John, Biden, I assume either never took Econ. 101 wherever he went to school or his memory has failed him once again. But I will say this for a man of very limited economic experience who never held down a real full time job in all of his earning years, he has amassed a pretty solid nest egg of net worth. And I understand he was a sometime college professor at my alma mater. Can anyone explain to me how he accumulated all of this wealth on a US Senators salary? Maybe he knows something we don't know.
Unfortunately, the people who need to read your comments, John, will never see them and the people on this blog who do mostly agree with you anyway. The level of ignorance of basic Civics and American history among our citizenry makes it much easier for Democrats to carry out their "fundamental transformation."
The Founders, while imperfect men themselves, had a keen grasp of human nature and crafted a Constitution that at least tried to mitigate our baser instincts. Nowadays, those baser instincts have become the mother's milk of our politics. Politicians, especially those on the Left, play on people's grievances, greed, and envy; and that is the core of Biden's economic "policy" message. Hate the person who has more than you do because it's unfair. The government will make sure those with too much are punished and then redistribute their ill gotten gains to you.
An earlier generation chose to disregard the previous Constitutional prohibition against an income tax and gave us the 14th Amendment which was supposed to impose economic "fairness" but instead it gave politicians the unlimited funds to grow the government into the behemoth it is today - along with all the big government ills the Founders tried to prevent. But the principle behind the progressive income tax—the more you earn, the larger the percentage of tax you must pay—would have been appalling to the Founders. They recognized that, in James Madison’s words, “the spirit of party and faction” would prevail if Congress could tax one group of citizens and confer the benefits on another group. Unfortunately, that spirit of party and faction is what rules today. It's the basis for pretty much everything the government does.
It's hard to say where this train ends up but it sure seems like the engineers driving it are intent on speeding us down the wrong track to economic and social oblivion.
Although not quite apropos to this discussion: John Adams was right: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other..." Unfortunately, we're proving him all too correct.
There is not much I can add to a very succinct analysis of the current political situation except the following: another fear of the founders was supposedly stated by Franklin in answer to a query about the work of the Constitutional Convention when he said we gave you a republic if you can keep it. Historically there has never been a real republic of the size of the current USA. It was felt that before it got too big internal factions would tear it apart. I've got a slight feeling that this is starting to happen here. I hope that I'm wrong but we are moving in the direction of a Socialist Republic and a Conservative Republic the former being based on socialist redistribution and the latter built on a free market system with a conservative ethos. Drowning our current nation in a flood of alien people who have no idea or care less about our political ethos and are only here for economic reasons will eventually lead to the bankruptcy and breakup of our current system. That is the direction I fear we are headed.
John, Biden, I assume either never took Econ. 101 wherever he went to school or his memory has failed him once again. But I will say this for a man of very limited economic experience who never held down a real full time job in all of his earning years, he has amassed a pretty solid nest egg of net worth. And I understand he was a sometime college professor at my alma mater. Can anyone explain to me how he accumulated all of this wealth on a US Senators salary? Maybe he knows something we don't know.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Unfortunately, the people who need to read your comments, John, will never see them and the people on this blog who do mostly agree with you anyway. The level of ignorance of basic Civics and American history among our citizenry makes it much easier for Democrats to carry out their "fundamental transformation."
The Founders, while imperfect men themselves, had a keen grasp of human nature and crafted a Constitution that at least tried to mitigate our baser instincts. Nowadays, those baser instincts have become the mother's milk of our politics. Politicians, especially those on the Left, play on people's grievances, greed, and envy; and that is the core of Biden's economic "policy" message. Hate the person who has more than you do because it's unfair. The government will make sure those with too much are punished and then redistribute their ill gotten gains to you.
An earlier generation chose to disregard the previous Constitutional prohibition against an income tax and gave us the 14th Amendment which was supposed to impose economic "fairness" but instead it gave politicians the unlimited funds to grow the government into the behemoth it is today - along with all the big government ills the Founders tried to prevent. But the principle behind the progressive income tax—the more you earn, the larger the percentage of tax you must pay—would have been appalling to the Founders. They recognized that, in James Madison’s words, “the spirit of party and faction” would prevail if Congress could tax one group of citizens and confer the benefits on another group. Unfortunately, that spirit of party and faction is what rules today. It's the basis for pretty much everything the government does.
It's hard to say where this train ends up but it sure seems like the engineers driving it are intent on speeding us down the wrong track to economic and social oblivion.
Although not quite apropos to this discussion: John Adams was right: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other..." Unfortunately, we're proving him all too correct.
There is not much I can add to a very succinct analysis of the current political situation except the following: another fear of the founders was supposedly stated by Franklin in answer to a query about the work of the Constitutional Convention when he said we gave you a republic if you can keep it. Historically there has never been a real republic of the size of the current USA. It was felt that before it got too big internal factions would tear it apart. I've got a slight feeling that this is starting to happen here. I hope that I'm wrong but we are moving in the direction of a Socialist Republic and a Conservative Republic the former being based on socialist redistribution and the latter built on a free market system with a conservative ethos. Drowning our current nation in a flood of alien people who have no idea or care less about our political ethos and are only here for economic reasons will eventually lead to the bankruptcy and breakup of our current system. That is the direction I fear we are headed.