Three Important Axioms

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

As you think about what you heard in last night's State of the Union Speech - or read about what you didn't hear if you're among those who had more important things to do than listen to another campaign speech - please keep three important things in mind. In fact, we would do well to remember these three things any time we're listening to a politician, and any time we're about to step into a voting booth. (Or sit down at the kitchen table to fill out that mail-in ballot if you're like us Washington voters who don't have voting booths anymore.)

1. The government cannot give anything to anybody without first taking it from somebody else.


2. When someone receives from the government something they did not work for, it means that somebody else worked for it without receiving it.


3. The government cannot create wealth. It can only redistribute it.

If you stop and think about these axioms, you will find that they logically lead to several other conclusions, one of which is: The government cannot create jobs - unless they're government jobs, which then increase the tax burden on the private sector, thus reducing wealth creation and the ability of the private sector to create jobs. The best that the government can do is to try to create an environment in which the private sector can flourish.

Who does create jobs? Well, it's well known that most jobs in this country are created by small businesses - a fact that's at least given lip service by the current administration. Who are the people who start small businesses? They are people who have managed to accumulate enough wealth that they're willing to take a financial risk in order to try to create more. It takes capital to start a small business. It takes more capital to run it for the first few years and (hopefully) nurse it into sustained profitability. That capital typically comes out of the savings of the person who started the business - who typically works extremely long hours for little or no pay in the hope that the business will pay off before the savings run out.

These are the "rich" people that the Democrats want to pile even more of the tax burden on. Problem is, when you take their wealth away, fewer businesses - thus fewer jobs - get created. Plus the incentive to work those long hours is reduced when you know that a bigger chunk of what you're working for is just going to be taken away from you anyway.

So keep those things in mind - particularly when you hear the wild claims about how many jobs were "created or saved" by the stimulus package, and the calls, which will become louder and more numerous as we approach the mid-term election, for a "jobs package" that will spend even more money that we don't have in an attempt to create jobs.

Print out the three axioms above. Tape them to your bathroom mirror. Read them out loud several times a day. If enough people really came to understand the truth in them, we would really start to see some change we could believe in.

Thanks for listening.