The Freedom Factory

We are moving closer towards a political economy every day. Every dollar borrowed, taxed, printed, and spent by government really comes from the private sector.  Trillions of dollars of national resources are being allocated by politicians and bureaucrats towards things they claim will benefit our economy. Congress just passed a $3.6 trillion budget ($1.2 trillion in deficit), and combined the Federal Reserve and Treasury have dumped $13 trillion into the economy in the last 16 months. What we must all ask ourselves right now is whether or not we trust government with our money? Continue Reading

Will stocks skyrocket after this week’s mark-to-market House meeting? Federal stimulus raises concerns over state sovereignty, Obama targets defense contractors, IMF marching towards Global New Deal, feds hold auto meeting to determine government involvement, and the U.S. dollar reaches highest level since 2006…just the latest in your Freedom Under Fire Report! Continue Reading

Like you, I am upset at the egregious pace of government spending without restraint.  I am upset more and more people are using the force of government to take from the responsible, productive, and tax paying American people in order to re-distribute wealth.  Wealth, gained through honest, industrial, and capitalistic work.  Wealth gained by free market exchange of materials, services, and ideas.  Wealth, the reward for sacrifice, hard work, planning, and thrifty living.

We learned at young age thriftiness means: working to pay one’s way and to help others, saving for unforeseen needs, and protecting and conserving natural resources.  Thriftiness is a virtue absolutely lost on large populations today.  The loss of virtue is evident in the reward for people who extended beyond their own means.  People who knowingly agreed to contract to repay for a dwelling they had no means to pay for are without virtue.  Virtue is gone as a growing populace continuously uses government to forcefully take from those of responsible means and give to those who have not earned it. Virtue is found in the entrepreneurs, the inventors, and the industrialists inside the very fabric that made America great.  The same virtue is found in every hard working American who puts in extra time, strives for extra hours or works multiple jobs in order to provide a better quality of life.  Abraham Lincoln:

Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

As we work harder, more and more people feel entitled to the fruits of our hard work.  These people have organized and elected a federal government that sees fit to transfer 100% of the tax burden to the upper 49% of wage earners in this country.  If successful, please tell me how 51% of the population who is receiving some form of entitlement from the 49% of tax-paying Americans ever give that power up. Thomas Jefferson said it better:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

or maybe even more telling, Thomas Jefferson:

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

When you only tax a certain portion of the populace, you have already set up class warfare because the people not paying taxes have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

And I have to include my favorite quote from Alexander Fraser Tytler:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: ‘>From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

What we are presented with today is not just doom and gloom for free-market capitalists because the government is applying more regulations and taxes for the “common good” to promote the “general welfare.”  But rather, we are experiencing the largest transfer of power from the American people to the government in the history of this great nation. We, the worried liberty loving, free market capitalists who generate jobs and fortunes never before seen on this earth will soon be silenced.  Soon, we won’t have a vote because we will be in the eternal minority of achievers who make this country run.  We,  are the motive power behind economic superiority.  The take-over of our liberty and property is being cheered as popular change.  Change that promotes giving people an equivalent fish to eat today, while relying on hard working individuals to fish harder tomorrow in order to provide more fish to the same undeserving people.  You have the right to pursue happiness, i.e. go fishing, you do not have the right to be given a fish at the expense of someone else.

The system works because we’re too busy working harder in order to be taxed more in order to maintain a quality life we have earned.  They rely on us and our ingenuity to invent new wealth such that they can tax it and redistribute it.

Ludwig von Mises:

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men… Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

I understand if you are frustrated. I am frustrated too.  It seems as if we don’t have a voice to be taken seriously because we are called selfish for wanting to keep the property we have earned in our lives.  Never forget, we earned our property such that we have the personal choice to do with it as we please. That choice is called liberty.  When you exercise your choice, you have experienced freedom.    It’s not selfish, it’s your constitutional protected right to have the choice on how your property is distributed.

William Boetcker:

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Death and taxes a given?  We can’t die without at first living.  We can’t pay taxes without at first prospering.  I ask the government to get out of the way of the industrialists, the capitalists, and the hard workers such that we can prosper.  A government that strives to guarantee equality of outcomes is in direct violation with a constitution that guarantees equality in opportunity.

The government relies on our taxes every pay period, every month in order to provide entitlements to those who have not earned them.  They won’t pay attention until they know we are serious about fighting back.  If we want them to pay attention, we need to withhold, even for just a little while, the very thing they rely on us to provide.  Without the legalized looting of their plunder, our property, the government won’t be able to fund the programs that enable and promote the very anti-thriftiness ideals that are so popular today.

Raise your federal and state tax withholding to the maximum for 2009. When April 15, 2010 comes along, file the maximum extension.  Delay paying into a system that only wants to drain you as long as legally possible. Let this be the wake up call to all liberty loving Americans. Let this be our generation’s tea party.

In a newsletter earlier this month, Senator Boxer wrote to Californians that her chief priorities are to “stabilize the housing market, create new, good-paying jobs, and get our economy back on track.” You can read a letter I wrote to her in response.

She cites a dour real estate market and a state-wide unemployment rate in excess of 8.2%. California is, indeed, facing tough economic challenges. The real estate market crash has hit the state particularly hard, with prices down about 33% between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

Some “fixes” proposed by the Senator:

1. Extend the food stamp program
2. Revise the COPS program that helps local law enforcement with staffing needs
3. Congressional “economic recovery” package to create infrastructure programs (build bridges, highways, and other big ticket projects)
4. Subsidize alternative energy projects

These political “fixes” are all misdirected and will spend lots of your money to do little. Food stamps, more police officers, and temporary construction jobs will do nothing to make the state more competitive, which is the real problem. Government construction is notoriously corrupt and inefficient-think Boston’s Big Dig which ran 470% over budget and killed a motorist with shoddy construction.

Let’s get real and propose policies that will actually grow the economy. California has two big problems:  over-regulation and over-taxation. We were hard hit by the housing downturn largely due to politically distorted real estate markets. Heavy taxation and restrictive labor laws drive businesses out of the state.

If Senator Boxer seriously wishes to help the state economy she should do something entirely foreign to her: figure out how to reduce government involvement in business activity.

• Identify and eradicate laws and regulations that decrease business profitability
• Address California’s punitive tax system that drives jobs out of the state

More government is not the answer, but politicians rarely admit that the best way to help is to step aside. Everyone wants the glory that comes with power.

I’ll keep you updated on the Senator’s response to my letter. From experience, I anticipate receiving a canned, automated response. I have yet to receive a response that actually addresses my concerns directly. Rather, I suspect low level staffers simply match the topic of my message with pre-written responses.

One of my friends just brought an interesting article to my attention. It’s a Wall Street Journal opinion piece written by Ari Fleischer (former White House Press Secretary) entitled “The Taxpaying Minority.” From the title you can guess he states the usual stats: top 40% of the population pays 99% of taxes, top 10% pay 71%, and the bottom 40% pay…NOTHING!

With the Earned Income Tax Credit many of these patriots even receive handouts by the federal government, taken from the rest of the chumps who pay taxes. When a large percentage of the population has no vested interest in the fiscal solvency of the state, they are prone to demand increasingly irresponsible programs until a crisis forces change. The Romans called the crisis ”civil war” after which a dictatorship was established.

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About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tytler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”

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