Why Capitalism is the Superior Economic System

 

As economic systems, capitalism and socialism are opposites and each claims to be superior. Capitalism adheres to the natural laws of economics, the center of which is supply and demand which says that when the supply drops or the demand rises, the cost of a product will rise; and when supply rises or demand falls, prices will fall.

Of course politicians may seek to ameliorate the effects of the natural laws of economics, but that does not make supply and demand any less real, just as you cannot contravene the law of gravity by making an apple float in the air.

Ultimately a free economy will right itself on its own while politicians, using government edicts, may make things better in the short run, but always make things worse in the long run. This was demonstrated in the late 1920s after the stock market crashed. In a panic, the government, under enormous public pressure, cut off free trade under the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act by imposing heavy taxes (a socialist idea) on imports. This slowed down international trade and killed millions of jobs in America.

These taxes were ‘protectionist’ measures that liberals always use to ‘protect’ jobs, when in fact the overall result was to kill jobs, as it is today. When foreign governments in the 1930s retaliated with tariffs of their own on American imports, the whole world economy slowed down.

Second, in the wake of the stock market crash, the government imposed big tax increases on business and on wealthy Americans in order to get more money for the government. Yet any capitalist will tell you that taxing people is the quickest way to slow down an economy. And the great depression of the 1930s was the biggest slowdown in American history.

Third, the Federal Reserve shrank the money supply by one-third in the wake of the crash. The Federal Reserve is part of the government. So another stupid action by the government caused the great depression to happen.

So by

*imposing heavy taxes on imports (liberal idea)

*raising taxes on business and individuals (liberal idea), and

*allowing the Federal Reserve (the government acting stupidly) to act in a haphazard manner to shrink the money supply, these elements combined like a ‘perfect storm’ to cause the economic collapse of the 1930s.

Then FDR, elected in 1932, said he was going to make everything better by hiring people with government money for make-work jobs like building highways and bridges to nowhere. Yet unemployment was higher in 1938 than it was in 1932!

So socialism started it, then lengthened and deepened the depression. If the economy had been left alone, it would have righted itself and the depression never would have happened.

So much for socialism.

Socialists claim that capitalism is unfair and exploitative, while capitalism says that socialism taxes people unfairly and favors the transfer of wealth from productive people to unproductive ones, i.e., that socialism is unfair and exploitative.

At many places on this website, Nikitas3.com has pointed out the superiority of capitalism. And to look at world history, all of the prosperous and productive societies have had open-market capitalist economies with free trade within and without. And all the destitute societies that could have been prosperous - like the Soviet Union and communist China - have been operated on socialistic ideas. The capitalist island of Taiwan, a breakaway nation formed by  fleeing Chinese when communism came to mainland China, has a living standard as high as anywhere in the world.

Capitalism, of course, needs to be regulated. Even George Washington said that. To have an economic system without some regulations would be the same as having a society without criminal laws. Chaos would reign because there always are people who will push the limit of what is allowed for their own benefit.

Socialism, on the other hand, it not a natural system at all, but is a contrived man-made system with all its rules and regulations set by politicians. And thus it is bound to fail because every time socialism finds an imbalance, it seeks to correct it with more laws and taxes and regulations. There is no natural system for regulating socialism. A contrived system can only be regulated by more contrivances. And when politicians seek to correct an economic shortcoming through socialist means, they always come up with a worse solution because they always put personal interests first.

So a good, regulated form of capitalism is far superior to any form of socialism for one reason only: Capitalism is the only economic system that actually creates wealth, while socialism is a system dedicated only to transferring wealth from one group to another. That is why liberals always favor taxation (it is their “wages”) and why socialism always leads to economic decline; because every aspect of socialism hinders, obstructs, or destroys wealth creation (taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, big government, corruption, patronage, environmental restrictions etc.)

This is not to say that taxation, regulation and environmentalism should be eliminated. Because they are part of the laws that must regulate capitalism. But those laws should be minimized, because by themselves those laws create zero wealth and thus the more they intervene in the economy the more they reduce jobs and opportunity for people to create their own destinies. Ultimately they destroy wealth.

Socialism encourages the wrong kind of “passive” people to succeed (welfare recipients, lazy government workers, overpaid public school teachers, corrupt urban political functionaries, slothful college professors who work 6 months a year etc.) and thus encourages entropy.

Capitalism, on the other hand, encourages “active” productive, creative and individualistic people to succeed, which leads to more prosperity. If each member of the society is strong and vibrant, the society will prosper. If each is slothful, the society will collapse.

In the big picture, socialism weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. This is the reason that socialism always fails and causes economic decline. If you visit a communist nation, where all the ideals of socialism are enforced at the point of a gun, you will find the population impoverished, starving and deprived of even the most basic material goods.

For instance Russia was a wheat exporter until the time of the communist takeover in 1917, and then the nation immediately suffered food shortages and starvation. This always happens under systems in which theoretically everyone is supposed to be taken care of and everyone is supposed to be equal. Ironically these socialist systems indeed are successful at that because most of the population ends up equal. Equally poor, that is.

At the same time, the leaders like Castro in Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela end up with vast fortunes tucked away in foreign accounts (while Republican George Bush’s assets in 2007 were a piddling $7.3 million) while their bureaucratic class – the government functionaries who run the everyday society – end up with all the highest and most secure privileges of the middle class, much like a public school superintendent profiled recently on CNN’s Black In America series was shown driving a brand new Mercedes-Benz and living in an elegant neighborhood while public school educrats always cry poverty.

It is important to note that people who advance in the bureaucratic, governmental society run by socialism lack all of the characteristics that are important to a growing and advancing society.

They are generally conformist, lazy, mediocre, willing to be led, thoroughly uncreative and are obsessed with money and with having an easy life.

They are not ambitious, creative, intelligent, motivated or individualistic.

That is why even the arts have spiraled downward into nothingness in the 20th and 21st century as socialism’s tentacles of mediocrity reach into every corner and crevice of society.

The people in socialism’s bureaucracy are attracted to that life because they are the type of people who are incapable of making anything of themselves in a competitive society. They are, by nature, colorless. It is a personality type that is attracted to, and thrives under, mediocre state socialism. Not all of them of course. There are some good people in the government.

But most are lesser, "passive" people. "Get a government job," they think from youth. "That way you will be taken care of. Take the civil service exam."

How many motivated, exciting, ambitious and interesting people do you know personally who thought to take the civil service exam?

Precious few, if any.

And they bring the whole society down because the society becomes like them because they hold the power. Under socialism, people advance only by two things -- by their conformity, and by their allegiance to the bureaucracy. And they can become relatively rich and powerful that way, like the school superintendent noted above.

The nation of India followed the path of the Soviet Union after its independence from Britain in 1947. India became extremely socialistic and was famous for two things – its giant, unwieldy and all-controlling government bureaucracy, and its poverty. The two go hand in hand.

After India in 1992 elected Mohandas Singh as its president with ideas to cut the bureaucracy and to let free-market capitalism reign, the country has since added 300 million people to its middle class. Easily.

Once-poor nations like Estonia, a former Soviet communist satellite, have become world-class success stories after they gutted their bureaucracies and instituted capitalist ideas that even America has not yet seen fit to adopt, like the flat tax.

Yet now it is America that is in economic decline as the Democrat party imprints its ideas on the nation. Taxation has risen steadily over the decades despite Republican presidents and efforts to lower them; endless regulations control every facet of life; poor people are increasingly dependent on government; hard-working people are taxed more and more; overzealous environmental regulations crush businesses and drive them abroad; and labor unions confront the companies that employ them day after day, and eventually kill millions of jobs and trillions in wealth. Just look at what unions are doing to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler today. In 10 years, they will be gone.

Capitalism, on the other hand, indeed is a system that favors ‘survival of the fittest’ for which it is roundly and routinely criticized. Liberals say that this is evil, that we must think about the poor and the weak among us. But a system that favors the strong really is superior because any system that consistently favors the weak will encourage weakness to thrive and ultimately will hurt everybody, including the poor, much more than capitalism. Go to a communist nation that could be wealthy under capitalism and everyone will be poor under socialism.

For instance if a liberal government gives single mothers money to support their children rather than encouraging families to stay together and fathers to support their children, it creates a weak, dependent society where girls grow up expecting that their children will be supported by the government. This creates chaos and a static bureaucratic society in which the colorless, odorless, tasteless government functionary who hands out checks is seen as the leader. Obviously not a very pretty picture.

Capitalism gives people from the bottom up the power to create their own destinies. In fact it is only a capitalist economy that creates a middle class at all. Go to a communist country and there is no middle class at all except for the small strata of government functionaries who work directly for the leader. Otherwise there is no middle class.

In communist countries, for example, there is no food for most of the population, even in the cities. Then go to any poor third-world nation with anything like a free-market, capitalist economy and you will see poor people in the market selling vegetables that they have grown. In other words, people have the power to control their own lives without government intervention, and this increases the potential of the whole society.

And while these poor people certainly do not lead glamorous lives, their occupation represents their freedom, just as a low-income person in America may wash windows or perform some other service like cutting grass. It is what he has in order to create wealth for himself. And thus it is good. He works, he has something to think about, he has something to care about, and he’s not hanging out on the corner all day doing nothing, an activity for which government-dependent people are famous.

Of course a socialist says that poor people must have dignity, and should not be dependent on demeaning jobs like cutting grass. And the question is why? Why must everyone work in an office and make $50,000 a year as the socialist ideal dictates? Because many poor people don’t even have the skills to earn money.

The fact is that much of poverty in America is due to socialism itself. The public schools – run lock, stock and barrel by the Democrats – often fail to teach even the basics. Democrats over-tax and over-regulate business. They spend far too much money on nonproductive government functions. Environmentalism restricts our energy supply and drives up the price of gasoline and electricity. Democrat labor unions run companies out of business. Seems like socialism really does destroy wealth, does it not?

See the Nikitas3.com essay below 10 Ways that Socialism Makes People Poor to see the many ways in which state socialism itself thwarts individual and societal economic improvement, and makes more and more people poor, while enriching the socialist elite like the Kennedys.

The goal of socialism is to get as much wealth as possible into the hands of people who believe in socialism, without regard for the cost to the overall society.

Many of the ultra-rich in America today are card-carrying Democrats. The richest people in the United State Senate are all Democrats. And Democrats now represent in Congress much more than half of all “rich” districts and states. See the essays in the section Who “The Rich” Really Are in America Today, accessible from the Nikitas3.com home page. It shows step by step how the rich and super-rich often support socialism… and why.

What is important is that the wealth created by a growing capitalist society offers money to support the poor who cannot support themselves. Americans are famously generous to charity and to the poor nations of the world, while poor people in America often have relatively high standards of living, with access to food, clothing, housing and medical care that not even middle class people have had throughout most of history, and living vastly better lives than poor people in other nations today.

Many people in America who are statistically ‘poor’ in fact have air conditioning, cars, and even own their own homes! To read the actual facts about poor people in America see this great article from Robert E. Rector at The Heritage Foundation. It will amaze you! www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg2064.cfm

Yet what are the socialists saying today about America? They are saying, “Look, now the middle class is being squeezed out. There are no longer the opportunities there used to be. Capitalism is failing.”

And this is true; our middle class is shrinking. But several things can be said about this. First, when America was booming in the 1950s with all the best jobs and housing that man could ever hope for, the left-wing 1950s ‘beatniks’ and the 1960s ‘hippies’ said this was a terrible way to live, and that man was doomed to a boring, conformist life. Now those same ‘hippies’ are in positions of power and they are all wondering why we don’t have all the great jobs that we had in the 1950s!

And the reason we don’t have those jobs is simple: The destructive policies that those 1960s ‘hippies’ have imposed on our nation over many decades have irrevocably harmed our economy... taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, labor union demands (particularly among unionized government workers) zealous environmental restrictions etc. all have pushed jobs overseas. And enviro objection to domestic energy production has led to the biggest job ‘outsourcing’ of all, hundreds of billions in oil money flowing abroad that all could be being spent here at home.

No, the ‘hippies’ now are in the United States Congress, and in governorships and state legislatures all over. And every single time they get power, their policies cause economic decline. Here is an essay about the destructive effects of socialism on the American economy from the Thinking Points section of this website called About Those ‘Two Americas’:

 

 The media report regularly on the status of the nation’s economy. One of the most watched figures is the unemployment number. Other figures include claims for food stamps and other indicators of economic woe.

When a Republican is president, the media attempt to portray the unemployment numbers in the most negative light possible. For instance, when the number is good they will talk about a period when the number was better. When the number is bad, they jump for joy and talk about the failing Republican president.

So you have to really think about what is happening with the economy to put unemployment figures in context. In June 2008, it was reported that the rate rose to 5.5% in May, which still is low by historical standards. But the media made it appear once more like Bush was failing.

Look closer, however, and you will see that we do live in “Two Americas”, as former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards liked to say.  Only problem is the “Two Americas” are not the ones that Edwards or other liberals even would dare discuss if they were being honest.

First: Consider the black inner cities of AmericaNew York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc. -- that include tens of millions of citizens. Who controls these areas with an iron grip?

The Democrat party does, that’s who.

Why is the unemployment rate, dependence on food stamps and other government handouts, the poverty rate and the murder rate always much higher in these areas than elsewhere in the nation?

Because the Democrats have crafted policies that insure that they are going to be higher. The terrible public schools, run without any challenge by the Democrat bureaucracy and the teacher unions, are failing miserably. Democrat liberals, who run the entertainment industry, get rich while inundating these areas with defeatist and violent messages like hip-hop and rap music. Democrat party bureaucracies and corrupt urban governments make starting a business very difficult. Abysmal leftist social standards exonerate broken families, fatherlessness and single motherhood, all of which contribute greatly to poverty. So all in all, there is little economic opportunity, and people remain poor.

So when the dismal economic figures from these inner cities are rolled into the national figures, it makes America look bad. No distinction is made between poor inner-city America, controlled by Democrats, and the more prosperous parts of the nation that are more conservative.

So indeed, there are Two Americas. Only problem is, Democrats don’t want to talk about those Two Americas.

Now look at the nation as a whole.

The South is booming economically. The most vibrant economy in the nation is in… Texas! Yes, evil George Bush’s Texas offers opportunity, hope, jobs and prosperity. How could this be? Is not Bush the embodiment of rapacious capitalism?

What other states are booming? How about Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and other “redneck” states.

Why?

Because they have long histories of conservative policies – low taxes, low regulation, less bureaucracy, fewer business-busting unions. People from the North are flowing into the South for jobs and opportunity.

Meanwhile, across the whole Northern Tier of the United States from Oregon to Maine - a region that is declining economically - there is only one single state that stands out for its economic growth and that is New Hampshire.

Why?

Because New Hampshire has a long history of being a low-tax, conservative, pro-business state.

For decades, however, elite, liberal, Ivy League New Englanders laughed at New Hampshire as a nutty, right-wing enclave. Now thousands of those same snobs are moving out of places like failing Massachusetts and into New Hampshire for the jobs there.

And typically they are taking their politics with them and turning New Hampshire liberal. And they are starting the process of smothering the New Hampshire economy with the same ideas that have strangled the rest of the declining Northeast – more taxes, more regulations, more environmentalism, more encroachments on private property.

So looking at the nation as a whole, you have the declining North and inner cities, and the rising South.

Now look at the people who increasingly are controlling the declining Northern Tier.

Here are the states as of June 2008 with a Democrat governor and two Democrat US Senators: Washington State, Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York State, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Sounds pretty Democrat, does it not?

But aren’t Democrats the party of “compassion” who want prosperity for everyone?

No, they are the party of economic decline and wealth redistribution from the middle class to the ultra-rich like the Kennedy family, John Kerry, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Larry Ellison and other leftists who support Obama, and who want to stay rich. Obama will assure that they remain rich, and that is why they favor him. It's all about the money.

Just 30 years ago, places like New York State and Michigan were economic powerhouses with big middle classes.

Yet who would say that today these are places of jobs, growth and opportunity? Who would say that the national economy is migrating toward New York and Massachusetts?

Nobody would, because the people who actually live in these states know that the story is quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, in places like rural Montana and Oregon, Democrat environmentalist extremism is shutting down timber cutting, mining, ranching and other economic activities, impoverishing the people there.

Why are these states failing?

Because they are becoming more and more dominated by Democrat politicians and Democrat/environmentalist ideas.

In Michigan, the radical auto workers’ union in many cases drove the car companies out of town with confrontational tactics and unrealistic wage demands, and we can see this is still happening today. Ten years from now, the American auto industry will be hanging by a thread because it was threatened by the unions (or rather by organized crime, which ran the unions and which is an arm of the Democrat party) in the good times, and now is committed to paying unsustainable pay, benefit and retirement packages.

This is why more and more American workers, particularly in the South, are rejecting unions. Because unions oppose the interests of working people in favor of union bosses and organized crime. They destroy jobs by the millions and wealth by the trillions.

Why is even the huge California economy declining slowly but surely, when it once was one of the greatest economies in the world?

Because California today is utterly dominated by the Democrat party and its bureaucracy, that is why. Forget about “Republican” Schwarzenegger. He is a liberal.

Come up to wonderful Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the union, 85% Democrat legislature with virtually the worst business/economic climate in America, according to most objective economic analyses including Forbes magazine. Any honest economist will tell you that the two go hand in hand – liberalism and economic decay.

Wherever they come to power, Democrats slowly wreck economic prosperity. So today, when you see national stories about the suffering of Americans, high unemployment or rises in food stamp dependence, look for the link.

What is affecting the overall national statistics? Is it bad times in conservative Texas that are affecting the national statistics, or bad times in Michigan and Massachusetts and rural Oregon and in the inner cities?

Take a guess...

Is the decline in the New York State economy showing up in the national figures, and then being blamed on Bush?

Of course.

Did Hillary Clinton promise to help the people of rural New York State in her 2000 run for US Senate?

Yes.

Has anything changed since then?

Yes, things are much, much worse as New York State turns more and more Democrat.

Conclusion: Perhaps we can start having two measures of economic well-being.

We will measure it in Democrat strongholds (inner cities, liberal states), and then in places where conservative, capitalist ideas dominate, like the South.

And then we will start to see the real story about the “Two Americas”.

 

People who advocate socialism say they want to "help" people, that they "care about the poor". But this is nonsense. Socialists operate at all levels of society, from the ultra-rich (like Warren Buffett, who supports Obama) to the welfare poor. And the socialists who run the Democrat party from the ultra-rich to the middle class bureaucracy, want the three things that all liberals want:

A)  Wealth for themselves;

B)  Power over other people; and

C)  A life of ease and pleasure.

Liberals love money more than any people in history. Just look at the zillionaires in Hollywood showing off their wealth like no group ever before in history. It is an obscene show of materialism. Just look at the liberal billionaires in New York and San Francisco and Silicon Valley and Martha’s Vineyard in summer, loving their wealth more than anything. Just look at how increasing numbers of rich people in America – well over 50% - describe themselves as liberal Democrats, as the national economy flounders and millions of good jobs go overseas.

Liberals love money! From the rich to the middle class. Think of the functionaries who work for the state and federal government. They are the best-paid people in the middle class. They have the best pay, benefit and retirement packages of all. They love to have: Money; power over other people; and a life of ease and pleasure. They produce less and work less than any other people in the workforce… except for other liberals like college professors, welfare recipients and public school teachers. In fact is it liberals who substitute ‘materialism’ for ‘prosperity’.

Prosperity is a good thing. It lifts all people up. Conservatives always have favored policies that promote prosperity. And one of the byproducts of prosperity is materialism, which is the placing of material wealth above all other forms of human striving.

The good conservative person, however, strives to make himself/herself better; strives to make the world better through his/her contributions; and shuns excessive material wealth in favor of a higher spiritual level of living where one truly is making the world better not by “letting the government help people” (the socialist way),  but by building homes and churches and powerplants and furniture and cars to give people a better life. It’s called productivity.  

Then liberals complain at every step. Typical...

Liberals, on the other hand, are in love only with money and a life of ease and pleasure. It was best illustrated by the 1960s when all the lazy hippies did whatever they felt like doing – usually not working – then acted as if they knew what everybody else should be doing. In other words, a life of ease and pleasure while having power over other people.

 

10 Ways that Liberal Socialism Makes People Poorer

(and what conservatives are doing about it)

 

Debating the average liberal is like debating a wall. They believe their arguments are impeccable, even when they are dead wrong. They say that only liberals care about "the poor" and "working families" while conservative capitalism is a system that benefits the rich. Nonsense. In fact, free-market capitalism creates a middle class everywhere it is applied, while socialism causes people to become poor in the following ways: Taxes, regulation, bureaucracy and government corruption thwart business everywhere and hinder job creation and expansion, often killing businesses off. Labor unions have only their own interests at heart and have hurt or destroyed many wealth-creating businesses while actually attempting to prevent non-union people from working at all. Environmentalism is throwing millions out of work in rural America and pushing up the cost of basic resources for all through restriction on the development of oil wells, timber harvests, mines etc. Just visit small towns and rural areas throughout the US and you often will see enviro obstruction of any and all new development.

Here are 10 ways to debate liberals on the subject of wealth and poverty, showing how socialism itself in fact is making tens of millions of citizens poor and poorer:

1. Unions kill jobs and wealth: Everyone knows that socialists are partners with labor unions. Throughout the 20th century, unions have acted in a belligerent and confrontational way with business, demanding artificially high wages and putting private employers under financial duress. Trillions of dollars in wealth, along with millions of good jobs, have been destroyed as unions have pushed companies out of business, killing opportunity for "working families". All Americans know that this is a fact, although many cannot admit it. As a result, huge numbers of workers today are freely voting against unionization, because they do not want their future well-being put in the hands of a few labor bosses. They have seen the sad result. Conservative response: Let the market, and the employer, set wages. This creates a sustainable economic climate for cooperation between labor and management, rather than confrontation.

2. Taxation thwarts economic growth: The power to tax is the power to destroy, goes  the old saying. Indeed it is. Throughout history, heavily taxed economies have suffered, while lightening tax loads has in every single case produced more wealth, and more evenly distributed wealth. Average Americans, including "working families", are being made poorer by relentless taxation. The money that he/she already has in his/her pocket is disappearing. This is a travesty. And ruthless taxation of private business is preventing those businesses from paying their workers better wages, or accumulating capital to modernize their plants and ultimately employ more workers. Meanwhile media liberals insistently call for higher taxes, which equal wage cuts (impoverishment) for "workers". Conservative response: Lower taxes and reduce government spending. It's really simple.

3. Public schools are failing to educate millions of citizens: Our publicly-funded, government-monopoly education system is failing to educate a large percentage of the 94% of Americans who go to public schools. When those people end up unable to function in the workforce, they slip into poverty. Since the public schools are bureaucratic monopolies controlled by teacher unions and the government, they are entrenched and unresponsive to public pressure and to common sense suggestions to improve themselves. Conservative response: Offer alternatives to mediocre or failing public schools, like charter schools and school vouchers for children to attend private or religious schools. This would end up costing taxpayers less money over the long run (making them richer) in many ways, because the education system would become more efficient, and students would be more productive when they graduate instead of falling into poverty and living off the taxpayer.

4. Colleges are charging far too much tuition: The liberals who run our colleges and universities are charging exorbitant tuitions that are far out line with the general inflation rate, and with the rise in the cost of other commodities. The media only make occasional and casual mention of this gouging, while college professors and other leftist bureaucrats in the educational establishment get higher and higher salaries, while working less and less, as the average "working family" works harder and harder in order to pay more and more for college. At the same time, low-income people increasingly are being shut out of expensive college education. Conservative response: Let's investigate the colleges for this ongoing "gouging" of the consumer. This rip-off is yet another transfer of wealth from the productive and hard-working citizens of America to the left-wing intellectual elite.

5. Incompetent government workers and overstaffed bureaucracies are costing us all hundreds of billions of dollars annually: Ever pass a group of state highway workers? What do you see? You see one guy working and four guys watching. This is the socialist ethic that drains our economies and sucks the life out of (impoverishes) the taxpayer. Virtually all government functions (except the military, the courts, law enforcement etc.) can be taken over by private enterprise and accomplished at one-third to one-fourth the cost of government bureaucracies. Conservative response: Privatize government functions wherever possible. Everywhere it has been tried, it has been successful. Government workers and socialist politicians do not  want Americans to know how successful privatization has been, and how much money it can save the average "working" person, whom socialists claim to represent.

6. Massive amounts of wealth are flowing from the productive middle-class and "working" people in the suburbs, and small-town and rural America into the pockets of ultra-rich left-wing socialists in places like New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Hollywood, San Francisco and other cities. This is making the average American poorer. Conservative response: Since these same urban socialists are most vocally in favor of "taxing the rich", let's urge them all publicly to voluntarily write additional checks to "United States Treasury" above and beyond their normal tax payments. The government accepts contributions like this. This will require no new laws or government bureaucracy, just honesty, and will allow productive Americans to apply for dollar-for-dollar tax relief from these additional revenues, "redistributing" the wealth more evenly to the hard-working people of America.

7. The welfare state has caused lazy government-aid recipients to become lazier and to consume even more of the nation's wealth, draining hard-earned money away from the productive people in America. Even the late and liberal New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the welfare state would destroy poor black Americans. When the out-of-wedlock birth rate was 25% in the 1960s, Moynihan sounded the alarm bell. Today, after four decades of federal government handouts, the rate is 70%. Out-of-wedlock children, and their mothers, are four to six times more likely to end up poor than the general population. Thus this giveaway system is creating more and more poor people. Conservative response: Move all anti-poverty programs back to the more accountable state and local level, and to private and religious charities. Urge poor people to marry before having children, and to believe in God, and in a righteous and moral life.

8. Trial lawyers are doubling the cost of health care for every citizen: This is one of the pressing issues of our day. Health care costs are skyrocketing for everyone, and particularly for the middle class, for one main reason; trial lawyers are suing medical personnel all over the nation. Some say that costs actually are being doubled, which would be no surprise since every single action in the health-care field is undertaken with the medical professional first asking: "How do I avoid getting sued?" So they double or triple up on tests, surgeries, procedures and doctor visits to cover all bases in the event of a legal challenge. Useless paperwork is multiplied, costing even more. Malpractice insurance to cover medical professionals is draining away tens of billions of dollars and driving good people away from medicine. Trial lawyers are virtually all Democrat liberals, give their campaign contributions almost exclusively to Democrats, while the Democrat party is repaying them by blocking any reform that would restrain these lawyers. Conservative  response: Reform the legal system to cap lawsuit awards and to punish these lawyers for frivolous litigation. This will halve the cost of medical care and make it affordable for everyone, including "the uninsured" whom liberals claim they care about.

9: Nanny-State liberals are forcing automobile buyers to purchase more and more expensive safety devices: Remember when cars had no safety belts, and nanny-staters demanded them. It was a good idea. They were right. Remember when cars had no driver airbags, and nanny-staters demanded them. That was a fair idea. It protected people who weren't diligent enough to use their seat belts. Now cars are offering more and more and more airbags: side, head, rollover etc. Some cars have as many as 8 airbags because nanny-staters are never satisfied and are constantly pushing for more. This is pushing up the cost of the average automobile, making consumers pay a higher price. There is no consideration for the economic law of diminishing returns, that after a certain point, the bags are increasingly not worth it. But nanny-staters do not care. More, more, more. And when one of these newer cars is involved in a crash, and the airbags deploy, insurers are more likely to "total" the car rather than repair it, because the growing number of airbags are so costly to replace. So insurance costs are rising too. This all combines to draw wealth away from the average "working person", making him/her poorer. Conservative response: Stop forcing auto makers to install so many airbags. Let the consumer decide how many he wants.

10. Environmentalists are pushing up the prices of many natural resources, from timber for housing to gasoline for cars, by restricting the supply: Over the last 30 years, environmentalists have become the most powerful lobby in history. This has happened for two reasons: They have many, many ultra-rich backers in the urban and suburban socialist elite. And they get free, favorable media coverage for any crisis they wish to declare. This media coverage is worth tens of billions of dollars in free advertising every year. Ecologists have used their power to restrict the harvesting of natural resources for decades now, pushing up the price for consumers, because reduced supply causes an increase in price through the law of supply and demand. Oil and timber are particular commodities that enviros have been restricting. Conservative response: Use our natural resources wisely for the common good. Do not deny access so that an elite minority of backpackers and birdwatchers can feel satisfied, while average "working" citizens, along with "the poor", pay more for housing and gasoline.

 

       Free Air Conditioning for All!

 According to a 2003 study from the Heritage Foundation called Understanding Poverty in America, 76% of “poor” people in the United States have air conditioning. Whether this statistic, which is taken from government studies, is accurate or not, we know that many millions of poor people have AC. And while air conditioning makes us comfortable in hot weather, billions of people around the world survive without it today. And throughout most of human history, everyone has survived without it.

The question is: Who should get air conditioning? And why should we even be debating personal choices?

Answer: Because this gives us insight into a wider question about “entitlement” and about the out-of-control tax system that is used to fund entitlement.

So the Nikitas3.com proposal is this: That no person or household that receives any government funding for food stamps, welfare, housing subsidies, medical care or any other service should be allowed to have air conditioning unless it absolutely is a matter of survival.

Consider the facts. First, hot weather kills a small number of Americans every year, primarily very old people. Second, poor people on government assistance who use air conditioning could better be using for food and rent the handout money that they spend to buy and operate an air conditioner, and thus could be cutting their dependency on taxpayers by shutting off the AC. Third and most importantly, however, many millions of hard-working people in America who pay taxes and accept nothing from the government cannot themselves afford to buy and operate an air conditioner, while the taxes that they pay often go to buy and operate AC for dependent people.

Therefore, Nikitas3.com believes that all air conditioners should be removed from the homes of dependent people.

Naturally welfare-state Democrats will object because they have crafted an elaborate social hammock which keeps them in power, and they become hysterical when any aspect of their plan is revealed to the sunlight. They will lash out, accusing those of backing this air-conditioner removal plan of “mean spiritedness” and all the other usual invectives.

So when liberals refuse this removal plan, conservatives should offer this compromise: Anyone in America who works and pays federal taxes should be offered a federal tax credit to acquire an air conditioner. Under this plan, the air conditioner’s purchase price and operating costs (AC requires a lot of electricity) can be directly subtracted dollar for dollar from that person’s federal income tax payment.

Naturally liberals will oppose this because it equals a “tax cut” for hard-working people, which they always oppose because they wish to control all citizens through the redistribution of wealth garnered through taxation. And second, this tax credit plan will benefit productive people who pay taxes, who are not a solid voting bloc for the Democrat party.

But this plan is only fair, is it not?  This would put taxpaying people on equal footing with the dependent poor (having air conditioners paid for by the federal government (the taxpayer)) but with one huge difference: The working citizens are contributing to this nation and paying the taxes while the dependent poor often are not working at all and often are not paying any taxes at all.

So who deserves the luxury of air conditioning more?

If Democrats reject this incentive plan, all the dependent poor should have AC removed from their homes. And if “the poor” object to removal, all government assistance to that person or household should be ended.

This is economic justice for the people who are working every day to make America a better place.

Free air conditioning for all!

How to Debate Liberals

 

Debating liberals is easy. You just have to know your facts, put them side-by-side with socialist claims (this is crucial, to have the side-by-side comparison) and you can debate them under the table. The reason liberals are always trying to squelch debate and are attempting to restrict conservative talk radio is that their ideas never stand up to scrutiny in side-by-side comparisons. The problem we conservatives have, however, is that many of us are not well-informed enough to stand up to the nonsense, lies, half-truths and propaganda that liberals put out. So arm yourself with facts. Here are ten simple examples of how to debate a liberal:

 

1) Liberal says: “The oil companies have a stranglehold on our economy and charge whatever they want. ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits (shock, awe, anger!) while we are paying more and more for gasoline.”

You reply: “You liberals have no rational alternative to the oil companies. What are you going to propose? A government oil company? Government-run FEMA couldn’t even get truckloads of ice to Hurricane Katrina victims over a period of an entire month, while private-sector Wal-Mart trucks were in New Orleans within two days of the storm.”

 “And yes, ExxonMobil had profits of $39 billion in 2006. But its gross sales were $340 billion. So its profit was around 11% of gross sales, which is only an average profit percentage for American companies. And the profits of companies like ExxonMobil are distributed to stockholders, including plumbers, used-car salesmen, public-school teacher union members and other ‘working people’.”

 

2) Liberal says: “I am a pacifist. I am opposed to violence. I oppose the Iraq war.”

You reply: “If you are like most so-called ‘pacifists’, you support abortion on demand and third-trimester abortion, both of which are acts of cruelty, violence and murder. So you are NOT a pacifist and you are NOT opposed to violence. You embrace violence every minute of every day.”

 

3) Liberal says: “We Democrats and liberals are on the side of ‘working families’.”

You reply: “Heavy taxation is one of the main forces working against the success of working families. It is disempowering them by robbing them of their hard-earned wealth. We conservatives oppose this taxation so that working families can prosper. And we also wish to eliminate the current tax code and replace it with something much simpler, so that ‘working families’ don’t have to live under a cloud every year, worrying about their massive, confusing tax forms. Liberals oppose any streamlining of the tax code, making more toil and anxiety for ‘working families’.”

 

4) Liberal says: “If we liberals didn’t protect the environment, the Republicans would pollute the whole nation.”

You reply: “It is not environmentalism that is cleaning up the ecology, it is capitalist technology that is doing it, while modern-day environmentalism is making our air dirtier in one very big way: Enviros have been so frightened of nuclear power that the United States is burning 1.2 BILLION tons of coal per year instead to generate electricity. This is causing massive air pollution. Nuclear power produces no air pollution. But even many enviros now favor nuclear power, after obstructing it for decades.”

 

5) Liberal says: “Only we liberals care about women.”

You reply: “The Republican party, which was founded by anti-slavery activist Alvin Bovay, was the first party to introduce the idea of women’s suffrage in 1896. And when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed giving women the vote, it was ratified by 36 states, 26 of which were controlled by Republicans. The first woman in the US House of Representatives was Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana. The first woman elected to the US Senate in her own right was Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. The first woman to be appointed to the US Supreme Court was Sandra Day O’Connor, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Regan.”

 

6) Liberal says: “If we Democrats didn’t help the poor, you Republicans would allow them to sink deeper into poverty.”

You reply: “If we Republicans didn’t work hard every day to create a wealthy capitalist society in the first place, you lazy liberals wouldn’t have two cents to redistribute to the poor.”

 

7) Liberal says: “You Republicans are opposed to gay rights.”

You reply: “Homosexual males in America suffer from high rates of disease, alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide and early death, with an average lifespan of 42 years. Repeat: An average lifespan of 42 years. Even cigarette smokers have an average lifespan of 68 years. So why are you liberals defending this homosexual lifestyle if you really ‘care’?”

 

8) Liberal says:Europe bans guns, and they have much lower crime rates than we do.”

You reply: “Your ‘pacifist’ Europe had 70 million killed in two world wars in the 20th century alone. And the Soviet Union would have conquered and destroyed Europe if we conservative, gun-toting Americans had not defended Europe after World War II.”

 

9) Liberal says: “Republicans are racists who hate black people.”

You reply: “Republicans freed the slaves. The Republican party was founded as the anti-slavery party. Martin Luther King was a Republican. And the state of black America today, with inner cities existing under violence, mayhem and chaos, is a result of unchallenged Democrat control of those inner cities.”

 

10) Liberal says: “All rich people are Republicans who are protected by Bush.”

You reply: “The two richest men in America, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are liberals. Most of Hollywood’s ultra-rich actors, producers and directors are liberals. Most of New York City’s billionaires are liberals, as are most rich people in other urban centers like Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle etc., along with places like Silicon Valley, Santa Fe, Martha’s Vineyard and many of America’s suburbs. The eight richest people in the United States Senate are Democrats. John Kerry, with his wife’s $1 billion fortune, is a liberal. The Kennedy family, with its $1 billion fortune, is liberal. Oprah Winfrey, with her $2.5 billion fortune, is a liberal. And on and on…”

 

12 Reasons We Don’t Want to be like Europe

 

Liberals tell us over and over and over that we must be more like Europe, that Europeans are sophisticated and that we Americans are stupid, that Europe has “free” health insurance and fast passenger trains and all that wonderful stuff.

The reason liberals say this is to try to make America more like Europe which means that liberals would have most of the power as they have for centuries in Europe. Even when America was founded, Europe had bureaucratic, taxing and autocratic states which the Founders warned against. That is the reason we wanted to separate from England in the first place.

America does not want to be more like Europe for the following 12 reasons which you can repeat any time that a liberal tells you that we must emulate them “over there”:

1) European governments, with very high taxes, take freedom away from individuals. If you are heavily taxed, you lose your freedom. America is becoming more and more heavily taxed and Americans feel it. We must reduce taxes to give people more power, and take power away from an oppressive government. Europe has huge taxpayer-supported bureaucracies that stifle economic individualism and self-reliance. In one recent case, a kiwi fruit seller in London had to throw away all his fruit and was not even allowed to give it away because the fruit was 1 millimeter smaller than  European Union rules allowed!

2) Europe’s highly-taxed and highly-regulated socialist economies have been producing chronic unemployment for decades. Economists always warn about this, but liberals ignore it because they do not want Americans to know what socialism is doing to Europe. European unemployment rates are routinely 7% to 12% officially, but unofficially and in reality, are much higher. There are tens of millions of people in Europe who never will be employed in their lifetimes, just as there is high and growing unemployment in Democrat bastions in America like New England, New York State and Michigan.

3) Europe’s highly-taxed economies have very low growth rates which cause the high unemployment. This is Economics 101. And low Euro growth rates drag down world growth and cause many struggling nations to be even poorer, just as communism destroyed the agricultural base of Russia, forcing the Soviet Union to import food rather than export it. This made the world hungrier.

4) European nations fought viciously among themselves twice in the 20th century alone, in World War I and World War II. Those wars killed more than 70 million people and destroyed Europe’s economies. Europe eventually was saved by America both times, and was rebuilt by America after World War II. Europe has never paid us back for that. They just insult us. Typical socialists.

Should America be more like Europe? Should we have two major wars that destroy our whole nation? It doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea.

5) Europe has rapidly falling populations. The birth rate is very low because first, the socialist welfare state has deprived people of jobs, so they aren't having children. Second, high taxes gut people's finances and discourage people from having children. Third, the socialist 'pleasure culture' entrenches abortion and recreational sex, not child-bearing and marriage. Europe’s populations currently are in the process of 'falling off a cliff' and this will have highly negative ramifications for the future.

America, which is more Christian and more conservative, has less of a problem, but still faces this population crisis on a smaller scale because in many  ways we have become like Europe with the focus on pleasure and abortion.

6) Europe invented communism and fascism, government which are said to have murdered 40 million of their own people and caused massive economic destruction for hundreds of millions more. Meanwhile, America has  remained free and generally prosperous. Why should we be like Europe?

7) France was so weak and effeminate that it rolled over and surrendered to Hitler in 6 weeks when Hitler invaded in 1940. Not a very good example. Ever hear about the Ebay advertisement for a Euro weapon (this is a joke, obviously):

‘French Army Rifle, vintage 1940, never fired, dropped once, best offer’

8) After World War II, Europe was so weak that America had to defend it from being invaded by the Soviet Union. Even after Europe recovered, they still depended on the USA to defend them as they slashed their military budgets and built up their welfare states. Today Germany’s defense budget proportionally is about 25% the size of America’s.

9) When Ronald Reagan played hardball diplomacy with the Soviets in the 1980s, and ultimately called their bluff and brought them down without firing a shot, the Euros marched by the millions in the streets to protest Reagan’s strategy.

That strategy including the placing of NATO nuclear missiles in France and Germany to counter Soviet SS-20 missiles that had been placed in Eastern Europe. The Euros, in a feminine panic, said that Reagan was going to start a nuclear war. The opposite happened. The Soviets realized that they had met their match and collapsed.

10) Europe today has belligerent Muslim populations growing in their midst and someday the Muslims may start a serious revolution and threaten European sovereignty.

The dishrag Euros are too busy sitting at their cafes and telling America how superior they are to do anything about the rise of radical Islam in their midst. It is too much work for them. The leftist intellectual classes even are making a case that Islam is no threat. The reason is that the intellectual classes are self-hating classes that don’t care if Europe is destroyed.

11) Europe's economy is heavily state-owned including its passenger railroads which consume massive taxpayer subsidies. Europeans who come to America are totally awed by our super-efficient freight railroads that are privately-owned, consume no taxpayer subsidies, and pay taxes to the government. The Big Four railroads of the American system are Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern and CSX. If you don’t know about America’s amazing freight railroad system, which moves 1.8 trillion ton-miles of cargo annually, then you haven’t been paying attention. It is the envy of the world.

12) Europe's socialist economies have powerful labor unions which are harmful to the people. These unions are touted as worker-friendly but in fact  they frequently strike and hold entire nations' economies hostage. They push up the cost of living in Europe with artificially high wage demands that always are  paid by consumers. Along with rampant taxation, unions make the cost of living in Europe unnecessarily expensive, further weakening individuals and making people poorer.

We should not become more like Europe. Europe should become more like the United States.

Use these points in your next debate with a liberal.