Brain Lemon

It seems to me that at some deep level, liberals must know that their economic theories don’t work.  History has proven again and again that command-and-control systems fail, with the most extreme forms providing some of the 20^th century’s darkest hours.  Yet still liberals put forth the idea that the solution to our problems is always more government and more regulation.  There has to be a reason why they continue to push theories that don’t produce wealth and don’t lead to prosperity.

The answer, of course, is that to a true progressive, such things are not a priority, and in fact may even be undesirable.  To a liberal, the end goal of all policy is to create and enforce a concept of “equality.”  That end is above all others and, in fact, many liberals would be perfectly fine with most people being poor as long as no one is rich (except for the Experts, but that is for another blog post).

This simple realization becomes even clearer when one looks at the contemporary debate over extending the Bush tax cuts.  While nearly everyone accepts that the “middle class” tax cuts should stay, liberals and conservatives disagree over the tax cuts for the so-called “wealthy”, also known as those making above some arbitrary figure (usually $250k/year).  Conservatives, understanding that raising taxes is a terrible idea during a recession, and that hurting those with money is perhaps even more harmful, favor extending all tax cuts at least temporarily (really, it should be permanently).  Liberals oppose this idea and want to raise taxes on the higher-earners.

The reason this illustrates my point above is that raising taxes on the rich doesn’t make sense.  It is plainly illogical to take more money away from precisely those people most able to spend it and create jobs.  Moreover, it doesn’t help the middle class one bit to raise the taxes of the wealthy.  All it does is give them the feeling that they are “soaking the rich” and getting back some of their money, because obviously they don’t deserve it.  This is a reaction based on envy and coveting with others have.

The fact is, liberal economic policy and conservative policy have entirely different aims.  To say that both sides want freedom and prosperity is not accurate.  One side favors policies that do nothing to create wealth, but plenty to “redistribute” it from the productive to the unproductive.  The goal of such policies cannot be economic growth.  It must be something else, specifically the momentary satisfaction that comes from taking from those who have more than you.  It’s clear this is not a solid moral backing for economic policy.

It’s looking like the next period of American history, or at least the coming years, will see substantial changes to the way we live.  We are already burdened with rising fuel and food prices that are having significant impact on lifestyle.  People are cutting costs, driving less, and slowly adapting to a world that has likely seen the end of cheap oil.  And all signs point to even more inflation and increases in costs, due to a number of factors that look more and more inevitable.

For one, our leaders have absolutely no intention of fixing the energy crisis.  As it stands now, we refuse to explore for oil in ANWR and other areas, we refuse to exploit our natural coal resources (we are the Saudi Arabia of coal, after all), refuse to build more refineries, refuse to build more nuclear plants – basically refuse to do anything that would actually increase supply, and thus lower prices.  Meanwhile, so-called "solutions" to the problem in fact will make it much worse.  Windfall taxes on oil companies, continued subsidizing of ethanol and other biofuels, and onerous environmental restrictions will all contribute to massive increases in prices in gas and food.  Everything seems aligned to do almost anything imaginable to make the problem worse.

Meanwhile, all three presidential candidates are effectively the same on global warming policies.  Despite the fact the human-caused global warming theory is at best unproven, we are about to embark on programs that will do incredible damage to industry, hurt economic growth, and destroy untold of wealth.  Cap and trade systems will impose huge taxes on domestic corporations, with this money either going to yet another government bureaucracy or to foreign companies.  The effects of global warming legislation are already being felt in Europe, and we are just at the beginning.  With today’s listing of polar bears as threatened, the government has gained wide-reaching new powers to restrict any kind of activity that may cause carbon emissions – most importantly energy production.  The door is now open to all sorts of restrictions and lawsuits which will cost us billions.

Add all this to government spending that continues to balloon out of control, tax increases, massive new programs such as universal healthcare, the effects of disrupting events abroad, the housing crunch, and many more, and we are in for one hell of a time.  While we will likely never see anything like the Great Depression again, we are facing changes to our lives that we may not fully realize.  Quite simply, we will not be able to travel as much.  Gas will be pricey enough to limit car travel, as well as making airfares skyrocket.  Food will be expensive enough to cause budgetary restraints, taking money away from all sorts of other categories.  Entertainment and discretionary spending will be crunched.  Many amenities will come to an end due to the incredible burden of energy prices.

We will eventually come through this, hopefully with most of our lives still intact.  The sooner we act, the better, but it’s not looking likely that we can do very much.  We’ve made our bed – now we must lay on it.  We’ve swerved head on into socialism and it will now have its wages upon us.  I guess we just have to do our best to prepare, be aware of what’s going on, and hope for the best.

I just received on of those forwards about some strategy to supposedly reduce gas prices by forcing oil companies to lower prices.  Needless to say this got me riled up on this Monday morning.  Here is my response to the email:

This is a perfect example of the economic ignorance believed by far too many people and perpetrated by politicians to avoid admitting that the problem is largely due to government, much like most problems including health care and the current economic problems.

The basic premise here is that oil companies could easily reduce prices if they wanted to.  That simply isn’t true, because they aren’t making that much profit on a gallon of gas anyway.  They make about 8 cents to a gallon, while the federal government makes about 59 cents, in addition to state taxes. In other words the government, by reducing spending enough, could drop this massive tax and save you tons of money.  But of course, the government can NEVER do with less – but supposedly the "evil" companies should have to!

In fact I’d rather give my money to Exxon than the government, because at least they’re investing it in research and discovery.  Which raises another point, we have tons of oil here but we are not being allowed to drill for it offshore, in ANWR, etc.  The key here is STOP blaming corporations, who are simply providing you with an essential product.  Their profits are seemingly large at first glance, but not once you but it in perspective to the size of the company.  NO ONE has the right to arbitrarily say that certain profits are "unacceptable" anyway.  Please think about this more before you buy into this populist, anti-corporate foolishness.

Anyway, that’s what I sent.  Thanks to Sarah for getting me going on a dreary Monday and distracting me from the 5 million helpdesk tickets I have.