My apologies for the last string of posts. I was boring myself with them, honestly. You probably don’t want to hear me drone on and on about the decline and fall of Western Civilization – it’s depressing. The data is there if you want it. You really don’t need me to simply repeat it for you. The argument always deteriorates into something I never wanted to get into: first, I present the facts; then, I give my opinion on the facts; but after that, I start questioning motives, saying things like “Obamacare is not about health care at all – It’s about control.” I mean, how could I know that? Are the President and Congress deliberately driving the nation over the brink? Who am I to say? In the parlance of the President, that’s “above my paygrade.” That’s between them and God.
This week, however, I reached an inflection point, at least in my own mind: if I had to guess, I’d give the United States a fifty percent chance of making it as a (free) nation. Why do I say that? Well, this week, the White House Budget was released, and it’s quite ridiculous. With a record-breaking $1.6 trillion deficit, the federal government is set to spend $3.8 trillion in 2011.
Does this make any sense to you? Is this how people live? Oh, right, right, we have to do all this, certainly because of something George W. Bush did. I hear it almost daily. This liberal trope has run its lifespan; the largest of the Bush deficits, of which this Administration “inherited,” was less than $200 billion (one-eighth of Obama’s, if you are not mathematically inclined). I’d call it “doubling down cubed” on the worst parts of Bush’s policies.
Although I promised not to go into the stats – yeah, I’m already slipping – but our deficit-to-GDP ratio is 10.6 percent. To put this in relative terms, the EU is set to order Greece to reduce theirs from a current 12.7 percent level to 3 percent. What would we do if China ordered us to do that same thing?
Which leads me to conclude we are in a free fall, held hostage by the most irresponsible public servants in our nation’s history, unwilling to make the hard choices, unwilling to sacrifice, like Castor for Polydeuces, an “entitled” level of comfort to sacrifice for others, namely, our children. Both parties lack the willpower to do so. Is there any HOPE? Tell me what you think, because I’ve said my piece.
I’ll re-double my efforts and focus on abstraction. Take a ride with me, through my personal life and a bit of history, and see if you can follow a couple of themes, which have, in fact, already begun.
Boots or Boat Shoes?
Since getting a pair of boots last month, every morning, I face the same question. Do I wear my boots, with the hardest working soles I’ve ever owned, or my typical boat shoes, which are, by nature, flimsy. It should be noted I have three serviceable pairs of boat shoes, five total, but only one pair of boots. I feel like a boss in either manner of footwear, so the question is independent of preference, because I like them both equitably.
Why does it matter? Not accounting for the ambulatory requirements in the record snow now outside my house, this is indeed an existential question. Boots of all sorts are generally worn by people in a field of work involving something physical – I reject the term “working class,” as well as “middle class,” as I oppose any kind of feudalist order and terminology – while boat shoes are worn by, well, the “sailing class.” That’s sarcasm. Also, in a way, both of these shoes represent and pay homage to two distinct parts of my life.
And while the question is multi-faceted, the answer is not: depends on the pants.
Bluegrass or Old-Time String Music?
My favorite music spans these two genres. Admittedly, the two styles are intertwined, like siamese twins, hinged at the hip. Where one begins and the other ends is sometimes indistinguishable, while the extremities of the two are immediately recognizable as separate.
Bluegrass has a boom-chuck-boom-chuck rhythm, usually established with a bass and a chop from either a mandolin or a guitar, and filled with a rolling banjo and likely a fiddle. Bluegrass is immediately recognizable and often fast in nature. ”Old-timey” music sounds like Depression era hymns, are slower in nature, and are meant to be uplifting, healing, or simply provide comedy relief. What is more entertaining to see is how iTunes labels this music, especially when the former ventures into classical styles, such as chamber music, or jazz, as with the Flecktones.
Why do I like this music so much? Perhaps it’s because of our similar origins in Appalachia, and before that, back across the pond. Unlike steel, though, DNA is not made stronger by folding (and re-folding) it onto itself. Somewhere deep in my DNA lies a proclivity for the pairing of a banjo with fiddle (or two, best represented with the twin fiddles of Mark O’Connor and Stuart Duncan on Bela Fleck’s “Up and Around the Bend“). More than likely, my ancestors have been playing music like this for centuries.
This kind of music evokes an emotion within me other types of music simply cannot. Why try to classify any of it? I mean, what, exactly, does Doc Watson play? I don’t know, but I know I like it.
Wilson or Coolidge?
In our history books (and Wikipedia), one of these men is lionized, while the other is demonized. That’s not surprising, as the American system of learning has been hijacked by leftists, perpetuating the problem by producing little leftists. If you couldn’t tell, I obviously have a different take on it, for the following reasons, which are not spelled out by the Trotskyites who plagiarize their professoriat for Wikipedia.
Before Woodrow Wilson, there was no permanent income tax. There was no Federal Reserve, and no Internal Revenue Service (as we now know it). When first implemented in 1913, the upper income tax rate was 7 percent. Eight years later, the upper rate had been increased to 77 percent. Admittedly, much of this was a result of World War I, but most was due to an expansion in the role of government in everyday life.
Something odd occurred as a result of these high income taxes. Instead of raising revenues, the national debt increased from $1 billion to $24 billion under Wilson. Why is that? Well, instead of taking the risk of failing and losing everything, or succeeding and keeping 23 percent, would-be innovators simply decided not to play. Unemployment was eleven percent when Wilson left the Presidency, even though unemployment tends to drop during wartime.
This was the financial situation Warren Harding “inherited.” Harding was personally ravaged by scandals (such as Teapot Dome) that plagued his Administration, due greatly to his character deficiencies, and he up and died two years into his term. During those two years, however, he put forth the framework for cutting the income tax, something Calvin Coolidge acted on.
Coolidge, along with his Congress, cut the top tax rate to 24 percent, with only the top 2% of wage earners paying any income tax at all. Unemployment, as a result, fell to 3 percent, and inflation flatlined at 1 percent, producing what is commonly referred to as the Roaring 20’s, with the lowest “misery index” in our nation’s history. As a direct result of his tax (and spending) cuts, Coolidge (with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon) drew down the national debt by $7 billion and experienced six years of budget surpluses during his Administration. He is, in fact, the only President who had a surplus every year of his tenure. How? By doing less, not more.
So, in my mind, one of these men is a Saint, and the other is a Monster. Long live laissez faire. Case closed, right? Well, another piece of history came about, but it’s a bit different than your teacher told you.
Miscalculations
When the stock market crashed, President Herbert Hoover took bold action to stop the hemorrhaging, but instead, made it worse, by raising the upper tax rate from 24 to 63 percent, and signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930. Hoover, a progressive Republican, took a lot of blame for not doing anything about the crash, and then came Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a true Wilsonian if there ever was one. (Note: Vice President Biden has a different take on this.) FDR raised the top income tax rate first to 79, and later to 90 percent. In 1941, FDR proposed a 99.5 percent marginal rate on all income over $100,000. When an advisor questioned this proposal, his response was, Why not?”
When that proposal died in Congress, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9149 on April 27, 1942, taxing all income over $25,000 at a rate of 100 percent, effectively establishing a maximum wage in the United States. The next day, FDR addressed the American people, saying, “I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.” Today, FDR’s $25,000 is equivalent to about $250,000. Where have I heard that number before?
Congress eventually overturned that executive order, but not before FDR lowered personal exemptions to $600, meaning most Americans now paid some form of an income tax. What happened to the unemployment rate under FDR? It skyrocketed to 24 percent, until World War II virtually evaporated unemployment in the United States, as the future of our nation depended on every able-bodied person.
We face the same situation today, with a similarly progressive leadership, who want to tax and regulate anything that makes a profit, until they need to be subsidized just to survive. I believe we need taxes, and regulations, but I equate the proper regulation of capitalism to the act of establishing a bowling lane for kiddos with gutter bumpers. Regulations serves as the bumpers. If the ball is moving in the wrong direction, you don’t go running down the lane to push it one way or another. You let it go. This is something the Keynesian central planners cannot, by nature, understand.
Historical statistics, as well as basic economics, proves that wage intervention produces unemployment. Instead, our central planners get involved in everything, targeting specifically those industries that make a profit, in that way, acting as locusts that feed on one field and then move to another, moving quickly to disrupt and dismantle the capitalist order upon which innovation and production is built. Gee, where did American production go, exactly?
Final Thoughts
I personally believe half the country is perfectly fine with what’s going on, if not complicit, then oblivious to the deleterious effects of our government’s policies. A recent Gallup poll supports the idea that more are complicit than oblivious, reporting 36 percent of Americans viewing socialism positively, with 61 percent of liberals, 20 percent of conservatives, and 39 percent of moderates expressing this sentiment.
Let me ask you: How did Rome fall? A once-great nation was spread too thin with two acting capitols, out of resources, militarily weakened, letting the Visgoths silently infiltrate them. By the time the Romans realized what was happening, it was too late, and no those who noticed didn’t really care anymore. What’s that got to do with us, you ask? Lech Walesa, co-founder of the Polish Solidarity movement, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and former President of Poland, put it bluntly this week, at the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba:
“The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily. They also lead economically, but they’re getting weak. But they don’t lead morally and politically anymore. They world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope.”
But there I go again, questioning motives. Complicit or oblivious? Let’s get back to the peripherals. In Greek mythology, Castor sacrificed his deity for his dying half-brother Polydeuces, so they could both live together on earth, as Homer put it, bound to “the corn-bearing earth that holds them.” Will this generation give up it’s so-called “entitlements” (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) to save an entire nation?
Castor made the sacrifice, and now both brothers are immortalized in the sign of Gemini, represented by the planet Mercury, faster than any other planet in our solar system, taking only 88 days to circle the sun. I’m not much for astrology, and I could go further than you’d want me to, discussing the theories associated with the end of the Age of Pisces, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, how it ties into end times and the pouring out of the seven bowls containing God’s wrath, but I think I’ll stop there, and to that home on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away.
