At the heart of the assault on American targets across the globe on 9/11 and the aftermath is the fundamental argument that has long been made by Islamo-fascist leaders to their people.
The argument is this: you are suffering because the west is prospering. You have so little because America and its allies have so much.
This is the exact same line of reasoning employed by the left on the economy: the middle class and poor are suffering because the rich are prospering. You have less because the wealthy have more.
Video: The Left’s Zero-Sum Game
This classic left-wing zero-sum game, at the heart of President Obama’s re-election campaign, stands in stark contrast to the free market message, which somewhat ironically was first given voice by John F. Kennedy, that a rising tide lifts all boats. Success at the top inevitably leads to expanded opportunity for the middle class. And the poor are lifted by more tax revenues spent on their behalf and the increased charity flowing from people who are prospering. That is the plus-sum philosophy we should demand from those who seek public office.
Instead, the left repeats the mantra that “trickle down” (or supply-side) economics “has been tried, and it doesn’t work.” This based, I suppose, on the old saw that if you repeat a lie long enough and loud enough, people will start believing it.
In point of fact, the opposite is true. For those of you on the left, see if you can follow this. More money in people’s pockets means more money spent and invested in the private economy, which in turn causes businesses to grow, which in turn leads to more jobs, which in turn leads to more of the left’s most precious commodity: tax revenues.
Framed that way, honest individuals can only reach one conclusion about how to restore prosperity in America, unless they are drowned in the message that their misfortune is caused by someone’s else’s fortune.
One need look no further than western Europe to witness the consistent failure of high-tax, low-growth economies. And our own history is replete with evidence of success resulting from low-tax, high-growth policies. The Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 tax cuts all resulted in more, not less economic growth, and more, not less tax revenues. The Kennedy tax cuts sparked almost immediate growth, and the Reagan expansion was spectacular. One state after another has employed free market principles to reduce their debt, cut spending and increase growth. But it is far easier for a demagogue to point fingers of blame, bellow about a lack of fairness and stoke class warfare by pitting one group of Americans against another.
The big lie implicit in zero-sum demagoguery is that the economy is static, an unchanging pie that must be sliced up fairly by those in power. The truth is that economies are not static. They are dynamic, usually growing in various degrees, or declining. And leftist, deconstructionist “economists” like Paul Krugman (not an Obama operative, but an incredible simulation) who lecture the world strictly on what revenues can be predicted from false, static tax models, know damn well all of this is true, but persist in their base dishonesty.
Joe Biden, in the latest installment of his series of unchained moments, said mockingly that “his heart breaks” at the prospect of sticking it to the productive elements of society – uh, I mean, the rich – by increasing their taxes, a proposal he wears as a badge of honor. Never mind the outrage of ridiculing Americans who have succeeded as your stock in trade, or that even President Obama, in one apparently unguarded moment, admitted that raising taxes on anyone in an economy with trace levels of growth is not a viable policy.
The Joe Bidens of this world who are running the show in Washington have spent us into oblivion with their failed dreams and flawed schemes. In satisfying their insatiable appetites for more power and control, they have wasted, misused, and flushed away so much of our treasure that, absent a serious course correction, our children have scant hope of a life even as good as ours or our forbears. And the only way to solve this is to allow the same people to take more of our money to fix the almost intractable problems we paid for and they created? Sure, let’s pay more for the mechanic who ruined my engine to repair it.
Hopefully, this nation has learned that dividing people by talking down and punishing success rather than celebrating and rewarding it is hardly just a shameful practice. It is a proven formula for failure.
