In Donald Trump’s first inaugural address, he spun a dystopian tale of “American carnage.” He lied about the economy, which was on the recovery, about crime, which was in decline, and about rapacious foreigners undermining our strength and prosperity, which was false then and remains false today.
He has since lied about rigged elections and the threat of immigrant hordes needing to be rounded up.
He lied then about the collapse of American prestige and lies now about its resurgence even as it disintegrates under his mismanagement from Canada to Europe to Iran.
One would think that the antidote to a sabotage of the economy and power of the US is a heavy dose of truth-telling, but the Democratic party in this election cycle went the opposite direction. The “Big Lie” left amplifies socialism, class warfare and crass bigotry via the megaphones of Democratic candidates and progressive initiatives across the nation and here in Colorado.
Instead of being repulsed by the degradation of their party, Democrats absurdly embrace “alternative facts” spewed in their name under the notion of a “Big Tent.” While politics has never been a forum for the best of human nature, the unabashed deceitfulness is nauseating.
I invite any politician and certainly the voters of this state and this nation to embrace some truth and a far more sensible approach.
Our system is not rigged!
Do[dropcap] inequities persist in our economy and our political process?
Yes, absolutely and obviously, but we are a very long way from the oligarchy or plutocracy that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would like you to believe we live in.
Vote-suppressing shenanigans are undoubtedly a threat to democracy, but the number of people who do not vote voluntarily because of discontent with both parties dwarfs the number who do not vote because of interference with the process.
We need to worry far less about an emerging king than about the fraying of the social compact that binds Americans together in a common enterprise of self-government.
Socialists also want you to believe that the American economy is exploitative and at the mercy of corrupt billionaires. Actually, the United States of America is a country of unparalleled wealth in the history of humanity with opportunity so diffuse that people around the world will give their lives in an attempt to share in it.
Do white people with a college degree who are the backbone of the socialist enterprise find that they are unable to get ahead like they thought they would? You bet, but that should serve as incriminating evidence of the failure of higher education to come down from the ivory tower to prepare graduates for a changing marketplace and not as grounds for annihilating the prosperity of the nation.
Democratize capital!
[dropcap]Socialism necessarily relies on tyranny. The ideology is rooted in the belief that government knows better how to allocate capital than the individual or the market, which requires simultaneously increasing governmental control over and reducing the freedom of both.
But what is government if not a collection of people who hold power? If you are aghast at the police-state tactics of ICE, do you imagine that the self-proclaimed radicalism of socialists will somehow be more benevolent when their rhetoric about the exploitative nature of profit has the enforcement power of federal agencies to disrupt it?
The answer to the excesses of the Trump Administration should be to expand freedom for all and not vengefully to deny freedom to others.
Increasing freedom with shared prosperity does not require confiscation. We need to create opportunities for those who have been excluded from participating in the extraordinary growth of wealth in the US to build wealth for themselves and their descendants.
One paragraph will not do this subject justice, but accomplishing this end certainly requires touching the third rail of American politics, reforming Social Security.
Other countries have adopted provident or superannuation funds to reduce poverty among seniors while attacking legacy poverty with great success and we must embrace what works.
No measure is perfect, but dropping a socialist anchor to halt the expansion of American prosperity is crazy when solutions exist to make more people wealthier instead of all people poorer.
Confiscatory tax is no answer!
There is a measure on the ballot this fall to replace Colorado’s flat tax with a progressive tax. It’s not the progressive tax itself that is the problem, but the populist, class-warfare nature of the measure. As with all tax rate hikes, the objective should be to cause as little economic disruption as possible. This is only achievable by implementing relatively small, incremental increases.
A sudden, near-doubling of the income tax rate will accomplish precisely the opposite. The selling point in the language of the measure is “Colorado’s current flat tax system . . . taxes millionaires and corporations at the same rate as regular working people.”
It then goes on to define these rich folks as those who make more than $500,000. Don’t get me wrong, $500,000 a year is a nice living, but who is it that makes that kind of money? Elon Musk? No, it is more likely your neighbor the franchise owner or the general contractor who might also be the ones who gave you your job.
What happens when they are faced with a sudden rise in taxes while also facing rising costs due to a super-high minimum wage, soaring healthcare costs and inflation in general?
They cut back on employees and employee hours.
They spend less on goods and services.
They do this because they have to and because it is human nature to react conservatively to economic disruption, which in the end, causes harm due to economic contraction and does not help.
It is possible to live in a country that crafts sensible solutions to real problems. Socialism is not that. Socialism, be it Democratic or national, leads only in the direction of tyranny and impoverishment.
Socialists, like the Trumpian MAGA-ites they hate so much, advocate for retribution against mythical foes who, in truth, are actually you.
