Don’t Cut Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face

The common denominator among socialism and all of its iterations is that power is held by a small group of people, usually belonging to a single political party.  And every iteration of socialism has rejected capitalism in favor of wealth equality and public control of the economy, which as a practical matter means a ruling faction within the state controls not only the means of production (factories, mines, major resources, education, agriculture, transportation, etc.) but also what goods and services are produced and the prices that are charged.

Meanwhile there is a colloquial expression, “A distinction without a difference,” which means  a linguistic or conceptual difference between options, but a difference that has no practical effect.  For example, there is really no difference between a state-run automobile manufacturer that produces only electric vehicles and a privately held automobile manufacturer that due to government regulation & taxation policies has no choice but to manufacture only electric vehicles if it wants to remain in business.

And the reason this is more important than ever is because Kamala Harris is already using the victim card, e.g., if you’re not economically successful it’s because you were denied opportunity by greedy corporations and individuals, and if elected, she vows to punish and control those exploiters by government fiat.

In her equitable society there will be no greed because government will be there to level the playing field, even though in 2021, the latest year with available data, the top 1% of income earners earned 26% of all income in the United States yet paid 46% of all federal income taxes while the bottom 95% combined paid just 33% of all federal income taxes and most interestingly, the bottom 50% paid somewhere between zero and 1% depending upon whose statistics you believe, but you get my point.

There are two major problems with Harris’ vision for America; first, socialism by any other name is still socialism, but more importantly, her progressive ideology fails to acknowledge that regardless of the type of economic system, be it capitalist, socialist, feudal or whatever, all economic policies must be viewed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the goals they proclaim.  I’ll repeat that for phrase for emphasis…all economic policies must be viewed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the goals they proclaim.

And regardless of ideology or economic system, an unassailable economic fact is that the world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests—it’s called human nature.  The great achievements of civilization didn’t come from government bureaus; Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a from a bureaucrat, Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t improve the quality of life of billions of people by government mandate.  And if your life was made easier or better due to the efforts of those individuals, why should you care how they were compensated?

As Milton Friedman told us, the record of history is crystal clear; there is no alternative way improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities are unleashed by free enterprise, the very process Harris’ and Schumer’s policies will subvert.

British economist, Lionel Robbins gave economics the following definition.  Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources, which have alternative uses.  By that definition, the Garden of Eden was a system of production & distribution of goods & services, but it was not an economy because everything was available in abundance.  So, as Thomas Sowell wrote, “Without scarcity, there is no need to economize.”

And economic scarcity means that what everybody wants adds up to more than what is; and that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it will always be because that’s the way life is.  If every resource had only one use this may not be an issue, but water has many uses, as does petroleum, and rubber, and farmland and just about everything else.  The challenge then for any economy is to answer the questions of how to allocate those scarce resources.

Economics is about the well-being of society as a whole, i.e., the cause-and-effect relationships of prices, work, pay, balances of trade, etc., vis-à-vis the allocation of scarce resources are what raise or lower the standard of living of a society as a whole, begging the question, who do you want making these quality-of-life decisions, you or government bureaucrats?  We saw what government bureaus did in the former Soviet Union, a failed state that arguably had more natural resources than any nation on earth yet now resides in the dust-heap of history because of its socialistic economic system.  So, why would any sane citizenry want to mimic that?

~ A one-party government would spell doom for the United States. ~

Yet that’s what we’re faced with in this upcoming election.  If Kamala Harris wins in November and the democrats run the table and take control of both Houses of Congress, which is a very real possibility, Chuck Schumer has already said he’ll kill the filibuster, legislate to restructure the Supreme Court and work eliminate the Electoral College.  And how long do you think it would be before the 10 to 20 million illegal aliens who entered this country during the Biden-Harris administration years will be given a direct pathway to citizenship – and voting rights?

Those engaged enough to have read the fine print in the democrat’s euphemistic comprehensive immigration bill, understand that the name of the game the democrats are playing is known as demographics.  In effect, the Democrat Party has told the nation they will keep the borders open until the republicans agree to their demands regarding “immigration reform,” which as a practical matter means amnesty for 10 – 20 million new democrat voters and a permanent one-party system.

Regardless of one’s political leanings or ideology, in all of recorded history no one-party system has ever inured to the benefit of the citizenry, so, I’ll pose a rhetorical question to the Trump-haters, is voting for Harris because you hate Donald Trump more important than the well-being of the nation-at-large or more specifically, to you, your children and your grandchildren?