Pens and Pitchforks

Saturday, a worker from the Obama campaign stopped by to pick up my wife’s absentee ballot (thanks to the campaign for helping get her registered) and I had an opportunity to engage this gentleman in a friendly chat about the issues.  However, I was disappointed to learn that he had somehow missed Sen. Government’s remarks about the shrinking pie that has been gobbled up by millionaires and billionaires.

This conversation made me think of another fundamental flaw in the way that Sen. Government views the pie: he has no idea who makes the pie.  The way Sen. Government talks about pie, it is as if the government runs the bakery.  The truth is, the pie is made by the millionaires, billionaires, and aspiring entrepreneurs that grow the economy through capitalist pursuits in private industry and it is only after they create the pie that there is anything for Senator Government to tax and redistribute.

To get the bakery to bake more pie do you: a) Take half the pies produced and give them to people who don’t have a clue about baking or b) Let the bakery keep more pies to sell at the prevailing market rate earning more profit and having more incentive to bake more pies?

To expand the number of jobs available do you: a) Take half of the bakery’s profit and let the government create jobs after they subtract administrative overhead or b) Let the bakery keep more profit and expand its baking facility?

Your answers to these questions gives you a little bit of insight as to whether you are a capitalist or a socialist.  Whether you favor large government reducing risk and slowing economic growth or entrepreneurship with less regulations, more risk, and faster economic growth.  Sen. Government can reduce your individual risks with significantly larger government, more oversight, more spending and more regulations.  However, with this reduced risk, comes reduced reward, not just for you, but for America as a whole.

Tags: capitalism, senator government, socialism

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 8:50 pm and is filed under National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.