A/O Global Intelligence Weekly: The Socialist Agenda of Failure

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

-- Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (22 October 1945)

Over the last 10 years, American Opportunity/Free Congress Foundation has championed the necessity of a growing economy. During the Obama administration, we decried the policy of “no growth” and spoke out on the necessity of serious and lasting tax reform to spur American economic growth.

Thanks to much of our early groundwork, the ideas we helped inspire in the Growth Code became a serious part of the Trump tax reform legislation, where the administration shepherded this critical reform through the U.S. Congress and enacted it into law.

As a result, the American economy is booming once again. Labor participation is near a new high, wages are up, jobs are more plentiful than ever before – all despite the prognostications of doom from left-leaning economists rooting against an American recovery.

For eight long years during the Obama administration, we were told that such results were impossible – that we were in a post-growth economy. They were wrong. The paychecks and job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of American families stand in stark contrast to the lost decade of anemic economic growth.

Yet despite these proven results, certain leaders on the American far left are actually advocating socialism. Political campaigns are being built around socialist proposals. Bernie Sanders is an avowed socialist. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is a socialist. Senator Elizabeth Warren has announced for President, advocating a wealth tax on estates over $50,000,000.

One probably shouldn’t take too seriously any of their flamboyant socialist proposals. Such proposals are intended to stoke resentment to obtain votes, despite the stark evidence that socialism fails in every country it is ever tried.

Nevertheless, President Trump felt it necessary to affirm that the United States is not and will never be socialist. That is because in raw political calculus, by introducing socialist ideas into the American lexicon, the purveyors of socialism hope to normalize socialist policies as acceptable points of debate. American exceptionalism makes a great many things work that would not otherwise work elsewhere, so goes the argument. If we can make capitalism work, then why not socialism?

Of course, capitalism works not because of American exceptionalism, but because it is an economic system on the side of human freedom – one that has lifted billions from poverty and created wealth across the globe. Socialism is the antidote to human freedom, human prosperity, and humanity writ large. As President Trump exemplified in his 2017 Krasinski Square speech in Poland, it is the people – not the powerful – who form the foundation of freedom and the cornerstone of its defense.

First, the socialist tax on individual success is anti-liberty and anti-constitutional. From the Founding Fathers to today, Americans know at core that tyranny begins with depriving citizens of their property. The right to property is liberty. It is independence of the individual representing individual empowerment through the just reward of one’s own labor.

This governing first principle is why the Constitution protects property. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing liberty and property rights to formerly enslaved persons explicitly repeated this guarantee saying no person shall be deprived of their “life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

Any such socialist proposal to tax one’s success would be a clear deprivation of due process of law. Such discriminatory and punitive taxation would run afoul of Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution forbidding discriminatory taxation not proportional to the U.S. Census. What is critical to consider here is that American liberty – unique in the experience of mankind -- has always been defined as the opportunity for Americans to earn and keep the product of their own labor – the pursuit of happiness.

More after the jump. . .

Second and perhaps more forcefully, any socialist government will never squeeze a single dime out of their targets. Such a punitive tax will mean capital flight, as wealthy people move their money and themselves to protect their property. Thus the hammer will fall on middle class families first, then lower class families as the search for “other people’s money” perpetuates a cycle of decline, distress, and finally destruction.

So why do it in the face of all the facts? One answer might be the fomenting of “class hatred” to punish success or simply harvest votes. This approach ignores the fact that many successful people did not start that way, but built something for themselves in our free society.

It is very clear that taking away wealth earned destroys the incentives to earn, produce and create more wealth. One wonders if that is not the explicit goal of their socialist proposals -- the weakening of our country and its freedoms.

Third, the money taxed or confiscated would not produce anything like the kind of money needed to run a socialist state. In fact, it would run the current government for precisely eight days – no more. There are only 83,620 people in the U.S. worth over $50 million. Applying Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2% tax on success yields at best $83 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money… but not much relative to our $1 trillion budget and certainly not enough money to fund the socialist state – not to mention the fact that those who have such capital will do everything possible to move it offshore and away from the socialists moneygrabbers.

For the pro-tax advocates, a tax on wealth and success is always the camel's nose under the tent – the politics of envy, not solutions. The real money in the U.S. is earned by the struggling middle class. When this tax on success inevitably fails to achieve its goals, the next step will be to increase taxes where the money is: in the middle class.

Far better than punishing success, we should be cultivating and fostering a culture that encourages even more Americans to achieve it. Wealth inevitably follows wealth; creating more wealth provides the latitude for society to give working people more productive jobs, more educational opportunities, foster a growing economy, create better wages and more opportunity.

Of course, decadence exists in every economic tradition. Yet rather than leverage the politics of envy, in a free market and capitalist economy, too often fools and their money are soon parted. The invisible hand of the market is far more just than the mailed fist of socialism, and there are billions of people lifted out of poverty to prove it.

The creeds and dogmas of Karl Marx have failed humanity at every turn. In contrast, the American “empire of liberty” remains a stark reminder that when human liberty is trusted, human beings prosper better than the thinkers and planners could ever hope to imagine.

The politics of more rather than the politics of less; this was the path of the Founders. It should be our path as well.

Some news and articles we recommend for information and discussion purposes, none of which necessarily represent the position of A/O:

As always, American Opportunity is always looking for new resources and topics we can address in detail. Please feel free to stay in contact!

Sincerely,

Jim Gilmore

AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY
901 N. Washington, Suite 206 Alexandria, VA 22314

contact@americanopportunity.org

703.837.0030

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