Liberty and Luxury
America was the first country in the world where the majority of its citizens could enjoy luxuries as everyday niceties. The average blue collar worker in America was living larger than even royalty in some countries. Whereas, in all other countries, only the small elite or royalty had the prosperity to enjoy luxuries. Know why America had this? Because of economic freedom, personal liberty, and property rights. Those principles created a free, open playing field filled with all kinds of opportunities for Americans to succeed!
America no longer enjoys the free market, capitalistic system that brought it all that prosperity. We are now a big government society with a lot of “central planners” who think they know better than the natural balance of free market economics. And the sad result of that is a lot of impoverished Americans who are up to their eyeballs in debt.
Government does not cause affluence.* Governments always provide the grossest bare minimum things.
Nobody is a fan of how our government runs things. Not you. Not me. Government doesn’t manage things very well. They don’t build cars well. They don’t provide lovely customer service. They don’t operate airlines well. They can’t install telephones. Their health care sucks. They couldn’t foresee the housing bubble, the S&A debacle, or the internet crash. Government programs are always marginal and bare bones.
However, one thing government is great at is overspending and under-delivering. They waste money and resources almost like they do it on purpose. They are the very definition of inefficient. No business could ever run the way our government runs, they would be bankrupt in weeks.
America is about the American Dream, not the American “that’s good enough.”
The American Dream is acquired by individuals going out to make their dreams happen. Everyone’s dream looks different when you go from individual to individual. There’s no standard. If everyone’s dream is different, how can the government provide it for everyone? They can’t.
If you want it, then work for it. If you want a gorgeous closet, go out and make it happen! If you want a beautiful house for your family, go ahead and work for it, no one’s stopping you. If you want a nice car, earn it. Don’t rely on debt for your lifestyle. It’s not sustainable and will catch up with you, eventually forcing you to live within your means.
The Sky’s the Limit no longer applies to America anymore
Oh wait, that’s not true anymore. The government has put a ceiling on our sky. We no longer exist in a free market system where the sky’s the limit and we can pursue what we want. There are so many government regulations and restrictions, they make it almost impossible to succeed in the marketplace, unless you have some friendly politicians in your back pocket. Business owners are bogged down with excessive restrictions that hurt them more than help: fees, taxes, laws, paperwork by the ton, lawsuits, and even more penalties by the government if they do succeed. Who on earth would even want to bother working or try to succeed in that kind of environment? And we wonder why business people are doing business overseas by the droves. There are much more friendly business environments outside of the United States.
We need freedom to restore prosperity in America. In order to get that, we need to stop relying on government, or the programs they promise us, to take care of us, because they can’t deliver anyway! Not sustainably or in any way that’s healthy for our economy.
As much as Americans hate the idea of it, because we’ve gotten so dependent on these programs, failing programs like welfare and social security need to be cut. Even the thought of ending these programs might anger you or cause panic. You might even feel distaste to the point that you stop reading this.
The older generation who bought into Social Security in the first few decades were scammed. It was a ponzi scheme. But if you collected in the 70’s up until now, you were okay because you were the first ones in the scheme. That’s the nature of a ponzi scheme. It’s the newer people who pay into it who are left holding the bag. The older people got paid with the new people’s money and got out unscathed. This newer generation is going to have to pay the price for the two previous generations getting duped into paying the government Social Security taxes which the government already spent long ago on other things.
Believe me, if we had a true free market, hard working success stories would be aplenty and government dependence would decrease. Government debt would decrease. More and more people would have to build amazing closets like this to fit all the stuff that they’d be able to afford from earning it themselves. That doesn’t happen when you have someone like Obama in office and an administration who wants to hinder the marketplace with taxes and regulations and strip us of our freedoms in the name of “safety and protection.”
*Eat The Rich by P.J. O’Rourke, pg.2
