Jerry Ahern

     At lunch today, Sharon and I were discussing our usual mixture of personal, business and political “stuff.” Ever since the disastrous 2008 Presidential Election, we’ve been talking politics more and more. This morning, when I fired up the computers, FOX News and AP were both proclaiming that the guy living in The White House and his minions were planning to levy some additional taxes on the institutions which received an infusion of bailout funds. It seems like the current administration and its Congressional cronies can’t do anything without including a new tax or tax hike. And, we were talking about a friend who’s not very well off and had just undergone major surgery, in its aftermath experiencing some startling revelations about the extent to which his caregivers would be compensated — not very well, considering the heroic measures undertaken to save our friend’s life. He and I got in to discussing – and not resolving, by any means – what moral obligation there might or might not be for a governmental entity to pay for someone’s health care – sort of a microcosm of the macrocosm, as it were, with the Leftists in Washington trying to kidnap the nation’s health care industry.
     To help people who cannot afford health care and the extent to which this is done is a complex moral question, to be sure. But, neither Sharon nor I see any moral or philosophical questions relevant to the proposed health care bills in Congress. What is proposed is theft, pure and simple. Stealing businesses, money and choice from the American people is not one of the powers granted to Congress in The United States Constitution. A lot of folks in both Houses of Congress seem to have missed that concept.
     But, yet, certain things have to be paid for by governments. Not all the silly crap and pork barrel spending, but worthwhile expenditures such as national defense, the interstate highway system, the space program, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Weather Service and its related organizations, etc.
     How do you do this without stealing greater and greater sums of money from businesses and individuals? Margaret Thatcher once said, “The trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.” What if you took other peoples’ money out of the equation? Gradually, of course. The United States Government tossed fortunes into a number of companies lately, most notably, perhaps, General Motors and Chrysler Corporation. Why not use this as the basis for a new start?
     The problem in The United States as relates to government spending is we – individuals, small businesses, large corporations, banks, etc. – all function as Capitalists and that’s the way it should be, because Capitalism is the finest economic system ever created. The “rub,” however, is that the government runs not like anything having to do with Capitalism, but Socialism, instead.
     During the American Civil War, an income tax was imposed in the North for a brief period. This was in 1862 and ended in 1872. In the 1890s, there was another experiment in income tax. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed, saying, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” By fiscal year 1918, the government had scored its first cool billion in income tax revenues. Who’d give up on swag like that? Withholding taxes were first begun in 1943, thus cutting out the middle man — you.
     Why not gradually use the government’s investments of our money in private businesses as the start of various government owned – meaning, citizen owned – businesses. Let’s say the government has a mighty share in GM and Chrysler. As those companies hopefully become profitable again, just like any shareholders, the American citizenry gets dividends and those dividends get put into the Federal Budget. We get our people in Congress – and, if they won’t co-operate, we use recalls and regular elections to dump them and get trustworthy replacements – to mandate through legislation that citizen oversight boards make certain that partially government owned GM and Chrysler aren’t competing unfairly with non-government owned Ford and the import based brands. Free market economy!
     Take this idea many steps further. You can choose to shop at Kroger or Jewel Tea or wherever else or at “U.S. Government Grocers,” and the government has to actually compete for your business and pay profits into the general revenue fund. Want to buy a new handgun? Maybe you’d pick up on a Glock or SIG or Smith & Wesson. Or, maybe, you check out the models available from “U.S. Government Firearms Manufacturing.” All the profits made, after expenses, go toward meeting the nation’s expenses, then eradicating the huge debt we owe to China and others, while parts of the profits from “U.S. Government Dairies” and “U.S. Government Airways” and “Uncle Sam’s U.S. Government Hamburgers, Under The Golden Sign Of The Dollar,” go into replacing the almost countless self-destructing bridges and roads that are part of our nation’s gradually crumbling infrastructure.
     In the far distant future, when all government debt is paid and more money is coming in through these investments made on behalf of American citizens, the government can do like the state government of Alaska has done with oil revenue profits – send every citizen a check each year.
     Let’s try Capitalism, because it’s a cinch that what the government is doing now certainly isn’t working! Let me know what you think, if you care to.

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