Category: Progressivism

MLLG

Progressivism is A Maze of Contradictions

George Noga

Female fetuses are aborted for gender selection to protect their rights as women.

Progressivism is A Maze of Contradictions

By: George Noga – October 23, 2022

Liberals believe the darndest things including obvious and preposterous contradictions. They champion anti-American Palestinians, governed by dictators, who pay bounties to families of suicide bombers, throw gays off tall buildings and treat women as chattel. They demonize Israel, a pro-American democracy, that goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and respects and protects the rights of women and gays.

Their mantra is “follow the science” but ignore it when it doesn’t support their dogma regarding GMOs, vaccines, fracking, organic food, and pesticides. They believe it is okay for millions of illegal immigrants to be unvaccinated, but Djokovic cannot play in the US Open and young children must wear masks even when playing outdoors. They are for less emissions but oppose natural gas and nuclear, the best ways to cut CO2.

Liberals oppose photo IDs for voting but are fine with requiring them for air or train travel, TSA, hotels, passports, renting a car, buying a gun, getting a mortgage, hunting or fishing license, job, unemployment, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, bank or brokerage accounts, cell phones, buying alcohol or tobacco, taking the SAT, giving blood, adopting a pet and for admission to the Democratic National Convention.

Liberals are passionate about a woman’s right to choose but oppose her right to choose where to school her kids, to buy a gun, to get vaccinated or to join a labor union. They claim their bodies are sacrosanct while demanding coerced vaccinations. They believe a young girl can have an abortion or undergo gender transition without parental notification or consent but can’t get a tattoo. In what has to be the most preposterous contradiction of them all, progressives believe in abortion for gender selection – in which 99% of aborted fetuses are female. In other words, progressives believe females should be aborted in order to protect their rights when they are women.

They call Republican claims of election fraud insurrection while asserting Stacey Abrams is governor of Georgia – despite losing by 50,000 votes. They are feminists but are okay with trans women (biological males) destroying girls’ sports. They believe Sweden and Nordic nations are socialist, but they are capitalist with taxes less progressive than in the US, where the bottom 60% pay no income tax net of credits.

Progressives want to tax the rich but protect carried interest, which benefits only private equity and hedge fund tycoons. They want unlimited SALT deductions that benefit only the top 3%. Instead, they raise corporate taxes, of which 98% are passed on as higher prices to working Americans. They unleash 87,000 new IRS auditors to suck out the sustenance of small business owners. They believe corporate money in politics is evil but megabucks from labor unions is peachy keen. They believe MSNBC is mainstream, but Fox News is extreme. They applaud the FBI for going after the Trump family but not Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s corrupt dealings.

Liberals beg dictators in Russia, Iran and Venezuela to produce more dirty energy, thus enriching our enemies and despoiling the environment, while doing everything possible to cripple clean energy production and distribution in the US and Canada. They rail against child labor in third world countries that produce goods for Walmart but are silent about child and slave labor working in deplorable conditions in the mines of Zambia, Congo and China that produce lithium and cobalt for EVs driven by elites.

Progressives consider abortion a constitutional right although it is not mentioned anywhere in that document nor is it deeply embedded in tradition. But they believe the right to keep and to bear arms is unconstitutional although it is explicitly stated in the Constitution and deeply rooted in American history and tradition. They believe labor unions are beneficial even though 94% of private sector workers reject them.

They believe America is racist despite a two-term black president, a sitting black vice president and political control of most major cities. In a recent survey, those who identified themselves as “very liberal” believed 10,000 unarmed blacks were killed by police last year. Those who identified as “liberal” put the death toll at 1,000 unarmed blacks killed by police. The actual number last year was six. They believe 50 million abortions since 1973 are just fine but that 1,500 legal executions are evil. They believe in open borders today but condemn them when Europeans migrated to America.

How is it possible for anyone with an IQ in triple digits to believe so many obviously and preposterously contradictory things? To be a progressive in America you must believe all the absurd incongruities enumerated in this posting. But no worries, life in the progressive hive is very easy. There is no identity but that derived from the hive; there are no values but hive values and there are no thoughts but hive thoughts.

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Next: We reveal the identity of the real fascists in America today.

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The Borg and Progressives: Collective Mentality

George Noga

The Borg, like progressives, demonstrate the pathos of a collective mind.

The Borg and Progressives: Collective Mentality

By: George Noga – September 11, 2022

Today is the twenty-first anniversary of the terrorist attack on America; it succeeded only in waking a sleeping tiger. However, there is an unrelenting and ongoing attack on our constitutional republic by collectivist forces, and it is succeeding. It already has corrupted and assimilated most of our institutions: entertainment, media, education, science, sports, immigration, criminal justice, academia, corporations, fact-checkers, election systems, politics, economics, religion, military and social media.

What would America look like if the progressive collective succeeded in assimilating everything? We don’t have to imagine; science fiction provides the answer. Star Trek presents an optimistic vision of the future. Earth eliminates poverty and strife, becomes an ecological paradise and a civilizing force throughout the galaxy. However, Earth faces a deadly foe that assimilates everything in its path into its collective hive.

The Borg present the most disturbing example of full-fledged collectivism extant, surpassing Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. The Borg are a race of cyborgs that hardwires its hive mentality into the brain and central nervous system of every Borg. A network connects all Borg brains with each other, and they share a collective mentality. Borg are assigned numbers rather than names. No Borg thinks for itself and has no identity outside of the hive. It is impossible to reason with them.

The Borg provide a chilling insight into a collective mentality; they offer individuals a stark choice between submission and the force of the collective. Once assimilated, all individuality is absorbed and subsumed, and they become drones. They are essentially parasitic as they grow by assimilating other people, cultures and technology. The Borg are like communism, fascism, socialism, multiculturalism, extreme environmentalism, climate madness, wokism and every other form of collectivism. It must enslave its people, force everyone to think alike and pillage and plunder others to survive.

Twenty-first Century Progressives Mimic twenty-fourth Century Borg

Go back to the two prior paragraphs and substitute “progressive” for “Borg“. The similarities are stunning. Collectivism demands unflinching obeisance to its narratives. Progressives have a collective mentality and use the same talking points each day, just as though connected to the hive. They seek to control every aspect of life through coercion and repression. They do not think for themselves, and it is impossible to reason with them; they can only recite talking points and call you hateful names.

Progressives believe absurd contradictions, disdain facts, harbor utopian fantasies and have obsessive desires to control others and to take from them. They have antipathy for all who differ. Choice, by which they mean only abortion, is their mantra. However, progressives do not believe a woman should be free to choose to own or to carry a gun, where to school her children or whether or not to join a labor union. Liberals exist inside a hive – conjoined mentally with all other assimilated drones. Life inside the progressive hive is easy. There is no identity except that derived from the hive. There are no values but hive values; there are no thoughts but hive thoughts.

Resistance is not futile

In Star Trek, the Borg mantra is “Prepare to be assimilated; resistance is futile.” Today, progressivism is very close to assimilating every institution in America as listed in the lead paragraph. In Star Trek, humans eventually triumph over the Borg by exploiting their weaknesses, i.e. their lack of individuality and obeisance to groupthink.

We at More Liberty Less Government will continue to fight against progressivism and against all other misanthropic forms of hive collectivism. Resistance is not futile!

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Next up September 18th is our Constitution Day posting.

More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us
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California Screaming – Prince of Fools

George Noga

The republic can survive a Biden, but not an electorate that made him president.

California Screaming – Prince of Fools

By: George Noga – June 5, 2022

California Screaming: The Cato Institute recently published the results of its multi-year project, Poverty and Inequality in California. You may be surprised that California, despite Silicon Valley and Hollywood, has the highest poverty rate in the USA. Moreover, poverty and inequality are getting worse by the day. The study found the cause is “California laws, regulations and policies are regressive, trapping people in poverty. . . . These policies involve criminal justice, education, housing and welfare.” California has had the most progressive government of any state for decades. Instead of utopia, liberal ideas have wrought the worst poverty and inequality in America.

Freedom Index: Cato also just released its Index of Personal and Economic Freedom for 2021. The five highest ranking (most freedom) states are, in order, New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee and South Dakota. The lowest ranking (least freedom) are New York, Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Oregon. The states with the most freedom all are red or purple; the bottom dwellers all are deep blue. Americans are voting en masse with their feet for more liberty and less government.

Prince of Fools: Following (edited for length) is from a major European newspaper. “The danger to America is not Joe Biden, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him to the presidency. It will be far easier to undo the follies of a Biden presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to those who elected him. The problem is much deeper and more serious than Mr. Biden, who is but a symptom of what ails America. The republic can survive a prince of fools like Biden, but is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who elected him.”

If Biden is the prince of fools, Kamala Harris is the queen of fools. Although the Trump presidency, or at least its policies, turned out much better than expected, he never should have been nominated or elected. He won the nomination only because 15 professional politicians all misread the electorate. He was elected only because Hillary Clinton was radioactive. Biden won, despite obvious signs of cognitive decline, because suburban women were triggered by mean tweets. In 2024 it could very well be a Trump- Clinton rematch – see my post of 5/22/22 on our website: www.mllg.us. How much longer can our beloved republic survive an electorate like this?

Permanent State of Emergency: Governments at all levels have learned their powers are vastly increased during an emergency – even if they created the emergency. It is no wonder we are in a permanent state of emergency: pandemic emergency, voting rights emergency, climate emergency and now an energy emergency. Nothing encapsulates the fecklessness of the Biden Administration more than energy. Immediately upon taking office, Biden declared war on the US energy sector in every way possible.

Biden feigns shock energy production plummeted and prices skyrocketed. He declared an ersatz state of emergency to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, after first begging Venezuela (dirty oil) and Iran (fund terrorism) to produce more. Biden has reverted to the progressive playbook and is blaming greedy speculators and energy companies. Funny – these same groups were not greedy when prices were falling under Trump.

Achieving Perfect Equality: Since men first trod this earth, many have dreamt of a world with perfect equality; thanks to scientific advances, that now may be possible. The best minds on the planet could create a master algorithm incorporating all known markers of success. The algorithm would include DNA and would account for, inter alia, race, gender, sexual orientation, height, weight, IQ and life expectancy.

Key exogenous factors also would be included in the master algorithm: place of birth, social class, family income and education level, et seq. The result is a polygenic score assigned to everyone at birth. Those with positive scores would pay a polygenic tax while those with negative scores would receive a benefit – in direct proportion to how much the scores were positive or negative. If done correctly, this would make everyone equal. It is only a matter of time until progressives adopt this idea and run with it.

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Next: My lifetime of experience with government schools.

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us
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Identity Politics and Tribalism

George Noga

Identity politics is a cancer growing in America; we must not let it metastasize!

Identity Politics and Tribalism

By: George Noga – November 28, 2021

With progressives, it is identity politics uber alles. This is reflected in Biden’s cabinet, which includes the first African-American defense secretary, the first gay cabinet officer, the first woman of color to head OMB, the first woman DNI, the first Hispanic secretaries at Homeland Security and HHS and the first woman treasury secretary. Checking off all the PC racial, ethnic, gender and LGBTQ boxes is all that counts.

This monomaniacal focus on identity comes at a steep price. To begin, there are nagging doubts about merit, competence and true equality. Progressives wield diversity mainly as a weapon to silence criticism and opposition. They have created a tyranny of diversity which undermines other values. Moreover, identity politics harms those who putatively benefit from being placed in exalted positions; they are subject to lingering but sub-rosa questions whether they owe their positions to identity or to merit.

Identity politics leads to tribalism, misunderstanding, anger and hostility.

Identity politics inevitably intensifies tribalism, which is anathema to the body politic. Tribalism has been the default condition for most of human history, but life in a tribe is easy in all the wrong ways and for all the wrong reasons. Tribal members don’t ever have to think; they just believe whatever the tribe says is right. Now, due to identity politics, we are seeing more and more Americans becoming tribal about where and how they live, work, socialize, vacation, marry and educate their children. This leads to anger, misunderstanding and hostility. It is a cancer we must not let metastasize.

Identity Politics is a Marxist Construct

Identity politics has a Marxist provenance. At the heart of Marxism lies class struggle, the belief workers, abused by capitalism, would arise, seize the means of production and create a workers paradise. However, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out (see our 10/3/21 post at www.mllg.us), Marx did not see workers also as consumers; he believed they were slaves under capitalism and would remain slaves under socialism.

In actual practice, Soviet-style Marxism brutally murdered over 100 million of its own people. It was a economic disaster; see our 10/24/21 post about the Trabant compared to the Mercedes. The human carnage and economic destruction were so monumental, that even die-hard Marxists understood that workers in Western Europe, North America, Japan and elsewhere would never accept the idea of class struggle.

Marxists desperately needed an alternative, so they substituted race and ethnic struggle for class struggle, which led directly to identity politics and Critical Race Theory. They mean to end private property and redistribute everything according to race. They aim to abolish individual rights in favor of group rights based on race and ethnicity.

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Fortunately, many things unite Americans: culture, history, language, traditions, flag, manners, landmarks, national symbols and sacrifices of past generations. In closing, we recall the salving words of Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address.

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Next: Our Christmas special features that great humanitarian, Ebenezer Scrooge.
More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

Laboratories of Democracy – Part II Sixty Years of Liberal Governance

George Noga

After 60 years of total liberal control , all blue states can do is to cry “racism”.

Laboratories of Democracy – Part II

Sixty Years of Liberal Governance

By: George Noga – March 28, 2021

This is the second of MLLG’s four-part series: Laboratories of Democracy. In case you missed Part I – no worries; it is on our website: www.mllg.us. The idea underpinning laboratories of democracy is that, under our Constitution, states have enormous latitude to experiment with different laws and policies. States can, and often do, take different, and even opposite, positions on issues such as right-to-work, marijuana legalization and gun control to name but a few. Over a period of decades, it should be possible to compare results and to adopt the successful policies and to reject the failed ones.

If one political party, governing under one unified philosophy, could control all the levers of power in entire states for 50-60 consecutive years, surely that should provide ample time to demonstrate the success or failure of that governance. There are such places in America; this is the story of the ones that experimented with and tested progressive shibboleths and liberal dogma for at least the past half century.

Liberals and their media adjuncts are absolutely certain their ideas are correct and that opposing ideas are not only wrong but dangerous and even evil. Surely, if there were places in America where they could showcase their ideas for a long enough time, it would prove beyond any doubt that liberalism worked. Surely, their economies would thrive and hordes of people would move there. Surely, it would provide a great quality of life and social harmony. Surely, such a veritable Xanadu would demonstrate the utter bankruptcy and depravity of capitalism, free markets and conservatism.

What would such a progressive utopia be like? It would have a high minimum wage, no right-to-work law and universal unionization – with great pay, benefits, job security and early retirement with medical benefits. It would defund the police and abolish cash bail. It would be highly regulated by a massive bureaucracy. Its schools, controlled by teachers unions, would spend double the national average per pupil. It would tax (personal and business) and borrow whatever was necessary to pay for it all.

Such a utopia would be a sanctuary state with uber-strict gun control. The homeless would be welcomed even if it endangered public health and safety. Shoplifting, drugs and arson would be decriminalized. New pipelines would be banned and green energy mandated. Rent control would be universal and evictions banned. If a pandemic hit there would be lengthy lockdowns and closures – including all schools. To cap it off, government would be run predominantly by woke minority elected officials.

These progressive utopias exist and have names; they are called Illinois, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Rhode Island. What are they like after 60 years under the progressive yoke? Are people streaming in from red state hellholes? These liberal utopias, like all utopias throughout history, are dystopian wastelands where life has become toxic and people are escaping in droves to red states.

It is impossible to hold a perfumed handkerchief to one’s nose to somehow make these progressive snake pits smell right. People are voting with their feet. Liberalism failed and failed abjectly. Even liberals are tacitly conceding their dogma is poisonous. They know government schools can’t educate inner city children, so they quit. Instead of uplifting poor kids, they are destroying successful ones by abolishing advanced and gifted programs. By gosh – if everybody can’t get on the lifeboat, no one can.

It is incandescently clear: politics is not the pathway to black success.

So, progressives and their media acolytes simply quit. After 60 years they no longer can escape what so plainly stares them in the face. But, instead of taking responsibility for their failure, they are resorting to their old chestnut, i.e. blaming it on racism. In the end, liberals always resort to screaming systemic racism; that’s all they have.

There is one other critical lesson in all this. For the past 60 years, as black elected officials increased from 1,000 to 25,000 (including a two-term president), it is incandescently clear politics is not the pathway to black success. There is no relationship between the success of black leaders and inner city black families; maybe success has more to do with stable families, education, and hard work.

 

April 4th is Part III – Travels in Blue State America.

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Real Doctors Versus Witch Doctors

George Noga

Progressivism drowns everyone in an endless sea of myths, banalities and outright lies.

Real Doctors Versus Witch Doctors

By: George Noga – February 28, 2021

The most disturbing trend in America today is the rapidly escalating number and gravity of disconnects between empirical reality and political correctness – between objective fact and logic on the one hand and vapid progressivism on the other.

I feel like a real doctor amidst a coven of witch doctors. I approach issues in a fact-based, logical manner; they screech truth-defying progressive mantras in unison like imps and banshees, believing the more often and louder they regurgitate their pallid screeds makes them truthful. I advocate principled solutions to public policy issues; they shriek socialistic incantations and prescribe antiscience remedies like applying leeches, bleeding and administering arsenic to bring the humours into balance.

As we begin the third decade of the twenty-first century, a cornucopia of marvels, thanks to free market capitalism, confronts us. Space flight is commonplace, medicine routinely performs miracles and technology brings us mind-boggling gadgets. Every measure of human well-being is the best it has been and is getting better all the time. Similarly, environmental metrics are the best in about 100 years and getting better.

Breathtaking social progress has been made in my lifetime. The status of women, minorities, LGTBQs and even animals has been elevated and virtually all vestiges of discrimination eliminated. The few racists that still exist are regarded by the rest of us as troglodytes; all of them could comfortably fit inside a high school gymnasium. Extreme poverty is nearly eliminated worldwide; in the US material poverty is reduced to 2%-3% of the population and exists mainly among those with cognitive disabilities, untreated mental illness and substance abuse. Food is so cheap the age old paradigm of the affluent being corpulent while the poor are gaunt has been reversed.

Progressivism is twenty-first century witchcraft

Amidst this horn of plenty there is one dismal creed that is seeking to reverse all the aforementioned miracles. That is progressivism and the misanthropic stepchildren it has spawned and midwifed. It goes by many names: ANTIFA, political correctness, BLM, environmentalism and democratic socialism. It brands its opponents heretics and seeks to control their speech just as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. It drowns everyone in an endless sea of myths, irrelevances, banalities, inanities and outright lies. Progressivism is a dark force that panders to the lesser angels of our nature.

Progressives have long sought to implement their agenda through government. They already control public schools, universities, entertainment, labor unions and the media. They are taking over corporations, social media, technology companies, sports and even science. These dark forces are metastasizing worse than kudzu and with the same effect. They now may be able to achieve their goals without government.

Witchcraft is defined as “the exercise or invocation of alleged magical powers to control people or events.” BINGO! Progressivism is simply twenty-first century witchcraft – not unlike that of the Middle Ages. Witchcraft may work for a time but eventually people quit believing – when progressives’ “magic” time after time proves to be ineffective and destructive. Until such time arrives, MLLG will continue to present fact-based, principled analysis and prescriptions that work – like a real doctor.

Next on March 7th is our retrospective on the Trump presidency.
More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

California’s Condor Cuisinarts

George Noga
Birds provide a gripping illustration of the hypocrisy of progressivism.
California’s Condor Cuisinarts
By: George Noga – October 6, 2019

        Progressivism is a bundle of inconsistencies, contradictions and outright lies, often taking opposite sides of the same issue when suiting its narrative. We have written on this topic before; visit our website www.mllg.us to see our posts of December 2, 2018 entitled Liberals Believe the Strangest Things and, if you have time on your hands, see our May 8, 2014 post www.mllg.us, Liberalism is for the Birds. Many other issues showcase liberal intellectual bankruptcy, but none finer than birds.

        Libs go gaga over birds whenever it suits their purpose. The Audubon Society estimated 2,300 birds were killed from the BP accident during which the media saturated us with photos of a pelican dripping with oil, only to later find the photo had nothing to do with BP. They hyped bird safety to try and kill offshore drilling.

        A pipeline leak, which killed a handful of ducks, became a progressive feeding frenzy to stop all new pipelines. Bird safety was a major part of the latte-left effort to halt the Keystone XL Pipeline and to oppose every fossil fuel project including fracking. Activists used the Endangered Species Act to list the prairie chicken and sage grouse as threatened species to try to stop all drilling on federal and private land.

          Now, let’s see how liberals regard birds when they don’t fit into their narrative.

         Saving the California condor was the holy grail of avian causes until condors ran afoul of an even holier progressive shibboleth – green energy. Over half the condors released in the wild have been killed, most by wind turbines; they are part of the million birds killed yearly by turbines, including bald eagles, hawks, golden eagles and owls. California wind farms have become veritable condor cuisinarts.

Liberals argue we must kill 126,000 eagles in order to save them.

        Just one wind farm (Altamont Pass near Oakland) kills 80 golden eagles each year. Progressives support the issuance of a federal taking permit to allow wind farms legally to kill 4,200 bald eagles each year for the next 30 years; that’s 126,000 eagles. In support of the taking permit, environmentalists argue climate change ultimately will kill even more eagles; therefore, we must kill eagles now in order to save them.

          In contrast, all fossil fuel activity kills about 1,000 birds a year versus 1 million for wind energy, i.e. 1,000 birds are slaughtered by wind farms for every bird killed by fossil fuels. Nonetheless, the Obama Administration filed criminal indictments against three oil companies for inadvertently killing 6 ducks. Liberals give the wind industry a get-out-of-jail-free card, while criminalizing oil companies for infinitesimally less.

          Solar energy projects also exterminate birds. The Ivanpah project, which covers five square miles (350,000 mirrors) in California’s desert, scorches birds, including peregrine falcons and great hawks, that fly overhead with its 1,000 degree heat. Solar farms also end up killing huge numbers of threatened desert tortoises. Just as with wind farms, progressives acquiesce while threatened species are savaged.

         Earlier this year in Scotland, a white-throated needletail was sighted for the first time in 22 years. Excited birdwatchers flocked to the Hebrides to catch a glimpse. While they were watching, the rare bird flew into a wind turbine and was killed. No doubt, progressives view this as a necessary avain sacrifice on the altar of wind energy. Imagine how they would have reacted if the needletail was killed in an oil spill.

         Progressivism is a lie and birds are but one way to showcase its hypocrisy.

Next up is our gloriously politically incorrect post honoring Columbus Day.
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us

Wanted: More Millionaires and Billionaires

George Noga
Newly minted millionaires and billionaires are essential for a thriving society.
Wanted: More Millionaires and Billionaires
By: George Noga – April 7, 2019

         Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned “a system that allows billionaires to exist“. Her chief of staff tweeted “Every billionaire is a policy mistake.” Pocahontas called billionaires “freeloaders“. Bernie Sanders said “Billionaires’ insatiable greed is having an unbelievably negative impact on the fabric of our country“. The economic illiteracy of such people is staggering. Even the laughable commie economists (oxymoron) of the old USSR understood that new millionaires were vital to economic success.

      In a market economy, one becomes rich only by creating a product or service voluntarily purchased by sovereign consumers. The more people helped, the greater the wealth. Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos became billionaires by improving the lives of hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people. Newly created wealth is the best metric for gauging how well a society is innovating and serving the needs of its people. A society with no new wealth creation is stagnating.

        Many who well understand that wealth creators are vital to America’s prosperity, nonetheless believe inherited wealth is evil. They are wrong; however, we leave that issue for another day. We do note however that almost all great wealth is dissipated within three generations due to the ever-increasing number of heirs, estate taxes, charitable bequests and poor decision making. Also, much of the motivation of the original wealth creators was to provide financial security for future generations.

        Not only is the latte left dead wrong about wealth creation, its positions on many other economic issues – tax rates, minimum wage, free college, Medicare for all and rent control – are voodoo economics and nothing short of modern day witchcraft.

Income tax rates/minimum wage: These were subjects of full postings on March 3 and 10 respectively and are available on our website: www.mllg.us. In those posts, we showed that higher tax rates do not result in more tax revenue and that minimum wages are insidious and harmful, especially to the people they purport to help.

Free college: Social science degrees from overcrowded schools, with courses taught by graduate assistants, are cruel hoaxes. The inevitable result is a surfeit of psychology, sociology and hyphenated-studies majors driving for Uber. Free college devalues all college degrees and the added competition from more degrees suppresses wages. There will be more degreed people seeking the same number of jobs requiring degrees.

Rent Control: Government creates housing shortages by restricting development and then compounds it by enacting rent control. They blame landlords when the problem is due entirely to government failures. Ultimately, it leads to more homelessness.

Medicare for all: The bill Democrats introduced in Congress provides for rationing and reinstitutes the dreaded Obamacare death panels. Even the Canadian system, which is better than many, is a failure; see our July 22, 2018 post entitled “Canadians Flock to Whitefish“. In Canada, the median wait time between referral and treatment is 21 weeks and years in some provinces. Over one million Canadians (3%) are on wait lists when same day service is inexpensive and readily available in the USA.

        Progressives prefer to attack the wealthy rather than to improve the lot of the poor; they care more about appearances, class warfare and political talking points than about results; it is much easier to demagogue billionaires than it is to reduce poverty. Instead of billionaires being policy mistakes, good economic policy fosters creation of more billionaires. Most Americans don’t resent success, they want to achieve it!

Our next post challenges Hillary Clinton’s claim to winning the 2016 popular vote.