Our Entitled Descent Began Long Before Obamacare

RealClearMarkets

By Bill Flax                          March 26, 2010

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/03/26/our_entitled_descent_began_long_before_obamacare_98395.html

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Modern Medical Care is a Blessing Not a Right

As last year’s health reform bill again permeates our public discourse many pundits have highlighted how socializing medicine will exacerbate our already precarious budget concerns. Much was also written regarding the evasion of public sentiment when Congress employed especially repugnant procedural tactics. While these aspects ridicule the hypocrisy of our elected representatives, they are secondary.

Healthcare is not a right. It’s a blessing.  Medical treatment or more specifically how we finance it, cannot be considered an unalienable right. It’s a form of consumption. Your right to own a car does not assure that you can afford a car. Politicians want to pervert our natural right to seek healthcare into a positive right whereby government shall guaranty such services.

We don’t have a right to good health. We do have a right to live how best we know to improve our health, but we didn’t pop out of the womb with a divine guaranty of ease and comfort. Nor can the state offer such.

One person’s misfortune doesn’t constitute government’s obligation. A problem aggravated by social programs is the entitlement attitudes they engender. That government somehow bears responsibility to remove the pain and hardship from life. Unfortunately, Americans have grown inured to statist “solutions” and now flock to politicians who promise Utopian fantasies.

Politicians may transform luxuries like advanced medical care into rights, but they can’t make healthcare free.  They can filter medicine through an all powerful bureaucracy and disguise its high costs, but government cannot guaranty one’s treatment without confiscating other citizens’ property.

James Madison, honored as the “Father of the Constitution,” reminded, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” Demagogues rely on the sanction of the crowd to portray their mischief as compassion, but redistributing others’ property in exchange for votes lays up no treasures in heaven. Only voluntary charity counts.

That socializing healthcare is blatantly unconstitutional hardly entails moral approbation. America’s system of governance was predicated on the rule of law prevailing over the rule of men.  Few domestic responsibilities were entrusted to the central government and as the Bill of Rights makes certain, Washington remains limited to only those powers specifically enumerated.

If some states opt to socialize healthcare, that is their choice. I would vote against it and move if it passed, but this illustrates the evil of leviathan central governments. If Washington imposes this debacle, where can we go? Choice has been stunted.  Access to healthcare will thence forward be at politicians’ pleasure.

Where does Congress derive its moral authority to assume this role?  Part of it is the supposed immorality of profit based healthcare.  But private health providers do not gain from patient misery as we’re told in haunting language.  They profit from relieving said misery and there is nothing immoral from getting paid to better people’s lives. 

Andrew Carnegie observed, “Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.” Politicians now distort such advancements into “rights,” but modern healthcare can’t be an unalienable right. It didn’t even exist for most of history and still doesn’t for most of the world. What we’re capable of healing today dwarfs what we could mend only decades back.

Half of all babies used to die at birth or soon thereafter.  Approximately three quarters of everyone who has ever lived died before the age of 35. We now take for granted blessings that would amaze our ancestors. Modern finance affords these advances to a broader spectrum, yet progressives belittle the free market which brought forth such gains.

That some can purchase more healthcare than others evidences that many are extremely fortunate, not that some are deprived. John D. Rockefeller couldn’t afford healthcare of the quality available to common laborers today. Even the homeless have access through emergency rooms to treatments unavailable to kings of yore. This hardly reflects deprivation. It does highlight that Americans are exceedingly blessed even as many amongst us exhibit ingratitude over rising prices or covet the care others enjoy.

Should healthcare become socialized, progress will likely slow. It will inevitably lead to higher costs (even if less visible) and poorer service.  Technologies and treatments will stagnate.  European social democracies are plagued by doctor shortages, long waits and unsanitary conditions. The overwhelming preponderance of new drugs and other treatments arise in the US where producers are still rewarded. Eliminating the profit motive will thwart progress.

Enabling people who choose to purchase other products, or who truly can’t afford health insurance, to partake anyway reflects a trade.  If everyone consumes advanced medicine today, we will lose much of our ability to enjoy even better healthcare down the road. Futurity will be crushed paying for today’s largesse, which will further inhibit progress.

Economically, socialized healthcare is insane.  Medicare wastes about $60 billion in annual fraud, far more than the entire health insurance industry makes in annual profits. The GAO estimates that 1/3 of all Medicare purchases for durable goods are dishonest or inappropriate.  New York has the highest Medicaid rate and approximately 40% goes to false claims.  Entitlements of $2 trillion, much spent on what’s already socialized in medicine, grow ferociously and threaten to explode as Baby Boomers retire.

However, as what remains private in healthcare is somewhat rationed by personal finances, increasing the state’s role will transition the rationing into being determined by politics. Utilitarianism is far more devious than people foregoing treatment because they can’t afford it.

The availability of specific drugs, treatments, hospitals and so on will soon fall prey to lobbying, corruption and rent-seeking considerations. Look at the tax code. Powerful politicians will enact better treatment for their favored constituents. Do we really want to put our access to medicine in the imminently corruptible administration of government sinecures?

Capitalism offers freedom and this is its best attribute even surpassing the undeniable material opulence it generates. If you prefer Ford and I prefer Toyota so what? You buy a Ford and I’ll buy a Toyota. But central planners are incapable of eliciting our preferences suitably to offer such choices. When bureaucrats make decisions, brand selection doesn’t entail individual choice guided by personalities and price points. Politics prevails. Oppression will follow.

Politicians rarely keep their promises, especially when offering chimerical absurdities like more encompassing healthcare at higher quality for less cost. Something must give. The history of government power is rarely benign.

Those clamoring for health reform as “social justice” must remember that states have proved history’s most frequent purveyors of injustice. Paraphrasing Augustine, “What is a kingdom without justice but a gang of criminals on a vast scale?”  Politicians who defy the Constitution to which they swear subservience clearly lack justice.  

If we’re going to dramatically alter the character of our Constitution to mandate government provision of health insurance, we should begin with something that’s actually in the Constitution.  Unlike healthcare, the right to bear arms is specified as a check against government encroachment. Therefore, following liberal reasoning, if anyone can’t afford a gun, then the government should arm them.

As a former marine T.O.W. gunner, I’ll take a new missile system!

Note this article has been updated/revised. It was originally published on RealClearMarkets as –

Healthcare Is a Good, Not a Natural Right – March 3, 2010

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There’s No Iniquity In Income Inequality

By Bill Flax,         RealClearMarkets          January 22, 2010

Demagogues in Washington are thrilled to ply their vote-buying wiles promising to punish greedy rich villains, but the wealthy are not the evil caricatures of popular imagination. Riches are not generated by depriving others. Some actions grow the proverbial pie. Others shrink it. Those prospering society through work, innovation or investing their capital deserve to be rewarded accordingly.

Greed has been prominently blamed for the current downturn and it certainly contributed, but not entirely in the manner depicted by the intelligentsia. In the Marxist conception of economics as a zero sum game, one’s profits must correspond to another’s losses. Businesses earning healthy returns are seen as immoral and limited government cited as the tool by which those on top exploit the masses. Society is comprised of victims and villains, with those helpless souls trapped at the bottom being pinned under those climbing their backs to the top. It is therefore government’s just role to redistribute power and wealth to the downtrodden.

Those who bought too much house weren’t greedy; that moniker only suits the banks which lost dearly on the unpaid mortgages. Companies losing money should be defibrillated back to health with transfers from those still creating the wealth sustaining us. The unemployed should be financed by those still getting up each morning. The villains are those creating the wealth that improves all of our lives and the victims are those who don’t work or honor their financial obligations.

But all this demagoguery is nonsense. It attracts votes, but a culture built on covetousness is unsustainable. When socialist-leaning reporters, teachers, social-workers, community activists, etc. bemoan how the rich attained their wealth only through robbing or exploiting others, (the classic class warfare agitprop) – the message is clear: hard work is futile.

Leftist do-gooders steer those they profess to be helping into an unnecessary bondage of poverty. Welfare is thought deserved and crime justified. The poor shouldn’t bother working or carry any qualms regarding theft or deceit themselves. If wealth were static, you could only gain by seizing a bigger slice from your neighbors. But wealth isn’t static. Capitalism grows the pie and benefits all.

The opportunity to work far surpasses handouts by offering both monetary reward and accomplishment. It allows the recipient a paycheck in exchange for contributing as opposed to the shame of only burdening society. Some are better compensated than others, but there is nothing immoral regarding different outcomes. This is natural.

It isn’t immoral that one is tall and another short. Nor is it unfair that one team wins and the other loses if the rules were applied evenly. It is absolutely immoral when government picks who wins. A cheating opponent is troubling enough, but the state should never violate its constitutionally-mandated role as an impartial referee. Unlike sports, where only one team wins, free markets allow both parties reward. Inequality doesn’t evidence winners and losers so much as reflecting one winning even more wonderfully than other victors.

The appropriate comparison is never whether someone else is better off, but what other options exist? It’s not unfair that my neighbor makes more than I. It is silly if I could earn more elsewhere yet complain rather than do so. If no other opportunities avail themselves, comparing your status with those more fortunate is a fool’s errand.

Poverty rarely results from a lack of opportunity. We earn when someone is willing to reward us because they also derive a benefit. If nobody values our output, we should redirect our efforts. The value of anything, our labor included, is a function of what someone is willing to pay. We make ourselves useful to society and get rewarded through market forces commensurately.

The media and academy compare real world capitalism, inevitably corrupted by imperfect man, with theoretical socialism. In practice, socialism of the fascist, communist or social democrat variety rarely works except on the blackboard. In theory, there would never be a traffic jam if everyone would just drive 65. In reality, socialism fails because it mistakes human nature. Incentives matter.

We are an inherently selfish species. Greed goes back to Adam, who had it all and still wanted more. Whether one considers Genesis a depiction of actual events or an allegory explaining human nature, the fact is undeniable: mankind from the dawn of history has been flawed. Greed didn’t just appear because George Bush was president. Greed defines us. It always has.

Capitalism may be the one aspect where this otherwise debilitating quality gets channeled into the benefit of all. In capitalist societies, wealth is generated by mutually beneficial trade. Wealth comes from adding value.

Through honest, free exchange, our wants are best satisfied by serving our neighbor’s wants. Without property rights and the freedom to transact for gain, we would fall into the mutually destructive perdition of jealously. We would consume as much as possible while producing as little as possible: communism in a nutshell.

America’s poverty line far exceeded the per capita income of every communist nation. Without free markets, no one excels. Markets don’t stunt the growth of low earners. They reward those who achieve more. People who denounce inequality are not concerned with the misfortune of some; they covet the bounty of others.

Socialism holds down everyone except the politically connected. Capitalism allows producers to rise on their merits and in so doing lifts the standing of all around them. Even the poor in modern America are generally extraordinarily rich by any material measure.

Those below the poverty line live better than nobles or tribal chieftains a few centuries back. Almost half own homes. About two thirds have more than two rooms per person while less than 10% have more than one person per room. Approximately three quarters of those below the poverty line have air-conditioning and own a car. Virtually everyone, the poor included, enjoys luxuries unavailable to the wealthy of recent past.

Even kings of yore didn’t have cell-phones, televisions, appliances, automobiles or the vast array of medical, culinary and entertainment options available to welfare recipients today. The lowest quintile of income consumes the most calories. The predominant dietary issue facing the poor isn’t starvation, but obesity. Our less fortunate aren’t suffering a lack of fortune.

The appropriate means to ensure wealth is earned fairly is not to inflict government into the market, but to extract it. No more bailouts, handouts or political patronage.

 http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/01/22/theres_no_iniquity_in_income_inequality_97600.html

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We Picked the Wrong Roman Dictator

By Bill Flax, RealClearMarkets (updated slightly)

From Government Square in Cincinnati, I often sit surrounded by impressive displays of federal invasiveness, and muse that we picked the wrong Roman dictator.

The Federal Building across the street, serving primarily to dispense largesse confiscated from the workers packed into the square below. The brilliantly marbled Federal Reserve branch where regulators seek enhanced power to oversee commerce while recoiling vigorously against any attempt to be scrutinized themselves. And the block long Federal Court House, which unlike the others, has constitutional legitimacy even as its reach and depth far surpass anything our founders would have tolerated.

Taking nothing away from the many hard-working and honorable souls inhabiting these structures, but America has lost its way. My hometown was named for the Society of the Cincinnati. In ancient Rome, citizen-general Cincinnatus put down his plow to save his nation. When the battle was won, he declined a crown and returned to his farm. His self-restraint in the face of overwhelming temptation bequeathed to Rome several centuries of limited, republican government.

George Washington exhibited similar virtue after our independence. He too could have been king, but his self-denial enabled the rule of law to triumph over the rule of men. Our revolution was largely fought to settle the timeless question of whether government is answerable to the law protecting the rights of its constituents – or – are the people subject to government with a malleable Constitution bending to political pleasure.

America once enjoyed a constitutional republic where property rights were sacrosanct, contracts were conscientiously enforced and markets prevailed. Secure property rights channeled our energies into productive enterprise via the profit motive. An impartial application of the law encouraged market development which enhanced specialization and America’s hallmark: an innovative spirit propelling higher living standards for all.

Freedom and prosperity are inexorably linked. Government constrained by law and limited by checks and balances, between both branches and levels of government, birthed an economic juggernaut. Yet, another Roman general has indirectly put a more pronounced stamp on our economy.

Fabius was called to confront Hannibal after the Carthaginian warlord destroyed several Roman armies. Recognizing Hannibal was too strong to confront directly, Fabius conducted a masterful war of attrition. When Hannibal advanced, Fabius retreated. When Hannibal retreated, Fabius advanced always staying safely distant, but close enough to harass the invader. Several times the citizenry grew impatient only for a replacement to hurl the Roman army headlong into calamity.

These “Fabian” tactics became the archetype for a group of sophisticates in late Victorian England. The Fabian Society believed in socialism, not coming by revolution as Marx envisioned, but by evolution. Bored by leisure and rebelling against the strict mores of the time, they sought not to directly confront the existent order, but to undermine it from within.

As prominent Fabian George Bernard Shaw explained, “The Fabian Society succeeded because it … set about doing the necessary brain work of planning Socialist organization for all classes, meanwhile accepting, instead of trying to supersede, the existing political organizations which it intended to permeate with the Socialist conception of human society.”

These ungrateful children of wealth advocated redistribution of other’s property while they resided in decadent luxury. Similar to many intellectuals today, they thought they knew better than we how to live our lives. Unfortunately, Fabians and their ilk became the dominant force in our media and educational establishments, indoctrinating generations of Americans to a perverted view of economics and “social justice.”

The Fabian movement spawned John Maynard Keynes, an advocate of central economic planning. The overriding focus of Keynes’ theory was Aggregate Demand. Loosely defined, aggregate demand reflects the total amount of goods and services consumed at a stable price. Borrowing and spending supplanted classical economic focus on production and savings as the building blocks of prosperity.

Keynesianism was described by Zygmund Dobbs in the illuminating expose, Keynes at Harvard, “The great virtue is consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is saving, thrift and ‘financial prudence’” because, “If there are no savings there is no private money for investment. Without private investors the government must provide investment capital. If the government provides for investment it has the power to dictate the conduct and processes of those who need investment capital.”

Americans wanting to mollify temporary hardship in the throes of recession resurrected Keynes. Rather than endure uncomfortable surgery guided by the market, government injects cortisone to offset the recession’s corrective reallocations. Subsidies replace efficiency. Bailouts replace business revitalization. Entitlements replace personal savings. Statism replaces self-reliance. All these government proffered “solutions” may ease our immediate discomfort, but perpetuate economic weakness and come at the price of liberty.

Not only is it immoral to confiscate private property through coercion to redistribute to political favorites, it’s also ineffective. Market distortions inevitably harm the economy. The more control we retain over our time, resources and abilities the more closely our efforts will be aligned with productive enterprise. A far-off central planner has no ability to effectively steer this process.

We have witnessed Washington assume greater control with each injection of dubious capital. As Henry Hazlitt warned, “Keynes’s plan for ‘the socialization of investment’ would inevitably entail socialism and state planning. Keynes, in brief, recommended de facto socialism under the guise of ‘reforming’ and ‘preserving’ capitalism.”

In the closing months of his presidency, Bush crossed the Rubicon authoring vast intrusions “to save” capitalism. Bush quickened what had been a long, painstaking march to socialism. Then a new Caesar immediately began to sprint. We elected not “change,” but acceleration.

Only eunuchs were permitted to guard the harem. Entrusting power to the ambitious personalities attracted to government inevitably augments the state to our detriment. Keynes admitted his theories, “can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than … a large degree of laissez-faire.” We must never abjure our God-given rights to the arbitrary whim of professional politicians in exchange for economic safety-nets.

Incessantly higher spending and increasingly burdensome regulatory controls proved too much. Americans now fear this headlong rush into government expansion. Poor Obama was fooled by an adoring press. He misread the signs and awakened the masses. We weren’t yet so effete to be bought by bread and circuses.

The Fabians underestimated the resiliency of free markets and Obama over-estimated his demagoguery. Cincinnatus might be forever gone, but Fabius can still be stopped.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/02/13/we_picked_the_wrong_roman_dictator_97632.html

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The Problem With Supply-Side Economics

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While supply side economics is not new, per legend, it was re-born out of a graph drawn on a cocktail napkin in the ’70s. Dr. Arthur Laffer developed the Laffer Curve based on a simple premise: at 100% taxation any incentive for work or investment ceases, eliminating the ability to collect taxes. At 0% taxation, productivity soars, but the politicians can’t collect any revenues to carry out basic government activities. Somewhere between these extremes, tax revenues get maximized.

The genesis of the supply side revolution was high taxes and an inflation driven decade of stagnation in the Seventies. Following Philips Curve logic (I know, I know that’s an oxymoron) inflation was deliberately unleashed to stimulate consumption. Keynesians in both parties tried to offset unemployment by debasing the currency. Nixon even declared, “We’re all Keynesians now.”

When these temporary inflationary boosts subsided, recessions returned with a vengeance and the cycle was repeated. The Carter years expanded our economic lexicon with the concepts of Stagflation and the Misery Index. Inflation in lieu of growth. By 1982, when the economy was finally left free to begin the corrective re-structuring that recessions require, both sides of the unemployment/inflation curve were devastatingly painful.

Ronald Reagan strengthened the dollar and implemented long overdue tax cuts, thus launching what Laffer et al pronounce triumphantly as the greatest period of wealth creation in world history. The notion that tax cuts increase tax receipts circled the globe, and was ultimately tried in such previously unimaginable locales as Euroland, Russia, India and China.

It worked.

Here, Reagan lowered the top marginal rate from 70% down to 28%. Tax revenues doubled by decade’s end. This phenomenon has proved true at every try including JFK’s posthumous tax cuts and more recently under George W. Bush. It remains one of the few economically sound policies Bush authored. Despite his reputation as a tax cutter, lower rates worked so well Bush became the heaviest tax collecting president in U.S. history.

Given the consistency of tax receipts as a percentage of GDP, growth obviously supersedes marginal rates as the driver of tax revenue. Tax collections have hovered between 16% and 21% of GDP since WWII, even as the top individual rate has been as high as 91% and as low as 28%. Washington employs numerous devices beyond personal income taxes, but this consistency is telling.

Recently this ratio artificially slid below 15% as Washington concealed additional welfare spending inside the tax code. The stimulus bills didn’t lower marginal rates, which has proven a reliable means to growth, but instead redistributed wealth as aggregate demand maintenance, i.e. demand side economics.

These “credits” went to low earners regardless of whether the recipients even paid taxes, but were disallowed for our best producers. Thus tax receipts slipped as stimulus spending was netted out.

Supply side economics invokes the most basic element of human nature: self-interest. We all seek to improve our material circumstances. The tinier the tax man’s bite, the greater is our incentive to produce. As tax burdens lighten, motivation heightens, sparking a robust economy. Allowing producers to enjoy their hard earned gains is both just and effective.

Contrasted with demand side economics it’s a no-brainer. It is neither just nor effective to funnel public money to political favorites hoping they will spend lavishly and thus stimulate production. Paying people not to produce inspires little effort. Depriving producers of needed capital so it can instead be transferred according to political whim ridicules the very pretense of stimulus.

Even calling political waste “investments” merely makes the semantics more palatable to gullible voters. Rather than paying people to consume others’ wealth hoping this will rejuvenate production, it obviously works far better to let producers enjoy their gains. We will always direct our own resources better than will politicians or their bureaucratic henchman. It’s not rocket science. Tax cuts incent production; profligate spending enables sloth and encourages corruption.

Other than the false credence this assigns to the pseudo science known as macro-economics, supply side principles seem irrefutable: lower tax rates motivate production which spurs economic growth thus expanding tax revenues. Let’s dissect this into its component parts:

Lower Tax Rates – Both fair and essential to liberty. Check

Motivates Production – Obviously better to incent work than free-loading. Check

Spurs Growth – We all benefit from the rising living standards. Check

More Tax Revenue – Yeesh, now why would we give the federal government more money to waste?

It’s not like Washington has a remotely positive spending record. According to George Gilder, “Under capitalism, when it is working, the rich have the anti-Midas touch . . . turning gold into goods and jobs and art.” Not so with government. They turn our gold into lead. Woeful tales of government fraud and abuse are legion. More taxes fuels more damage. For instance:

The welfare state ruined low-income communities by subsidizing illegitimacy thus spawning new levels of human pathology. Their intrusions into retirement and healthcare have replaced families, churches and communities as the wellsprings of charity.

The entire social spending infrastructure diminishes personal responsibility and the cohesiveness of communities. Who needs family or neighbors when the state eagerly offers assistance? The nanny state doesn’t prevent irresponsibility; it promotes recklessness because others bear the burden.

Our foreign policy bolsters dictators around the world, invariably fostering resentment. Why, when millions can remember the atrocities committed by Germans, Russians and Japanese during World War II, are those nations more popular than America? Part obviously reflects jealousy, but our meddling doesn’t help.

Washington’s intrusions into energy, healthcare, education, labor, housing and a host of other areas merely drive up costs. Much of what Washington does is counterproductive or unnecessary. Most legitimate governance is best left to the states or local bodies. We should find that point on the Laffer Curve which generates the highest tax revenue and then cut taxes further by several magnitudes.

Maybe then the federal government’s meddling will cease and it will stick to those precise few roles enumerated in the Constitution. Thus focused, the federal government’s effectiveness might be improved.

http://blogs.forbes.com/billflax/2011/02/10/the-problem-with-supply-side-economics/

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What Rand Paul Should Have Said About Slavery

May. 19 2011 – 2:47 pm | 1,040 views | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

By BILL FLAX, Forbes

“The real destroyer of the Liberties of any people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and largesses.” – Plutarch

Rand Paul, the freshman senator from Kentucky, can’t seem to avoid controversy. Last year, then-candidate Paul questioned certain clauses of the Civil Rights Act on principled libertarian grounds. He quickly came under fire from across the political spectrum.

The son of libertarian standard bearer Ron Paul recently generated headlines again for comparing free health care to slavery. As several commentators observed, no one can “conscript” doctors to practice medicine. He freely quit the profession. However, this isn’t the primary concern, heinous as doctors fleeing regulatory impositions portends for the future quality of medicine.

The weightier issue isn’t confined to health care workers. It affects everyone: a serf-like dependence on the state, where greater portions of our labor and property are appropriated by the collective at the price of diminished personal freedom.

But Sen. Paul misfired. Slavery doesn’t work for this analogy. Even as there was little practical difference, slaves had human owners whereas feudal serfs belonged to the land. As the state collective exerts more control over our time, labor and property, we become serfs, not slaves.

The USSR became the ultimate manifestation of this evil. Despite its egalitarian rhetoric, communism reflected a return to feudalism. It never brought the promised equality. Instead, communism shifted the hierarchy from noble birth to party affiliation without the tempering restraints of tradition and morality.

This threatens to be our future unless property rights are restored, individual liberties preserved and personal responsibility reestablished. As Americans abjure our civic responsibilities to the state, government bureaucrats gladly abridge our liberties.

Every penny in taxes, every mandate or regulation defining permitted or prohibited activities, and every well-meaning nanny state intrusion slides us further from sovereign, self-reliant citizens towards serfdom. Where America presently travails on this continuum or how significantly ObamaCare accelerates our pace are debatable, but the direction such policies propel us isn’t.

Sen. Paul highlighted a troubling shift in America’s conscience. The individual has been replaced by the collective. In popular culture, those who defend freedom are regularly castigated as selfish and greedy. While this column will defend neither selfishness nor greed, it will denounce the hypocrisy of those lambasting individualism and personal property rights.

A Marxist professor once pontificated to our class about how American capitalism embodies greed because if you didn’t work you would starve. Sadly, many Americans share similar sentiments. But not only is this nonsense — many non-workers, including even illegal aliens no less, eat very well — but in communist states if you don’t work, or if you labor for your own ends instead of the collective’s, you might even be shot.

Capitalism may be the sole avenue where otherwise debilitating character traits like greed and selfishness get channeled into harmonious community benefitting all. In capitalism, wealth is generated by mutually beneficial trade. Profit derives from adding value. The lure of gain engineers progress as directed by the market.

Allowing the greedy their gains spurs production which grows the pie for all of us. Progressive taxation and cumbersome red tape may somewhat constrain greed, but these deny others the benefit of their efforts. Redistributions of wealth reward those susceptible to laziness and sloth, but consumption without production shrinks the pie.

Why is pulling your own load and expanding the proverbial pie considered selfish, yet burdening others thought justified? Through honest, free exchange, our wants are best satisfied by serving others. Those not pulling their load while devouring handouts such as government funded medicine are the truly selfish. People who wish for the state to leave them be benefit society far more than those seeking expanded social services.

Too many Americans now follow the path of demanding others’ output rather than producing something of value with which to trade. We seek collective entitlements over individual achievement. The obvious problem there is that wealth is created from the ground up, something once fundamental to America’s ethos. Where we once pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps we now seek the state’s jackboots to live off of our neighbors.

The pioneers on the frontier developed organic, local community governance through voluntary association. This became the essential defining characteristic of American identity. Today, it’s difficult to imagine any distress not attenuated by government programs. But a far less prosperous nation carved herself from wilderness. She overcame numerous wars and a great depression without two years of unemployment benefits, food stamps, government-funded medical subsistence and seatbelt laws.

Self-reliance and mutual voluntary aid has yielded to victimhood and entitlement. No personal failings remain our fault. If we neglect to save for a rainy day, our kids can’t read, or even if we default on our debts, society is to blame. Government, as society’s proxy, should swoop in and ameliorate our irresponsibility.

As reported on CNBC, social welfare benefits have soared from 26% of income before the recession began to a startling 35% today. As recently as 2000, the figure was only 21%. As economist Robert Higgs warns, “The ‘safety net’ that governments have stretched beneath us seems more and more to be spider’s web in which we are entangled and from which we must extricate ourselves if we are to preserve a prosperous and free society.”

Serfdom may be superficially appealing to some, but how is shunning work and still eating moral? How is it justified to spend on frivolities like cell phones, cable TV, designer clothes and ostentatious jewelry only to then shamelessly scurry to the state for “free” health care? How is willfully burdening your neighbors appropriate?

One person’s misfortune does not constitute another’s debt, especially when the misfortune arises from negligence or sloth. As government grows it engenders an entitlement attitude that society somehow bears responsibility to remove the pain and hardship from life.

But those forever seeking government remedies may think America merely trades freedom for security, but we really risk swapping prosperity for tyranny.

http://blogs.forbes.com/billflax/2011/05/19/what-rand-paul-should-have-said-about-slavery/

Paying Tribute To The Vital Entrepreneurs Who Grow Rich

Image by AFP via @daylife

Last week at our annual meeting a speaker emphasized that 92% of GDP depends on something being sold. The message was clear: Our company will prosper only if we add value to customers. We must become indispensible to their success.

There was also a moving tribute to the founder of the company I work for, who is set to retire. He rose up from poverty by virtue of improving the lives of those with whom he dealt. His creation was a boon to hundreds of workers and thousands of customers. Each profited, living better than we otherwise would have had his vision never materialized. We worked there because we saw the opportunities presented as superior to whatever was our next best option.

Likewise, customers patronized the business because they too thought it was in their interests. And many must have picked wisely because they returned for more, making him a legend in the industry.

He was one of the “vital few,” those exhibiting the ingenuity, vision, perseverance and drive to create. America, with her protections of property rights, the rule of law and respect for the profit motive has historically been blessed with many such entrepreneurs.  They grow rich by developing products or performing services that satisfy their customers’ needs.

Morally, riches are irrelevant other than how they are acquired and for what they are used. Life isn’t defined by possessions and those who worship wealth will never have enough, but there is a moral imperative to produce.

Economically, successful businessmen make the world a better place. They are essentially voted rich at the cash register poll. We pay them to add value and they reciprocate with jobs, goods and art. The top ten percent of earners pay most of America’s taxes, account for the majority of charity and half of retail sales.

It is thus baffling that wealth has become such an object of derision. Even decades after communism collapsed we are inundated with Marxist agitprop. Intellectuals and politicians — teeming with a hypocritical combination of envy and self-righteousness — pontificate incessantly about the rich “not paying their fair share” or bemoaning that the “rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” But as class antagonisms manifest in progressive income taxes and other policies built on covetousness, we risk stunting the essential entrepreneurial spirit.

Hopefully, the last election reflects a shift, but America has experienced a troubling trend where politicians derive power (and wealth) by demonizing success. President Obama stokes such animosity with, “We’re not trying to . . . begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

An ironic statement considering he makes millions writing books attacking the wealthy and has parlayed this blatant demagoguery into political power. If as senator he had determined enough was enough we’d be better off.

Class warfare rhetoric implies that riches are gained by depriving others and that we live in a static social order. However, in America, the classes are not fixed and those generating wealth expand the pie. By rights, then, they ought to retain larger shares.

Over 80% of millionaires are self-made. Most never become millionaires, but we benefit immensely by those who do. We might work hard but lack the vision, the confidence to take risks or the willingness to devote ourselves to career at the expense of all else. Others lack the discipline to delay gratification, thus squandering earnings before they become wealthy. Yet, because of those seeking riches, we lead comfortable lives basically riding on their coattails.

Here, poverty is not permanent. Many start poor but realize the American Dream, ascending to new heights. Every year recent immigrants and fresh graduates gather on the lowest income levels eager to ride the American escalator to higher prosperity. There will always be a bottom rung for liberals to complain about even as its prior inhabitants advance into higher strata that don’t repopulate automatically.

Entrepreneurs power this escalator using capital for fuel.

The poorest Americans enjoy world class medical care, an amazing array of dietary choices and technologies such as cell phones, televisions and appliances. Even if you don’t own a car, you have access to wonderful transportation options. You likely live in the comfort of an air-conditioned space with access to ample energy supplies. In a material sense, even manual laborers are phenomenally wealthy by historical standards.

Don’t take America’s economic prowess for granted. It’s an unprecedented achievement. Only an ingrate complains that those who brought us these incredible advances prospered. We all gain from the products by which they earned their riches and the wealth they accumulate. Abusing them will backfire.

Innovation and jobs require investment. In wealth lies the necessary capital without which there is no production and no opportunity. It is vital that the rich find America a welcoming place to invest. They must sense the ability to gain. Limiting choices through over-bearing regulations or punitively raising taxes stunts the motivation for those still astride the escalator endeavoring to become rich.

Investors achieve returns by planting the seed capital that sprouts into new companies, better goods and rising living standards. Raising the cost of investing means less capital available to create jobs, fund innovation or produce things which beautify and sustain life.

The top one percent of earners already pay about 40% of income taxes. This reduces capital availability and proves dual taxation on capital gains or dividends are counter-productive. Worse, we steer investment into the public sector via tax free government bonds.

The government wastes more than it creates. Politicians merely siphon production to redistribute their largesse to favorites. They confiscate wealth by making promises that go unfulfilled. If government programs were subject to market discipline most would starve for lack of investors or customers. If a business performed like our public schools it would expire quickly.

Businesses, aka job providers, enrich society by adding value to their customers. We buy something because we consider it worth more than the money we spend. Businesses can only extend the choices available. If customers don’t buy, they part ways peacefully. Not so with government. We pay for public services even if we see no value or would choose differently. We comply with bureaucratic mandates or suffer fines or imprisonment.

America needs more entrepreneurs and less government.

http://blogs.forbes.com/billflax/2011/03/30/paying-tribute-to-the-vital-entrepreneurs-who-get-rich/

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Answering The Critics Of Limited Government

The Founding Fathers – Image via Wikipedia

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
–Alexis de Tocqueville

Several recurring objections are leveled against those who extol the virtues of liberty. Particularly for those like myself who believe strongly in both unalienable natural rights as well as traditional standards of conduct. When we espouse objective moral truths the naysayers frequently label us hypocrites. A typical objection goes, “You complain about Washington telling you what to do, but you tell others what to do and how to think.”

This obviously misses that society and state are different creatures. We are all unique individuals “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable rights.” We are not blobs of collective putty to be shaped to suit the state’s ends. The problem arises not from voicing opinions in the marketplace of ideas, but that some employ government coercion to empower their theories.

Popular culture has grown so inured to government proffered solutions for every perceived problem that people attribute any stated preference as seeking an imposition of state. Those with classical liberal beliefs propose the opposite. We want less government, not for those in power to dictate according to our views.

However, freedom and morality are necessary accompaniments. That’s why the founders, even deists like Jefferson, saw biblical morality as the essential bedrock bolstering the republic. John Adams believed, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” They thought without strong work ethics, honesty and personal responsibility that liberty would quickly slip into licentiousness incompatible with self-government.

But they did not permit Washington to mandate morality or provide charity. The Bill of Rights specifically forbids federal authorities from meddling in matters best left to local, private parties. An unfortunate symptom of the expansion of state is that it smothers private forms of governance such as families, churches, or community groups. But these are vital to societal well-being because they distill our base instincts into civilized behavior.

These voluntary associations countering the debilitating aspects of our character have been weakened by welfare, nanny-statism and America’s politically correct civic religion that treats poverty as victimhood. As people become increasingly dependent on government, those functions best left to the community lose their vitality.

Why work when the check comes anyway? Why provide for your family if taxpayers will? Why assist your neighbors in their distress if the state offers support? Why even conduct your own affairs responsibly if the state will swoop in to ameliorate your irresponsibility?

Weakened families and weakened communities result from a godless state permeating every aspect of life. Those intermediary institutions standing between the individual and government have been undermined as we’ve traded liberty for public safety-nets. Shamefully, many charities even subvert their core principles so as to qualify for federal subsistence.

Society spirals downward as the state oscillates between offering security and then, in reaction to the decadence unleashed by sponsoring prodigality, government further expands to enforce mores. Enthusiasts for government expansion parlay societal breakdown into opportunities to demand cradle to grave entitlement programs. Sure segues into still greater societal dysfunction.

Safety-nets don’t foster responsibility, but encourage recklessness because others bear the costs. And down we spiral as greater social spending begets greater social ills requiring still greater levels of spending. We’ve fallen from George Washington to Cloward-Piven.

Nor can the state effectively enforce morality. No government can successfully alter human nature. All it can do is make immorality illegal while stocking our jails with millions of prisoners including many imprisoned for victimless crimes. This is a counterproductive outrage.

It would serve society far better for governments, especially those above the local level, to desist. Rather than failing dismally to enforce morality government should stop subsidizing immorality. Too many communities have already been crippled by a do-gooder secular state’s stupidity.

Instead, let’s cut social spending, unplug the welfare state and revert these issues back to communities where they belong. Private parties are invariably superior stewards than government bureaucrats. Likewise, the breadth of public services provided is best determined locally. Should a community decide to offer handouts, it’s much more efficient holding recipients accountable than federal or even the state governments Washington bribes into obeisance. Bribes funded by money extracted from the states no less.

Should a community prohibit activities like gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc., that is well. Communities must maintain standards of decency and such cannot be unilaterally imposed by those from the outside. It’s really none of anyone else’s business. However, when Washington or state governments exact such standards, freedom is vanquished.

Draw a continuum from individual to nation state. The closer to the individual it is clearly more likely that rules reflect the community’s needs and less likely they impose significant burdens on others. Few, other than sanctimonious elitists, would deny a family’s right to establish order in their home as they choose. But when a larger, political governing body enacts its decrees, the cost and oppressiveness of compliance rises dramatically.

If this logic is too abstract, or opens up a discomfiting door, then the default should be that government minds its business at any level. Just don’t ask me to pay for the damage.

Government should protect the framework wherein citizens are free to follow their aspirations as their efforts and ability allow. Character is chiseled at the intersection of rights and responsibility. Somehow, rights have morphed into entitlements, but when the state takes care of us, growth in government shrinks the character of its citizens.

Then government expands further to fill the void.

Several more serious, but similarly spurious objections maintain that libertarians, strict constitutionalists and others are labeled heartless. The complaints often invoke images of segregation, devastated ecology pillaged by greedy capitalists or starving children denied sustenance by a de-funded welfare state.

Over the coming weeks this space will attempt to refute these objections and explore why markets and freedom suffer such unremitting criticism despite undeniable success.

http://blogs.forbes.com/billflax/2011/04/14/answering-the-critics-of-limited-government/

Other work by this author.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The budget debates have been illuminating. Apparently, those heartless tea partiers would gladly allow children to starve so millionaires can pay less in the way of taxes. The latter has been a recurring slander leveled against welfare reform in the ’90s and more recently in response to Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.

No one starved then. What if Washington stopped doling out relief now? Would a vacuum prevail? It’s an odd presumption considering free markets have lifted so many millions out of poverty and America is the world’s most generous dispenser of private charity. Maybe sanctimonious liberals fear such a vacuum because they are notoriously stingy.

People who oppose government redistribution contribute four times as much charity as those who favor such schemes. This includes 3.5 times as much to secular charities. Those who prefer free markets also give more blood, are more likely to provide directions, to return change given mistakenly or offer assistance to the homeless.

To truly be charity, alms must be given freely, require nothing in remuneration and offer the donor no material benefit. If possible, benevolence should be anonymous. The left hand ought to not even know what the right hand does.

Instead, the Left hand blares a trumpet about compassion while spending others’ money as it shamelessly smears the Right. Who is really heartless: those seeking fiscal responsibility or those spending our children into peonage?

Using one’s heart and one’s mind are not mutually exclusive.

The real vacuum is federal spending. Washington filters our taxes through a bureaucratic black-hole before spewing out waste and vote-buying patronage. Public charity is an oxymoron. There is nothing moral in confiscating property from one to bestow on another.

As discussed previously, society does not revolve around Washington. The building blocks for an ordered, coherent community are families, friends and neighbors and then church (or equivalent). Only if each fails does government have any justification to execute its own counterfeit charity.

In our limited, constitutional republic, the pecking order for a public response is first local government, and then state. There is no constitutional standing for federal charity. Rather than Congressman Ryan’s block grants to states, why funnel these funds through Washington at all? Instead, restore control back to state and local governments. The closer proximity between giver and recipient, the more efficient and responsible is charity’s conduct.

Historically, when private parties provided most benevolence, it was generally administered more prudently than politicians redistributing other’s largesse. Thomas Jefferson bragged that you could travel the entire eastern seaboard and never encounter an American begging. Private charity was readily available and distributed responsibly so as to not create additional social burdens.

Relief was never meant for people who could help themselves, but don’t. Instead of easy handouts, people who neglect their duties could be taught responsibility and the dignity of work. Sensible charity offers a minimal safety net to prevent starvation or exposure, not provide idle comfort.

Poverty once suggested that someone lacked food, clothing or shelter. As the Heritage Foundation observed,

According to the government’s own surveys, the typical “poor” American has cable or satellite TV, two color TV’s, a DVD player or VCR. He has air conditioning, a car, a microwave, a refrigerator, a stove, and a clothes washer and dryer. He is able to obtain medical care when needed. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs.

Not exactly dire circumstances. The average menial laborer today enjoys more material abundance than a prince or tribal chieftain of recent past.

Washington sets the poverty bar at three times the income level necessary to afford an adequate diet. In 2011 it’s about $22,500 for families of four. The calculation considers only about four percent of government assistance. An average family with children in the bottom third of income receives over $30,000 of government relief annually across 71 means tested poverty programs.

Per the Census Bureau, people classified as poor spend $2.24 for every $1 of reported income. Many underreport income, acquired illicitly or otherwise, to avoid taxes and qualify for greater handouts. If the rate were based on consumption, poverty would be halved.

These endeavors violate many of the essential ingredients of sound economics. By means testing, incentives are perverted. They discourage effort, personal savings and marriage. We incent people not to work, spend frivolously and have children out of wedlock despite a clear correlation between marriage and success; and similar connections between illegitimacy and crime, drug abuse, unemployment and poor academic performance.

Welfare may profit overpaid government social workers, but it impoverishes those most vulnerable in our midst while consigning them to communities wreaked by high crime and moral despair. Men become superfluous as women marry the state. As illegitimate children became a bread ticket, we got more illegitimate children. Men turn to the street unbridled by the responsibility of providing for their offspring.

Handouts destroy families, rendering the recipients into perpetual dependence. Welfare creates so many additional social needs that only government can marshal sufficient resources in certain low-income areas. But that government exacerbates a problem leading to more government and thus more exacerbation offers a rationale to shrink, not expand the state’s reach.

The welfare state was created by opportunists exemplifying Lord Acton’s warning that power corrupts. It exploits the poor as political props with little regard for their well-being. The state is not altruistic. It is not inhabited by exemplars of wisdom and virtue transcending the human frailties that befall the rest of us.

According to Hillsdale College’s Michael Bauman, “More frequently than we care to admit, our poverty programs are thinly veiled efforts to enhance our self-esteem and to assuage our consciences by means of state programs. To imagine that by such shallow and self-gratifying efforts we can eliminate human poverty is shameless hubris, not charity and grace.”

Government sinecures actually lobby Congress on behalf of continuing these wasteful, overlapping programs for their personal enrichment. The SEIU, AFSCME and other bureaucrats advocate ardently for enlarged entitlements. But budget matters are secondary. The question is do these programs harm their supposed beneficiaries.

Social problems grow proportionately to what we waste “solving” them. Increased spending has not decreased poverty. The poverty rate stood at 12.6% in 1970. We now dispense, in real terms, about 15 times as much in blatant disregard of human nature. President Obama accelerated welfare spending by over 40%, to almost $1 trillion, but the rate today is 15%.

America spends over $2 trillion annually on entitlements, but this promises to explode as Baby Boomers retire. Private charity totals about $300 billion. If Washington ceased, could private parties tackle this terrific burden?

Today, America is far wealthier than when relief was local and primarily private. The average income, adjusted for inflation, increased sevenfold during the Twentieth Century. We’re wealthier, healthier, have more opportunities, etc. There are more resources available for charity because we’re better off, and were it still conducted sensibly, there would be less need.

The expanding attitude of entitlement endangers our very national ethos. America should never have embarked on this wretched journey which may soon smother the private sector. Only the creation of wealth can truly overcome poverty and this depends on individual effort.

Americans must quickly restore our self-reliance before we drown under egalitarian collectivism.

http://blogs.forbes.com/billflax/2011/04/21/does-limiting-government-really-condemn-children-to-starvation/

Do Marxism And Christianity Have Anything In Common?

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” – Karl Marx

Recently I was privileged to speak before a ladies book club. Midway through, a former English professor announced with an assurance only an academic could accomplish that “Jesus was a communist. That is just a fact.”

A similar notion was recently advanced by a Forbes contributor, Richard Salsman. Salsman holds a negative view of Christian values, considers sacrifice a “vice,” and even begrudges honoring our war dead. But what similarities do Marxism and Christianity share?

Frederick Engels, Karl Marx’s sidekick and benefactor, eulogized that Marx’s greatest insight was, “men must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before they can pursue politics, science, art, religion and the like.”

Jesus asserted the opposite disavowing that faith is predicated on bodily well-being, “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ . . . But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:31-33).

Biblically, body and soul are distinct. The vibrant Christianity seen throughout history even as believers endured deprivation or persecution irrefutably contradicts the Marxian materialist stance. Tertullian pronounced, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The prodigal son didn’t return with his belly full.

Marxists require secular, materialist explanations for everything, but there is no scriptural basis for these severe restrictions on permissible avenues of thought. From this irreconcilable beginning, biblical doctrine and Marxist theory diverge still further. 

Marx sought to replace the Christian worldview with a vile substitute. His rejection ran deeper than the oft quoted jibe, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

He admitted, “My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” He thought Christianity reflected a palliative used by the rich to constrain workers so they wouldn’t revolt. To Marx, church and family presented obstacles to Utopia. The hierarchical society affirmed by Scripture prevented the rise of the proletariat.

Marx’s writings reveal undeniable, but antithetical parallels with Scripture, a deliberate replacement meant to expunge Christianity from society. To wit, Marx even employed religious themed legerdemain. Atheism, whether Marxist or Objectivist, relies on faith too, it just requires drastically different metaphysical assumptions.

The Marxist dialectic redefines good and evil. Sin changed from rebellion against God into striving for individual ends as opposed to the collective. The institution of property rights represented original sin.

Communism supplanted the Garden of Eden with a Rousseauian primitive man at harmony with nature, the genesis of environmental worship’s close ties to Marxism today. Marx even incorporated a millenarian view of history as an evolving class struggle finally solved by the coming victory of the proletariat. Utopia represents Heaven, ultimately created on Earth – by man. The collectivist state becomes god.

This man centered worldview was absorbed by the academy, media, entertainment industries and much of government. They now distill cultural Marxism, aka political correctness, to credulous Americans who thought we won the Cold War.

It’s not just that our perspectives are diametrically opposite, but Bible believing Christians and Marxists also seek fundamentally different goals. God’s judgment shows no favoritism. Everyone is equal in His sight, but God is no egalitarian. The word liberty appears sixteen times in the New Testament. Equality among men but twice: Matthew 20:12, pertaining to salvation in a parable which defends property rights; and 2 Corinthians 8:14.

The latter alludes to God sustaining Israel in the wilderness with manna. Paul instructs those of us more fortunate to voluntarily help others requiring assistance. Exodus highlights God’s view on public property: use only what you need. Don’t unnecessarily impose upon your neighbors. Worldly governments showering favored constituents with handouts lack the divine enforcement mechanism of making hoarded manna quickly rot.

Biblically, society is inhabited by unique, sovereign individuals made in God’s image and personally accountable to Him. Equality under the law stems from equality before God which always and everywhere negates equality of results. God is no respecter of persons. Nor should justice favor particular segments even if their cause is politically correct. Justice is measured by precision to God’s standards, not by the shifting goals of secular academics.

Moses said, “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice. You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute” (Exodus 23:2-3). Not very proletarian.

Nowhere does Scripture task government with equalizing wealth. Not only is redistributing private property for political purposes immoral, it also undermines the God ordered notion of accountability. Without freedom to do either right or wrong, the moral basis dissolves. Dr. Ronald Nash observes, “Passages that oblige believers to use their resources for God’s purposes presuppose the legitimacy of private ownership.”

The Bible requires work, frugal living and honest dealings. It mandates impartial justice, sound money and property rights; plus endorses liberty and limited government – all essential elements of capitalism. Christ even used free market principles repeatedly in his teaching. Jesus clearly appreciated price signals and the role of incentives.

The parables of the talents and minas offer sage investment advice. It is prudent to entrust resources to those multiplying them and extract resources from those squandering them. This counters the Marxist principle of progressive taxation taking from the most productive to subsidize those wasting scarce resources. But Jesus used these essential lessons to illustrate spiritual truths, not finance.

Market based economics appear consistent with Christ’s teachings, however it is inappropriate to usurp divine authority by transforming Jesus into Adam Smith. The Bible unequivocally endorses certain elements of capitalism. And never does it disavow capitalism, only its impure application by corrupt participants; unless one equates free markets with Social Darwinism as do Marxists. But theirs is clearly neither a biblical perspective nor an accurate depiction.

Economics is not a Zero Sum Game. One’s gain does not necessitate another’s loss. Innovation, efficient profitable production and savings expand the pie. Consumption, malinvestment and waste shrink it.

Likewise, taking several verses describing a voluntary, communal living arrangement out of context to prescribe secular socialism defies logic. Those passages in Acts were descriptive more than prescriptive. Taking them otherwise throws out virtually everything else in Scripture. Frederick Engels saw this clearly, “If some few passages of the Bible may be favorable to communism, the general spirit of its doctrines is, nevertheless, totally opposed to it.”

The early church welcomed Jews and proselytes from the Diaspora back at Pentecost. These travelers pooled their possessions in loving fellowship fearing Jerusalem’s imminent destruction. There is no evidence this communal arrangement spread beyond Jerusalem or persisted long. None of the epistles indicates communal living.

Privately entrusting resources to St. Peter, in subservience to God, differs greatly from “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul” through a distant bureaucratic apparatus inspired by the humanist god of power. The Bible never endorses involuntary socialism administered by secular governments.

American settlement sometimes involved religious communities experimenting with communal living. One famous example, the Mayflower Compact, was instituted at the insistence of their English sponsors. The Puritans rapidly abandoned communalism – “that conceit of Plato’s” – in favor of vigorous free enterprise, which proved both consistent with their strong religious sentiments, and a rapid path to prosperity.

To function, economic formulas must acknowledge man’s fallen nature. Here Marxists blunder badly. We aren’t lucky blobs of otherwise inert matter malleable to the state’s machinations. Man is inherently selfish going back to Adam, who had everything, yet still wanted more. Genesis reflects the earliest commentary on our nature and it reveals what remains today: a greedy, violent bunch prone to jealousy, sloth and vice.

Communism fails except as augmented by fear (and ultimately there too), because forging “New Socialist Man” remains forever beyond the state’s grasp. Only God can change men’s hearts. Our base instincts betray us. When we see someone slacking and still taking – we produce less. When we see others taking beyond their share – we take more too. Without private property and opportunities for profit through honest toil, living standards stagnate.

Any movement must deal with realities and thus superficial similarities with other systems will materialize, but properly understood, Marxism is the absolute denial of Christianity – precisely as Marx intended. Where Marxists seize power, Christians are always persecuted and atheism is enforced, usually at a steep cost.

I tried summarizing this for the ladies and would probably still be prattling on but the soft spoken women sitting next to the one pronouncing Jesus a communist simply said, “I lived in Communist Romania for thirty-one years. Don’t tell me about Communism . . . Communism is death.”

She defended freedom better than a hundred articles. If pictures are worth a thousand words, experience is worth millions.

 Click here for part one – Sorry, But Christ Wasn’t A Communist

http://blogs.forbes.com/billflax/