Bad news.
Whether or not Obama gets to rob the productive sectors of the economy (again), this is what Fauxchahontas will be running on in 2016.
At the heart of socialism is the conflation of “society” and government. Leftists know that “society” sounds much nicer than “government,” and they compulsively use that euphemism, but Thomas Paine shows clearly that that is a fallacy:Milton Friedman liked to use the free market example that “nobody knows how to make a pencil.” But he was not the originator of the example, which comes from the articleCommon Sense
by Thomas Paine (1776)
Of the Origin and Design of Government in General,
with Concise Remarks on the English ConstitutionSOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
I, Pencilby Leonard E. Read. (1958). The article is long, but is a classic. I cite it because it makes the point that while the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company makes the pencil, the provenance of whose components is described in the article, those inputs themselves have such diverse inputs that the truth of the matter - in my words - is that society makes the pencil. Not government, mind, but society.