Liberal Policies Hinge on Redistribution of the Wealth and Deficit Spending

Liberal Policies Hinge on Two Big Ideas

The economy of the United States will continue to struggle until two liberal policies are rejected and replaced with workable principles. All liberal polices hinge on one of the following concepts:
• Redistribution of the wealth is necessary and/or morally justified
• The economy can be stimulated through increasing the money supply (deficit spending)
If these policies can be shown to lack substance and/or are simply false, then liberalism is false and lack substance.
Is forced redistribution of the wealth through taxes practical or morally justified? According to traditional American political thought, the government obtains its power from the consent of the people. In other words, the government cannot do anything that the people cannot do themselves. You can’t delegate to government the power to steal when stealing is not a natural right belonging to every person.
An example would be to ask a simple question. Can person ‘A’ go into his neighbor’s house and take his food, money, or possessions without the owner’s permission. The answer is no. This would be theft. Theft is rejected as a moral good. However, can person ‘A’ ask government to take his neighbor’s food, money, or possessions without the owner’s permission and transfer it to ‘A’? The answer should be the same, no. Liberals answer differently. They say that this is a moral function of government.
Neighbor ‘A’ does not have the power to redistribute wealth and ‘A’ cannot give power that he does not have to government to redistribute wealth. Yet, redistribution of the wealth is exactly the basis of the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party has built a case that redistribution of the wealth is morally justified.
We hesitate to challenge this notion because it has become such a dominant part of American culture. Public education, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, federal student loans, earned income tax credit, etc. etc. and to some extent Social Security are all based upon redistribution of the wealth. We don’t want to address the issue because it would require significant changes.
The problem is that redistribution of the wealth increases the size of government, reduces the number of those that produce material goods, increases the number of people that consume material goods, and eventually leads to widespread poverty and suffering. It seems to me that we have a choice. We need to hit the reset button. We can make reasonable changes now or ignore the basic problem with redistribution of the wealth and allow the economy to collapse which will result in widespread misery and suffering.
To me the choice is obvious; we need to make basic changes in the way social services are provided. The sooner we act; the less hardship will be created.
Liberals also believe that the economy can be stimulated by increasing the money supply. This is simply false. Economies are stimulated through work and production. Money is simply a tool of exchange. Money is not the economy. Increasing the money supply actually harms the private sector through decreasing private capital and decreasing the size of the productive private sector. Monetary policy is a kind way of saying"Grow Government.”
http://chum.ly/n/7bbaa8

Essay on the nature of Money from the MIses Institute

The Free Market: The Fallacy of the Money Supply: mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=444

This 1500 word article explains the nature of money and why liberal economic policy cannot work.
http://chum.ly/n/7bb939

Post from steventhayn at CHUMLY

The Liberal Narrative Exposed
The Liberal Narrative Exposed:: The economy can only be stimulated by an increase in production. There is no other way. Liberals believe that increasing the money supply can stimulate the economy. The truth is that monetary policy (increasing the money supply) cannot stimulate the economy any more than a drug addict can be cured by taking another hit of heroin.

Liberals base this belief on FDR’s policies during the Great Depression. They believe FDR ended the Great Depression by increasing the size of government. The problem with this belief is that it is not true. FDR created the longest depression in US history and it only ended after his polices were rejected by Congress in 1946. WWII simply masked the effects of liberal polices by trading huge increases in debt for war time production.
"Government statisticians present economic growth in terms of monetary expenditure data, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and industrial production. These indicators are designed in line with Keynesian thinking that spending equates to income — hence, more spending leads to a higher national income and therefore to a higher economic growth.” September 01, 2009 by Frank Shostak

Economic growth should be measured in private sector material output. If increasing the money supply can stimulate the economy, then we need to print boatloads of money and stimulate it. However, stimulus packages like the ARRA don’t work because they only stimulate consumption but do little to stimulate production.

The ARRA invested $100s of millions of dollars into medical care for the needy, salaries for government workers, and food for the poor. All of this money is gone with nothing to show for it. If the amount of money that was spent on ARRA projects had been invested in factories and production, we would now have ongoing production, jobs, and tax revenues being generated by these factories. What we have is debt with no production.

If the $787 billion had been spent on creating jobs by spending $250,000 per job, there would have been 3,148,000 jobs manufacturing jobs created. This would have lead to another 3or 4 support jobs or another 12,000,000 jobs or a total of 15,000,000 new jobs.
The current unemployment rate according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics in February 2011 is 8.9 percent or 13.7 million total unemployed.
The money was simply misspent. We could have totally eliminated unemployment. Now, we have debt and unemployment, the worst of both worlds.
http://chum.ly/n/7aa708

Reform of Public Schools

As many of you know, I have been very interested in improving and reforming public education. One of the reasons that reform efforts have been disappointing is because we have always funded based on attendance. I think it is time to consider funding based on what is learned.

We don't simply want students in school, we want them to learn.
http://chum.ly/n/7a7752

Food Stamps in the Commerce and Human Resource Committee

In Commerce and Human Resource Committee, a discussion was held concerning the problems caused by issuing all Food Stamps on the first day of the month. The issue was between the Northwest Grocers Association and the Department of Health and Welfare. The Northwest Grocers Association was concerned about the added costs i.e. the extra employees and the number of people, because of long lines, that leave food in their carts and walk out of the store which causes food spoilage.
The position of DHW said that it would cost more to issue Food Stamps over several days.
The Liberal Narrative is concerned about the health and budgets of the government agency budget, in this case, the DHW. The Conservative Narrative is concerned about the health and budget of private businesses which, by the way, are the ones that actually produce and distribute the food in the first place.
The vote was very predictable. The two Democrats and one Republican voted to hold the Department of Health and Welfare budget harmless by wanting to kill the bill. The 6 other Republicans voted to protect the budget of the Grocers and asked the DHW to implement the policy.
http://chum.ly/n/789a83

Post from steventhayn at CHUMLY

Shaken Baby Syndrome
Shaken Baby Syndrome:: A resolution raising awareness on the dangers on shaking a baby. Please never, never shake a baby. It can cause death and permanent damage. Set the baby down and walk away rather than shake out of frustration.
http://chum.ly/n/734ced