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You are here: Opinions Viewpoints Schaller's Politically Incorrect Lexicon: A Navigation Guide To The PC Cultures of Mckinley County NM (and planet earth )

Schaller's Politically Incorrect Lexicon: A Navigation Guide To The PC Cultures of Mckinley County NM (and planet earth )

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PART 4 IN A SERIES

CHAPTER FOUR – SELL A COW, BUY A BULL

HAPPINESS ECONOMICS: World Values Survey studies reveal economic as well as individual freedom has been found to exert an independent impact on life satisfaction over and above the impact on per-capita income levels and other indicators of material well-being. Economic freedom exerts a strong and persistent impact on both individual life control and life satisfaction.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT: The primary intent of our Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution was to limit the powers of the federal government.

FREE MARKET CAPITALISM: Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. It demands the best of every man, and rewards him accordingly. In a free market men trade their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent, uncoerced judgment. Free market success depends on providing quality products and exceptional service, all at a competitive price. Entities that rip off their customers usually wither and die. In a capitalist society all human relationships are voluntary. In contrast to bureaucratic collectivism, capitalism rewards ingenuity, productivity and success – not so for ineptitude, idleness and failure.

THE CAPITALISM/SOCIALISM DICHOTOMY: Capitalism is voluntary exchange in a free market. Socialism uses force and coercion for redistribution of wealth. Capitalists understand economics, socialists understand squandering. As Winston Churchill put it, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”

THE TWO COWS ANALOGY:

Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Environmentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of *ownership* is a symbol of the phallocentric, warmongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of nonspecified gender.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: In a capitalist society the price you pay for individual freedom is personal responsibility. Transients from welfare states often have difficulties adapting to the responsibilities of a free society.

LIVING WAGE: A euphemism for raising minimum wage as a welfare handout. Real world ‘living’ wage is what you make after a short probationary period during which you have proven yourself to be a dedicated worker with such value to the company that you create negotiation leverage.

RIGHTS: A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life.

CLEAN CAPITALISM: Along with short lifespans the world before the industrial age of capitalism was one of unsanitary stench and disease highlighted by horse manure, unwashed sweaty bodies, kerosene, outhouses, sewage, dust, mud and pest infestation. Smoke from open fires choked cities, forests were stripped of trees and most of the crops went to feed working animals.

‘TRICKLE DOWN’ THEORY: A straw man fallacy. It cannot be found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic theories.

SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS: Argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services as well as invest in capital. This is done with tax cuts and deregulation. “Build it and they will come.”

TAX CUTS INCREASE REVENUE: Under Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and Gingrich, lowering federal taxes resulted in increased tax revenues.

TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY: Tax the rich? Already done it. America’s taxes are the most progressive in the world. That means our top 10 percent pay a much higher share of the tax burden than the upper classes in other countries do. That’s not all; we also have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.

MONOPOLY: The exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. The most monopolistic institution that has ever existed is the US government. That may be why federal worker salary and benefits average well over $120,000, double the private-sector average of just over $60,000, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

FREE TRADE vs PROTECTIONISM: Nearly all economists agree that freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment. The real effect of protectionism is to increase monopolies under the premise of a ‘trickle down’ benefit.

SCHOOL VOUCHERS: Market competition among private schools leads to increased student achievement and decreased education costs. In regions of low performing public schools, vouchers provide ‘opportunity scholarships’ for parents to pick the private schools of their choice to enroll their children. If there was any district in America that needed a voucher system it would be GMCS. Labor unions and bureaucrats will have nothing of it.