“Capitalism and Freedom” – Senator Jim DeMint

This week GM won permission for a government-backed company to purchase GM brands including Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet, in order to pay off millions of dollars of debt—elevating the phrase “big government” to a new level. As consumers are confronted by an ailing economy and a brittle banking system, how much longer will it be before the capitalist system becomes just a faded memory?

The following is an excerpt from Senator Jim DeMint’s new release Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America’s Slide into Socialism:

“America’s golden goose is our capitalist economic system. It has made us wealthy beyond anything the world has ever known. Yet our excesses and debt are leading us to demand more and more golden eggs. Our taxes, regulations, and legal liabilities on businesses are now the most onerous in the world. We haven’t yet killed the goose, but we have plucked her clean, and the socialist axe is at her neck…

We have seen the federal government’s ‘communal sector’ replace local decision-making in public schools, hamstring private sector health-care services, federalize local banking, socialize farming, nationalize road construction. We now have federal intrusion into almost every business sector. Government must provide a consistent and predictable framework of laws and regulations, but arbitrary intrusion and subjective interpretations of regulations destroys the operation of the free market. Capitalism and socialism will not work together.

America cannot have it both ways. We must decide if we want a free market economy or socialism. Mixing the central planning principles of socialism with the decentralized free-market principles of capitalism has not worked, and it is destroying American’s competitive advantage in the world. Using business to collect taxes, provide health care, maintain pension programs, promote affirmative action, support the unemployed, absorb the cost of emissions by cars and utilities, and pay for frivolous lawsuits is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

All of these functions are important and sometimes necessary, but Americans must understand that putting these costs on the backs of businesses does not save money; it obscures costs and creates inefficiencies that reduce competitiveness. Businesses don’t pay for anything; they pass along the cost of taxes, health care, pensions, and all other costs of doing business to their employees and customers. These expenses increase the cost of American workers but reduce their take-home pay. They also increase the cost of products, reduce competitiveness, and hurt profitability.”

In 314 pages, Senator DeMint argues against big government and calls for Americans to take back the power rightfully bestowed upon them by our founding fathers. He also calls for Americans to defend their personal freedom and provides action steps citizens can take to stop this slide into socialism.

Link: http://www.savingfreedombook.com/

Connect with Senator Jim DeMint online:

Twitter: @JimDeMint
Personal Site: JimDeMint.com
Senate Site: DeMint.Senate.gov

Want to see a state-run economy? Go to Michigan

by Sandra

In his speech at Georgetown University on April 14th, Obama suggested that the old economic model of free market capitalism is dead. He likened it to building our house on sand. To build our economic house on rock, continued Obama, is to rely upon government, particularly on government spending to stimulate the economy. Elsewhere in his speech he glowingly talked of government “investment” in green industries to create jobs, for example.

Translation: it’s government’s job to pick economic winners and losers, rather than allowing free market forces to shape the economy.

If you want to know what that really looks like, where the government picks economic winners and losers, you only need take a look at Michigan.

Here are some of Michigan’s startling statistics:

• 
  Michigan has a 12.6% unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. (Michigan has achieved this dubious distinction of being “#1” in unemployment for the past 6 or more years.)


• Michigan’s per capita income ($34,342) has slipped 11.2% below the U.S. national average ($38,564), the lowest ranking since statistics were first kept in 1929.


• The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), a government agency charged with economic development, proclaimed it had created 40 new jobs from 2005 to 2007 (at the total cost of $116.3 million in taxpayer dollars. That’s roughly $3 million per job.) However, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Michigan had a net loss of 100,000 jobs from 2004/2005, even before taxes increased 11% on small businesses and 7% individuals.
  
  These are but a few statistics. I could go on about how houses have sold in Detroit for $1; how Michigan’s poverty rate is growing; how Michigan has had a skyrocketing net loss of population since 2001 (mostly the college-educated.)
  
  But you get the picture. Government has no business picking winners and losers in the economy. (Unless, of course, your goal is to impoverish the population, making them more dependent upon that very same government, as that government continues to grow through higher and higher taxes.)
  
  And if I may remind all of you who do not live in Michigan that during these same 8+ years Michigan that has been in an economic depression, the rest of you in most of the other 49 states were seeing economic growth, especially in right-to-work states like Alabama or no-income tax states like Texas or states with foresight who diversified their economies 20 years ago, like North Carolina.
  
  So the next time you hear someone parroting the line that it’s the free market’s fault that we’re in this economic mess, with all its greedy capitalists, and so we now need the government to run our economy – send them to Michigan.