Posted on 03/23/2009 9:18:26 PM PDT by ReformationFan
It says something about the dismal state of affairs in our country today by what outrages folks.
Sure, if we want to portray business as the root of our economic ills, outrage about executives getting bonuses at a company that received taxpayer bailout funds has political sex appeal. Or perhaps that some company that got bailed out sent their managers to a fancy retreat somewhere. Or that maybe a bailed-out company sponsored a golf tournament.
But where's the outrage about the circumstances that allow this all to happen to begin with? Where is the outrage about the ease with which politicians can expropriate hundreds of billions of taxpayers' funds to do these bailouts?
I have been looking through a new study, released by an organization called the Property Rights Alliance, called the International Property Rights Index. The study examines 115 nations worldwide and examines the correspondence between prosperity in a country and how secure private property is there.
It shows a practically perfect correlation. The more secure private property is in a given country, the more prosperous it is. Countries rated in the top 25 percent in secure and safe private property have on average nine times more income per person than those in the bottom 25 percent.
It's one of those things that makes so much sense that you wonder why you have to do a study to show it. The easier it is to steal in any given country the less likely the economy will function well there.
You really don't even need a fancy business degree to predict this. One of the Ten Commandments, transmitted so many thousands of years ago, instructs us not to steal.
Yet, basic truths such as this are becoming increasingly lost in our country and this is what should be driving our outrage. That we now live in a country where our private property is no longer safe and the very government that supposedly exists to protect it has become the thief we have to worry about.
President Obama went on Jay Leno's popular Tonight Show and talked about the current crisis. Listening to him, there seems little doubt that everything started on Wall Street. "The problem is...people were able to take huge, excessive risks with other people's money."
But, Mr. President, half the mortgages in this country are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which were and are backed up with the money of us taxpayers. An easy-flowing mortgage credit market built by politicians, by setting us taxpayers up to guarantee it all, which is what we wound up doing, is what started this whole thing.
The president and Leno bantered about electric cars and, talk about taking risks with other people's money, the president apparently sees no problem tapping into us taxpayers to finance research into these cars. "So, we're going to be investing billions of dollars in research and development around these technologies -- that's what's going to create the auto industry of the future," Obama said.
We've already used taxpayer funds to bail out auto companies. Now we're going to use them to take over their research and development functions.
Given what the International Property Rights Index shows, we might consider that because private property has become as insecure as it has in our country -- that we have really legalized theft -- that this might be what's at the root of our economic chaos.
So, we can have government-issue edicts on what executives are paid at companies that politicians bail out with taxpayer funds. Or maybe we should check if families whose mortgages we bail out are going on vacation or out to dinner.
Or we can re-direct our attention from symptoms to causes. We can recall that the founders of our country intended the role of government to protect our lives and property, not violate them. And that in times when we have respected that proper use of government, our country has prospered.
Property rights are the fundamental right. How the State treats the individual and his property are indicative of how the state treats the individual in all the other areas.
Don’t you know—if it is the government that is stealing the money from people, it’s OK.
I’m waiting for the next swing up then I’m selling everything and leaving. I like Japan... b/c I like sushi... and I’m tired of the rules being changed in mid game. This is wholly inappropriate and I simply can play foolish games anymore. With 10 Trillion dollars of Obama debt- I fold. No more. I won’t play this table anymore. It is time to move to a new casino.
Look at illegal immigration—we’ve legalized theft OF America.
Taxation by a democratically elected body apportioned according to means to pay is not theft.
Pretending that it is, is pretending that government itself is illegitimate.
It is inadvisable. It is bad economics. It is pig headed stupidity. But it is not theft.
Congress has the right to levy taxes and the sovereign American people have the right to elect poltroons who do so with abandon. The sovereign American people are free to be foolish, that is inseparable from the meaning of freedom.
Pretending the sovereign American people only have a right to do things you approve of or that are sufficiently smart is pretending that they are not sovereign, and that you are. But it is utter nonsense again. They will do what they jolly well please and you will take it and like it and grin.
So educate them already, instead of pretending they don't have full power to do every scrap of it. They do. Advise them better, as free men. No, they are not wards of manipulative pols. No, they are not incapable of legislating for themselves and for you, in contempt of your imaginary self-appointed vetos.
You'll reach them a lot more readily if you face the fact of their freedom, and stop looking for dodges. Only one thing will serve - to teach those free men wisdom. No theory, no system, no allegation or smear, can help you in this one iota.
i believe part of my property would be cash, along with stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.
and yet, the fed is able to seize my property as i make it. on top of that, i heard/read a rumor that the top fed rate could go to 50% or 65% (if anyone has heard the same, please let me know.. i’d like to confirm so i can book my airline tickets off this crazy island)
“The pragmatic case for respecting property is strong, but the feigned moral outrage criminal illegitimacy case they make here instead is utter nonsense.
Taxation by a democratically elected body apportioned according to means to pay is not theft. “
Your point seems to be that since what the government is doing by appropriating moneys is legal, then it can’t be theft. The title of the article clearly makes a distinction between what is legally criminal and what is morally criminal.
By extension, if our government of duly elected officials were to decide that all left handed people must be rounded up and killed then all the ensuing deaths wouldn’t be murder. Perhaps they would be bad policy and ill advised but by no means would the government be guilty of murdering anyone.
Obama wants the top rate at 39% and remove the cap on SS. So that would put high income self employed individuals at a 54% effective federal tax rate. Toss in state taxes from high tax state like California and their effective income tax rate is around 65%.
I hear you, I REALLY hear you... by my count the retroactive, punitive taxation [AIG] that passed recently violated the Constitution eight times. EIGHT TIMES! Disgust is too light a word.
They are a moral reality and not merely a power.
There is no effective moral power apart from them, and dreams of one are all delusional. All moral conduct that actually exists on earth at this present time is a side effect of their own morals and the strength of their arms on battlefields. Your approval of this patent reality is not necessary for its truth.
If the sovereign American people decided that your property were required, tomorrow, to destroy some great threat to their existence, they would be entirely right to use it, and your not wanting them to do so would be nothing more than a piece of personal petulance. Of no moral standing whatever.
No law you can appeal to has any reality beyond the justice of 12 fellow citizens chosen at random and judging its merits. If they are just and wise, you live in a just and well guided world. And if they are not, look anywhere you please, everything else you can grasp at is an utter delusion.
Instruct the free American people, where you see them err. But defying them or denying their rights presumes something greater, that does not exist, and you and yours certainly do not amount to. To put it in a walnutshell, if you make me or any other sane man choose between their power and your principles, I and we will choose their power every day and twice on Sundays.
They've done more for the world than you ever will. You are a moral insect beside them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.