Making the Future
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
-Samuel Johnson
Throughout time disparate groups and individuals have felt compelled to make rules for all based on feelings of superiority. Perhaps it's only natural for someone with superior intellect, wealth or power to somehow believe that simply makes them superior in all facets of life. The thing is these days these people are acting on their impulses, their would-be superiority and self-appointed need to legislate mankind and preside over our thoughts and manners well into the future. Mayor Bloomberg claims to be helping the poor by stopping them from buying large sodas and Big Macs unless calories are printed on the menus.
Singers and actors are deep into projects that aim to sway, or in their minds, save societies beginning more often than not with saving the planet. I suspect you make a certain amount of money from singing or acting and soon you think you should make life harder for others to make it easier on the planet. This kind of thinking is beyond self-absorbed and boring but can't be ignored. I guess playing super heroes and other characters must really lead these people to think humans are going to destroy the planet. The earth is huge and would outlast any bombardment from mankind whom would perish well before.
Be that as it may, it's okay to believe in things but what's not okay is forcing massive changes on the lives of others. It's great to speak out about things we believe are truth but to force change by taking away freedoms and imposing a will that displaces those in existence is wrong and dangerous. This is the core of the fight in Washington. What the future will be and what those in power want the future to be. The world envisioned by Mayor Bloomberg, Bono, Hollywood's left and President Obama is one where mankind lowers its material desires including wealth, calories and achievement to be replaced by a tranquility that binds the less superior of beings.
Save for those blessed elites we'd all have the same stuff and balance would be an accepted world where lazy folks are revered as hard-working and net production of goods and services would be evenly distributed. Of course maintaining such a utopia would be expensive and more importantly, behind the scenes, harsh. It's not surprising President Obama, an ardent opponent of the Patriot Act not only renewed it with more power but now wants all federal agencies to be able to scan your economic activity without court approval.
It's not surprising the White House had such a hard time saying whether they would kill Americans on American soil with drones. It shouldn't be surprising (although it's scary as hell) non-military parts of the government just ordered up 1.2 billion rounds of ammunition. (This isn't like JFK having aides run around Washington DC to buy up all the Cuban cigars they could find before he signed law prohibiting their sale. As much as this administration dislikes many parts of the Constitution there is too much opposition to the abolishment of the Second Amendment although taxing bullets could make them prohibitively expensive.)
There will be an army of IRS agents hired to enforce the new healthcare law but one has to wonder what else they'll be used for.
Stability Levy
Over the weekend an amazing thing happened in Cyprus where the government took the mind-boggling step of freezing bank accounts and transfers in order to vote on a new tax against savers. Think about this for a moment ... you wake up one morning and an irresponsible government is taking money out of your bank account. The goal is to raise €10.0 billion for a bailout of the island nation.
EURO5.8 billion will be raised from saver's tax
All savers are going to be taxed.
> Depositors with less than €100,000 taxed at 6.75%
> Depositors with more than €100,000 taxed at 9.9%
In addition to the hit on locals the move would (vote delayed but hard to see it not going through now that the cat's out of the bag- there's going to be a run on the banks either way) crush wealthy Russians with huge deposits in Cyprus. There is a message to wealthy people and corporations everywhere- we can and will reach out and snatch what is ours!
> Cyprus GDP Euro18.0 billion
> Cyprus Bank accounts Euro70.0 billion
The idea this move will create stability is laughable. The country is bracing for a run on banks so there will be a holiday for a few days; in other words, the banks will not open. In the meantime, the European Central Bank promises to step in should a run on the banks occur, whenever they reopen so it doesn't destabilize the nation. This is scary stuff, but what happens when a government squanders all the money in its coffers. It provides a number of cautionary tales for Americans the least of which is what the future may actually look like.
President Obama says we could keep running deficits for another decade without a problem. Imagine trillion-dollar deficits for ten more years, and it doesn't impact the nation. It is beyond ridiculous. It's the kind of thing that only someone of superior thinking could come to embrace. Regular thinking people would have to question what would taxes have to be to support a government with a spending appetite that ferocious it must layout a trillion more every year than it takes in.
There are those that think government spending in the name of creating jobs is preferable to a balanced budget that provides fertile soil for real and sustained growth or unbearable debt.
I've been adamant about the need to understand that Greece didn't become Greece overnight or that Cyprus that just broke a sacred bond with its citizens aided by interlopers that said they would only chip in money if the island nation found cash. There weren't many options left for that government to scratch out some dough- so it raided banks of people that heretofore had done everything right. Cyprus could be our future and could happen sooner rather than later, and even though it won't be soon and never has to happen, it's a future all Americans should accept as possible.
Soon President Obama will pass a Nixon-era law to force all major industrial projects to provide information on the future impact on the environment. This plan will cost untold gobs of money, stall projects, stall hiring and force industry to become advocates of a worst-case global warming crisis. I'm not sure how much they'll have to pay upfront for future damages imagined but I bet it will run in the billions of dollars. It will be a brilliant move by the White House as it will fill their coffers, hamper big business and get a tacit advocate in its goal of making everyone believe as if gospel in man-made global warming and the notion Americans should pay the price for the sin.
It's the kind of penalty that isn't too far from the absurd tax on Cypriot savers as this drive to avoid future ecological disaster will mean higher energy bills for all, fewer jobs for all and will punish people that do or try to live life the right way. This isn't the first nor the last time the administration will use any means necessary to affect the future they envision the thing is that future doesn't reward ambition, innovation, individualism or the idea there is actually a higher power than superior men.
As for Samuel Johnson he was indeed a powerhouse.
o Poet
o Essayist
o Moralist
o Biographer
o Editor
o Literary Critic
o Lexicographer
He took nine years to create an amazing dictionary, formed a the Club of intellectuals that gathered each Monday at 7pm at Turk's Head and included greatest thinkers of that time: Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, Adam Smith and Gibbons.
Johnson wasn't a fan of colonists and felt they overplayed their hand and desire for no taxation without representation. For all his amazing attributes this world-renowned thinker didn't believe in a would-be America and didn't think colonists would prevail.
Conclusion
The future is tomorrow and a million years from now. I find it amazing we could be forced to mitigate America's greatness and tax all its citizens because there is a chance the planet will get a degree warmer in the next one hundred years and yet the same people that embrace that believe squandering money and legacy will pushing out the private sector and punishing success is a great game plan for the next ten years.
We will not become Greece tomorrow, so the stock market rally could continue, but anyone afraid of a worse-case scenario is spot on although it is wiser to fight against it and defend liberty than digging a foxhole to await a finality that is many years away - and doesn't have to happen.