Friday, December 18, 2009

The Greatest Resource on Earth: Human Intelligence

As America moves ever closer to government takeover of the economy and with it our personal lives, it is crucial to reflect on how we got to be the greatest country in the world. We can do this by looking at a tiny city really...Hong Kong and what happened to that city/state when freedom was allowed to thrive. Sometimes it's easier to "see" when an example is used that is outside our immediate experience.

Imagine the horror of the anti-capitalist, socialist mentalities if it was said to them: what if there were a country in which the government stays out of the economy? One with no tariffs or other legal restrictions on international trade - with no regulatory agencies, no minimum wage laws, no price or wage controls. Imagine, it is said to them, that the government limits neither investment coming in nor profit going out. There's no capital gains tax, no interest tax, no sales tax and a pittance in corporate bailouts for companies that fail to compete on a free market. This imaginary country has a 15 percent flat tax, enabling its citizens to retain the preponderance of their earnings. Further, it extends no unemployment benefits, enacts no labor legislation and provides no Social Security, no national health insurance and scarcely any welfare. The welfare statist would recoil in horror from such a proposal; he would drown his interlocutor with dire warnings regarding the misery of the numberless poor and exploited who would be the inevitable victims of such a heartless, callous system. But, in fact, that country exists, it is real; it's Hong Kong, one of the wealthiest nations of history. (The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein).

The hero of the story of Hong Kong is John Cowperthwaite a disciple of Adam Smith (need we say more?). He was sent by Britain to Hong Kong as its financial secretary as "Britain itself moved toward socialism". But Mr. Cowperthwaite moved Hong Kong toward laissez-faire Capitalism. As Bernstein writes: "He kept taxes low, he imposed no tariffs, he eliminated bureaucracy and made it easy to start a business....enforces laws against crime, ....upholds contracts. In short provides a rule of law that protects honest individuals".

The moral of this fact of history is that people do not necessarily need to have a wealth in natural resources. What people around the world desperately need is FREEDOM, low taxes, and the rule of law...laws that protect property rights and the rights of honest individuals to live their lives as they see fit. But what is coming down the pike for America are more intrusions into our lives, higher confiscatory taxes and mandates that will kill productivity and usher in the decline of our great country. The reason shoving Universal Health Care and Cap and Trade down our collective throats is a naked attempt by government and their psycophants to continue the takeover of our economy and dictate to us how we should live our lives.

If there ever was a hoax perpetrated on the entire globe it is the environmentalist crusade against "global warming". There is a reason for this. They don't care if it's true...they only care about controlling human beings. According to my knowledge of history that is called FASCISM and it's coming from the left. Unfortunately, the right has long ago lost it's "raison d'etre" ---it's reason for being.

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