What’s Mine is Mine What’ s Yours is Negotiable

The economy is scheduled to plunge off a cliff in January. 

Back in the first two years after the Progressive’s November Revolution of 2008, the big government party enacted tax increases not scheduled to take place until after the 2012 elections. They also passed Obamacare which carries within it multiple tax increases, which are also scheduled to take affect after the 2012 election.  Combine these with previous tax rollbacks scheduled to expire in January 2013 and we are looking at the major economic crisis the progressives have worked so hard to create so they can then work so hard to solve. 

In 2010 the voters got a chance to let the central planners know what they thought of what had been done with the power entrusted to them in 2008.  However, with only one house of Congress in Republican hands they were unable to reverse any of the changes made in the first two years of the Obama administration, so come January we hit the wall.

This manufactured economic crisis will be used by the triumphant Progressives as proof that capitalism doesn’t work.  Then following their play book, since too much government wrecked the economy we need more government to fix the economy.  They will tighten the already strangulating regulatory straight jacket.  If Obamacare is upheld and implemented, within a few years it will kill the private insurance industry as company after company figures out it is cheaper to pay the fines imposed than purchase the insurance required.  The flight of paying customers from the private insurance companies will force them into bankruptcy.  Remember even if they used deceptive language at the moment of passing the bill President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid were on the record many times saying what they were aiming at was a single payer European type healthcare system.  And we can all see how well that is working out for the Europeans.

They will also use the failure of the insurance industry as more proof that capitalism doesn’t work.

As President Obama travels around the country inciting class warfare with his constant attacks on the millionaires and billionaires which he tells us aren’t paying their fair share he continues to accept vast amounts of money from those same millionaires and billionaires.  While his administration imposes regulation after regulation that every day makes it harder to start new businesses, maintain or expand small businesses he turns a blind eye to the continued casino like atmosphere at the largest banks: the ones that are too big to fail and which should be too big to bail.

The largest bank in the country, J. P. Morgan Chase just lost another couple of billions in risky credit derivatives that their own chairman says were ill-conceived, poorly executed, and not managed very well.  This is the same bank that President Obama says is one the best run banks in America and the same chairman who has visited the Whitehouse at least 18 times since 2009..  The Chairman of the Board Jamie Diamom, the one in charge when all the poor execution was going on was just voted 23 million dollars in compensation while the stockholders take it in the wallet. 

Crony capitalism, where the public takes the risk and bears the loss while the cronies who contribute money to the politicians reap the benefits is alive and well.  Favored corporation such as GE whose chairman, Jeffrey R. Immelt serves on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness makes billions in profit and often pays nothing in taxes.  Personally I believe there should be no corporate taxes since they are in reality double taxation but taxing some while exempting others is the worst kind of Corporatism and the President merely uses this system to reward donors and then turns around and attacks this pay-to-play system as an example of the rich not paying their fair share.

There is a con game going on.  Straw men are being set up only to be knocked down.  Our fellow Americans who get their news from Jay Leno and the Daily Show have no idea what is being done.  They swallow the party line as belched out by the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and troop to the polls to vote for the same party their fathers and grandfathers voted for.  But the major parties today aren’t ideologically, organizationally, or in practice the same parties America has known.

Neither party stands for smaller government, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.  At one time they both stood for these fundamentally American concepts.  Operating like the twin heads of one bird of prey, both major parties expand the government and add to the regulatory burden which is changing America from the Land of the Free into a totalitarian morass that is stagnating its way from the first world to the second world. 

From the beginning of the primary process it was obvious that Romney was the anointed choice of the establishment Republicans and the media.  Now that he has been all but chosen it is time for the Democrats to scare up a third party somewhere somehow.  President Obama’s record of socialist accomplishments is so stunning it has even aroused enough of the politically comatose to push him back to the 40+% of the electorate who would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for anyone except a Democrat.  He has lost the independents and the undecided.  His only chance for victory is a third party, so there will be a third party even if the Democrats have to invent it and pay for it themselves.

As the big day, the day when we as voters will get a chance to reverse the November Revolution of 2008, watch as a third party emerges, well-funded and well prepared.  This third party will say all the right things.  They will come across as conservative ideologically and economically.  They will probably even try to portray themselves as the organized expression of the thousands of independent Tea Parties across the country.

No third party has won a presidential election in America since 1860.  The rules have been rigged, and so many people vote instinctively for the party their fathers voted for the odds of a third party winning are close to the odds of winning the power ball.

If the progressives win one more election they will cement in their transformation of America from a land based on equal opportunity to a land of based on equal outcome.  Everyone gets the same thing except of course for those who divvy up the swag.  Those who divide what they take from the producers to give to the non-producers always seem to end up with everything while everyone else gets just enough to get by long enough to produce something else that can be expropriated by an all-powerful central government.

The Progressives who have taken control of America act as if all the money we earn is theirs and the only debate is about how much they will let us keep.  And they constantly remind us that the government can’t afford to leave us with too much money.  If they did we wouldn’t be dependent on them. 

Maybe we should change the motto from E Pluribus Unum to What’s Mine is Mine What’s Yours is Negotiable.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

If I Wanted to Make America Prosperous Again

First, I would ask myself how did our ancestors build America from an agricultural colony on the edge of civilization into the number one manufacturing and commercial nation the world had ever known. 

Why reinvent the wheel if round ones still roll?

The early American colonies of the British were founded based upon the economic ideas of Mercantilism.  Governmental regulation of industries, trade, and commerce characterized Mercantilism as every aspect of the economy was utilized for national policy. This was especially true with foreign trade, which was determined more by national aims rather than individual or local interests.

The definition of wealth began to change in the sixteenth century.  During the Middle Ages, wealth was defined by the amount of productive land a nation possessed.  As transportation, especially by sea, improved so did the ability to conduct foreign trade bringing with it an increase in the amount of cash generated by that trade.  The definition of wealth came to be the amount of cash a nation possessed.  Therefore every nation sought to have a favorable balance of trade.  They also sought to develop monopolistic type environments wherein they provided their own raw materials thus avoiding imports which meant money flowing out and fostering the export of finished goods raising the level of money flowing in.  Defining wealth as the accumulation of cash, the nations of Europe desired to conduct foreign trade on a larger scale, and they began looking for foreign sources of gold, silver, and raw materials.

This brings us to the British effort to develop North America as a source of wealth.

The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland were the first successful British colonies in what was to become the United States of America.  Though the initial colonists came looking for gold they soon learned that prosperity came not from a shovel but instead from a plow.  It was tobacco that primed the pump and lifted the colonies from a burden to a benefit for the mother country.  After years of mounting expenses for the British and years of starvation for the colonists the cultivation of tobacco brought prosperity.  Virginia’s production of tobacco grew from 200,000 pounds in 1624 to 3,000,000 pounds in 1638 overtaking the West Indies as the number one supplier of tobacco for all of Europe thus boosting Britain’s balance of trade.

The cultivation of tobacco fostered a plantation system based upon indentured and slave labor.  A gentrified class of great planters sought to replicate the social structure of Britain with a small number of very rich ruling a large number of small land holders who prospered to a certain extent but never enough to challenge the status quo.  The wretched poor of Britain who had come to the Chesapeake colonies to find a better life did find more opportunity and the ability to advance from the landless poor to the ranks of yeoman farmer.  However, there was little opportunity to enter the ranks for the gentry which became a type of American nobility.

New England, because of the soil, the climate, and the fact that there was no major cash crop that grew well in the area, did not lend itself to large plantations.  Most farmers were operating at a subsistence level.  If they did generate a surplus it was in crops that were not easily transported across the ocean, and they were also crops that could be grown in England and were not needed as imports.

This climatic and environmental adversity did not condemn New England to being a poor relation to the Chesapeake nobility.  Instead the New English diversified, innovated, and used individual enterprise to not only match but to surpass Chesapeake and every other colony in the British Empire.  Those who settled New England were Puritans who sought to purify the Anglican religion of ceremony and return it to what they saw as the simplicity of early Christianity.  They did not believe that good works brought salvation but they did believe that salvation brought good works.  Therefore they sought to occupy their time with productive activity to glorify God through their labors.  This was a manifestation of what the sociologist Max Weber later called , “The Protestant work ethic.”  Whatever you choose to call it, it was this drive to succeed no matter what the adversity that led the New English to look beyond the soil, beyond the climate and to the opportunity.

First they exploited the fisheries of the Northeast.  In 1641 the New English caught 600,000 pounds of fish much of which was exported to Britain.  By 1645 they were catching more than 6,000,000 pounds per year employing more than a thousand men on 440 ships.  They came to dominate the fish trade shipping not only to Britain and its empire but also to Spain, Portugal, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands. 

By the end of the 1600s the merchants of the New English coast began to circle the globe trading the fish, surplus crops, and lumber of their area to all parts of the British Empire.  They became such shrewd traders that soon American ships were carrying trade from one colony to another even when the cargo didn’t originate in New England.  This secondary carrying trade generated a growing profit that in turn rebounded in a number of ways.  The increased profits brought home financed increased industry and growth at home, and it also spawned a shipbuilding industry which exploited the vast resources of the northern forests. 

Between 1674 and 1714 the New English built more than 1200 ships, totaling more than 75,000 tons.  By 1700 there were fifteen shipyards in Boston which produced more ships than all the rest of the British colonies combined.  Only London had more shipyards.  This was a significant engine of economic growth.  To build one 150 ton merchant ship required as many as 200 workers, mostly skilled craftsmen.  The shipyards also supported the growth of numerous enterprises to supply their needs such as saw mills, smithies, barrel makers, sail makers, iron foundries, and rope makers. In addition, the farmers of New England benefited by feeding the craftsmen, supplying the ships, and providing the timber.

By 1700 Boston was the third city of the Empire behind only London and Bristol and the New English shippers were earning freight charges for carrying produce and material that was neither produced, shipped to, or shipped from their home colony.  The enrichment of the area spread prosperity far beyond the sphere of shippers, sailors, and their sundry suppliers.  According to Boston’s shipping register for 1697-1714 over 25% of the adult males in Boston owned shares in at least one ship. 

All of these linkages produced an economy filled with diversification and development as opposed to the stratified monoculture of the Chesapeake colonies.

These trends continued as time went on leading to the industrial North eventually overwhelming the agricultural South.  The expansion and growth of America was based upon a foundation of hard work and innovation born of adversity.  Finding themselves in a hard place Americans found a way to prosper and grow like a young plant reaching for the sun.  Freed from the rigid restraints of the home country and then guaranteed freedom by the constitution and the limited government it provided America surged to the front ranks of nations.

Today, America labors under self-imposed adversity.  We are in the grip of an oppressive Progressive Movement that after 100 years of incremental advance is poised to transform America from what she has always been into what they want her to be.  America has traditionally been a constitutionally limited Republic operating on democratic principles providing individual liberty and economic opportunity.  The Progressives envision America as a centrally-planned highly regimented social democracy where the wealth is spread around from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs .

If I wanted to make America prosperous again I would take off the self-imposed shackles of a central government on steroids, stop imposing new regulations, and reduce taxes everywhere on everyone.  Then I would stand back and watch our economy takes off like a rocket and we take our place beside our ancestors as free people with economic liberty and a will to succeed.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens