Consider, if you will, a recent article in Rolling Stone, authored by Mr. Jesse A. Myerson, entitled:
Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For
I encourage Patch readers (and especially those referred to as Millennials) to read Mr. Myerson's article before proceeding.
Such is what passes for journalism today: Everything "blows". Such is the thoughtless tripe millions of our younger people are digesting...when they aren't reading novels glamorizing vampires and werewolves.
For a growing number of younger adults in America today, the idea of the public ownership of all wealth, property, and the means of production has come to have great appeal. Much like the photo above, their image of a hip and chic new society in which everyone willingly shares everything fairly and equitably seems like a good way to go. Unfortunately hip, chic, fair, and equitable is not what eventually happens in any Communist nor even most entirely Socialist societies. To confirm this for themselves, all Millennials need do is spend a bit of time talking to anyone who has escaped from such a place. There is a reason such places tend to build walls around themselves. It is to keep their own people from fleeing, not to keep others from entering.
Many are not aware that some of the early Pilgrims actually tried a form of Communism when they arrived in the new world. For those who have not heard how that early experiment in Communism failed miserably, and how adopting more capitalistic approaches ultimately saved them, I encourage you to read an article entitled "The Pilgrim’s Failed Socialist Experiment", by Dr. Harold Pease.
As with our own early experiment with a milder form of Communism, the entire world's history is replete with examples of other failed attempts to order societies according to Communist or entirely Socialist approaches. In these societies, the vast majority of the people may indeed be financially "equal", but it is an equality of misery and of poverty. The only people that do well in such societies are the people who are running them. Communist and Socialist leaders are typically very wealthy.
But how can this be, if everyone in such societies are supposed to be "equal"? It is because in such societies, Communism and Socialism are intended for everyone else...not for the ruling elites. If you truly seek complete wealth distribution, you will not find it in such societies. You will find that the ruling elites in such societies typically live in mansions and palaces, while everyone else lives in whatever sub-standard, generic housing units those ruling elites have determined are most appropriate for them.
In the interest of complete clarity, as governmental systems, Communism and Socialism do have some distinct differences. Socialism can be accurately characterized as Communism-light.
In Communism, the means of production are held in common, negating the concept of ownership in capital goods. Production is organized to provide for human needs directly without any use for money. Communism is predicated upon a condition of material abundance.
By contrast, in Socialism, the means of production are owned by public enterprises or cooperatives, and individuals are compensated based on the principle of individual contribution. Production may variously be coordinated through either economic planning or markets.
Readers can learn more about the various differences, and similarities, between the two systems here.
Returning to the Rolling Stone piece, Myerson offers five economic reforms he suggests Millennials "might want to start fighting for, pronto, if (they) want to grow old in a just, fair society..."
"Guaranteed work for everybody"
Sorry Millennials, there are no "guarantees" in life except that one day you will surely die. For the most part in this life, you get what you earn, or what your forebears may have earned, or what the funds you have earned, earn in return through your savings and investments.
Be exceedingly cautious, also, of any government-offered "guarantee" of much of anything. Recall that President Obama and his willing dupes in Congress spent considerable energy and taxpayer dollars "guaranteeing" many things related to the ill-named "Affordable Care Act", precious few of which have since come to pass.
Recall that here in the U.S. we kicked off our own "war on poverty" back in the 1960's with many lofty guarantees from government that we would significantly reduce poverty here, if not eliminate it altogether. We established largely socialistic programs such as "Welfare" and "Social Security" under "guarantees" that these would largely end all poverty and need in our nation. Have they? Of course they haven't. Instead, under our current President alone, we have increased welfare entitlements a hundredfold and our Social Security program is all but bankrupt.
Shouldn't the success of a socialistic program such as "Welfare" assessed based upon how much less the nation needs it? So why do we have more people on welfare than ever before? If Socialism works, how can this be?
Having a job implies that someone is willing to trade their funds for your labor. In what rational labor equation should some employer, whether government or otherwise, create a job solely for the purpose of providing someone with employment? Such jobs would be, by definition, utterly meaningless. They would produce nothing other than the labor required to complete them. Labor for its own sake is pointless. To be meaningful it must produce a product or provide a service that others want or need.
How does employing people to dig ditches only to fill them back up again meet this criteria? Put simply, it does not. All such jobs do is create the illusion of utility and usefulness. They only assuage the need of some to feel better about themselves...to deceive themselves into believing that creating such jobs makes any constructive difference whatsoever or in any way addresses the larger challenges of poverty or unemployment.
Can such jobs sometimes help create and maintain needed pubic infrastructure? Sure. Please tell me what infrastructure our nation currently needs that has not already been created? And again, please tell me where the funds come from to pay the wages of millions of new government workers to maintain the infrastructure we already have? Our nations roads and bridges are not crumbling from a lack of people to do the work to maintain them but, rather, from a lack of funds required for materials and worker compensation. Government produces no wealth, all it can do is print currency. The more it prints with no new wealth to support it, the more valueless that currency becomes.
Similarly, government jobs also do nothing to produce wealth. In the private sector, the employee contributes to creating actual wealth, a share of which that worker then receives in the form of his or her compensation. Government jobs provide various services, nothing more. So whence comes the funds to compensate government workers? Put simply: It comes from taking it from others (through taxation) and through borrowing (incurring debt).
The government which would create Myerson's new government jobs owns no wealth of its own and, so, must either tax it away from others or borrow the funds needed to pay all of its new workers. Borrowing further indebts all taxpayers who must ultimately repay these debts from the income they earn through doing work of the more productive sort. This, in turn, reduces the taxpayers' ability to improve their own lives and care for their own families, often forcing them to rely, in turn, on some form of public assistance in order to get by.
In this way the vicious cycle of unemployment and poverty not only continues, but worsens. Come on, Millennials. Think!
"Social Security for all"
Sounds nice. Again, who pays? If, as Myerson suggests, all are receiving social security, who then is funding it? Oh that's right "the rich". News flash, Millennials, we could strip every penny of wealth from every "rich" person in the country and it would not fund our existing government-sponsored entitlement programs for a single week. So after we impoverish the evil "rich", who will pay for all of these social program increases next week? Hmm? Are you thinking yet?
"Take back the land"
Ah yes..."Look about you, Millennials", says Myerson, "other people have used the funds they or their forbears earned to purchase properties and construct buildings on those properties. They then use those buildings to generate wealth in the form of rents and leases."
Rather than suggesting that you earn your own funds and use them to purchase your own properties and construct your own buildings, creating your own wealth, Myerson believes we should use government to "take" those properties and buildings that others own and give them to someone else, for the uses that government prefers.
Yes, yes...."the man" (i.e. government) is very wicked and selfish, right up until you need him to impose a tax upon someone else or confiscate property legally owned by another. How does the government accomplish this? Will it just ask nicely and these property owners will be happy to acquiesce? Not likely. So how does the government compel them to do so? It sends armed officers to forcefully eject them. You would be comfortable with that? Many of you often condemn our current society as a thuggish "police state." How would this not be a clear example of the very armed government activity you typically condemn?
Are your eyes beginning to open yet? Is your naïveté starting to dissolve to any degree?
"Make everything owned by everybody"
Here, again, we should apparently use the government (which is otherwise seen as detestable and militaristic) to "buy up" all the capital stock owned by others. The government owns no funds of its own, so who does it take these funds from in order to "buy up" all of this capital stock? From the evil "rich"?
So if, as mentioned, all of the wealth of all of the rich will not fund all of the current entitlement programs for one week, and if, according to Myerson, government should also be providing everyone with both property and social security, where does the extra money come from to buy up all of this capital stock? Does the government just print it, as it has been?
Our current -failing- system has already driven our nation $17 trillion in debt, a national debt that continues to deepen by the millions every single day. Deepen our national debt further still? At some point these bills must be paid. Who will pay them? If government is already providing everything to everyone, how does it also pay down the increased debts Myerson's approach would create? Does anyone know? Anyone? Bueller?
If government hyperactivity has gotten us into the current fiscal mess, why in the world should we empower government to do even more? Should we not, instead, make better efforts to restrain government so that it will cost us less and have less power and authority over our personal lives? I think so. What do you think? If your true goal is maximum freedom, then you should be against government expansion, not for it, for as government expands, individual liberty and personal freedom necessarily contract.
"A public bank in every state"
This is the one suggestion that makes at least a modicum of actual sense and has some sound basis in constitutional law. Central and fractional reserve banking are literally wrecking our economy and have been for many, many years.
States should be able to manage their internal financing as they prefer and not as the federal reserve and central bankers dictate. States should be free to establish their own financial terms and negotiable instruments with one another, or not, as they prefer.
"To regulate Commerce...among the several States..." was intended to promote commerce...not suppress and restrict it. We have allowed the federal government to far exceed its intended role in this area and in so many others.
Make no mistake, Millennials, it is not properly functioning market capitalism that has made such a fiscal mess of things in the U.S. (or anywhere else) it is the combination of central banking, fractional reserve banking, and the abuse of corporatism. As an economic system, capitalism has served to improve the overall quality of life, to a higher degree, for a greater number of people, than any other economic system ever devised. Virtually every single advance in every area of our society can be traced directly back to someone wanting to provide a better product or service to someone else, at a fair and mutually agreed-upon price. The profit motive is not a bad thing, nor is it an example of greed.
A truer example of greed is some in a society demanding that government take what others have legally earned and transfer it to themselves, who did not earn it and have no lawful claim upon it.
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The answer to almost every single one of Myerson's grievances is to encourage Millennials to work hard and then enjoy the benefits of their own labors, enterprises, and/or investments, and to allow others to remain free to do the same. To seek to advance oneself in any other way deprives all others of their God-given individual freedom to succeed or to fail based upon their own merits or demerits.
Millennials, if you desire to help others on a voluntary and charitable basis, then by all means do so. Give as much as you like as often as you can and ask others to do the same as they may be able. But do not demand that government force anyone to help anyone else. That is not voluntary and it is not charity. It is compulsory and it constitutes little more than legalized theft.
Government entitlement programs intended to help the less fortunate have proven the most costly and least efficient methods to provide that help. If your true goal is to help others, does it not make more sense to do so directly, through charity, rather than allowing government to serve as the costly and terribly inefficient middle man? If government confiscates $10 of the income you earn to help the homeless, and only $4 of that actually gets to the people you want to help, does it not make more sense to donate that $10 to a charity, where $8 or more of it will actually get to those in need?
Instead of looking about you, seeing that some others have more, experiencing envy and entitlement, and seeking ways to use government to take what others have; how about experiencing sincere admiration and a renewed motivation to work harder to honestly acquire more of whatever it is that you want? If acquiring wealth is truly what you seek, then expend the effort and enterprise necessary to create or acquire it.
The idea that there exists a finite amount of monetary wealth in the world and that if some have more others must necessarily have less is utter nonsense. Wealth is created from both industry and enterprise. Wealth creation is limited only to the amount of industry and enterprise people are willing to expend. By this measure, the amount of wealth that may be created through industry and enterprise is infinite. All you have to do (as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and millions of others have done) is go out and create or earn it. This approach takes effort, however. This makes you the most responsible for your own success, rather than someone or something else. Misusing government to take what others have is far easier, of course. It also happens to be far more dishonest.
If it is not monetary wealth that you seek, that's ok too. Then pursue your own particular flavor of happiness. No one prevents you from doing so. If you do not like the negative influences that wealth can sometimes have on others, then demonstrate for those others a better way to live but do not misuse government to impose your beliefs upon others.
Be very careful, Millennials. To agree that it is a good idea to use government to take from others is also to agree that it is a good idea to allow others to use government to take from you. Are you truly prepared to hand over everything to government which you may have worked hard to earn, so that it can be distributed to others in a manner that government, rather than you, believes is the most equitable? Truly?
If so, then do that. Practice what you preach. Liquidate most of your current personal assets and send the IRS a check. Nothing prevents you from doing so. I'm sure your government will be greatly appreciative...and then it will come back next week, or next month, or next year, and demand still more and if you do not pay what it demands, it will send its armed officers to your door, eject you from your home, confiscate whatever property you may have left, and may even imprison you for daring to question why, after you've already given the government almost everything you owned, government has the right to demand still more.
Do you truly want to live in a nation where people have no personal responsibility for their own successes or failures? Where every minute decision about every aspect of every person's life is made by government? Where a government that has the power to give everyone everything, would likewise have the power to take everything away?
No recourse? No appeal? No due process? Truly?
Think Millennials. Think!
John B. Greet is a Long Beach native and retired LBPD Sergeant, currently living in the Pacific Northwest.