Posted on 03/23/2009 4:39:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
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.
Peter Schiff has complained that “We don’t make anything in America anymore!” He’s right.
Obama and the politicians are all about cracking Wall Street types and business people over the head with a baseball bat, but not mismanaged government. (Why is Obama’s team made up of Wall Streeters?)
The real culprit is government at every level. One level that nobody has ever discussed is the local level and property taxation.
For example:
Look at run-down and destroyed Hartford, Connecticut.
The mill rate in Hartford is 65 mills (almost exactly).
That means, that if someone puts a small $10 million factory or shop up in Hartford, the first guy through the door is the tax collector with a bill for $650,000.00
The factory owner owes this money whether or not he makes a single dime off of his endeavor. That is an awful lot of money to spend on basically nothing. You have to stay up pretty late at night to figure out how to make an extra $650,000.00 EACH AND EVERY YEAR.
What do you get for this money?
Hartford is a ghetto with high levels of illiteracy.
A very high crime rate.
You will need bars on the windows because of the crime.
Democrats run this city, and your employees will probably try to unionize at some point.
So this money is taken away from the factory owner and handed over to the fat welfare scum so that they can sit on their fat backsides and guffaw at Oprah instead of working.
We need to restore the environment that existed when America industrialized, or we are in serious trouble. If I were to build a $10million factory somewhere, it would never be anywhere in Connecticut. So the decay will accelerate.
By welfare scum I hope you’re talking about the fat cats on Wall Street.
Like that's going to happen. Mob rule and legalized theft - government by for and of the envious losers (ie democratic voters).
Personal story- went to Kalifornistan last dec to visit the machatonim and while there went to see elephant seals at ano nuevo. While there the guide mentioned that a rich guy with a sailboat had cut too close to the rookery gotten his boat stuck and picked up some pretty healthy fines. A mid forties woman turned to her husband and cheered at that. I turned to my offspring and said - "See what losers look like and act like. Those people don't have enough money to afford a boat, but rather than see it as their fault, they hate and envy those who do. I bet they voted for Obama" I said it loud enough to be overheard (on purpose) I thought the loser and her husband were going to explode, She turned a bright red, but lacked the courage to actually say something to me.
the “fat cats” got there by working (however crooked that work may have been), whereas “welfare scum” contribute NOTHING and are a continual burden to those of use who do work. And they are the main supporters of the “democrappic”
government that supplies them.
Oh, well, if they were hard working crooks, then ok. Right.
What do you think about basketball/football/baseball players' salaries?
I don’t care, ain’t my dime.
Didn’t mean to imply that there’s anything completely right about crooks on Wall Street but that’s what laws and regulations are all about ...Controlling the crooks! You can’t control welfare scum into being productive. They just get more entrenched in the welfare state. Which, by the way, is SOCIALISM and run by the biggest crooks of all!
The concept of America must include the reality..... The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
Fix trade, and we will make things in America...the figures you give are inaccurate because it’s a different rate for business...as for fat welfare scum sitting on their backside...plenty of people lost jobs because of free traitor policies. What did you think would happen if good paying jobs with benefits evaporated? Do you think we can serve hamburgers to each other at McDonalds or work for minimum at Walmart/other low paying big box stores (taxpayer pay benefits for the working poor also) and remain a prosperous country with full employment? Peter’s point is unless we begin to make real tangible goods, we can not attain prosperity in this country. He is correct.
Welfare scum as you put it lost their jobs because of the criminal actions of the so called fat cats...one beget the other...what did you think would happen?
Then why do you care about the wall street fat cats. Once Kongress takes it it isn’t your money anymore anyway. The ones to get angry at are the greedy b@st@rds in Kongress and the socialists in the Obamination’s administration.
Uh, ok.
Actually, years ago I invested in New Haven and got royally screwed during a major tax increase that came out of nowhere. Almost the entire neighborhood was on welfare, Section 8 etc. and every one of them was fraudulent...
One lady on the street had 10 kids with the same guy who lived in the house. He had cars up and down the street, they were always out partying. At the time they had so many programs... welfare, Section 8, Food Stamps, WIC...
This burden is borne by someone - and it has spiraled out of control.
There are many other parts of the country where workers would be willing to work in a mill.
The tradition of the New England mills is gone, IMO.
Talk to Iowa- S Dakota- Nebraska- Kansas. Good workers will be very happy to see jobs there.
People on welfare into their 3rd and 4th generation didn’t lose jobs...never had them in the first place. Why are you so down on people who make tons of money? Jealous that they ain’t giving you your “fair share” ?
From Frédéric Bastiat...
But of what plunder was he speaking? For there are two kinds of plunder: legal and illegal.
I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling — which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes — can be called socialism. It is not this kind of plunder that systematically threatens the foundations of society. Anyway, the war against this kind of plunder has not waited for the command of these gentlemen. The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. Long before the Revolution of February 1848 — long before the appearance even of socialism itself — France had provided police, judges, gendarmes, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds for the purpose of fighting illegal plunder. The law itself conducts this war, and it is my wish and opinion that the law should always maintain this attitude toward plunder.
But it does not always do this. Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder, and it is of this, no doubt, that Mr. de Montalembert speaks.
This legal plunder may be only an isolated stain among the legislative measures of the people. If so, it is best to wipe it out with a minimum of speeches and denunciations — and in spite of the uproar of the vested interests.
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
Much more...here...
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G1810
Thanks to FReeper raygun for the link.
BUMP-TO-THE-TRUTH!
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