oft-times ignoring the warnings of our comrades and ancestors who have already learned the perils of the ways we foolishly believe we have just now discovered. Inventing one’s own religion we call idolatry; inventing one’s own simplistic political system is aptly named arrogance.
This week we witnessed the hazards of such a small minded man figuratively coming out from behind the shelter of his teleprompters. Running out of winning options, President Obama seems to be doubling down on his “tax the rich” mantra. In a country where the road to the possibility of financial success is almost considered a birthright, he is walking a precarious tightrope in insinuating that hard work, intelligence, and creativity are not the primary factors in achieving the American Dream. His contention that the multitudes of highly, moderately, and barely successful business men and women owe the government a debt of gratitude for their success is a hard pill to swallow, and demonstrates conclusively that the President has never “enjoyed” the privilege of trying to operate a business. Only someone who has never faced the many obstacles placed before an aspiring businessman would assert such an absurdity as that he should pay the government back for his success. Believe me, it is on every businessman’s secret wish list to “pay the government back”! Only someone who has not experienced the endless hours completing bureaucratic paperwork, and watching hard earned profits taken and wasted, would not realize how offensive such a remark would be. Yet this is the path the President chose to go down to justify his contention, despite some simple mathematical analysis, that taxing the “rich” is the solution to our foundering economy.
The idea of a progressive tax system is hardly a new one, and extensive research and data exists as to optimal tax rates to insure the wealthy bear the heaviest load without discouraging economic growth. It’s not quite rocket science, but it does require a bit more than a bumper sticker or a stump speech sound bite to plumb the depths of an effective tax policy.
Going back to such free-market capitalists as Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, it was understood that the poor could not be expected to shoulder the burden of the administration of government, and that the lion’s share of that support would need to be disproportionately provided by the wealthy. In Jefferson’s letter to Madison on “Equality” he bemoans the state of the impoverished he meets in France, who were in such a state due to the propensity of the French aristocracy to buy up vast tracts of arable land and leave it to go wild. This they did for their capricious and sporadic use of it for the recreational hunting of game. For this reason many looking to work the land, could find no land to work. Understand that what Jefferson was suggesting was that the right to own property, if pushed to the extreme as it was in France, might interfere with the natural (God given) rights of other men of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In such cases, Jefferson suggested, it might become a reasonable role of government to set limits; and much like the parent of a gluttonous child to say, “You have enough… let someone else have a chance.”. What Jefferson was not suggesting was that the government should take the fruit of someone’s hard work and give it in the form of an entitlement to someone who did not work for it. He spoke only of the limited resource of land, and the danger in an agriculture based economy of an aristocracy owning all the land, allowing it to be used solely for their own recreation, and thus denying to the citizenry even the opportunity to earn their own living. The poor, earnestly desiring to work, could not because of the monopolistic moral failings of the aristocracy. What he expressed is a lesson we would have done well to have learned from our predecessors: “Too big to fail” is a very bad idea.
Mr. Obama’s problem is that he is looking at the whole thing backwards. The successful are generally so because they took advantage of the environment they found themselves in, worked hard, took risks, made good decisions, and maybe got a little lucky on the way. Many, if not most of them are willing to help others do the same. What is hard for the willing to swallow, and difficult to justify for the less than willing, is the taking of their wealth, hard-earned more often than not, and simply redistributing it to the able-bodied but unwilling to work, or disbursing it for wasteful government programs like bridges to nowhere, cowboy poetry festivals, and GSA extravaganzas. There would be far fewer tax protestations were tax revenues more wisely and sparingly administered. And so it is not the businessmen who owe their success to the existence of the government for the roads, the internet, and education (all small parts of the Federal budget); these men would build their own infrastructure if need be. It is the government that owes its existence to the success of businessmen. In failing to see this in its correct perspective, the President is blind to the ultimate solution of our economic woes, and that is the restarting of the economic engine of small business and entrepreneurship. Robbing Peter to pay Paul fantasizes with the same ignorance as the quest for the perpetual motion machine, and is destined for the same level of success.
IMHO: President Obama’s contention that the success of a business in America is due primarily to the workings of government is preposterous. The chief role of government relative to business is to apply the brakes. Practically speaking, and apart from crony capitalism, the most productive thing government can do for business is to get out of the way. That said, a car without brakes is a dangerous thing, and it is the duty of government to judiciously apply the brakes to business for the safety of its passengers, the citizens. In such a role attention should be given toward limiting the size of corporations and banks so that an “aristocracy” does not control the entire means of production, distribution, or finance. The phrase “Too big to fail”, should be effectively relegated to a concern of the past.
Long ago our forefathers studied the fall of empires and understood that the concentration of too much power and resources in one place is a dangerous practice that leads to tyranny. They constructed a system of checks and balances, and the division of power, with the provision for bloodless revolutions, and the ready threat of a bloody one should a tyrant seek to shut down the system. More than anything else, they feared a government that was “too big to fail”, and gave us a system whereby the power to succeed rests in the People themselves, and not in the government empowered to serve them.
Let me tell you something, President Obama… You might think you were elected because you were just so smart… there’s a lot of smart people out there… or it must be because you worked so hard… there are a whole bunch of hard working people out there… This wonderful nation does not function because of you or your government, Mr. Obama, it functions in spite of you, because of the genius and humility of great minded men, and the can-do spirit of the American citizen. If we, against all odds, can yet find success, you would do well, Mr. President, to heed your own words… “You didn’t do that… somebody else made that happen.”
