Reprinted with permission:
On Hannity last week, the king of vulgarity, Jerry Springer, kept hammering home a puzzling point — that Barack Obama needs additional stimulus money so the government can hire more people. After all, he said, “the private sector can’t employ everyone.”
Now that’s one I’ve never heard before. The private sector can’t employ everyone, therefore the government needs to take more money from working people and “create” jobs for people who aren’t working? Springer’s comment was, of course, code for more redistribution of wealth.
The truth is that 100 percent employment is possible only in a police state like the Soviet Union of the twentieth century, where everyone was forced to work — at a job, and at a wage, that the state mandated. And we all know how well that system worked out for the masses.
By contrast, if there were such a thing as a true laissez-faire economy, everyone who genuinely wanted to work would be employed. The problem in today’s socialist America is that people do not have to work if they don’t want to. Millions of perfectly capable individuals have the option of remaining unemployed because of “jobless benefits,” minimum-wage laws, food stamps, and other forms of welfare.
Remove all of the above, and the employment rate would, indeed, approach 100 percent. Today, however, people have the luxury of taking their time finding a job that they believe to be worthy of their education, experience, and talents. And the result is that many people choose to be unemployed rather than “underemployed.”
The term underemployed makes me bristle because it implies that a person has a right to a job and a salary that he deems to be worthy of his efforts. Yet, no matter how hard I search, I cannot find any such right in the Constitution. Come to think of it, I can’t find any rights in the Constitution that the government has the authority to grant.
The fact is that the government has no right to take your money and use it to create a make-work job for someone else. Whether the private sector can or cannot employ everyone is another one of those false premises that the left uses to divert attention from the real issue — in this case, the issue of freedom.
Unfortunately, as crazy as Jerry Springer’s statement was, both Democratic and Republican statists continually show, through their actions, that they agree with him. Which is to say that they don’t believe in capitalism. What they do believe in is state capitalism — or, more appropriately, state-controlled capitalism, much like in China. Statist politicians clearly understand that continually increasing welfare benefits is the surest way to stay in office.
We’ve come a long way since Calvin Coolidge famously said, “The business of America is business.” Sadly, today redistribution of wealth is America’s number-one business, which is why free-market constitutionalists are finding it increasingly difficult to push through any cuts in public-assistance programs.
Isn’t it interesting that Ronald Regan, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a one-time spread-the-wealth Democrat, both cut the number of people on food stamps and presided over the two most robust economies of the past half century? No doubt it was just an inconvenient truth.
But a little truth has never deterred Barack Obama from relentlessly striving to achieve his goals. That’s why one of Obama’s greatest triumphs in his quest to cleanse the United States of its evil capitalist system has been to increase the number of food-stamp recipients from 32 million to 46 million in just three years.
Not surprisingly, at the recent Fox News Republican debate, Juan Williams, a hapless media soul lost between two worlds, claimed that Newt Gingrich’s reference to Barack Obama as “the food-stamp president” had “racial overtones” — even though half of the people receiving food stamps are white! Nice diversion, to be sure.
The fact is that when Jerry Springer says that “the private sector can’t employ everyone,” he ignores the reality that, from California to Spain … from Wisconsin to Greece, the mantra of the pampered parasitic class is, “We don’t give a damn about the economy, the debt, or the government’s lack of cash. We want our benefits anyway!” Not jobs, mind you. Benefits.
Giving its crack editorial staff due credit, I believe Newsweek almost had it right in it’s cover-story headline, which read: Why are Obama’s critics so dumb?
In fact, with just a bit of editing, I was able to straighten out the wording for them: Why are Obama’s supporters so dumb? Why do they not see that by continuing to demand that the welfare state expand, their children and grandchildren are destined to live under tyranny?
As Thomas Sowell said in his article “An Ignored ‘Disparity’”, “Whole totalitarian governments have risen to dictatorial power on the wings of envy and resentment ideologies.”
Sorry, Jerry, but the problem is not the private sector’s inability to “employ everyone.” The problem is envy and resentment, the dark forces that blind welfare recipients from the certain consequences of their actions.
Which is why you can count on class warfare, like never before in our history, being the overriding theme of this year’s elections. It will be ugly.
You have permission to reprint this article so long as you place the following wording at the end of the article:Now that’s one I’ve never heard before. The private sector can’t employ everyone, therefore the government needs to take more money from working people and “create” jobs for people who aren’t working? Springer’s comment was, of course, code for more redistribution of wealth.
The truth is that 100 percent employment is possible only in a police state like the Soviet Union of the twentieth century, where everyone was forced to work — at a job, and at a wage, that the state mandated. And we all know how well that system worked out for the masses.
By contrast, if there were such a thing as a true laissez-faire economy, everyone who genuinely wanted to work would be employed. The problem in today’s socialist America is that people do not have to work if they don’t want to. Millions of perfectly capable individuals have the option of remaining unemployed because of “jobless benefits,” minimum-wage laws, food stamps, and other forms of welfare.
Remove all of the above, and the employment rate would, indeed, approach 100 percent. Today, however, people have the luxury of taking their time finding a job that they believe to be worthy of their education, experience, and talents. And the result is that many people choose to be unemployed rather than “underemployed.”
The term underemployed makes me bristle because it implies that a person has a right to a job and a salary that he deems to be worthy of his efforts. Yet, no matter how hard I search, I cannot find any such right in the Constitution. Come to think of it, I can’t find any rights in the Constitution that the government has the authority to grant.
The fact is that the government has no right to take your money and use it to create a make-work job for someone else. Whether the private sector can or cannot employ everyone is another one of those false premises that the left uses to divert attention from the real issue — in this case, the issue of freedom.
Unfortunately, as crazy as Jerry Springer’s statement was, both Democratic and Republican statists continually show, through their actions, that they agree with him. Which is to say that they don’t believe in capitalism. What they do believe in is state capitalism — or, more appropriately, state-controlled capitalism, much like in China. Statist politicians clearly understand that continually increasing welfare benefits is the surest way to stay in office.
We’ve come a long way since Calvin Coolidge famously said, “The business of America is business.” Sadly, today redistribution of wealth is America’s number-one business, which is why free-market constitutionalists are finding it increasingly difficult to push through any cuts in public-assistance programs.
Isn’t it interesting that Ronald Regan, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a one-time spread-the-wealth Democrat, both cut the number of people on food stamps and presided over the two most robust economies of the past half century? No doubt it was just an inconvenient truth.
But a little truth has never deterred Barack Obama from relentlessly striving to achieve his goals. That’s why one of Obama’s greatest triumphs in his quest to cleanse the United States of its evil capitalist system has been to increase the number of food-stamp recipients from 32 million to 46 million in just three years.
Not surprisingly, at the recent Fox News Republican debate, Juan Williams, a hapless media soul lost between two worlds, claimed that Newt Gingrich’s reference to Barack Obama as “the food-stamp president” had “racial overtones” — even though half of the people receiving food stamps are white! Nice diversion, to be sure.
The fact is that when Jerry Springer says that “the private sector can’t employ everyone,” he ignores the reality that, from California to Spain … from Wisconsin to Greece, the mantra of the pampered parasitic class is, “We don’t give a damn about the economy, the debt, or the government’s lack of cash. We want our benefits anyway!” Not jobs, mind you. Benefits.
Giving its crack editorial staff due credit, I believe Newsweek almost had it right in it’s cover-story headline, which read: Why are Obama’s critics so dumb?
In fact, with just a bit of editing, I was able to straighten out the wording for them: Why are Obama’s supporters so dumb? Why do they not see that by continuing to demand that the welfare state expand, their children and grandchildren are destined to live under tyranny?
As Thomas Sowell said in his article “An Ignored ‘Disparity’”, “Whole totalitarian governments have risen to dictatorial power on the wings of envy and resentment ideologies.”
Sorry, Jerry, but the problem is not the private sector’s inability to “employ everyone.” The problem is envy and resentment, the dark forces that blind welfare recipients from the certain consequences of their actions.
Which is why you can count on class warfare, like never before in our history, being the overriding theme of this year’s elections. It will be ugly.
Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
H/T Political Brambles
