— by Polydamas
At the second presidential debate, President Barack Obama gave lip service to the free enterprise system, proclaiming “I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known.” President Obama’s professed allegiance in the abstract to one idea while embracing in practice an opposite idea leads us here at The Cassandra Times to attribute his rhetoric to far more Machiavellian reasons. We believe that, when in doubt about the motives of people and institutions, the best tool for analysis is to “follow the money trail” or, in other words, who benefits from their decisions and actions.
The first obvious reason for President Obama to profess allegiance to the free enterprise system is to fool the undecided voters. According to Walter Hickey writing for the Business Insider in the article “Meet The Voter Who Will Decide The 2012 Election” (http://read.bi/T5gxjc), a recent poll by the Tarrance/LRP poll, released by Politico and George Washington University, shows that:
“The prototypical undecided voter is a white 18 to 29 year old woman who didn’t graduate from college. She’s employed, single, and identifies as an independent. In elections, she typically splits tickets and considers herself a soft Democrat. She is unsure if she identifies with the Tea Party movement. She lives in a union household, and is considered low-income. She’s a Protestant, but goes to church infrequently or never. She’s not sure about who would take the country in the right direction and doesn’t know who she plans to elect to congress. She did not watch the debate or any coverage of the debate.”
This composite undecided voter may have learned in high school about the free enterprise system as being “the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known” but does not truly understand exactly what this means. To this undecided voter, the free enterprise system is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. In other words, the undecided voter understands from what he or she was taught in high school that the free enterprise system allows us to have flat-screen televisions, iPhones, tablet computers, and a greater variety of useful gadgets and gizmos that make life in the 21st century easier than in previous centuries.
The undecided voter does not see the free enterprise system as the practical application of a certain moral and political philosophy. Instead, the undecided voter looks at the economic system in terms of its practical benefits to him or her. Conversely, if someone showed this undecided voter that a socialist or communist economic system provided him or her ten percent more of the useful gadgets or gizmos he or she wanted, then this undecided voter would sign off on socialism or communism being “the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known”. The undecided voter’s ignorance is bliss to politicians.
On the other hand, the second obvious reason for President Obama to profess his allegiance to the free enterprise system is to snare the typical young inventor or entrepreneur. Even the enterprising young children who decide to open a neighborhood lemonade stand do so with the reasonable expectation that they will be able to reap the rewards of their hard work. It is only with the promise of creative freedom and reaping the rewards of their initiative and innovation that two young men, Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak, started Apple Computer in a garage in Los Altos, California in the mid 1970s. It was the same promise that led Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce to start the Intel semiconductor company in Santa Clara, California a decade earlier. Thus, Silicon Valley was born and the personal computer revolution soon followed.
From one side of their mouths, Barack Obama and other populist politicians give only enough lip service to the free enterprise system to tempt inventors and entrepreneurs with the carrot of creative freedom and the promise of reaping the rewards of initiative and innovation. Yet, from the other side of their mouths, Barack Obama and other populist politicians bribe their base and undecided voters with the fruits of the labors of inventors and entrepreneurs. These populist politicians work tirelessly to convince their base and undecided voters that an expanded government bureaucracy is an indispensable intermediary between the goods and services produced by their producers and the satisfaction of the infinite needs and wants of consumers. In a democracy, a populist government bribes voters with the goods and services that it legally loots from their producers in exchange for more government power.
Let us consider how President Obama has bribed the Democratic Party’s base and undecided voters since 2008. According to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow’s article “Is Obama Buying the Election With His Welfare Explosion?” (http://bit.ly/QCzqG2), “Massive amounts of capital are being drained from the private sector and transferred to the government. This is one reason why American businesses have gone on a virtual capital-investment strike.” He also states that “in our new entitlement nation, growing government dependency is ruining the very moral fiber and backbone of America’s traditional work ethic. Increasingly, the feds are paying more to not work, rather than providing after-tax incentives to go back to work.”
The amounts involved in the bribe are breathtaking. In his excellent post, appropriately titled “The 7-Eleven Presidency” (http://bit.ly/R1wKDf), Jeffrey Anderson shows that the federal government is spending $11 for every $7 of revenue. In 2012, the federal government had $2.45 trillion of tax revenues and spent $3.54 trillion, 44 percent more than it brought in, for a deficit of $1.09 trillion. In 2011, the federal government took in $2.30 trillion and spent $3.60 trillion, a 56 percent gap, and a deficit of $1.3 trillion. In 2010, the federal government raised tax revenues were $2.16 trillion, but spent $3.46 trillion, a difference of 60 percent, and a deficit of $1.29 trillion. All in all, the federal government spent 56 percent more than it raised, $10.71 trillion to $6.85 trillion, equivalent to a debt-ridden family whose annual income was $70,000 but squandered $110,000.
Where did the money go? Welfare payments have increased 32 percent between 2008 and 2011.(http://bit.ly/V9TXDQ). In 2011, federal spending accounted for $746 billion, the states spent $284 billion, for a total of $1.03 trillion. In fiscal year 2008, welfare spending was “only” $563 billion. Medicaid spending rose to $296 billion in 2011, up $82 billion from 2008. Food stamps was $75 billion in 2011, nearly double from 2008.
A lesson from antiquity is in order here. In 133 B.C., during the height of the Roman Empire, Tiberius Gracchus used his public office as Tribune to give away to voters free bread and circuses paid for from the public treasury. As the original tax-and-spend populist politician, he also proposed to seize the lands of the rich and give them to the poor. The inimitable and inspirational Robert Anson Heinlein described what happened:
“‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But, once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or, in its weakened condition, the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
Tiberius Gracchus did not serve a second term as the Roman Tribune. Neither should Barack Obama serve a second term as President of the United States.
