Billions of dollars are spent with little or no results for the investment.
Welcome to the July Agribusiness issue of NorthBay biz magazine. Also featured in this month’s issue is a special report on Healthy Living. Given that California’s economy has been driven primarily by the tech industry’s boom or bust business cycles, it’s nice to focus on the more traditional and more stable agriculture industry. In the North Bay, the ag community not only sets the economic tone, but also the rhythm of life. So please enjoy the stories, special features and columns as we attempt to capture the spirit of what makes life here in the North Bay so special.
“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” —James Bovard
With that thought as the opening for this month’s column, I thought I’d posit some ideas and pose some questions that I find troubling. The country has been veering to the political left for decades now—and sharply left for the past several years. Imposing socialism as the guiding vision for our country by enacting its programs and ideas as solutions is certainly a radical departure from the philosophy that made this country a singular success in the world.
As Social Security approaches bankruptcy, welfare spending grows exponentially. Veterans requiring care are denied treatment by a system rife with incompetence and corruption. Pay raises for our active military are denied while benefits for illegal aliens are increased. The American capitalistic system is characterized as corrupt and greedy as the left continues to divide the country by encouraging every group to think of itself as victims entitled to special treatment.
The real disconnect here, one that’s especially prevalent in urban centers, is that the people who’ve been encouraged to think of themselves as victims are the same people who’ve been electing representatives who promise to right these wrongs. And what’s happened? In almost every instance, the problems have only grown worse—more poverty, more crime, fewer jobs, bad schools, more families without fathers and less hope for escaping this cycle of hopelessness. Billions of dollars are spent with little or no results for the investment. Welfare, for far too many, has become institutionalized as a way of life as big government robs individuals of their futures all in the name of good intentions.
Only politicians possess the temerity to lecture an audience about the greedy rich at a $25,000 per plate fund-raising dinner. Who else would accuse people of being “extremists” for merely expressing views in favor of balancing the federal budget? Who else but a politician could stand at the podium and accuse “rich people,” who pay 86 percent of all income tax collected, of not paying their fair share? Only in today’s America can it be claimed racist to require people to show identification to vote. How is it possible, after collecting more income tax revenue than at any other time in the history of the country, for the federal government to still spend $1 trillion more than it collects? Current total annual federal spending eclipses $7 million per minute,and yet the federal government still claims it doesn’t have enough of our money. (Spending of that magnitude is hard to fathom.)
So here we are, almost eight years and trillions of dollars later: Has this unprecedented level of spending by the federal government revived our moribund economy? The administration’s stated goal was to implement an agenda that would create jobs to reignite the economy and return the nation to prosperity. However, contrary to the stated goals, policies were enacted that were certain to further constrain economic improvement.
Here are a few examples of those policies: Arbitrarily ignoring immigration laws and letting millions of illegals enter the country (further taxing an overburdened welfare system with additional costs while potentially taking jobs away from citizens willing to work); raising personal and capital gains taxes, thereby reducing the amount of capital available for business growth and investment; redefining the meaning of work in welfare to work that actually encouraged not working; refusing to build a pipeline that would potentially lower the cost of fuel while creating tens of thousands of new jobs; and mandating a national health care program that increased costs for every taxpaying family while adding trillions to the national debt despite promises to the contrary.
Why have the vestiges of the recession lingered so long, stifling even a modest recovery, let alone a robust one? It’s a direct result of the policies I’ve mentioned and hundreds more like them. This persistent attack on our capitalist system and the attempt to replace it with one that’s failed everywhere in the world it’s been tried is, predictably, failing once again. No matter the glowing rhetoric and best intentions, its vision is filled with empty promises.
That’s it for now. Enjoy this month’s magazine.
