Wake Up America
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How to pay for the freebies that Socialist-Democrats (SD) use to lure naive voters to the polls was discussed here last week.
Since then, the far left SD Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has taken the dialogue a step further. She believes billionaires are immoral and should be taxed at the 70% level. She either does not know or does not care that over 50% of federal income taxes are collected from only 5% of the taxpayers.
Over 50% of the taxpayers at the other end of the line pay little or no income tax. Many in this group look forward to income tax season because it means they will get refunds of the taxes withheld from their pay checks during the preceding year.
This is the system that AOC, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rouke and other SDs think is unfair. That makes Karl Marx sipping his German beer and Vladimir Lenin enjoying a glass of Russian Vodka very happy.
Americans waving the SD banner had better wake up and begin paying attention to what is going on in Venezuela. That rapidly dying country is currently featured on the nightly news.
Not too long ago, Venezuela was the most prosperous and progressive country on the South American Continent. Immigrants were flocking there from all over the world.
Then it got a leader of the SD stripe and this paragraph from an article titled “Venezuela’s Suicide” by Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro in a recent edition of The Federalist summarizes the sad result.
“A 2001 presidential decree on land reform, which Chávez handed down with no consultation or debate, was a taste of things to come. It broke up large commercial farms and turned them over to peasant cooperatives that lacked the technical know-how, management skills, or access to capital to produce at scale. Food production collapsed. And in sector after sector, the Chávez government enacted similarly self-defeating policies. It expropriated foreign-owned oil ventures without compensation and gave them to political appointees who lacked the technical expertise to run them. It nationalized utilities and the main telecommunications operator, leaving Venezuela with chronic water and electricity shortages and some of the slowest Internet connection speeds in the world. It seized steel companies, causing production to fall from 480,000 metric tons per month before nationalization, in 2008, to effectively nothing today. Similar results followed the seizure of aluminum companies, mining firms, hotels, and airlines.”
Fortunately, the U.S. economy is much larger and more diverse than that of the old Venezuela. This size and diversity would be more difficult to destroy in just the few years needed for Venezuela’s slow death, but it could be done.
Another road block to replicating Venezuela here is the organization of our government. Expecting the three independent branches of the government to agree on such a program is highly unlikely. Also, the division of Congress into two independent branches would be another road block.
Nonetheless, following Venezuela’s lead is still a worrisome possibility. Just a century ago, the same thing happened in Russia, a country much larger than the U.S.
More recently, Bernie Sanders gathered a following of many millions of adoring young voters broadcasting his socialist message.
Now AOC, who will not be 30 years old until October, is expanding on the Sanderistas (pun intended). Thankfully, because of her age, she will not be eligible to run for President next year. But cross your fingers and hold your breath in 2024.
So here’s the perspective.
Capitalism in a democracy has served this country well for more than two centuries. It has provided very comfortable living standards for a vast majority of its citizens. Even the less fortunate among us have a better quality of life than those millions or billions still living around the world in homes without indoor plumbing or electricity.
So wake up America. Quit dreaming. Do not follow the SDs like lemmings following the Pied Piper.
enough
