The Fiscal Cliff Deal and Shrinking American Freedom: Hurting Americas Poorest Citizens

09 Jan The Fiscal Cliff Deal and Shrinking American Freedom: Hurting Americas Poorest Citizens

 

The fiscal cliff deal in America involves higher taxes, and virtually no spending cuts. 

Lower income Americans are less financially able to start their own enterprises, and need to find jobs in stable, established businesses, small or large.

As the Democrat-led explosion of growth in federal government regulation, taxation and power occurred over the last four years, unemployment has remained staggeringly high, (statistics that make it look like unemployment figures are going down deceptively exclude the millions of Americans who have given up looking for jobs), so we’ve experienced the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression. Filings for  “disability” have skyrocketed (there are 39 states with fewer total citizens than the number of Americans on disability). Family net worth is down 40% under Obama. So people do not have the money to buy homes or the income from jobs to start saving for one. 

• It’s raining regulations:
  • In the first three years of the Obama administration, he imposed nearly four times the new regulations than his predecessor did at the same point, at over five times the cost to American citizens.
  • Thousands of new federal regulations will hit U.S businesses in 2013, with just the top 13 most expensive ones costing the U.S economy $515 billion.
  • On the Friday before Christmas, 2012, Obama released a staggering list of new regulations that he will impose on America’s businesses and individuals. 
  • Regulations strangle businesses, so they have no ability to grow and create jobs, so people who need jobs cannot find them. And on and on it goes.

• The polar opposite of economic freedom is communism, and its ugly stepsister socialism.  Consider the communist nations of Cuba, and North Korea, two of the most economically “unfree” nations in the world.

• In 2011, half of North Korea’s Army was starving. Credible reports say that over 5 million North Koreans starved to death in the last 10 years. 
• Cubans are in a panic over the ill health of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez because their nation is so completely dependent on Venezuela for food and other basic necessities. Cuba “still has a cash-strapped centrally-planned government-run economy” and its people are completely dependent and completely helpless. Cubans literally and realistically fear starving to death if Chavez dies because self-sufficiency has been crushed and improving one’s plight through hard work is economically and legally impossible.
• Both Cuba and North Korea defend their economic control over society as intended to “provide” for all citizens, to make life fair by equally distributing wealth, with the result of equally distributing human suffering and misery.

 History has taught us that big, powerful central government and its consequent crushing of individual economic freedom causes suffering, for the poorest among us, and for everyone else.

These are “big issue” times in America, with far more at stake than particular tax proposals or spending cut ideas. The overarching question is whether Americans wish to continue our two hundred plus year history of abundant economic opportunity and unparalleled personal freedom, or do we wish to slither and slide down the path of big government controlled economies that crush personal freedoms and opportunities, in exchange for government promising to “take care of” our every need.

You can’t have it both ways, and the challenge is to connect the dots between the offers of “free stuff” and “government provided everything,” and the loss of real freedom.

The Index of Economic Freedom validates what Americans who work hard and pay taxes know in their hearts: freedom is slowly and surely evaporating in America as government is growing in power and control over society and our economy. It is up to the American voters and active citizens to tell our elected officials that we want our freedom back.