Beware of politicians who wish to do "good" with someone else's money. They are abundant in both major political parties and will destroy liberty. Here is why.
In listening to the 2016 debates of either party, you would not know that we are over 19 trillion dollars in debt and that to pay it off each individual would have to pay $59,145 or each taxpayer, $159,759 according to US Debt Clock.org, since this would include children and the half of adults who do not pay taxes. Democrats want everything free or subsidized -- healthcare, housing, food and now, under either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, free college. They can't give away enough. Republicans want a military budget big enough to sustain 900 bases throughout the world.
There exists little, or no talk, of cutting anything. Where will all the money come from? Democrats want to rob the wealthy, who create our jobs, and Republicans say they will create such a robust economy that there is no need to worry. In either case, both major political parties attempt to ignore the problem away.
This is precisely where we were two presidential elections ago. Barack Obama answered the problem by doubling those on food stamps and nearly doubling your share of the national debt, thus charging our children another $9 trillion.
But aside from our creating conditions favoring an impending fiscal collapse from the "give-aways" of the past, a bigger related problem is the creation of a generation that expects the government to continually give more to them for free with someone else's money. When votes are attached to the public giving, we will never elect those who will cut the gift giving.
Under socialism, vote power favors those who want things for free, as they, in time, become the majority. This process is accelerated, and corrupted, when politicians link government gift giving with their being elected. Gift giving does not always initially include money. This was exemplified when Obama, seeing a close election coming in 2012 and wishing to capture the Hispanic vote more fully, decided to not enforce established immigration law to befriend this eventual vote group. Remember, illegals have many friends and family in the U.S. who are voters and, in time, will become such themselves. His victory has been attributed, in large part, to this group's massive turnout for him. Gift giving, however, always includes money in time because, for example, this group does demand services such as education, medical, etc.
Because the poor, as a class, always tend to favor government intervention and thus financial favors from government to their benefit, and since all government money comes from the middle and upper classes through ever increasing taxes, (presently 47 percent of the adult population pay no federal income tax and a good share of these make up the non-productive class) they eventually destroy the productive base of society as government takes over more of the economy by confiscation or regulation. The overriding principle is this: the more the socialism, the higher the taxes and the greater the burden on the producing class.
Finally, someone less burdened by political correctness than I is blunt enough to say it as it is -- so blunt that even the low information voter cannot miss it. Those who feed off the labor of others need to know what they are doing to the country by pushing for the freebies. An unknown author nailed the problem on the head when he wrote:
The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff. And the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop.
And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting. Now, the people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are receiving the free stuff that the people who are paying for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced and racist. So, the people who are getting the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by (means of) the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff and giving them the free stuff in the first place.
We have let the free-stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them. The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 238 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States, as we know it.
Again, beware of politicians who wish to do "good" with someone else's money. They are abundant in both major political parties and will destroy liberty.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for more than 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Editorial on 03/23/2016