tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86426003538916544412024-02-18T22:07:34.053-08:00I Don't Like Bernie, Because....Essays challenging the claims in "I Like Bernie, But..."Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-20792115339810407382019-12-30T12:02:00.000-08:002019-12-30T12:02:11.564-08:00Bernie’s embrace of gun control endangers American liberty<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: blue;"><b>With Bernie rising in the polls, getting closer to
controlling our government, note how he has started to demand dangerous,
anti-liberty gun control.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The website <i><a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/">I
Like Bernie, But...</a></i> seeks to address concerns that voters might
have about Bernie Sanders, and to assure them that his plans work, that he's
electable, and that his vision his sound. Previous posts on this blog
have addressed the <i>I Like Bernie</i> take on <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/27/isnt-bernie-a-socialist-why-yes-he-is-and-thats-bad/">his
socialism</a> (yes, he's a socialist, not a Democrat) and <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/28/bernie-wants-to-raise-taxes-and-its-going-to-hurt/">his
tax and spend plans</a> (which are great if you want to kill the economy).
This post takes on the <i>I Like Bernie </i>discussion about
Bernie and guns.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The question asked at <i>I Like Bernie</i> is "Isn't he
too weak on gun control?" The <i>I Like Bernie</i> team then hastens
to assure readers that no, he's not. The Brady Campaign loves him and the
NRA hates him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhylCFxlJDord_YiCs9id1ZX4tdo6gku4LQZGgrebM3pNCRGDqYvSH2TkJkUiztjuNMGc8Nm-f24B13tuuMoN6Ce1qmQLAhLSVuTTvreiBMvGh5EjjsHPxWu5PuuoSNxnYxtrtFPd0B-HXu/s1600/Bernie+on+guns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="635" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhylCFxlJDord_YiCs9id1ZX4tdo6gku4LQZGgrebM3pNCRGDqYvSH2TkJkUiztjuNMGc8Nm-f24B13tuuMoN6Ce1qmQLAhLSVuTTvreiBMvGh5EjjsHPxWu5PuuoSNxnYxtrtFPd0B-HXu/s400/Bernie+on+guns.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/30/bernies-embrace-of-gun-control-endangers-american-liberty/bernie-on-guns/"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600"
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The Progressive concern about Bernie and gun control arises
because of Bernie's long-ago Second Amendment friendly votes on <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Bernie_Sanders.htm">various gun control
initiatives</a> during his years in the Senate:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Voted
YES on allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains. (Apr 2009) </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Voted
YES on prohibiting foreign & UN aid that restricts US gun ownership.
(Sep 2007)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Voted
YES on prohibiting product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers. (Oct
2005) </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Voted
YES on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse. (Apr
2003)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Voted
NO on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1. (Jun 1999)</li>
</ul>
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As you can see, barring Bernie's "no" vote on
decreasing waiting periods, that's a pretty gun supportive record, which is
definitely off-putting to Progressives. However, by 2013, Sanders was
allying with <a href="http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/why-bernie-sanders-alleged-gun-moderate-gets-a-d-minus-from-the-nra/">the
Progressive caucus on gun issues</a> when he supported banning assault
weapons and universal background checks. These votes left <a href="http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/why-bernie-sanders-alleged-gun-moderate-gets-a-d-minus-from-the-nra/">Second
Amendment proponents dubious</a> about Bernie's trustworthiness on gun rights.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8642600353891654441" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It seems Sanders, for his part, ran afoul of the
organization [NRA] in 1994, when he voted for a bill that would have banned 19
varieties of semiautomatic assault weapons. According to Richard Feldman, a
former NRA lobbyist, voting in favor of banning any kind of firearm is, in the
eyes of the NRA, unredeemable. “Unless you vote the other way later on,” he
adds.</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since the last election, though, Bernie has become only <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/4/18236537/bernie-sanders-gun-control-president-campaign-2020">more
strident when it comes to gun control</a>, as he tries to beat back the
Progressive fear that he was too soft on guns:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But since 2016, Sanders, who’s now running for the
presidential nomination in 2020, has taken a different tack on guns. He’s
reiterated the need to expand background checks and ban assault weapons. He’s
pointed to his broader support for gun control, and co-sponsored several Senate
gun violence bills. In public appearances and social media, he’s highlighted
his own past remarks, going back to the late 1980s, in which he called for a
ban on assault weapons.<br /><o:p> </o:p>*snip*<br /><o:p> </o:p>Sanders emphasized the issue in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7DRwz0cAt0">campaign announcement speech</a>:
“I’m running for president because we must end the epidemic of gun violence in
this country. We need to take on the NRA, expand background checks, end the gun
show loophole, and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons.”</blockquote>
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For those wondering why Bernie's increasing urge to grab
guns is a bad thing, let me explain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>An armed government aimed at a disarmed citizenry is a
recipe for tyranny and death<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Data proves irrefutably that citizens are never in greater
danger than when their government is armed and they are not. To prove that
point, this analysis looks at the world's most successful murderers over the
last century or so. To do this, I break killers down into three categories:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;">Non-government
actors <i>without</i> guns,<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;"><o:p> </o:p>Non-government
actors <i>with</i> guns, and</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;"><o:p> </o:p>Killer
governments (acting <i>with guns, </i>of course)</li>
</ol>
The numbers may surprise you.
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First, here are the facts about the worst mass murders
committed by people or corporations acting <i>without</i> guns:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b>The
worst psychopathic individual mass murderer who killed without a gun</b>:
Gameel al-Batouti. On October 31, 1999, he cried out “Allahu Akbar” as he
piloted a plane full of passengers into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 217
people. </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b>The
worst ideologically driven collective of mass murderers who killed without
guns</b>: The 19 al Qaeda members who, on September 11, 2001, used box
cutters to hijack four planes, crashed three of those planes into three
buildings and one plane into a field, killing 2,996 people in a matter of
hours. </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b>The
worst corporate mass murderer without a gun: </b>In December 1984, the
Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, accidentally
released toxic gas from its facility, killing 3,787 people. </li>
</ol>
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<b>CONCLUSION</b>: When dedicated or negligent mass
murderers use something other than guns, they’re able to achieve deaths that
range from a few hundred to a few thousand.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Second, here is information about people or corporations
that committed mass murder <i>with</i> guns:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b>The
worst psychopathic individual mass murderer who used a gun</b>: Anders
Behring Breivik who, on July 22, 2011, shot and killed 69 people in Norway
– mostly teenagers. This rampage came after he’d already set off a bomb,
killing 8 people. Norway has strict gun control. </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b>The
worst ideologically driven collective mass murderers who used guns</b>:
Given Islamists’ tendency to use all weapons available to shoot as many
people as possible in as many countries as they can, this is a tough one
to call. I believe, though, that the Mumbai terror attack in 2008 is the
largest ideologically driven mass murder that relied solely on guns.
Throughout the city of Mumbai, Islamic terrorists engaged in a coordinated
attack that killed 154 people. The unbelievably bloody and shocking mall
shooting that al Shabaab staged in Kenya killed only 63 people, and the
Paris Massacre in November 2015 claimed only 130 lives. </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b>The
worst corporate mass murder using guns</b>: I can’t find any corporation
that slaughtered people with guns. To the extent that numerous workers
died during 19th century labor disputes, those deaths occurred because
state government, siding with management, sent out the state’s militia to
disperse the strikers. For example, in November 1887, in Thibodaux,
Louisiana, the state militia killed between 35 and 300 black sugar
plantation strikers. The 20th and 21st century did not offer such
examples. </li>
</ol>
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<b>CONCLUSION</b>: When individual killers or small groups
of killers rely on guns, their effectiveness is limited, compared to those who
use planes or bombs. In addition, corporations (outside of crazed Hollywood
movies) drop out of the running entirely.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Before moving on to those entities that rack up the highest
body counts with guns (that would be governments), let's summarize the above
information and make a few additional points about murderous individuals with
guns: Individuals and corporations can and do kill. However, even when
given optimal killing situations (e.g., acts of terrorism or corporate
negligence), the numbers stay in the low thousands – and actually sink
significantly lower when guns are involved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, there’s an obvious hole in the above data, and
that's the most common gun-death situation in America: Small killing events (a
murder here, a murder there), that over time result in a lot of dead bodies.
Believe it or not, though, those numbers (a) are not as bad as you think;
(b) mostly fall, rather than rise, as legal gun ownership increases; and (c)
are driven more by urban culture than gun ownership.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let's start by adding up <a href="http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm">America’s annual murder
statistics from 1960 through 2018</a>. Over that 58-year period, the
total number of Americans killed was 1,019,167. (This number encompasses all
murders, not just those with guns, but we’ll still use it as the most extreme
illustration of Americans’ alleged propensity to violence.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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For those who like averages, that’s an average of 17,572
murders per year – which is, of course, a nonsensical number, because the data
shows that murder rates are variably and always bear some relationship to
America's growing population. (Regarding the variability, note the sudden spike
in murder beginning in 2015, a date that coincides with the Black Lives Matter
movement attacking policing.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just for fun, let’s pretend America had 17,572 murders per
year every year since 1776, when she declared her independence from Britain.
That’s a ludicrous notion, of course, given that America’s population was then
only around 2.5 million, compared to today’s 330 million. Still, I’m going to
extremes to make a point. If we multiple 17,572 by 243, we get a ridiculously
high total American murder rate (by all methods, not just guns) of 4,269,996
over a 243 year span.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ridiculous or not, I’m going with that 4,269,996 number
because I want to make a point. As you'll see, 4,269,996 individual murders
over 243 years is chump change compared to the numbers armed governments acting
against disarmed citizens can kill in anything from a year to a decade. Here is
the damning data showing what happens when armed governments are able to turn
on their own citizens or engage in genocidal attacks against specifically
selected religious, cultural, or racial groups – all of them unarmed and
defenseless.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Turkey</b>: In 1915, the Turkish government ordered and
carried out the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5DQfjud4ynMN3rya-95F5EiJ88GaBhfDO1LvkSY_-rpUTDJ_9cWnAuF6e9eIBvFBdS-Cabg5v7BGWz5VjSAXJxmKVVIaCARfBU2CtsBEMAy9hBEt1mCmiauSPD8mc_QbXnadN37PhX1uh/s1600/Armenians+slaughtered+by+Turks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="460" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5DQfjud4ynMN3rya-95F5EiJ88GaBhfDO1LvkSY_-rpUTDJ_9cWnAuF6e9eIBvFBdS-Cabg5v7BGWz5VjSAXJxmKVVIaCARfBU2CtsBEMAy9hBEt1mCmiauSPD8mc_QbXnadN37PhX1uh/s400/Armenians+slaughtered+by+Turks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<o:p> </o:p> </div>
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<b>Soviet Union</b>: From the 1920s through mid-1930s, the
Soviet government under Stalin declared war on the independent Ukrainian
farmers known as Kulaks. Through government engineered starvation, deportation,
and execution, enforced with Soviet gun power, the Soviets are estimated to
have killed approximately 7 million Kulaks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Kulaks were just one group who died off in a specific
mass killing. In fact, nobody really knows how many of its unarmed citizens the
Soviet Union killed, whether using starvation, outright execution, or deadly
penal colonies. Estimates range from 7 million to 20 million people dying due
to the Soviet government’s policies and purges.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg83tHFYvR6a2w0By6lj-3wxqfXQtOR3iW-TzivyY3HxA-B2HsxTJi6liWmDOl-hR7gAamYm2bEn0GBHqL8xpLn6GE030D3WWCFfFbq7HoRf7RYfDSun_geAc6qMRWNRF2vnWl_ErmcGh85/s1600/Kulak+famine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg83tHFYvR6a2w0By6lj-3wxqfXQtOR3iW-TzivyY3HxA-B2HsxTJi6liWmDOl-hR7gAamYm2bEn0GBHqL8xpLn6GE030D3WWCFfFbq7HoRf7RYfDSun_geAc6qMRWNRF2vnWl_ErmcGh85/s400/Kulak+famine.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/30/bernies-embrace-of-gun-control-endangers-american-liberty/kulak-famine-2/"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_38" o:spid="_x0000_i1031"
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<b>China in the 1960s through 1970s</b>: When it comes to a
government killing its own citizens, the Soviets were pikers compared to the
Chinese. Current estimates for those who died during the Great Leap Forward due
to government engineered famine, executions, and slave labor, range from
between 23 million to 46 million unarmed Chinese. Some estimates (outliers,
admittedly) posit even 50 million or more Chinese dying to appease Chairman
Mao’s statist vision. (No pictures here, because China was then a closed
system, much like North Korea today, and managed to hide what it did.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b> Nazi Germany, from 1933-1945</b>: You knew I’d get
to the Nazis, of course. Not satisfied with purging their own country of Jews,
gypsies, homosexuals, and handicapped people, the Nazis conquered Europe from
France to Poland to Denmark and embarked upon a purge in those countries too.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Without exception, the civilians that the Nazis targeted
were already unarmed (voluntarily or involuntarily), losing their weapons
either before the Nazis came to power (Jews in the Pale, the large area between
Russia and Poland, were never allowed arms) or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Control-Third-Reich-Disarming-ebook/dp/B00GL9OBY0/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&qid=1402863874&s=books&sr=1-1&tag=bookwormroom-20">ended
up disarmed when the Nazis achieved power</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With their pick of helpless victims, the Nazis killed
6,000,000 Jews; 250,000 gypsies; 220,000 homosexuals, and, through slave labor,
executions, and starvation, as many as 10,000,000 Slavic people in just six
years. (The number of handicapped people killed is unknown.) As an aside, when
the Nazi gun-control gang got the bit in their teeth and went to war, the war
itself resulted in the deaths of almost 20,000,000 European civilians who
weren’t targeted because of race, religion, sexual orientation, or disability
but who were, instead, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgju44wssN6aEmsThd_6dSpPMqr0A1kkS6lAm22evNFbyGBlnml5p4a_f_okL4B135RbDSc51Bt62tc7t6f5JZp_uD1Eu3cJ2BUOyN53n5gkdc0OwmDDlDoflRfCCM29cdaAe0PLacnQbRi/s1600/Roundup+in+Warsaw+ghetto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1200" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgju44wssN6aEmsThd_6dSpPMqr0A1kkS6lAm22evNFbyGBlnml5p4a_f_okL4B135RbDSc51Bt62tc7t6f5JZp_uD1Eu3cJ2BUOyN53n5gkdc0OwmDDlDoflRfCCM29cdaAe0PLacnQbRi/s400/Roundup+in+Warsaw+ghetto.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roundup in the Warsaw Ghetto</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYR84Hs9zJoVJbvNtULQgUhmKYHzXDE7rFqulAaSAQuGWjp0-vokFIeE5_1EKC_QfB4vRkYvqYHNwnqAepM4X_kEHmclzkTd22sxdoJhrzO94NJfL_nbcxSl3VmSjPLMLKlMLMGtLrLivu/s1600/Man+about+to+be+shot+by+Nazis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="615" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYR84Hs9zJoVJbvNtULQgUhmKYHzXDE7rFqulAaSAQuGWjp0-vokFIeE5_1EKC_QfB4vRkYvqYHNwnqAepM4X_kEHmclzkTd22sxdoJhrzO94NJfL_nbcxSl3VmSjPLMLKlMLMGtLrLivu/s400/Man+about+to+be+shot+by+Nazis.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nazi Death Squad executes Jewish civilian</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-wni139wtdzgrbcTHVaZ-OHFyhbQvWzzCA2LDv75IZWVc-Wny65yYZwbzWuwD2n2D1tT7QIMIcwXGUX6K6On0dtOJOiNX80hyg1ylxoMhOBlze6QdyRKcDxjElBN9ZCIw74lQli50X8L/s1600/Mass+Grave+at+Bergen+Belsen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="970" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-wni139wtdzgrbcTHVaZ-OHFyhbQvWzzCA2LDv75IZWVc-Wny65yYZwbzWuwD2n2D1tT7QIMIcwXGUX6K6On0dtOJOiNX80hyg1ylxoMhOBlze6QdyRKcDxjElBN9ZCIw74lQli50X8L/s400/Mass+Grave+at+Bergen+Belsen.png" width="388" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just one mass grave at Bergen Belsen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<b>Cambodia</b>: Following the Cambodian Civil War, Pol Pot
rose to power in Cambodia. Once in power, in the years between 1975 and 1979,
his government killed between 1.7 and 2.2 million of its own unarmed citizens,
out of a population of around 8 million people. Were the U.S. to have a Pol Pot
moment today, that would be the equivalent of having the federal government
kill 66 million to 85 million people in four years.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigIcdd9c1i-HB87wmt87A1zLWFOUsOJKVSiTJbR2Rc2bIDeaHtMvbhlQj5_1mPE5Kp1Dl6AaNQKTlMAsEkHmqRHIXnX6kWCU2Z46JWxzCTfu_O8YCChCMgIJ7ampPFYesYIGJ4McCkOo2z/s1600/Cambodian+killing+fields.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="650" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigIcdd9c1i-HB87wmt87A1zLWFOUsOJKVSiTJbR2Rc2bIDeaHtMvbhlQj5_1mPE5Kp1Dl6AaNQKTlMAsEkHmqRHIXnX6kWCU2Z46JWxzCTfu_O8YCChCMgIJ7ampPFYesYIGJ4McCkOo2z/s400/Cambodian+killing+fields.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/30/bernies-embrace-of-gun-control-endangers-american-liberty/cambodian-killing-fields/"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_34" o:spid="_x0000_i1027"
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<o:p> </o:p><b>North Korea</b>: Nobody knows how many North Koreans
(none of whom are allowed arms) have died since the murderous Kim regime came
into power. <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP10.HTM">One
estimate</a> is that 1,293,000 North Koreans have died at their
government’s hands. That number, of course, is entirely separate from the
hundreds of thousands of North Koreans <a href="https://humanpain.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/north-korea-concentration-camps-1/">residing
in concentration camps</a> throughout that hellish little nation. We know
something about what goes on those camps because of the small number who have
escaped to tell the tale:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4BjJUJQ9KWZ3ZSO6m0cwU29WFdfjPbDYy_9joSiCL39T4F3uVuVbu_454E50GNicJRCYxQ0biccploFej3bfz2dmiM3CT9SwG3mIEfHBaOTWgpTDLR81vkxMQp2pBLEzFWZnzgYux31iC/s1600/Scourging+finger+nails+in+North+Korea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="635" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4BjJUJQ9KWZ3ZSO6m0cwU29WFdfjPbDYy_9joSiCL39T4F3uVuVbu_454E50GNicJRCYxQ0biccploFej3bfz2dmiM3CT9SwG3mIEfHBaOTWgpTDLR81vkxMQp2pBLEzFWZnzgYux31iC/s400/Scourging+finger+nails+in+North+Korea.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/30/bernies-embrace-of-gun-control-endangers-american-liberty/scourging-finger-nails-in-north-korea/"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_33" o:spid="_x0000_i1026"
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<o:p> </o:p>The above are the government-engineered mass murders that
spring most readily to my mind. I’ve obviously left out many that properly
belong on the list, everything from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to Cuba, to just
about every tin-pot dictatorship in Africa and Latin America. So far as I know,
we don’t have an official ISIS death toll but it’s easily in the high five
figures.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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If you would like a fuller look at the government-engineered
mass murders in the 20th and 21st centuries, I recommend <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP1.HTM">R. J. Rummel’s Statistics
of Democide</a>, which examines the kill rate of 214 regimes. I’ve picked my
way through some of this opus and, even though Rummel’s writing is scholarly
not scintillating, I was able to catch the depressing gist: governments kill
and, given the chance, they kill often, in staggering numbers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Think about this: Progressives are worried about leaving
guns in the hands of individuals who can manage in a single incident, and only
with spectacular effort or negligence, to kill people in fairly low numbers. At
the same time, Progressives, who currently look to Bernie as their leader,
desperately want to hand all weapons over to the government, leaving the
population unarmed, despite compelling evidence showing that armed governments
with an unarmed population at their mercy kill in the millions, with a few
million dead here and another fifty million dead there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Stalin spoke from personal experience when he said, “The
death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” It's fine
to cry over the tragedies, but Progressives really should to direct their
energy to avoiding the statistics. (And of course, there’s always the argument
to be made that Bernie, who was alive during the post-WWII Soviet purges and
gulags, the Maoist Great Leap Forward, and the Cambodian Killing Fields – all
statist attacks on their own disarmed citizens – is untroubled by government
mass murder.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The Founding Fathers ratified the Second Amendment
because they understood the dangers government poses.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Looking back at the American Revolution, it's easy to assume
that the result -- an American victory -- was a foregone conclusion. In
fact, right up until the bitter end, the outcome could have gone either way.
After all, the colonists had taken up arms against the most powerful
military in the world. Anyone placing bets in 1776 or 1778 would have been
smart to wager <i>against</i> the revolutionaries.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Indeed, if the revolutionaries had lived in the home country
of England, it’s likely that those placing bets against the revolution would
have been correct. England, an old, stable culture that had weathered a
devastating revolution slightly more than 100 years before, was not much given
to having individual citizens bearing arms. (The American rebellion began in
part because <a href="http://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/the-american-revolution-was-against-british-gun-control/">the
British sought to disarm the colonists</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was only in the Americas, far from “civilization,” that
guns were a necessity. One does not go into the frontier unarmed. Too many
people had untamed forests pressing against their fragile communities to manage
without at least one musket, rifle, or pistol in their possession, not just to
hunt for food but to protect themselves from both human and animal predators.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because of their circumstances, the American colonists
didn’t just possess arms; they knew how to use them. While George Washington
despaired of turning his volunteers into a well-drilled, spit-and-polish
military, the one thing he didn’t have to worry about was weapons training. His
rag-tag army knew how to load, aim, and shoot (especially those Tennessee
mountain boys). If the Continental Congress could provide the bullets, many of
the colonists willingly provided their own guns and know-how.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Revolutionary war had been over for eight years when the
Founders enacted the Bill of Rights. It was in that context – the aftermath of
a small colony’s successful revolution against the most powerful nation in the
world – that the Founders determined that American citizens would never again
be subordinate to, rather than in control of, their government.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For this reason, the first ten amendments to the
Constitution do not define government power; they limit it. And more
importantly, they limit it, not by having the government graciously extend a
few privileges to America’s citizens, privileges that the government can as
easily revoke, but instead by stating rights that individuals automatically
possess without regard to the government’s powers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The second of these stated rights – and that only one which
is dedicated exclusively to a single principle, rather than a blend of related
principles – refers to every citizen’s inherent (not government-granted, but
inherent) right to possess arms:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of
a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed.</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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If the Second Amendment were written in modern English, the
Founders might have phrased it this way:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The only way citizens can defend themselves against a
tyrannical government is to create their own army (which, obviously, is
separate from the government’s army). The people therefore have an overarching
and innate right to have guns, and the government may not interfere with that
right.</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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For those stuck on the phrase a “well regulated militia,”
history irrefutably establishes that this does not mean that our Second
Amendment rights exist only if each gun owner gets together with other gun
owners on a regular basis to create an army, complete with drilling and
officers and such-like. That is, back in 1791, when the Founders ratified the
Second Amendment, they were not imagining an America dotted with "People's
Armies." Instead, even though the federal government was small and weak,
the Founders still worried that American citizens might in the future need to
rebel against a government that had grown too powerful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The revolutionaries' own experience had shown them that
citizens don’t need to have a standing militia that is always ready to fight.
Instead, the citizens must only have the ability to come together as a
well-regulated militia on an "as needed" basis (the need being the
necessity to secure individual freedom against government). This ability to
transform from peaceful citizens into an effective militia when needed requires
a citizenry that, on its own initiative, is both well-armed and competent with
those arms.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What's important for us is that the Founders understood that
every government has the potential to become tyrannical (although they couldn’t
have predicted in their wildest dreams the mad scope of worldwide government
killing in the 20th and 21st centuries). They therefore embedded in the Bill of
Rights the ultimate barrier against tyranny: an armed population that, if
needed, can instantly transform itself into a citizen army.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, some of those armed citizens will do bad things with
their guns, but even at their worst, they are insignificant killers compared to
rogue governments. As a matter of principle, supported by data, an armed
citizenry is safer than an unarmed one when it comes to the biggest, most
blood-thirsty, most deadly predator known to man: Government.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Legal guns, in honest citizens' hands, are the best
defense against race-based murder.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Every black person knows that there is one American subgroup
that dies more from gunshots than any other group in America: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide">blacks</a>,
especially young black males:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
According to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Department_of_Justice" title="US Department of Justice">US Department of Justice</a>, African Americans
accounted for 52.5% of all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with Whites
45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for African Americans was
almost 8 times higher than Whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most
homicides were intraracial, with 84% of White victims killed by Whites, and 93%
of African Americans victims were killed by African Americans.<sup><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-49">[49]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-50">[50]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-51">[51]</a></sup><o:p> </o:p>In 2013, African Americans accounted for 52.2% of all murder
arrests, with Whites 45.3% and Asians/Native Americans 2.5%. Of the above,
21.7% were Hispanic.<sup><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-52">[52]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-53">[53]</a></sup><o:p> </o:p>Blacks account for the majority of gun homicide
victims/arrestees in the US while Whites account for the vast majority of
non-gun homicide victims/arrestees. Of the gun murder victims in the United
States between 2007-2016, 57% were black, 40.6% white (including Hispanic),
1.35% Asian, 0.98% unknown race and 0.48% Native American.<br /><o:p> </o:p>Non-gun homicides represented about 30% of total murders in
the time period. Blacks were still overrepresented although only by about 2.5x
their share of the general population.<sup><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-54">[54]</a></sup> Of
the non-gun murder victims in the United States between 2007-2016, 61.5% were
white (including Hispanic), 32.9% black, 2.29% Asian, 1.89% unknown race and
1.43% Native American.<sup><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#cite_note-55">[55]</a></sup></blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Incidentally, <a href="http://americanthinker.com/2012/12/listening_to_the_latest_media.html">if
you remove black on black crimes from American gun-death statistics</a>,
America could be some peaceful European country when it comes to gun deaths.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Progressives respond to these tragic numbers by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Explanations_for_racial_discrepancies">citing
socio-economic factors and racism</a>, and then demanding ever greater gun
control and claiming that anyone who opposes gun control is a racist. Then,
when they achieve that gun control (as they have in Chicago, Washington D.C.,
Los Angeles, Detroit, etc.), they are perplexed that black youths die in ever
greater numbers in the cities with the most gun control. The only fix
they can imagine is more gun control on an ever greater scale.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I'd like to suggest that the answer lies with the simply
stated NRA principle that, “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have
guns.” Real-time data shows that, when law-abiding citizens in black
communities are also armed, <a href="http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/FoxNewsSupremeCourtGunBan.html">the
bad guys quickly start slinking away</a>. Basically, most human predators are
lazy, cowardly opportunists and they will not attack if doing so is dangerous.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The following paragraph sounds like a non sequitur, but it's
not. I'll explain in a minute.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1991, Americans killed each other in the greatest numbers
ever: 24,700 Americans died that year at the hands of other Americans. Since
then, the numbers have declined steadily. In 2011, only 14,661 Americans were
murdered, a 40% crime drop that reverted America to murder numbers last seen in
around 1969, when 14,760 Americans were murdered. (There has been an
uptick in urban murder rates in 2015, which may have had to do with police
becoming passive in the face of the Black Lives Movement, but that's a subject
for another post, with its own analysis.) <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gunslott.html">As John Lott has pointed out</a> with
almost mind-numbing repetitiveness, what happened since 1991 and today is that
law-abiding Americans armed themselves in ever greater numbers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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What do declining gun-crime statistics have to do with my
claim that making it easier for law-abiding citizens to have legal guns is the
opposite of being racist? It’s simple: People who are not racist want
blacks to live and thrive in safe environments -- and those environments are
best created and sustained when the predators are kept at bay by armed,
law-abiding citizens.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Incidentally, one of the things few people learn in school
is that the Democrat party has always worked hard to keep guns from blacks.
This is true for the slave era, when Democrats were the slavery party;
the post-Reconstruction era, when Democrats controlled the South; the Jim Crow
era, when Democrats still controlled the South; and present day inner cities,
which are Democrat-controlled and tragically crime-ridden.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Except for a few racist, Southern-Democrat chapters, the NRA
has consistently fought against black disarmament, reasoning correctly that
giving blacks guns would protect them against slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow
generally, and predators inside and outside of their communities. (For more on
the subject, read <a href="http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-04-18.html">Ann
Coulter’s article about gun rights and blacks</a>, in which she summarizes with
her usual élan the way in which the anti-black Southern hegemony worked hard to
keep guns out of black hands in order to control and terrorize them more
effectively. You may hate Coulter, and you're within your rights to do
so, but she's got the facts on this subject.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
To sum it up, if you're not a racist, you want American
blacks to live and to thrive. They can do this only in safe communities and the
safest black communities have always been those in which moral, law-abiding
black citizens have been armed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Safe communities are those with a strong moral compass
and a lot of guns.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s tempting not to write anything here but, instead,
simply to show the video of the <a href="https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/12/29/2-dead-1-critically-injured-shooting-white-settlement-church/">would-be
mass murderer</a> entering a church in Texas yesterday only to be met instantly
by armed citizens who ended his rampage after only two deaths, not dozens. The
outcome would have been very different if the attendees had been trapped there,
like fish in a barrel, while waiting the endless minutes for armed police to
arrive:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/53hleVLARbE/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/53hleVLARbE?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The above video is not just a one-off. As I hope I’ve
demonstrated above, an armed society is protected against its government, and
armed moral, law-abiding citizens protect themselves from the predators amongst
them. (This is why <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/29/hanukkah-attack-shows-jews-learn-self-defense/">I
strongly argue</a> that American Jews to arm themselves.) Just look at England:
Once it banned guns, it became a country with violent crime and murder rates
consistent with South Africa’s – and that’s not something any civilized country
wants to boast about.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The current Progressive political stance is to demand total
disarmament because “one death is one too many.” That is a naive and
unrealistic demand that results in more deaths, rather than fewer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mankind’s civilized veneer is thin at best. Turn on the news
or read a history book and you'll be reminded that human beings are infinitely
creative when it comes to killing. If I felt so inclined, I could kill someone
by coming upon them when they’re asleep and stabbing them repeatedly in the
eyeball with a Bic pen. (Don’t worry; I’m not planning this but, rather,
positing the possibility.) The gun’s invention added to man’s repertoire, but
it didn’t change his inclination to kill.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What changed with guns is that guns evened things out,
increasing ordinary people’s ability to defend against the predators among us.
If a huge man gives every indication that he intends to use his ham-like hands
and jackbooted feet to beat me to death, or that wicked knife to stab me to
death, my best defense as a small woman is several gunshots fired off before he
can close in on me. Likewise, an armed homeowner can stop the intruder at the
door before a murder, rape, or robbery even has time to get started. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2gCFOtaZPo">This video effectively makes
that point</a>.) And of course, it's a good government that worries about
infringing to much on its armed citizens' freedoms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Putting all guns in police hands is not the answer and
that's true even if one ignores the fact that too many governments have a nasty
habit of committing mass murder. For one thing, even nice neighborhood cops can
get the bad idea that they’re “the King of the world” if they’re running around
in tanks, armed to the teeth, while unarmed citizens meekly obey them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In addition, unless the gun violence is part of a rolling
dispute that takes place over a long period of time, cops usually get to the
scene long after the mayhem is finished. Just review again the video, above, of
the shooting in Texas, with the shooter gunned down <i>in seconds</i>. The NRA
summed up this practical reality by saying “When seconds count, the police are
only minutes away.” Indeed, if you have a Hurricane Katrina situation, the
police may be days, weeks, or months away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bad things happen. That’s life. But it’s certain that, on
the whole, the best way for good people to defend themselves against bad people
is for the good people to be armed. And maybe I'm naive, but when I look
at Americans, I believe that there are many more good people than predators.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This principle isn’t undermined by the stories that
routinely appear about kids dying tragically from a gun accident at home. Just
as the problem in World War II wasn’t the guns but was the Nazis, too often the
problem in those homes isn’t the guns it’s the parents. These are the homes in
which parents use drugs or too much alcohol around the children, the homes that
don’t have smoke detectors, the homes with small children that nevertheless
have unprotected access to swimming pools, and of course the homes in which
parents don’t follow <a href="http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx">basic gun safety rules</a>.
Their kids are unsafe under any circumstances.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Additionally, sometimes freak accidents just happen, with or
without guns. I remember in the 1980s, in Texas, a woman died instantly when
she tripped in her living room and crashed into her old sliding glass door,
which shattered into razor-like shards, one of which severed her aorta.
Likewise, <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/06/07/woman-flung-from-golf-cart-dies-after-landing-on-broken-wine-glasses/">a
wine glass killed a woman</a> in a slow-moving golf cart accident a couple of
years ago. There is no such thing as perfect safety.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even factoring in crimes, carelessness, and chance, the
reality is that people are most safe when they have a gun. It is the best means
by which they can defend themselves against all predators: humans, animals,
ideologues, and governments.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Those advocating gun control need to lie to promote their
cause -- which should tell you that their cause is invalid.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Progressives, from Bernie on down, demand push gun
control, they do so using false data. If you have to falsify data to
support your position, you don’t have a case. It’s as simple as that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As just one example, gun control supporters published a
Google map purporting to show 74 gun murders at American schools since the
Newtown shooting in December 2012. Here's that map:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlfjhrgxiQVl7yXQ2ddhgzdgTJmhoP-SYWsV6XPG7i900-Y9QDhhplUe19RQcp-i7ZqIGHDR_ekvie058rRelh7s1J7H7bzhySEcfazu4gpyF9Ao0m66Oa48HIqKQCnQdKfBRRblNqhwFw/s1600/2012+faked+gun+crime+map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="626" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlfjhrgxiQVl7yXQ2ddhgzdgTJmhoP-SYWsV6XPG7i900-Y9QDhhplUe19RQcp-i7ZqIGHDR_ekvie058rRelh7s1J7H7bzhySEcfazu4gpyF9Ao0m66Oa48HIqKQCnQdKfBRRblNqhwFw/s400/2012+faked+gun+crime+map.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/30/bernies-embrace-of-gun-control-endangers-american-liberty/2012-faked-gun-crime-map/"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_32" o:spid="_x0000_i1025"
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href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/30/bernies-embrace-of-gun-control-endangers-american-liberty/2012-faked-gun-crime-map/"
style='width:468pt;height:268.5pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People who are afraid of guns find this map terrifying.
It obviously shows that our children aren't going to schools; they're
going to shooting ranges -- and they're the targets. The problem, of
course, is that the map is based upon a lie, and the lie is that almost none of
those little flags are school shootings of the type that terrify white,
Progressives living in suburban communities. Except that's not true.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Charles C.W. Cooke <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380108/lying-about-school-shootings-charles-c-w-cooke">summed
up the problems with the map</a>:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The [Washington] Post is admirably clear that the map
includes both colleges and schools, that it counts “any instance in which a
firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds,” and that
the data isn’t “limited to mass shootings like Newtown.” This point has also
been made forcefully by <a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson">Charles
C. Johnson</a>, who yesterday looked into each of the 74 incidents and <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/10/wow-journalist-attempts-to-debunk-anti-gun-groups-list-of-school-shootings-in-america-since-sandy-hook-heres-what-he-found/">noted</a> that
not only did some of them not take place on campuses but that “fewer than 7 of
the 74 school shootings listed by #Everytown are mass shootings,” that one or
more probably didn’t happen at all, that at least one was actually a case of
self-defense, and that 32 could be classified as “school shootings” only if we
are to twist the meaning of the term beyond all recognition.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why would gun-control advocates lie like this? Simple.
The facts don’t support the premise that America’s schools are being turned
into daily bloodbaths because of armed and crazed students. If you don't
have those useful facts, you have to invent them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s another lie, one that President Obama made in a
speech on June 10, 2014, after another headline about white people getting
shot, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-needs-to-do-some-soul-searching-about-mass-shootings-obama-says/">President
Obama said</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p> </o:p>We’re the only developed country on earth where this
happens, and it happens now once a week. . . . I mean, our levels of gun violence
are off the charts, there’s no advanced developed country on earth that would
put up with this.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obama added at another point in his speech that this level
of killing is “becoming the norm.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I've demonstrated above, that's untrue, for America's
violent crime -- gun and otherwise -- has been dropping since the 1990s.
Indeed, we're <a href="https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp">nowhere
near the top nation</a> when it comes to violence (although our immigrants,
both legal and illegal, from those countries with extravagant violent crime may
affect America's own problems).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obama's obsession with the apparent ubiquity of mass gun
deaths in America <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-while-speaking-in-paris-on-planned-parenthood-shooting-this-just-doesnt-happen-in-other-countries/"> showed
up again</a> at the end of November 2015, after a shooting at a Planned
Parenthood clinic that left three dead. He stated then that " I say this
every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings. This just doesn’t happen in
other countries." Obama had apparently forgotten that, just two
weeks before, men armed with guns committed a mass shooting in Paris that
killed 130 people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Given President Obama's statements, it bears repeating here
that, contrary to the sense that mass murder is omnipresent in America (a sense
driven by the immediacy of internet news and the media’s own blood lust), right
up until the uptick in murder after Black Lives Matter cowed police, <a href="http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm">America’s murder levels
had declined</a>, returning us to numbers last seen in 1969. Even with
the BLM uptick, one can still see that we’re not getting more violent, we’re
getting significantly less violent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And while we all learned in school that correlation isn’t
causation, there’s compelling evidence from Western nations the world over, not
to mention the individual American states, that <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gunslott.html">violence goes down when
legal gun ownership goes up</a>, and that violence goes up when legal gun
ownership goes down. That’s a pretty strong correlation/causation argument.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me reiterate the point I made at the beginning of this
section: You know you’re right if your opponent’s only evidence is fraudulent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Conclusion<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To sum up, it's entirely possible that everything
gun-control advocates have ever believed about guns and gun control is wrong.
Even Bernie seemed to grasp that when he was still dreaming of overthrowing the
American government rather than running itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Any honest gun rights supporter will freely concede that
guns can be used for evil purposes. What those who seek to control guns refuse
to admit, though, is that history and crime statistics establish with almost
boring repetition that people are safer when they live in a moral, armed
country.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When it comes to the killers, data shows that individuals
with guns are always inefficient killers, while governments acting against
unarmed citizens are massively efficient killers, often leaving tens of
millions of dead bodies in their wake. Significantly, in the modern era, no
government has attempted to go full-bore totalitarian when its citizens are
armed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When it comes to those defending themselves, communities
that have more law-abiding citizens with guns than criminals with guns are safe
communities, a reality that would most benefit black Americans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bottom line is one that will make Progressives feel
uncomfortable, but that is nevertheless true: Guns kill . . . and that’s
a good thing. By doing so, they serve as a bulwark protecting individual citizens
from predatory people and governments. That’s why individual citizens must
strongly defend the Second Amendment right to bear arms, resisting all
government efforts to grab their guns, something that would leave them
vulnerable, not only to criminals and jihadists, but to the government itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you’re a Progressive and any of this has resonated,
perhaps you ought to rethink your support of candidates who promise to take
away all privately owned guns (and that includes Bernie), leaving all guns
solely in government hands, and give another look at Donald Trump who is the
antithesis of a dictator.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And if you're asking how we know that Trump is not now and
will not be a dictator, the answer is simple: Trump believes that
Americans should be armed, something that precludes his ever becoming a
dictator. He knows that the vast majority of Americans are good people, who
will not (and have not, given the 300 million privately owned guns already in
existence) turn America into a giant shooting gallery, complete with human
targets. Sadly, those shooting galleries do exist in America, but they're
confined to Democrat- and gun-controlled inner cities.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(You can see the other posts in this series <a href="https://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2019/12/isnt-bernie-socialist-why-yes-he-is-and.html">here</a>
and <a href="https://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2019/12/bernie-wants-to-raise-taxes-and-its.html">here</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(This post updates <a href="https://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-few-thoughts-about-bernies-stance-on.html">a
post from February 2016</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-59497413087865527422019-12-28T12:08:00.001-08:002019-12-28T12:08:25.040-08:00Bernie wants to raise taxes and it's going to hurt<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The website <i><a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/">I
Like Bernie, But</a>...</i>, created in 2016 and updated for 2019, tries to
calm people's fears about Bernie Sander's socialist extremism. It states
questions reflecting concerns that people might have about Bernie, and then
provides pithy little answers refuting those fears.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <a href="http://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/isnt-bernie-socialist-why-yes-he-is.html">a
previous post</a>, I addressed the myriad falsehoods, omissions, and
misconceptions in the website's assurance that Bernie isn't a <i>dangerous</i> socialist,
he's a <i>good</i> socialist. This post addresses the misleading
answer to a concern that "I heard he [Bernie] wants to raise taxes."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here's what <i>I Like Bernie, But</i>.... has to say
about Bernie and taxes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEqQouEdYmAL4QSQCIInpD900ph3TOP7R4KLOIYC_CfsDpjS-OAQN392BnSekj_fkOEO73Jk7IcczESpWB6n8KwWChMTrYCchWcuSMb0wDqpo4gheQbgxosyxCdGZqtsWHXjpTVX_wrjA/s1600/Bernie+on+taxes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="634" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEqQouEdYmAL4QSQCIInpD900ph3TOP7R4KLOIYC_CfsDpjS-OAQN392BnSekj_fkOEO73Jk7IcczESpWB6n8KwWChMTrYCchWcuSMb0wDqpo4gheQbgxosyxCdGZqtsWHXjpTVX_wrjA/s640/Bernie+on+taxes.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/28/bernie-wants-to-raise-taxes-and-its-going-to-hurt/bernie-on-taxes/"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600"
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<o:p> </o:p>That's simply false. Here's the truth:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To fund his proposed <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/471759-a-reality-check-on-warrens-and-sanderss-spending-proposals">$97.5
trillion in spending over the decade</a> after his election, Bernie must tax
everybody and tax them hard. This is not a Republican viewpoint.
Back in 2016, when Bernie’s goals were less grandiose, <a href="http://www.vox.com/">Vox</a>, a internet media outlet known for its
strong Progressive orientation, examined Bernie’s plans and found them wanting.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dylan Matthews imagined how the Tax Code would look if
Bernie is allowed to go forward with his plans to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10783922/bernie-sanders-single-payer-plan">socialize
medicine</a>; make <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/18/8621759/free-college-bernie-sanders">college
free for everyone</a>; <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-introduces-bill-to-rebuild-americas-crumbling-infrastructure-support-13-million-jobs">revamp
America's infrastructure</a>; have the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/bernie-sanders-asks-congress-to-spend-55-billion-on-1-million-jobs-for-youths/2015/06/04/0354e9dc-0ae6-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html">government
create jobs for young people</a>, a ridiculous scheme that Milton Friedman
destroys with <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/01/13/enacting-useless-regulations-in-order-to-force-the-transfer-of-wealth-from-rich-to-poor/">a
single question about spoons</a>; <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-social-security/">expand
Social Security</a>, a program that is already going broke and sucking vast
amounts of money out of the federal budget; and a whole bunch of other, smaller
programs. Before I get to his specific conclusions, though, let's talk about
the bigger picture.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first thing you need to understand, before we even get
to the numbers, is that if you imposed a 100% tax rate on every single
"rich" person in America (from the super-rich to the pretty darn
comfortable), you might be able to fund Bernie's plans for a month or so.
Even if you followed that up by then confiscating all the assets
from these same "rich" people, you still wouldn't be able to pay for
even a fraction of Bernie's plans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don't believe me? Check out this video made when the
Occupy Protesters started demanding that the 1% pay for everything. As you’ll
see, Bernie’s demands can’t exist in the real world:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/661pi6K-8WQ/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/661pi6K-8WQ?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you don't have time to watch this 9 minute video, you can
get the same information from a clear and funny post entitled "<a href="http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-family-on-10-billion-a-day.html">Feed
Your Family on $10 Billion a Day</a>." Whether you watch the video
or read the post, you will learn more about actual money than you will if you
spent weeks following Bernie around listening to his <a href="http://godfatherpolitics.com/bernie-sanders-tweet-disqualifies-him-from-holding-any-political-office">economically
ignorant statements</a> about <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2015/08/17/the-collected-nitwit-and-unwisdom-of-bernie-sanders/">money
and wealth</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After watching the video or reading the post, you will know
with absolute certainty that "the rich" cannot fund Bernie's
grandiose plans. That means that other people are going to be tapped for
money -- and you might be surprised at how far down the economic food chain
that tapping goes. Let's go back to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/22/10814798/bernie-sanders-tax-rates">that <i>Vox</i> article</a> (remember,
this is a Progressive publication from 2016, when Bernie’s plans were slightly
lower dollar), to see what even Left leaning out let has to say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Matthews notes that Bernie likes to throw out big,
conclusory answers when he's asked where the money will come from for his
plans:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And for every plan, he's got <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his-proposals/">an
idea to pay for it</a>. College? Slap a financial transactions tax on Wall
Street. Infrastructure? Tax corporations on profits they earn abroad.
Single-payer? Raise income and payroll taxes, and then <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10783922/bernie-sanders-single-payer-plan">a
bunch of others too</a>.<br /><o:p> </o:p>While Sanders tends to portray these as separate ideas with
separate financing, I thought it'd be worth adding them up and seeing what the
tax code looks like with all of them. I looked specifically at his changes to
personal income, payroll, and capital gains tax rates. </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What Matthews discovered when he "looked
specifically" at Bernie's tax changes is that all Americans will need to
pay more taxes -- often significantly more taxes from those who can least
afford them -- to finance Bernie Sander's dream of a government that will
provide everything for everybody. For clarity's sake, Matthews leads with
a graphic showing that everybody will be paying marginal increases on their
taxes, whether they can afford it or not (and keep in mind that this graphic is
from 2016, not 2019):<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSu7IvfI-rtMsX5elbxEY-3sGmsumlsWIn2_olfrFeO-f0sWFujt7SReBPV99pHBHm3NyXuFctsb-B79BTYn6dcWi2HoM87t9sScU-BFfw6w1Jc0qGRyks9UZrvUPAeo-HTWrL3QApF5Mu/s1600/Tax+rates+now+and+under+Bernie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="362" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSu7IvfI-rtMsX5elbxEY-3sGmsumlsWIn2_olfrFeO-f0sWFujt7SReBPV99pHBHm3NyXuFctsb-B79BTYn6dcWi2HoM87t9sScU-BFfw6w1Jc0qGRyks9UZrvUPAeo-HTWrL3QApF5Mu/s640/Tax+rates+now+and+under+Bernie.jpg" width="362" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There's no doubt that those making more than $250,000 a year
will bear the greatest burden under the new tax scheme: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most taxpayers would see a single-digit increase in their
marginal tax rate. People with taxable income below $250,000 would see an 8.8
percentage point increase.<br /><o:p> </o:p>But the very rich would see eye-popping increases in
marginal rates: from 36.8 percent to 62 percent for people with taxable income
between $250,000 and $413,350. The big change here is applying the Social
Security payroll tax, which adds another 12.4 points.<br /><o:p> </o:p>For the very richest Americans, with more than $10 million
in taxable income, Sanders's proposal would produce a 77 percent marginal rate.
That's not unprecedented — under Dwight Eisenhower, the top income tax rate was
91 percent — but it's higher than the top rate at any point since 1964. </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you're wondering, there's a reason that America did away
with those top rates back in 1964: High top rates don't bring in more
money. The reality is that the rich are better than anyone at protecting
their money from what they perceive as unreasonable income taxes. They
take it offshore, shelter it, hide it and, most importantly, refuse to invest
it, leaving their wealth unavailable to the rest of the country for such useful
things as business start-ups, employment, exploring innovative ideas, etc.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The clearest representation of the damage too-high taxes do
to an economy is the "Laffer Curve," which Art Laffer came up with
more than 40 years ago. It's a simple premise: If you make it too
expensive for people to make money, they'll stop making money.
Here's <a href="http://www.laffercenter.com/the-laffer-center-2/the-laffer-curve/">a more
comprehensive explanation</a>: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As drawn, the Laffer Curve shows that at a tax rate of 0%,
the government would collect no tax revenue, just as it would collect no tax
revenue at a tax rate of 100% because no one would be willing to work for an
after-tax wage of zero. The reason for this is that tax rates have two effects
on revenues: one is arithmetic, the other economic. The arithmetic effect is
static, meaning that if rates are lowered, the tax revenues per dollar of tax
base will be lowered by the amount of the decrease in the rate, and vice versa
for increasing tax rates. In other words, this is what happens when a
hypothetical 1% tax collects $1 million, so people assume that a 2% tax would
collect $2 million… and a 5% tax would collect $5 million. Likewise, under the
same scenario people would similarly assume that a .5% tax rate reduction would
collect only $500,000. </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here's a helpful visual: </div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmTCX3srgt-OPJ0hz8QBAMJpVdBJQ2P_x4guNIriPARNa1DMTxnDzejxuN__ZwXIbvoeViZtVnsuRvzAsR7qmooXqFMFxisRBBJbstLbXIs3Ijf5ClkOEUrRbJTmvXB51bv1U3h_kCLsM2/s1600/Laffer+curve.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmTCX3srgt-OPJ0hz8QBAMJpVdBJQ2P_x4guNIriPARNa1DMTxnDzejxuN__ZwXIbvoeViZtVnsuRvzAsR7qmooXqFMFxisRBBJbstLbXIs3Ijf5ClkOEUrRbJTmvXB51bv1U3h_kCLsM2/s1600/Laffer+curve.png" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That's all very easy to say in theory, but how does the
Laffer Curve really work in fact? Well, it turns out that, when put to
the test of real world economics, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-laffer-curve-at-40-still-looks-good/2014/12/26/4cded164-853d-11e4-a702-fa31ff4ae98e_story.html">the
Laffer Curve performs as predicted</a>: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Solid supporting evidence came during the Reagan years.
President Ronald Reagan adopted the Laffer Curve message, telling Americans
that when 70 to 80 cents of an extra dollar earned goes to the government, it’s
understandable that people wonder: Why keep working? He recalled that as an
actor in Hollywood, he would stop making movies in a given year once he hit
Uncle Sam’s confiscatory tax rates.<br /><o:p> </o:p>When Reagan left the White House in 1989, the highest tax
rate had been slashed from 70 percent in 1981 to 28 percent. (Even liberal
senators such as <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/99-1986/s529">Ted
Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum</a> voted for those low rates.) And contrary
to the claims of voodoo, the government’s budget numbers show that tax receipts
expanded from $517 billion in 1980 to $909 billion in 1988 — close to a 75
percent change (25 percent after inflation). Economist Larry Lindsey has documented
from IRS data that tax collections from the rich surged much faster than that.<br /><o:p> </o:p>Reagan’s tax policy, and the slaying of double-digit
inflation rates, helped launch one of the longest and strongest periods of
prosperity in American history. Between 1982 and 2000, the Dow Jones industrial
average would surge to 11,000 from less than 800; the nation’s net worth would
quadruple, to $44 trillion from $11 trillion; and the United States would
produce nearly 40 million new jobs.<br /><o:p> </o:p>Critics such as economist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/opinion/paul-krugman-voodoo-economics-the-next-generation.html">Paul
Krugman </a>object that rapid growth during the Reagan years was driven
more by conventional Keynesian deficit spending than by reductions in tax
rates. Except that 30 years later, President Obama would run deficits as a
share of GDP twice as large as Reagan’s through traditional Keynesian spending
programs, and the economy grew under Obama’s recovery only half as fast. </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And to give a current spin to the blessings of the Reagan
economy, just look at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/12/20/trumps-tax-cut-is-two-years-old-and-job-growth-in-low-tax-states-is-soaring/#48c060af4e71">what
happened to the American economy</a> under Trump’s tax reform: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its state-level
jobs report today for the Month of November [2019], providing 23 months of
employment information to track how the Tax Cut and Jobs Act may have shaped
job growth trends across America. The results strongly suggest that the 27 low
tax states (with average SALT deductions below $10,000 in 2016) are
significantly outperforming the 23 high tax states and the District of Columbia
(where filers claimed more than $10,000 in SALT deductions).<br /><o:p> </o:p>From December 2017 to November 2019, the low tax states
added nonfarm payrolls at a rate 93.8% greater than the high tax states.
Nonfarm jobs include those in the government sector. Limiting the scope of job
growth to the private sector, where small business owners’ decisions on when
and where to grow their businesses are directed affected by the tax code, shows
and even larger job creation advantage for the low tax states, with a 97.9%
higher rate of job growth in the past 23 months. Capital-intensive
manufacturing shows an even larger disparity, with the rate of manufacturing
jobs growing 3.3% in the low tax states compared to 1.3% in the high tax
states, a massive 151% disparity in favor of the low tax states. In the past 12
months, the difference in manufacturing job growth is an astounding 1,209%
advantage in favor of the low tax states. This may be because manufacturing
facilities take longer to get up and running than do other sectors such as
retail, with the effect of the tax cut being slower to manifest in this sector.<br /><o:p> </o:p>The table below shows the percentage of jobs added in three
categories, nonfarm, private sector, and manufacturing over three time periods,
since President Trump was sworn in in January 2017, since the passage of the
tax cut in December 2017, and over the past 12 months. </blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK-I5IpjnTxiYH26Lxj0QyedAWMA60mBRCfLCUrF2eQ7ZHThll-xgC9qS4IMLJ5WByItxeqpKSoPPEHXhKv66tvtC7wLgllpvSqEhJQSVeZiZa5P1Ly7nTkpNIOPnjJU-rmDwEtwfTptwh/s1600/Results+of+Trump%2527s+tax+reform.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="555" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK-I5IpjnTxiYH26Lxj0QyedAWMA60mBRCfLCUrF2eQ7ZHThll-xgC9qS4IMLJ5WByItxeqpKSoPPEHXhKv66tvtC7wLgllpvSqEhJQSVeZiZa5P1Ly7nTkpNIOPnjJU-rmDwEtwfTptwh/s1600/Results+of+Trump%2527s+tax+reform.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All of this boils down to a single point: If Bernie's
tax plan goes into effect, over time there will be less money available to the
government, not more. People will earn less, create less, innovate less,
spend less, and invest less. It just won't be worth it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the first year or two of the new, higher tax rates, the
rates will look successful because they'll sweep in money <i>already created</i> through
investing, earning, innovation, etc. After that, though, the tax revenues
will slide steadily as the economy becomes more and more sluggish.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I assume that, at this point, some people will point out
that the real benefit of Trump’s economy is only for those rich enough to
invest in the booming stock market. That’s not true, and you can see why if you
compare the Trump economy to the Obama economy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During the Obama years, it's true that the stock market did
grow. However, if you were really paying attention, you might have noticed that
the boom was entirely unrelated to job creation and other signs of a thriving
economy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What's happened is that, in a high regulation, high tax,
unstable environment, the rich, rather than investing (and risking) their money
in job and wealth creation, were just storing it in the stock market, waiting
for a sign that investment will be less risky. For everyone else -- that
is, for businesses and their employees -- stagnation was the name of the game, whether
in the number of jobs available or in the salaries people could earn.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Compare this to Trump’s low tax and fewer regulations
economy, and you can see that the stock market rise has been accompanied by <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-06/u-s-jobs-trounce-forecasts-with-266-000-gain-as-wages-heat-up">rising
wages and more available jobs</a>. Most importantly, the greatest wage benefit
from Trump's economy has <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/27/trump-economy-middle-class-wages/">flowed
to the lowest wage earners</a> -- that is, it's not just the stock market
investors making bank.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If we were to reverse the Trump gains and embrace Bernie's
proposed capital gains tax (going from an already high, compared to Europe,
rate of 23.8% to a new high of 64.2% at the very top), most investment would
stop altogether.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, don't believe me (a conservative); <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/22/10814798/bernie-sanders-tax-rates">believe <i>Vox</i></a>,
a Progressive publication: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Sanders campaign estimates they'll earn $92 billion a
year from taxing capital gains the same as wages. But there's reason to think
they'll actually lose revenue.<br /><o:p> </o:p>One thing that happens when you increase the capital gains
rate is that people stop selling assets — and thus realizing gains on capital
that can be taxed — as frequently. That means there's a point beyond which
raising the capital gains tax would reduce sales so much that revenue
actually falls.<br /><o:p> </o:p>Note that this is a very different question from whether
taxing capital gains at a high rate hurts economic growth. Many
economists <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/21/mitt_romney_s_effective_tax_rate_is_very_low_most_economists_think_it_should_be_.html">think
it does</a>, but that effect would reduce revenue by lowering the price at
which assets are sold, not making them less likely to be sold in the first
place. The latter is a different effect whose existence is much less
controversial. </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the way, if you're tired of hypotheticals and what to see
what it looks like in places where Bernie's financial plans have already been
put into effect, look around the world: In the years after World War II,
Europe looked like a strong economy that also managed to be socialist. What
this ignored was that (a) Europeans were having babies to repopulate after
World War II; (b) America paid for Europe to rebuild its infrastructure; and
(c) America paid for most of Europe's defense costs. Going into the 21st
century, though, Europe had a declining birth rate, the infrastructure benefit
had gone away with time; and, with the end of the Cold War, America stopped
pouring so much money into European defense and the European economy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So it is that, in the 21st century, most of Europe is having
economic problems thanks to the withdrawal of American Cold War funding, the
2008 recession, the dramatic drop in birth rates, and the influx of immigrants
who drew on the system without funding it, all of which made it impossible for
European countries to continue what was essential a Ponzi scheme, whereby they
kept taxing the up-and-coming generation of workers to pay for the perks accorded
older people. Add to this hyper-regulation from the EU, which makes conducting
business very difficult, and you can see why Europe's system isn't so admirable
anymore.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An even better example of what happens when you implement
Bernie's tax policies is Venezuela, which had such a rapid decline after
socialization that you can see the Bernie-style problems playing out before
your eyes. Venezuela implemented Bernie's socialism a few years ago and
went from being one of the most prosperous Latin American nations (thanks to
oil revenue) to being flat-out broke, with shortages of everything from food to
toilet paper to (ironically) oil.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Government manages money very badly. When you have
your own money, you presumably worked hard for it and depend a great deal on
it. You'll therefore be careful with it, and quite possibly want to do things
that make you earn more of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Government is different. The government bureaucrats
who are making decisions about and spending your money didn't earn that money.
They won't be affected if they spend it unwisely.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Worse, when they run out of your money thanks to unwise
management, these bureaucrats don’t have to do what ordinary people do, which
is either to cut spending or work even harder to pay bills. Instead, they just
have to demand more from you, since they have the vast punitive power of the
government at their back to take that money from you. (Robin Hood,
incidentally, didn't steal from the rich; he stole from the tax collectors, and
gave the money back to the taxpayers.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And one final point about those government bureaucrats:
As a friend reminded me, F. A. Hayek's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320553/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0226320553&linkCode=as2&tag=bookwormroom-20&linkId=BHBQEJN5Q47D2D4G">The
Road to Serfdom</a></i> makes the point that it doesn't matter how good, honest,
and caring the manager is. There is simply no way for one person or
government department to accumulate enough knowledge about what's going on in
the economy for that person or department to make good decisions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even with powerful computers and all the technology of the
21st Century, the knowledge needed to make smart economic decisions is so
diffused through the country and the population that shortages WILL
occur....and then the attempt to deal with them will make things worse, and so
on and on, <i>ad infinitum</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here's the bottom line: Governments do not create
wealth. The only way they get money is to take it from people who have
earned it. They then hand that money out to favored constituencies,
picking winners and losers as they go. Invariably, because government is
slow, inefficient, and cares more about reward friends and punishing enemies
than profits and losses, the money dribbles away, having enriched a few and
impoverished many.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of the day when the government takes it upon
itself to be the money manager -- to suck up everyone's wealth through
constantly increasing taxes, and then itself to run the businesses and make the
calls -- everyone ends up poorer. Just ask the people in Venezuela.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(You can find the first post in this series, about why it's
a bad thing that Bernie is a socialist, at <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/12/27/isnt-bernie-a-socialist-why-yes-he-is-and-thats-bad/">Bookworm
Room</a> or at <a href="https://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2019/12/isnt-bernie-socialist-why-yes-he-is-and.html">I
Don't Like Bernie, Because</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(This post updates <a href="https://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/i-heard-he-wants-to-raise-taxes-you.html">a
post from February 2016</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br />Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-26929268783521933572019-12-27T15:57:00.002-08:002019-12-27T15:57:55.260-08:00Isn't Bernie a socialist? Why, yes, he is and that's bad.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="color: blue;">Contrary
to the promise in a pro-Bernie website that socialism is great, it's not: It
destroys economies and makes people prisoners of their own government.</span></strong><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The website <a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/">I Like Bernie, But...</a>,
which was created in 2016 and has been updated for 2019, takes it upon itself
to answer concerned readers who ask "Isn't Bernie a socialist?" It
assures these people that Bernie isn't a <em>socialist</em> socialist.
Instead, he's a <em>democratic</em> socialist, which the website
promises is something entirely different:<br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
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<br />
<br />
The above conclusions are just wrong, and they're so very wrong that they
need to be corrected and explained in a lot of paragraphs. Here
goes:<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
To begin with, you need to understand what it <em>really means</em> to
be a socialist. Only then can you understand that putting the word
"democratic" in front of "socialist" doesn't change
anything.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
So, what is a "socialist" system? Think of the realm of
available politics as a line moving from left to right. On the far left
side are totalitarian regimes, which means government has all the control and
the people have none. At the far right side is anarchy, which means there
is no government at all, although the resulting chaos usually means that people
have no control either. (Ironically, anarchy usually ends when a strong
man takes over and creates a totalitarian regime.)<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
All political systems fall somewhere along that line. The further to
the Left they are, the more likely it is that power is centralized, and the
further to the Right they are, the more likely it is that there is minimal
centralized power, leaving more power with individuals.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Socialism, by definition, is a system that vests power in the government.
The government owns or exercises control over all of the means of
production, as well as all of the things produced. All people work under
government control and all goods and services are handed out pursuant to
government mandate.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Theoretically, in a socialist country, the people and the government are one
and the same. The reality, though, is that you can't have millions, tens of
millions, or hundreds of millions of people in management.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
What actually happens, therefore, is that all power resides in a
tightly-controlled government group that makes all decisions about everything.
It decides what the country as a whole will build, produce, sell, etc.
As part of this, the government has to control every aspect of citizens'
lives, in order to make sure that its social and economic goals are met.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Over the last 100 years, socialism has taken on many guises, from hard to
soft. In today's world, North Korea, which vests all power in one member
of one ruling family, is socialism's most extreme face. We know that
hundreds of thousands of people who have displeased the regime live in
concentration camps where those who survive work as slaves.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
A small percentage of those North Korean citizens who are connected to the
ruling party live good lives, with food, shelter, and other creature comforts.
The military is heavily supported, because socialist dictatorships are
paranoid. But for everyone else -- well, famine is a common occurrence in
North Korea because, as you'll see repeatedly in socialist countries,
government types are horrible economic managers.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The government also fears its citizens (because it treats them so badly), so
the government spies upon them constantly and punishes them brutally for even
the smallest infractions. When you concentrate all power in one entity --
that is, all police and military power -- you're going to have an entity that
can do a great deal of harm, both at home and abroad.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The former Soviet Union wasn't much better back in the day than North Korea
is now. In its heyday, the Soviet politburo controlled every aspect of
people's lives. During the 1930s, when Stalin headed the nation, he
decided that the Kulaks in Ukraine, who were small farmers with privately owned
farms, had to be destroyed to make way for large collective farms run under
government control.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
When the Kulaks refused to cooperate with Stalin's grand plan, he used his
vast government power to steal their grain and starved them to death. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor">Millions died</a>.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
During the 1950s through the 1980s, China had the same repressive government
as North Korea and the Soviet Union. During the 1960s, when Chairman Mao
announced his Great Leap Forward, which was intended to take China from a
medieval economy to a modern one in around five years, tens of millions of
people died because of starvation, torture, slave labor, and execution.
Low estimates say that 40-50 million died. High estimates say that
as many as 75-100 million died. (Because China was such a tightly closed
society, there are really no photographs.)<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Even today, the Chinese communist government is utterly cavalier about
individual rights. It <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/china-imprisoned-more-journalists-other-064501637.html">arrests
and jails journalists</a>; imprisons <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/23/790834485/for-their-own-good-the-detention-of-muslim-ethnic-groups-in-china">millions
of Muslims</a>, using <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/china-appears-to-add-a-sickening-new-dimension-to-its-treatment-of-uighurs/2019/12/16/aff10e5a-204e-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html">them
as slave labor</a> and <a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/this-is-mass-rape-china-slammed-over-program-that-appoints-men-to-sleep-with-uighur-women/news-story/ed45cd065e39690354b6402d02904557">raping
the women</a>; <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7803779/ROBERT-HARDMAN-turning-blind-eye-Chinas-state-sponsored-persecution.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490">harvests
organs</a> from prisoners for profit; <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/desperate-workers-allegedly-left-notes-093733600.html">uses
slave labor</a> to help drive the Chinese economy; and is using bullets to
destroy the efforts Hong Kong’s citizens are making to preserve their
democratic institutions (something <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/06/18/733615882/protests-spotlight-hong-kongs-1-country-2-systems-model-with-china">the
Chinese government promised to protect</a> when it took over Hong Kong’s
governance in 1997).<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The Nazis, whom everyone today accuses of being on the "right,"
were also socialists -- that is, people from the, totalitarian, Left side of
that political spectrum you see above. The Nazi party's full name was the
"National <em><b>Socialist</b></em> German Workers' Party."
Where Nazi Germany differed from a hardcore communist country like the
Soviet Union, China, or North Korea, was that the government didn't take over
all the businesses and homes. Instead, it allowed businesses and homes to
stay in private hands -- as long as the government made all economic decisions
and controlled all aspects of people’s lives.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The socialist system the Nazi used is called “fascism.” The first fascist
government was in Italy, under Benito Mussolini, back in the 1920s. Mussolini
defined socialist fascism this way: “All within the state, nothing outside the
state, nothing against the state.”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Today, people think fascism is not related to socialism or communism because
Hitler ended up going to war against the Soviet Union. Thus, people reason
that, if communism is “left” and Hitler went to war against the communists,
than fascism must be “right” and “right-wing” politics must therefore be bad.
The reality is quite different.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Hitler hated communism, not because it was the complete opposite of his
fascism socialism, but because it was too similar. The fight between communism
and fascism, both of which were children of socialism, was like a sibling
rivalry within the same family. The important point is to note that both
systems were agreed upon one thing: The government should be in total charge of
all aspects of the economy and should completely control people’s decisions and
their lives.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Because the Nazi’s socialist system meant that, despite private property,
the government was running things, people had no choice but to go along with
the program. Those who didn't were imprisoned or killed. While
there’s nothing wrong with love of country (i.e., “nationalism”), if you add
nationalism to fascism, and then blend in anti-Semitism and the Nietzschean
idea of a “master race,” all of which is presided over by a crazed megalomaniac
. . . well, you suddenly have a government engine primed to think it's entitled
to and can achieve world domination. Additionally, because socialist
governments are lousy economic managers, eventually they always have to look
over their border to other people's wealth and labor to survive.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Modern Europe has been the softest side of socialism – it’s like Nazism
without the toxic master race idea and the quest for world domination.
European countries have let people have their own businesses and homes
but have kept tight control over services such as health care, railways, and
heavy industry (coal mining, steel production). They also bury their citizens
under regulations. Every single aspect of life in a modern European socialist
country is regulated.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
For a long time, Europeans thought they'd found the perfect solution with
this "loving" socialism. Their citizens could run their own
businesses and make money, so they had some economic growth. In addition,
in exchange for extremely high taxes, the citizens got "free" medical
care (which they'd prepaid with their taxes), low-cost train and bus fares, and
good elder care. It all looked so beautiful in the 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s. That mid- to late-20th century vision of European socialism is what so
many of today's American Democrats, Progressives, and Democratic Socialists
believe they can bring to America.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
What the Europeans conveniently forgot, and what Americans have never
thought about is, is that after World War II, it was American money that
rebuilt their infrastructure. This meant that Europeans didn't have to
repay capital investments. Their capital infrastructure was delivered to them
intact and ready to go thanks to American money.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Europeans also liked to ignore that, during the entirety of the Cold War
with the Soviet Union, America paid Europe's defense costs. That allowed
them to spend their own tax revenues on the "free" medical care and
cheap train fare that Europeans love to boast about as a sign of their superiority.
To this day, no European nation boasting about its “socialized” or
“single payer” medicine will acknowledge that European countries never had
"free" medical care -- they had American-funded medical care.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Maggie Thatcher, who was the conservative Prime Minister in England during
the 1980s, famously said "Socialist governments traditionally do make a
financial mess. They always run out of other people's money." In
Europe, American money started vanishing when the Cold War ended. Not only
did American money start drying up in the 1990s, Europe found itself with a few
other problems when it came to maintaining its "friendly" socialism:<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
(1) Its population began to age. People in socialist countries tend to have
fewer children. In Europe, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Fertility_statistics">fertility
rates are below</a> population replacement rates. The aging population was
draining the social welfare system, because they needed medical and elder care,
and there were fewer young people to create wealth to sustain that same system,
a problem that continues today.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
(2) The 2008 recession affected the entire world's money supply, decreasing
drastically the wealth in Europe. Europe still has not recovered
economically.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
(3) Europe invited in millions of immigrants who were not on board with the
social compact that controlled European socialism. In the years after WWII,
Europeans collectively understood that, if everyone worked when young, then
everyone would be cared for when sick or old (at least as long as the Americans
took care of the defense bill). The problem was/is that the new
immigrants, primarily from Africa and the Middle East, didn't sign onto this
compact. They came, got welfare, and stayed on welfare, letting the
Europeans work for them. Again, this is an ongoing European problem, especially
given the huge influx of Middle Eastern and African refugees who started to
arrive in 2015.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
European socialism is in big trouble now that money is tight, the population
is old, and the immigrants are continuing to pour in, taking without first
having given.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
By the way, the semi-socialist programs we Americans have, such as Medicare
or Social Security, are also running on empty. The younger generation is
just barely paying enough in taxes to keep those programs funding old people.
By the time that the generation that's paying for Medicare and Social
Security now ages up to those programs, the best estimate is that there won't
be anything left for them. As Thatcher knew, government always is a
remarkably poor money manager.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Another example of homegrown socialism's failures is minimum wage laws.
These laws mean that the government, rather than the marketplace, sets wages.
Even the <em>New York Times </em>once understood that the minimum wage is a way
to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/14/opinion/the-right-minimum-wage-0.00.html">keep
unskilled labor out of the job market</a> entirely. Rather than
paying every worker a living wage, minimum wage laws mean that businesses have
to cut back on workers or end up shutting down entirely.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Just recently, a Progressive woman in Seattle wrote that, because of the
city’s minimum wage laws, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/seattles-wage-mandate-kills-restaurants-11576195087">she
had lost her job</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This city’s minimum wage is rising to $16.39 an hour on Jan. 1. Instead of
receiving a bigger paycheck, I’m left without any pay at all due to the policy
change. That’s because the restaurant where I’ve worked for six years is
closing as a consequence of the city’s harmful minimum-wage experiment. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I work for Tom Douglas, one of the best-known restaurateurs in Seattle. Mr.
Douglas is in many ways responsible for the city’s reputation as a foodie
paradise, and he recently celebrated his 30th anniversary in business. He’s a
great boss, and his employees tend to stay at the company for a long time. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But being an established chef and a good employer doesn’t save you from the
burden of a sharp minimum-wage increase, up 73% from $9.47 in 2015. For
large-scale employers like Mr. Douglas, there’s no separate rate for workers
who earn tips. In Washington and a handful of other states, tips aren’t counted
as income earned on the job. That means restaurateurs are expected to pay
servers like me the full minimum wage in addition to our considerable tip
income. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When rent is too high, labor costs too much, and customers don’t want to pay
$40 for a roast-chicken entree, the only way for many operators to ease the
pain is to close. </blockquote>
Things aren't go well in California either. That state put in place another
wage control law that was supposed to help people – only to have the opposite
happen. People who freelance don’t belong to unions – and California has had a
lot of freelancers, most notably driving for Uber and Lyft. Unions therefore
put pressure on the California legislature to change things. The unions
obviously didn’t crudely phrase this as a demand for more unions workers.
Instead, they, and the politicians who support the union plans, assured everyone
that they were doing it for altruism, to make sure that workers got paid good
wages and had good benefits.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
To that end, in 2019 California passed AB5, which, among other things, says
that freelance writers cannot submit more than 35 pieces of writing in a year
to a single publication. This was supposed to spare these writers, many of whom
are women caring for children or sick people, from being <em>exploited</em>.
But because government bows to interest groups, it seldom understands the
marketplace and individual needs. <a href="https://reason.com/2019/12/23/california-freelancers-sue-to-stop-ab5-law-thats-destroying-their-jobs-pol-says-those-were-never-good-jobs-anyway/">The
law, which goes into effect in 2020, will ruin people financially</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The bill's pending implementation has wreaked havoc on publications that
rely heavily on California freelancers. Just last week, <a href="https://reason.com/2019/12/17/california-freelancers-suffer-from-totally-predictable-unintended-consequences-of-gig-worker-protection-bill/">Vox
Media announced it</a> will not be renewing the contracts of around 200
journalists who write for the sports website SB Nation. Instead, the company
will replace many of those contractors with 20 part-time and full-time
employees. Rev, which provides transcription services, and Scripted, which
connects freelance copywriters with people who need their services, also
notified their California contractors that they would no longer give them work. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Companies can simply blacklist California writers and work with
writers in other states, and that's exactly what's happening," Alisha
Grauso, an entertainment journalist and the co-leader of California Freelance
Writers United (CAFWU), tells Reason. "I don't blame them." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
*snip* </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I've been able to earn nearly three times the amount I did working a
day job, doing what I absolutely love, and having more to volunteer and spend
time with loved ones," <a href="https://twitter.com/jackiehdlam/status/1204523785354792960">wrote</a> Jackie
Lam, a financial journalist. Kelly Butler, a freelance copywriter, echoed those
sentiments. "Thousands of CA female freelancer writers, single moms,
minorities, stand to lose their livelihood due to this bill," she <a href="https://twitter.com/kellyabutler/status/1205573838819348481">said</a>.
"I was told by a client because I live in CA they can't use me. I made
$20K from them this year." </blockquote>
The Bill’s sponsor, secure in her theory and uninterested in the reality of
people’s lives, has no sympathy for those who suffer because of the new law:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), the architect of AB5, has heard
these stories. "I'm sure some legit freelancers lost substantial
income," she <a href="https://twitter.com/LorenaSGonzalez/status/1206962386055221253?s=20">tweeted</a> in
the wake of Vox's announcement, "and I empathize with that especially this
time of year. But Vox is a vulture." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"These were never good jobs," Gonzalez <a href="https://twitter.com/LorenaSGonzalez/status/1205265427401601024">said</a> earlier
this month. "No one has ever suggested that, even freelancers." </blockquote>
When you’ve got theory on your side, who needs facts, even if those facts
are real people?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Gonzalez is the face of the same socialism that Bernie is promising for
America: It puts power in the hands of poor managers who too often abuse that
power. A government-managed economy is a lousy system that has failed
everywhere it's been tried, whether we're talking about the Soviet Union, China
(which is now trying a weird controlled "market" economy), Cuba, North
Korea, Europe, or any other failed socialist experiment in Africa and Latin
America.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
And what about the "Democratic" part in that phrase “Democratic
Socialism”? Doesn't that mean we'll get only as much socialism as people
allow, and that America will never have a government continuously hungry for
more control over people's lives? Well, here's the sad truth -- that word is
meaningless.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
"Democratic" means that citizens get to vote for their leadership,
but it doesn't say anything about the political system itself. China
styles itself the "People's Democratic Republic of China," but no one
looks at it and thinks "Wow, that's a free country because it's got the
word 'Democratic' in its name."<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
North Korea, the most repressive country in the world, has as its official
name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." Again, as in China,
people in North Korea don't have a <em>right</em> to vote, meaning
that it's a voluntary activity; instead, they are required to vote, <em>or
else, </em>and they'd better vote for the people their government has
already handpicked as the winners.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
During the Soviet Union's heyday, that nation always liked to boast that it
was more "democratic" than America because it had a higher voter
turnout on election day. Somehow it never mentioned that a person who
failed to vote could end up in prison or that, when voters showed up, they had
about the same number of candidate choices as they had food choices as the
grocery store . . . which is to say, none.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Here's one other thing you ought to know: Up until 2016, Bernie had
never been shy about being called a just a plain, hard-core socialist.
After all, this is a man who happily honeymooned in the Soviet Union, when it
was one of the most repressive countries in the world. It was only in 2015,
when he started succeeding in the Democrat primaries that he and his supporters
began to try to whitewash that "socialist" label.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Never forget, though, that any type of socialist, no matter how they try to
dress up their socialism, ends up on the Left side of that line I showed you
above – the authoritarian side, the side on which the government gets to
control everything and the individual citizens find that they have fewer and
fewer rights and experience greater and greater fears about their own
government.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
But what about the other side of that line . . . the Right side? Isn't that
evil too? No. Just no.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Young people are constantly told that the “right” is bad, but that’s just
something communists made up. After World War II, when the Nazis were the most
evil thing on earth, Communists in Western countries went around teaching that,
because they’re good and they’re Left, any ideology that stands against them,
whether its Nazism (itself a form of socialism) or a true liberal democracy,
must therefore be bad and therefore “Right.”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Here’s the truth: On the right side of that political line in the chart at
the top of this post, as long as you don't stray too far into anarchy, you're
safe from authoritarianism. That is, you're safe from a system in which a
government, or a government working with powerful private interests, controls
you. Instead, you have small government and individual liberty.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
In a government on the right side of the spectrum, people get to decide what
they want to do with their lives. They get to try to invent, build,
serve, work, play, and anything else they please as long as they don't harm
others. They get to buy and sell what they like when they want to.
Because they are allowed to own their own homes and cars and businesses,
they have a stake in the success of each of those endeavors, and they work hard
to achieve that success.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
A free marketplace isn't controlled by a government that calls all the
shots. It's controlled by every person, with all these people organically
combining their skills, knowledge, desires, energy, and ambition to create the
most prosperous economic engine in the world. And if you think that's a bad
thing, think again. Thanks to market-driven First World capitalist
energy, people live longer, healthier lives than ever before. Even poor
people in America are rich and successful compared to poor people anywhere else
in the world.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Here's a good summation of America's virtues, for rich and poor alike, back
from the 1960s, when the hippies thought they knew it all:<br />
<br /><br />
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FZo2hhvvlpw/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FZo2hhvvlpw?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
Oh! One other thing: For those concerned about wealth
inequality, totalitarian societies have no social mobility and extraordinary
wealth inequality. Whether the society is a monarchy, aristocracy,
military junta, or a socialist "paradise," people are either in the
ruling party/class or they're not. Those with power and wealth hold on to
it tightly and scatter just enough food, money, and medical care to the masses
to prevent a bloody uprising.<br />
<br />
In a market economy, though, not only does a rising tide lift all boats,
wealth constantly moves around. Yesterday's immigrant may be today's
innovator. And that rich grandfather might have seen his son waste all
the money and his grandchildren become quite poor.<br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
If you figure out how to use the internet well, you may get rich. On
the other hand, if you decide to spend your time smoking pot and playing
computer games, you'll probably be poor (and burn through whatever money Mom
and Dad left you in their wills).<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
People who make smart choices can rise up; those who don't . . . well, life
can be hard. But I'd rather live in a world that offers the possibility
of success as opposed to a world that keeps everyone firmly down in the mud.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
I don't like Bernie because he is a <em>socialist</em> and that's
a bad thing in all places, at all times.<br />
<br />
(This is an updated version of <a href="https://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/isnt-bernie-socialist-why-yes-he-is.html" target="_blank">a blog post</a> I first created in February 2016.)Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-37263584838178111682016-02-05T14:54:00.003-08:002016-02-05T14:55:48.956-08:00I don't like Bernie because his "Medicare For All" plan is terrible for America's health and economyMy college-age child introduced me to a website called <i><a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/" target="_blank">I Like Bernie, But...</a></i> which is particularly appealing to young voters. The website offers short answers to concerns pro-Bernie voters might still be harboring about his policies and his ability to win. With few exceptions, these answers are just plain wrong. You can see my rebuttals at a website I set up as a counterweight (<i><a href="http://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">I Don't Like Bernie, Because...</a></i>). I've republished those same articles here, at my own blog, addressing <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2016/02/02/i-dont-like-bernie-because-hes-a-socialist/" target="_blank">Bernie's socialism</a>, <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2016/02/03/i-heard-bernie-wants-to-raise-taxes-you-heard-right-and-its-going-to-hurt/" target="_blank">his tax plans</a>, and <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2016/02/04/the-all-important-second-amendment-and-why-bernie-is-wrong-when-he-votes-against-it/" target="_blank">his Second Amendment stance</a>. Today I'm tackling everything that's wrong with Bernie's plan to socialize American medicine.<br />
<br />
The <i>I Like Bernie</i> site imagines a worried Progressive voter exclaiming "I heard he wants to get rid of Obamacare!" Not to worry , says <i>I Like Bernie</i>. In fact, Bernie wants to make Obamacare even better by putting our entire medical system into government hands:<br />
<br />
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<br />
This promise -- that everyone will get high-quality, free medical care, thereby saving American families thousands of dollars a year, while keeping them healthier -- is false. There is no way Bernie can do this. The numbers don't add up, and both the Obamacare experience in America and the socialized medicine experience in Europe show that the free market, not government, is the only way to bring costs down, making quality medical care available to everyone. If you have the patience, this post will walk you through the analysis, using what I hope is clear, simple language, making learning about the economics of medical care a relatively painless process. (Or, as the doctor with the big needle aimed at your arm always says, "This won't hurt a bit.")<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>I. What Bernie promises</b></div>
<br />
Bernie's campaign, in its ongoing effort to pretend that Bernie is not a socialist (<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2016/02/02/i-dont-like-bernie-because-hes-a-socialist/" target="_blank">he is, and that's a bad thing</a>), has titled his plan "<a href="https://berniesanders.com/medicareforall/" target="_blank">Medicare for all.</a>" When he talks about his plan, though, Bernie skips that cute Medicare euphemism and goes for the kill: "The only long-term solution to America's health care crisis is a single-payer national health care program."<br />
<br />
The "single payer" to whom Bernie refers is the government. That's a euphemism too. The government isn't really paying for anything at all, because the government doesn't have money of its own. It never <i>earns</i> money, it <i>takes</i> money. Thus, all of the money in its bank account is actually <i>taken</i> from every American who pays taxes.<br />
<br />
So what Bernie really means when he talks about single-payer nationalized medicine is that he wants "taxpayer-funded" health care. He envisions using taxpayers to fund his grandiose plan of setting up a system in which the government takes those taxpayer funds and, after siphoning off vast funds for administrative salaries, waste, and graft, takes what's left to pay for doctors, nurses, physician's assistants, hospitals (everything from janitors to floor clerks to surgeons), and pharmaceuticals. It will impose these prices from the top down, bullying doctors and nurses who spent years, or even decades, perfecting their skills; hospitals that have invested millions in infrastructure to provide patient care; and pharmaceutical companies that routinely invest millions in research that usually comes up dry, in the hopes of hitting it big with the odd medicine here and there.<br />
<br />
Here's the truth: Even if you <i>love </i>Bernie's plan, it can't work. The numbers won't add up, just as they haven't been adding up in Europe or in America (with Obamacare). In the rest of this post, I'll explain why.<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br />II. America cannot afford Bernie's plan</b></div>
<br />
Bernie promises that, by raising taxes on "the rich," he can cover the costs for everything he promises, including putting the government entirely in control of doling out people's money for medical care. I blogged <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2016/02/03/i-heard-bernie-wants-to-raise-taxes-you-heard-right-and-its-going-to-hurt/" target="_blank">here</a> about the problems with Bernie's general promise that "the rich" can pay for all of his plans, so I won't repeat that discussion. Instead, I'll just tell you here that they can't. In this post, I'll focus solely on Bernie's scheme to fund a nationalized healthcare plan.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jan/13/how-much-would-bernie-sanders-health-care-plan-cos/" target="_blank">Bernie boasts</a> that the plan will save middle class people thousands a year, but he's playing word games when he says that. The reality is that, while middle class people will no longer have to write checks to their insurance company (assuming they don't get insurance through their employer) or pay for deductibles and medicines, they're still going to take a financial hit because taxes must go up significantly to fund his plan. Even under the most optimistic scenario (which we know never proves to be the case), middle class people will have to pay a lot of money if the system isn't going to be running a $3 trillion deficit by the end of a decade.<br />
<br />
As Bernie envisions it, his plan will impose a 6.7% payroll tax on employers (who will, of course, pass that tax on in lower wages or higher prices for goods and services). He'll also add a minimum 2.2% tax increase on people earning more than $200,000 when filing singly or $250,000 when filing jointly. That medical care tax would be in addition to all the other tax increases he plans to impose upon those same earners.<br />
<br />
Lastly, Bernie will require everyone (or everyone above poverty level) to pay a percentage of their income as a medical tax. He says a family earning $50,000 would pay only $1,100 a year -- which is a good price -- but he's quite vague ABOUT what higher earners will pay. This, he claims will pay for American medical care (which currently consumes 1/6 of the American economy).<br />
<br />
Except none of the above is real. What really happens is that the healthcare system becomes another huge, unfunded liability, while chronically <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/03/analysis-bernie-health-care-plan-could-mean-85-percent-top-tax-rate/" target="_blank">sucking wealth out of the American economy</a>:
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An analysis of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health-care plan released Wednesday reveals that despite significant tax increases, it would add between $3-$14 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years, while giving the United States the highest capital gains tax rate in the developed world.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It would also raise the top tax rate to 85 percent, according to the analysis by the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sanders proposed what he calls a “Medicare for all” plan, which his campaign estimates would cost an additional $1.4 trillion per year. It would be financed by six separate tax increases. The CRFB found, though, that the tax hikes would not be enough to cover the program’s cost, and that it would add $3.1 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[snip]</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The campaign estimates that replacing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), personal exemption phaseout (PEP), and Pease limitation with a 28 percent limit on deductions would result in a revenues of $150 billion over 10 years. The CRFB finds that in fact this would lose the federal government $250 billion. Sanders’ campaign believes his proposed employer payroll tax and income surtax would provide $8.4 trillion over 10 years. Though using CBO estimates of what those taxes would bring in revenues, the CRFB found that it would more likely be less than $7 trillion in revenue over a decade.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Many of these changes also would also have negative macro-economic effects that would be difficult to project. For example, Bernie’s plan to tax capital gains and dividends as ordinary income would have a top rate of 62 percent (52 percent from income, 6.2 percent from his Social Security plan, and 3.8 percent from a Medicare investment surtax).</blockquote>
You can read more of that article <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/03/analysis-bernie-health-care-plan-could-mean-85-percent-top-tax-rate/#ixzz3zKFUAP61" target="_blank">here</a>. You can also study this handy-dandy chart:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<b>A three-trillion-dollar deficit over ten years, just for healthcare costs, is <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/" target="_blank">a very big deal</a>.</b><br />
<br />
Oh! And if you're a young person reading this, there's one more thing you need to know: You're going to be the one paying for this nationalized healthcare, although it's not clear whether you'll ever see a real benefit from it.<br />
<br />
Imagine that the US had already enacted socialized medicine five years ago, and then think about you as compared to your grandparents: You are as healthy as a horse and almost never see a doctor. Your grandparents, however, often need to see doctors for a variety of health problems that become more common as the human body ages. Logically, then, your grandparents, along with all of your friends' grandparents, are going to receive the greater part of the healthcare provided in America.<br />
<br />
Here's one other thing you need to think about in connection with your grandparents: They're retired, which means they're not earning money and paying income taxes. Thus, they are not, and will not be, paying into the system, even as they take more and more out of it. You, on the other hand, are entering your peak working years, making your generation the government's cash cow for income taxes. You will be paying a lot of money into a system that you are not using.<br />
<br />
Under this scenario, you have to hope that the generation behind you also works hard and pays money into the system, and that the same holds true for several subsequent generations. Otherwise, when it's your turn, you may find that the system is running on empty -- which is precisely what has happened already with Social Security and Medicare. Nor will this problem of the takers not paying and the payers not taking go way any time soon. Because Americans are living longer, the crowd at the top, the old people demanding medicine but not paying taxes, keeps getting bigger.<br />
<br />
In other words, when it comes to nationalized health care with a vast and growing elderly population, a "pay it forward plan" is a high-risk, low-reward deal for the young ones doing the paying.
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>III. Progressive claims to the contrary, European health care not the wonderful thing that you think it is</b></div>
<br />
I don't have to be in the room with you to know what you're yelling now at the computer screen: "What about Europe?! Socialized medicine has worked in Europe." I'm sorry to break this to you, but it hasn't -- or, at least, it hasn't worked as you think it has.<br />
<br />
When talking about European socialized medicine, there are two things to consider: Whether the system can be funded and whether the people living under the system get quality care. I'll deal first with funding, and then second with the care Europeans receive.<br />
<br />
The socialized medicine system in continental Europe starts with the end of World War II. After WWII ended, large parts of Western Europe were completely flattened. The infrastructure was gone, six years of war having effectively bombed Europe back to something shortly after the Stone Ages. Eastern Europe, of course, was starting its long darkness under Soviet Communist rule.<br />
<br />
The anti-Communist United States was quite worried that, given the destruction in Western Europe, the Soviets could easily expand their sphere of influence into the West. The United States therefore embarked up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan" target="_blank">the "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Europe</a>. Europeans neither had to earn nor repay the money that America handed over; it was a gift to get Europe back on its feet, both for humanitarian reasons and so that it would resist communism. When Europe industry started rolling again, it had very little debt to repay. the Marshall Plan was like an industrial head start or, to use a sports metaphor, a big golf handicap.<br />
<br />
In addition to cash handouts, the United States gave Europe another big gift: It took on most of Europe's defense costs during the Cold War. The various nations certainly had their own armies, but these armies were small and usually contributed only a minimal amount to the hot wars that broke out during the Cold War. As those of you who are anti-war know, it's expensive to have a military. European nations did not have to bear that expense, or they bore a minimal, almost ceremonial defense burden.<br />
<br />
With the money Europe didn't for capital expenditures, that it did not pay on repaying loans for infrastructure development, and that, for decades, it did not pay for defense, Europe ended up having room in its budget for healthcare. In other words, even as Americans were paying out-of-pocket for their own health care, their tax dollars were also being used to help fund Europe's "socialized" medicine.<br />
<br />
It's certainly true that Europeans also paid for the own healthcare through extremely high taxes. These high tax rates worked well when European countries, which are all smaller than America, had homogeneous populations. That is, almost everyone in these countries had shared values that included a willingness to pay into the system when young based upon the belief that, when a specific generation of young people stepped up to old age, the next generation of young people would take on the burden of working and paying for the system. It was all very fair and very sweet.<br />
<br />
But here's something you may not know about socialized countries: The people in them don't have babies. After the post-war baby boom ended in the early 1960s, European adults began to have fewer and fewer children. Europe now <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/european-birth-rate-declines/" target="_blank">has a negative growth rate</a>, meaning that it's not having enough babies to replace the old people who age expensively and then, at ripe old ages, die. The youthful population is shrinking, while the bulk of the population keeps aging.<br />
<br />
As you may recall from the tax discussion, above, a "pay it forward" medical system doesn't work when the bulk of the users are too old to pay into it, even as the number of young people paying into it keeps shrinking. You can imagine that this puts great financial stress on the system. The stress is worse because the end of the Cold War meant the end of American dollars funding the military, which had for decades freed up European cash for health care.<br />
<br />
Looking at Germany's shrinking youth population, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made to fateful decision to stem the financial losses resulting from a vanishing working-age population by welcoming hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants, almost all of whom were young. On paper, it looks like a fine idea: If your working population is vanishing, import a new one.<br />
<br />
What Merkel forgot is that a primary element behind European socialism's success was a small, homogeneous population that played by the rules. The new immigrants weren't raised in that belief system. They operate more under a "I'll take everything I can now, while I can" world view. So instead of paying into the system like good native-born Europeans, the new immigrants are <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/26/dentist-association-warns-treating-migrants-terrible-teeth-will-cost-taxpayer-billions/" target="_blank">taking even more out of the system</a>, raising the stress level.<br />
<br />
This immigrant trend has been taking place for some time now, as Europe started decades ago opening its doors to people from the Middle East and North Africa. At a slow trickle, Europe could adjust to accommodate the stress on the healthcare system, both in terms of funds and infrastructure. With millions of people banging on Europe's doors, though, it's very doubtful that the system can hold.<br />
<br />
Socialized medicine in Europe was a functioning program for a few decades only because of a unique set of circumstances: Lots of American money, no major defense costs, a post-war baby boom, and a homogeneous population with shared values. Take away any one of those factors, and socialized medicine starts having financial troubles. Take away all of those factors and socialized medicine will swiftly come to the end of the line.<br />
<br />
In addition to being unaffordable absent extraordinary circumstances (which are not present in America), Europe's medical care isn't now and never was that good. Yeah, yeah, I know you're shocked to hear that. After all, back in 2000, the World Health Organization ("WHO") came out with a report that savaged the American healthcare system when compared to Europe. It concluded that, on overall performance, the world's richest and most powerful nation managed to come in at 37th place when it came to providing overall healthcare. Here's the thing: You should never rely on a study's conclusions unless you know the metrics that controlled the study's outcome.<br />
<br />
When Americans think of healthcare, they think of speedy access and good results: My grandmother got a new hip within two weeks of the doctor saying she needed one, my father's cancer has been in complete remission for 10 years, I was hospitalized immediately when I got pneumonia, I can almost always see my doctor within two days after I call . . . that kind of thing. So when Americans hear about a presumably reputable study stating that America is only in 37th place when it comes to quality medical care, they think this means that the new hip never happened, the cancer killed something, the pneumonia was a badly conducted office visit, and the doctor's wait-list was months long (all of which is true for the VA, the only example of truly socialized medicine we have here in America).<br />
<br />
Except, as I said, for the VA, the WHO report got it all wrong. It turns out that WHO wasn't interested in the things that matter to Americans when they think about quality treatment, namely, outcomes and wait times. WHO's metric was whether medicine was socialized or not. The more socialization, the higher the scores, regardless of outcome.<br />
<br />
Scott Atlas, in a great article entitled "<a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-worst-study-ever/" target="_blank">The Worst Study Ever?</a>" took the time to break out the numbers:
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>World Health Report 2000</i> was an intellectual fraud of historic consequence—a profoundly deceptive document that is only marginally a measure of health-care performance at all. The report’s true achievement was to rank countries according to their alignment with a specific political and economic ideal—socialized medicine—and then claim it was an objective measure of “quality.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[snip]</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Before WHO released the study, it was commonly accepted that health care in countries with socialized medicine was problematic. But the study showed that countries with nationally centralized health-care systems were the world’s best. As Vincente Navarro noted in 2000 in the highly respected <i>Lancet</i>, countries like Spain and Italy “rarely were considered models of efficiency or effectiveness before” the WHO report. Polls had shown, in fact, that Italy’s citizens were more displeased with their health care than were citizens of any other major European country; the second worst was Spain. But in <i>World Health Report 2000</i>, Italy and Spain were ranked #2 and #7 in the global list of best overall providers.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most studies of global health care before it concentrated on health-care outcomes. But that was not the approach of the WHO report. It sought not to measure performance but something else. “In the past decade or so there has been a gradual shift of vision towards what WHO calls the ‘new universalism,’” WHO authors wrote, “respecting the ethical principle that it may be necessary and efficient to ration services.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[snip]</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The nature of the enterprise came more fully into view with WHO’s introduction and explanation of the five weighted factors that made up its index. Those factors are “Health Level,” which made up 25 percent of “overall care”; “Health Distribution,” which made up another 25 percent; “Responsiveness,” accounting for 12.5 percent; “Responsiveness Distribution,” at 12.5 percent; and “Financial Fairness,” at 25 percent.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The definitions of each factor reveal the ways in which scientific objectivity was a secondary consideration at best. What is “Responsiveness,” for example? WHO defined it in part by calculating a nation’s “respect for persons.” How could it possibly quantify such a subjective notion? It did so through calculations of even more vague subconditions—“respect for dignity,” “confidentiality,” and “autonomy.”</blockquote>
That's just a small portion of a superb article. I urge you to <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-worst-study-ever/" target="_blank">read the whole thing</a>.<br />
<br />
As another example of the GIGO (Garbage In-Garbage Out) factor when it comes to comparing American medicine to medicine in other parts of the world,perhaps you'd like to know why high school and college textbooks keep saying that rich, powerful America comes in at a dismal 54th place for infant mortality.<br />
<br />
What the textbook authors don't know, or ignore, is that, when it comes to calculating infant mortality rates, <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-doctor-is-in-infant-mortality-comparisons-a-statistical-miscarriage/" target="_blank">different countries have different ways</a> of determining what’s a "live birth." America is one of the few countries in the world that counts any baby born alive, no matter how fragile it is, as a living baby for infant mortality purposes.<br />
<br />
In other countries, including Europe and Asia, the public records count as a "live birth" only babies that are a certain minimum size or weight, or that have already survived a certain amount of time outside of the mother. This means that comparing U.S. numbers with other countries’ numbers is an apples and oranges comparison <i>unless you adjust </i>for the differing baseline of what constitutes a live birth. Any study that ranks America so low on infant mortality is based upon a flawed comparison of unequal data. What we really should be ranked upon -- and ranked very highly -- is the value we give to every life, no matter how fragile.<br />
<br />
Remember that, as Mark Twain might have said (or someone else definitely said), there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.<br />
<br />
The reality is that America has very good medical outcomes and that people have long had swift access to medical care. Moreover, because there is lots of money flowing through the system (rather than clutched in a government bureaucrat's fists), businesses have an incentive to invest in researching new medicines or coming up with new techniques.<br />
<br />
Money, after all, is a fabulous motivator. Lack of money leaves you in the situation of my aunt, a fervent communist who lived out her days in East Germany. In her "upscale" party-member apartment, her kitchen sink was broken -- and had been broken for nine years. "Never mind," said Auntie Marxist. "I'm on the list for a government plumber to come and fix it." So far as I know, she was still on the list with that broken sink a decade later, when she died.<br />
<br />
Underlying that perverse WHO study is the reality that the government is ultimately more concerned with the bottom line than it is with any individual. When push comes to shove, you'll make financial sacrifices to save a parent's or a child's life. Government doesn't care. It doesn't love you. You're a statistic.<br />
<br />
This ugly reality has revealed itself in England, which has for some time been relying heavily on healthcare rationing to make up for missing money in a system that's breaking down for the reasons I described above. By the way, in addition to diminishing funds, lack of competition worsens the situation. If patients are being killed in Hospital A because of that hospital's penny-pinching ways, they have no option to go to Hospital B, that will treat them better. In England, they're all Hospital A.<br />
<br />
And that's how you end up with stories about the <i>Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient</i>. Isn't that a nice name? Rather than forcing painful and ultimately unhelpful medical procedures on people who are near death, let them go peacefully, which just palliative (comfort) care.<br />
<br />
The problem was that people were taking too long to die, so many National Health Care hospitals refined the Pathway's definition of what constitutes "near death." That's how there came to be a big scandal in Britain <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/elder/9343428/Elderly-patients-helped-to-die-to-free-up-beds-warns-doctor.html" target="_blank">with reports of hundreds, even thousands, of elderly patients</a> who were not at death's door nevertheless <a href="http://noliverpoolcarepathway.com/food-and-water-its-link-with-the-lcp/side-effects-of-taking-away-patients-fluids/" target="_blank">being hastened to their deaths</a>, starving, <a href="http://noliverpoolcarepathway.com/food-and-water-its-link-with-the-lcp/side-effects-of-taking-away-patients-fluids/" target="_blank">dehydrated</a>, and abandoned.<br />
<br />
The highest level of the British government's supports the cold, hard calculation that old people in England, who are not longer paying money into the system, are a burden on socialized medicine. Just a few years ago, a senior government adviser said that the National Health Service should <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2983652/Baroness-Warnock-Dementia-sufferers-may-have-a-duty-to-die.html" target="_blank">save money by killing people with dementia</a> on the ground that old and sick people have a duty to die (emphasis added):
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[snip]</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Lady Warnock, a former headmistress who went on to become <b><i>Britain's leading moral philosopher</i></b>, chaired a landmark Government committee in the 1980s that established the law on fertility treatment and embryo research. </blockquote>
Your takeaway from this should be that the government doesn't love you; it loves its statistics and five-year goals. When the money runs out, don't be surprised if the government isn't knocking on the door of your hospital room to let you know that your life is too expensive and must end. Those old people in England were the ones who funded that National Health Care service for decades. They believed in it. They trusted their government. And it killed them anyway.<br />
<br />
Knowing all that, are you really willing to put your life in the hands of government bureaucrats -- the same people who for years have been saving money for their bonuses by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Health_Administration_scandal_of_2014" target="_blank">neglecting America's veterans to death</a>?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>V. Conclusion</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
Bernie's making a lot of promises to young people about socialized medicine, assuring them it can be funded on the cheap and will give everyone top flight medical care. He's lying or, at the very least, seriously confused. Indeed, if he were actually demented in a country with socialized medicine, he could probably be on a government hit.<br />
<br />
There is no such thing as a free ride. Absent a rich country funding your socialized medicine, a completely homogeneous population willing to play by the rules, and young adults who are constantly having more children who will also play by the rules, your socialized medicine system will always go broke.<br />
<br />
America can't look to another country willing to pay the costs and cannot count on a constantly burgeoning population of young people willing to pay it forward, in exchange for an unreliable promise that they'll get some care too. Indeed, we have an example of that problem right here at home: <a href="http://www.investors.com/clinton-lying-about-obamacare-death-spiral/" target="_blank">Obamacare is also going broke</a> because old people use it but don't pay for it, and young people don't use it and are unwilling to pay for it.<br />
<br />
In addition, wherever there is socialized medicine, there is bad care. Bureaucrats who face no competition are not interested in the quality of care. They're interested in metrics such as the number of patients registered with a hospital (whether or not they get treated) or the best way to make the numbers about baby deaths look good (e.g., refusing to count fragile babies as "live births").<br />
<br />
The absolute best way to ensure top flight care and affordable prices is through the free market. And before you start saying "That didn't work in America, which is why we needed Obamacare," you need to understand that America hasn't had a free market since WWII. It was then that the government placed salary caps on employers in a misguided effort to help fund the war effort. Prevented from giving high salaries to entice the best workers, employers began offering health insurance benefits as part of the salary package. This disconnected people from both the cost of insurance and the cost of medical care.<br />
<br />
Employer provided health insurance is a lousy way to keep costs down. The insurance companies try to do it by stiffing doctors or hospitals, or denying insureds payment. That's inefficient. The best way to control costs is to have patients shop around in a competitive market. If my insurance company is paying, it doesn't matter to me whether my child gets her checkup by a reputable doctor who charges $60 or a reputable doctor who charges $80. It matters only if I pay that money. For basic medical care, the patient should be the first line of defense in cost control.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, if individuals, not employers, purchased most health insurance, that would also control insurance costs. Even before the rigid complexities of Obamacare, though, that also wasn't really a free market. In California, insurers have hundreds of regulations that drive costs up, something that's not the case in, say, Texas. Insurance companies also can't compete across state lines, so consumers may be trapped in very expensive markets. Also, mandates about what insurance most offer mean block a free market that would allow a healthy young man to make a minimal payment for catastrophic insurance, while parents with young children could pay for a more complete plan to cover all the things that can go wrong with little kids.<br />
<br />
By the way, if you're worried about people with chronic conditions who often ended up uninsured before Obamacare, the marketplace could have helped that too. Just as everyone who buys insurance knows that some portion of that insurance fee is going to cover uninsured motors, a similar system could be established to enable poor risk patients to get insurance. When it comes to people who cannot afford insurance or have been denied it because of chronic conditions, a slight mark-up to create a fund for premiums in the free market is a hell of a lot easier than turning the entire healthcare system over to the government.<br />
<br />
If you doubt me about the benefits of competition, dig into your desk drawer and drag out one of your flash drives. Take a good look at that useful little thing and think about this: On Amazon today, you can get <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Z6K44PQ/?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&keywords=flash%20drive&linkCode=ur2&psc=1&qid=1454708870&s=pc&sr=1-1-spons&tag=bookwormroom-20&linkId=C2XTRGU7CEZLBSMJ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ten 8 GB flash drives for $44.00</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=bookwormroom-20&l=ur2&o=1" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /> -- or $4.40 per flash drive. What you probably don't know if you're under 35 is that, when flash drives first came out in the 1990s, their storage ability was measured by megabytes, not gigabytes, and their cost was in the hundreds of dollars. What brought quality up and costs down was competition, unimpeded by government mandates and other market perversions.<br />
<br />
So next time you hear someone say Bernie will improve American medical care by handing it over to the government, ask yourself -- and your friend -- whether there isn't a better way.
Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-31371496202928100162016-02-04T09:55:00.000-08:002016-02-05T15:44:01.096-08:00Why it's no compliment to Bernie that the NRA hates himThe website <i><a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/" target="_blank">I Like Bernie, But...</a></i> seeks to address concerns that voters might have about Bernie Sanders, and to assure them that his plans work, that he's electable, and that his vision his sound. Previous posts on this blog have addressed the <i>I Like Bernie</i> take on <a href="http://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/isnt-bernie-socialist-why-yes-he-is.html" target="_blank">his socialism</a> (yes, he's a socialist, not a Democrat) and <a href="http://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/i-heard-he-wants-to-raise-taxes-you.html" target="_blank">his tax and spend plans</a> (which are great if you want to kill the economy). This post takes on the <i>I Like Bernie </i>discussion about Bernie and guns.<br />
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The question asked is "Isn't he too weak on gun control?" No, the <i>I Like Bernie</i> team hastens to assure readers, he's not. The Brady Campaign loves him and the NRA hates him:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRn6WOHZ4l-7OOuBmduHZZmttOVpFgdUCJNDaohJOj2TM5YmiZ77gnDMk1GayBQjHGepzrJmMe_pE7Xp98NcqtldVnTxnxr7UqYg2dJzM6F2GkglR8yImg0xHnFdKRIZrwxhsKat3VZmKU/s1600/Bernie+on+guns.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRn6WOHZ4l-7OOuBmduHZZmttOVpFgdUCJNDaohJOj2TM5YmiZ77gnDMk1GayBQjHGepzrJmMe_pE7Xp98NcqtldVnTxnxr7UqYg2dJzM6F2GkglR8yImg0xHnFdKRIZrwxhsKat3VZmKU/s400/Bernie+on+guns.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The concern about Bernie and gun control arises because of his votes on <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Bernie_Sanders.htm" target="_blank">various gun control initiatives that he's voted on</a> during his years in the Senate:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Voted YES on allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains. (Apr 2009)</li>
<li>Voted YES on prohibiting foreign & UN aid that restricts US gun ownership. (Sep 2007)</li>
<li>Voted YES on prohibiting product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers. (Oct 2005)</li>
<li>Voted YES on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse. (Apr 2003)</li>
<li>Voted NO on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1. (Jun 1999)</li>
</ul>
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As you can see, barring his "no" vote on decreasing waiting periods, that's a pretty gun supportive record, which is definitely off-putting to Progressives. Seeing which way the political wind has been blowing on his side of the bench, though, by 2013, Sanders was starting to <a href="http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/why-bernie-sanders-alleged-gun-moderate-gets-a-d-minus-from-the-nra/" target="_blank">join the Progressive caucus on gun issues</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In 2013, he voted for an expansive ban on assault weapons and came out in favor of universal background checks.</blockquote>
It votes such as the 2013 one, and his <a href="http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/why-bernie-sanders-alleged-gun-moderate-gets-a-d-minus-from-the-nra/" target="_blank">a 1994 vote on automatic weapons</a> that leave Second Amendment proponents dubious about Bernie's trustworthiness on gun rights.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It seems Sanders, for his part, ran afoul of the organization in 1994, when he voted for a bill that would have banned 19 varieties of semiautomatic assault weapons. According to Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist, voting in favor of banning any kind of firearm is, in the eyes of the NRA, unredeemable. “Unless you vote the other way later on,” he adds.</blockquote>
Ultimately, despite <i>I Like Bernie</i>'s assurances that Bernie will ban guns, the reality is that <a href="http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/why-bernie-sanders-alleged-gun-moderate-gets-a-d-minus-from-the-nra/" target="_blank">he seems to shoot from the hip (pun intended)</a> on that one:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On Sunday, Sanders sought the middle ground in an interview on CNN. “We need a sensible debate about gun control,” <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/246882-we-need-a-sensible-debate-about-gun-control-sanders-says">he said</a>. “Folks who do not like guns are fine, but we have millions of gun owners in this country who are law-abiding citizens.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[snip] </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The truth is, Bernie hasn’t enunciated a coherent position on gun rights,” says the former NRA lobbyist Feldman. “With him, it’s reading tea leaves.”</blockquote>
<div>
Since you're here, reading this post, I assume that you're a voter leaning towards Bernie, but genuinely curious for more information about his positions -- curious enough to read material that says he doesn't have what it takes to keep America strong and free. I also assume, though, that you think the Second Amendment is an antiquated idea and that we should get rid of guns entirely, leaving them only in police hands (the same police, I might add, that the Black Lives Matter movement accuses of engaging in the mass slaughter of blacks). <br />
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Given what I assume is your spirit of open inquiry, I'd like to suggest to you that Bernie is being smarter when he supports gun rights than when he opposes them. Bear with me on this one. Read what I have to say. Think about it and then, if you disagree, leave a polite rebuttal in the comments.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
I.</div>
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Here's the most important thing you need to know, because you're the kind of person who wants to decrease gun deaths: <b>guns are at their most deadly when government has complete control over them</b>. <br />
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Data proves this point. Let's walk through the numbers for the last 110 years or so. This analysis looks at the effectiveness of non-government murderers who <i>do not</i> have guns; non-government murders who <i>do</i> have guns; and governments that murder, <i>with guns</i> of course. The numbers may surprise you.</div>
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<div>
First, here is information about the worst mass murders committed by people or corporations who used instruments other than guns to carry out the killing:<br />
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><b>The worst psychopathic individual mass murderer who did not use a gun</b>: Gameel al-Batouti. On October 31, 1999, he cried out “Allahu Akbar” as he piloted a plane full of passengers into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 217 people.</li>
<li><b>The worst ideologically driven collective of mass murderers who did not use guns</b>: The 19 al Qaeda members who, on September 11, 2001, used box cutters to hijack four planes, crashed three of those planes into three buildings and one plane into a field, killing 2,996 people in a matter of hours.</li>
<li><b>The worst corporate mass murderer that did not use guns</b>: In December 1984, the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, accidentally released toxic gas from its facility, killing 3,787 people.</li>
</ol>
<b>CONCLUSION</b>: When dedicated mass murderers use something other than guns, they’re able to achieve deaths that range from a few hundred dead to a few thousand dead.<br />
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Second, here is information about people or corporations who committed mass murder using guns:<br />
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<ol>
<li><b>The worst psychopathic individual mass murderer who did use a gun</b>: Anders Behring Breivik who, on July 22, 2011, shot and killed 69 people in Norway – mostly teenagers. This rampage came after he’d already set off a bomb, killing 8 people. Norway has strict gun control.</li>
<li><b>The worst ideologically driven collective mass murderers who did use guns</b>: Given Islamists’ tendency to use all weapons available to shoot as many people as possible in as many countries as they can, this is a tough one to call. I believe, though, that the Mumbai terror attack in 2008 is the largest ideologically driven mass murder that relied solely on guns. Throughout the city of Mumbai, Islamic terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack that killed 154 people. The unbelievably bloody and shocking mall shooting that al Shabaab staged in Kenya killed only 63 people, and the Paris Massacre in November 2015 claimed only 130 lives.</li>
<li><b>The worst corporate mass murder that did use guns</b>: I can’t find any. To the extent that numerous workers died in any given 19th century labor dispute, those deaths occurred because state government, siding with management, sent out the state’s militia to disperse the strikers. For example, in November 1887, in Thibodaux, Louisiana, the state militia killed between 35 and 300 black sugar plantation strikers. The 20th and 21st century did not offer such examples.</li>
</ol>
<b>CONCLUSION</b>: When individual killers or small groups of killers rely on guns, their effectiveness is limited, compared to those who use planes or bombs. In addition, corporations (outside of crazed Hollywood movies) drop out of the running entirely.<br />
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Before moving on to those entities that rack up the highest body counts with guns (that would be governments), let's summarize the above information and make a few additional points about murderous individuals with guns: Both individuals (singularly and collectively) and corporations can kill. However, even when given optimal killing situations (e.g., acts of terrorism or corporate negligence), the numbers stay in the low thousands – and sink even further when guns are involved.<br />
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I can already anticipate that you've pointing out an obvious hole in the above data, and that's the most common gun-death situation in America: Adding up small killing events (a murder here, a murder there), which results in a lot of dead bodies. Believe it or not, though, those numbers are (a) not as bad as you think; (b) mostly falling, not rising, as legal gun ownership increases; and (c) driven more by urban culture than gun ownership.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Let's start by adding up <a href="http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm">America’s annual murder statistics from 1960 through 2012</a>. Over that 52-year period, the total number of Americans killed is 914,191. (This number encompasses all murders, not just those with guns, but we’ll still use it as the most extreme illustration of Americans’ alleged propensity to violence.)<br />
<br />
Even if we assume the most extreme scenario, that America has had a stable murder rate of <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "bitstream charter" , "times" , serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> </span>914,191 murdered citizens per every 50 years, Americans would still have managed to commit only around 4,000,000 murders in 233 years, using all weapons available. </div>
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That seems like a big number but, as you're about to find out, it's not really. As you'll see, the serious killers in the last century haven’t been individuals or small groups. </div>
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<div>
The serious killers have been governments acting against unarmed (usually disarmed) citizens. Here is the damning data showing what happens when armed governments are able to turn on their own citizens or engage in genocidal attacks against specifically selected religious, cultural, or racial groups – all of them unarmed and defenseless.</div>
<div>
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<b>Turkey</b>: In 1915, the Turkish government ordered and carried out the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUdRNm_WkUWzujzfoZh3CRSRfyWMwl-odt38uji0WJjZZPanO9ZC1mIieX11rIemCHFzk_PsEYJ3tkat9QKT6JO_fvBVfAciTPp4GnAbVbeoBiRZbTFCzCuOz9HvV1FicN-NHL1kP4RPVX/s1600/Armenians+slaughtered+by+Turks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUdRNm_WkUWzujzfoZh3CRSRfyWMwl-odt38uji0WJjZZPanO9ZC1mIieX11rIemCHFzk_PsEYJ3tkat9QKT6JO_fvBVfAciTPp4GnAbVbeoBiRZbTFCzCuOz9HvV1FicN-NHL1kP4RPVX/s400/Armenians+slaughtered+by+Turks.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bodies of unarmed Armenian citizens slaughtered by Turks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Soviet Union</b>: In the 1920s through mid-1930s, the Soviet government under Stalin declared war on the independent Ukrainian farmers known as Kulaks. Through government engineered starvation, deportation, and execution, enforced with Soviet gun power, the Soviets are estimated to have killed approximately 7 million Kulaks.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPwpqhWfmSorKA-99SnBOuG1dNGlQlwOONMSC-CQkXbAoC7tIpLjHxj-POTOzmXwvZiBNglhcbN8fWkAM7aW9UaWxGOTIrok9YNT0OTsg1PV-v74NUgoAbAohKNaM_Yz71oGWwp7uM72uN/s1600/Kulaks2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPwpqhWfmSorKA-99SnBOuG1dNGlQlwOONMSC-CQkXbAoC7tIpLjHxj-POTOzmXwvZiBNglhcbN8fWkAM7aW9UaWxGOTIrok9YNT0OTsg1PV-v74NUgoAbAohKNaM_Yz71oGWwp7uM72uN/s400/Kulaks2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Kulaks were just one group who died off in a specific mass killing. In fact, nobody really knows how many of its unarmed citizens the Soviet Union killed, whether using starvation, outright execution, or penal colonies. Estimates range from 7 million to 20 million people dying due to the Soviet government’s policies and purges.<br />
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<b>China in the 1960s through 1970s</b>: When it comes to a government killing its own citizens, the Soviets were pikers compared to the Chinese. Current estimates for those who died during the Great Leap Forward due to government engineered famine, executions, and slave labor, range from between 23 million to 46 million unarmed Chinese. Some estimates (outliers, admittedly) posit even 50 million or more Chinese dying to appease Chairman Mao’s statist vision.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgfRunPvLb3CU9q_Vb_WGjLP9XwNFwUz0Tsja2NKIvux-Fj3_RcbW2TCif1Q0_uFrWrF-EEezon-UKp7PYEtAZfUpLAZtN5Qz-CHrYEXiiJPCJ1eBpjwm9Hb02PZ7Qao5zeOIX8zomCh_/s1600/Great_LeapForward_famine.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgfRunPvLb3CU9q_Vb_WGjLP9XwNFwUz0Tsja2NKIvux-Fj3_RcbW2TCif1Q0_uFrWrF-EEezon-UKp7PYEtAZfUpLAZtN5Qz-CHrYEXiiJPCJ1eBpjwm9Hb02PZ7Qao5zeOIX8zomCh_/s400/Great_LeapForward_famine.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unarmed Chinese citizen at the mercy of his government</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Nazi Germany, from 1933-1945</b>: You knew I’d get to the Nazis, of course. Not satisfied with purging their own country of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and handicapped people, the Nazis conquered Europe from France to Poland to Denmark and embarked upon a purge in those countries too.<br />
<br />
Without exception, the civilians that the Nazis targeted were already unarmed (voluntarily or involuntarily), losing their weapons either before the Nazis came to power (Jews in the Pale, the large area between Russia and Poland, were never allowed arms) or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Control-Third-Reich-Disarming-ebook/dp/B00GL9OBY0/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&qid=1402863874&s=books&sr=1-1&tag=bookwormroom-20">ended up disarmed when the Nazis achieved power</a><img border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=bookwormroom-20&l=ur2&o=1" />. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
With their pick of helpless victims, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews; 250,000 gypsies; 220,000 homosexuals, and, through slave labor, executions, and starvation, as many as 10 million Slavic people. (The number of handicapped people killed is unknown.) As an aside, when the Nazi gun-control gang got the bit in their teeth and went to war, the war itself resulted in the deaths of another 19,315,000 Europeans who weren’t targeted because of race, religion, sexual orientation, or disability but who were, instead, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6RB8bGXgIl5jBppk8LTwMF-YFFAgqBmjmJFMcPirY84TejRKy0vSPuDlahhcbQwCCIbcgKu17RSIZ_MfNPVmhepuiYMdO77v8576-ZbJrlbQT_1nUVMYKbiHCj2B9c2nmioutj6FFzDRt/s1600/Armed+Nazis+rounding+up+Jews.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6RB8bGXgIl5jBppk8LTwMF-YFFAgqBmjmJFMcPirY84TejRKy0vSPuDlahhcbQwCCIbcgKu17RSIZ_MfNPVmhepuiYMdO77v8576-ZbJrlbQT_1nUVMYKbiHCj2B9c2nmioutj6FFzDRt/s400/Armed+Nazis+rounding+up+Jews.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nazis using guns to round up unarmed people</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz5Hx2Iy5NFRTwGG1ukHuK_zDLSI_VAlhNvf6GzoHQsDBBGo26x-iuc0JiCw-hIzlbkz7NmmEDYBmcJE8Rj7eCCGcga2YSvD_kAzQeC-05QJlaXssxJn-F_lpa3Xm0HGW4EdwCMy1586Uo/s1600/Nazi+shooting+Jews.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz5Hx2Iy5NFRTwGG1ukHuK_zDLSI_VAlhNvf6GzoHQsDBBGo26x-iuc0JiCw-hIzlbkz7NmmEDYBmcJE8Rj7eCCGcga2YSvD_kAzQeC-05QJlaXssxJn-F_lpa3Xm0HGW4EdwCMy1586Uo/s400/Nazi+shooting+Jews.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nazi using gun to shoot unarmed people</td></tr>
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</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1mSqhBwbzBmbpbio4eD67b2Jzu3z1-BNPSFS_xQC9Nqp-cLowdhuHVIP4Ot60mhYXDWc5ZohYyzHyhbqDKXwSzz1ws7gkyItKsHM_KsvMPr61KcmRQHuvnN0hnHr4LM2rICqBpMyw_U9A/s1600/bodies-of-deceased-concentration-camp-everett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1mSqhBwbzBmbpbio4eD67b2Jzu3z1-BNPSFS_xQC9Nqp-cLowdhuHVIP4Ot60mhYXDWc5ZohYyzHyhbqDKXwSzz1ws7gkyItKsHM_KsvMPr61KcmRQHuvnN0hnHr4LM2rICqBpMyw_U9A/s400/bodies-of-deceased-concentration-camp-everett.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The end of the line for unarmed people at the wrong end of Nazi gun control</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Cambodia</b>: Following the Cambodian Civil War, Pol Pot rose to power in Cambodia. Once in power, in the years between 1975 and 1979, his government killed between 1.7 and 2.2 million of its own unarmed citizens, out of a population of around 8 million people. Were the U.S. to have a Pol Pot moment today, that would be the equivalent of having the federal government kill 66 million to 85 million people in four years.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuHgAth_WfdE1tdkUBa01-sGcvkpIUxqGO8NWhi05X_M25SNI64Ag4su6FZP4-Gl5OEQ9lejtxoFxknsrqKI6isVdviXBggS67eBkJ7q6MuAX7mFysPy1G_Dtvf5keRua1ZyiQY4UuA-QL/s1600/CambodiaKillingFields1981-621x407.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuHgAth_WfdE1tdkUBa01-sGcvkpIUxqGO8NWhi05X_M25SNI64Ag4su6FZP4-Gl5OEQ9lejtxoFxknsrqKI6isVdviXBggS67eBkJ7q6MuAX7mFysPy1G_Dtvf5keRua1ZyiQY4UuA-QL/s400/CambodiaKillingFields1981-621x407.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A minute part of the Killing Fields in Cambodia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>North Korea</b>: Nobody knows how many North Koreans (none of whom are allowed arms) have died since the murderous Kim regime came into power. <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP10.HTM">One estimate</a> is that 1,293,000 North Koreans have died at their government’s hands. That number, of course, is entirely separate from the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans residing in concentration camps throughout that hellish little nation.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq08O8AkyCOtwFiaHq77HpethWlPoUpQUgg4doCig-atBQe-LtmoA9jEpPXtKMXhCgPiDFgTreyEJBshidA3mJU1ICqAfqdZPgIFnIIEmSNAZsg8kCk-xa8cdtdA1kJkYpXr6-wNTVoZmQ/s1600/Life+in+North+Korea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq08O8AkyCOtwFiaHq77HpethWlPoUpQUgg4doCig-atBQe-LtmoA9jEpPXtKMXhCgPiDFgTreyEJBshidA3mJU1ICqAfqdZPgIFnIIEmSNAZsg8kCk-xa8cdtdA1kJkYpXr6-wNTVoZmQ/s400/Life+in+North+Korea.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Life in North Korea</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The above are the government-engineered mass murders that spring most readily to my mind. I’ve obviously left out many that properly belong on the list, everything from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to Cuba, to just about every tin-pot dictatorship in Africa and Latin America. ISIS also isn't on the list yet, but the death toll in regions it controls is mounting. (And ISIS, to give its sadistic imagination credit, uses guns to intimidate, but enjoys creative murders involving tall buildings, drowning, burning, beheading, etc.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you would like the full body of statistics for government-engineered mass murders in the 20th and 21st centuries, I recommend <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP1.HTM">R. J. Rummel’s Statistics of Democide</a>, which examines the kill rate of 214 regimes. I’ve picked my way through some of this opus and, even though Rummel’s writing is scholarly not scintillating, I was able to catch the depressing gist: governments kill and, given the chance, they kill often, in staggering numbers.<br />
<br />
So think about this: as a Progessive, you are worried about leaving guns in the hands of individuals who can manage, only with spectacular effort or negligence, to kill people in fairly low numbers, with Mumbai coming in at the top with more than 150 dead. At the same time, you desperately want to hand all weapons over to the government, leaving the population unarmed, despite compelling evidence showing that armed governments with an unarmed population at their mercy kill in the millions, with a few million dead here and another fifty million dead there.</div>
<div>
<br />
Stalin spoke from personal experience when he said “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” It's fine to cry over the tragedies, but you really should direct your energy to avoiding the statistics.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
II.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's the second most important thing you need to know: <b>The Second Amendment exists because Revolutionary-era Americans fully understood that government is always the greatest threat to individual lives and safety</b>.<br />
<br />
Looking back at the American Revolution, it's easy to assume that the result -- an American victory -- was a foregone conclusion. In fact, right up until the bitter end, the outcome could have gone either way. After all, the colonists had taken up arms against the most powerful military in the world. Anyone placing bets in 1776 or 1778 would have been smart to wager against the revolutionaries.<br />
<br />
Moreover, if the revolutionaries had lived in the home country of England, it’s likely that those placing bets against the revolution would have been correct. England, an old, stable culture that had weathered a devastating revolution slightly more than 100 years before, was not much given to having individual citizens bearing arms. (Indeed, one writer has posited that the rebellion began in part because <a href="http://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/the-american-revolution-was-against-british-gun-control/">the British sought to disarm the colonists</a>.)<br />
<br />
It was only in the Americas, far from “civilization,” that guns were a necessity. One does not go into the frontier unarmed. Too many people had untamed forests pressing against their fragile communities to manage without at least one musket, rifle, or pistol in their possession.<br />
<br />
Because of their circumstances, the American colonists didn’t just possess arms; they knew how to use them. While George Washington despaired of turning his volunteers into a well-drilled, spit-and-polish military, the one thing he didn’t have to worry about was weapons training. His rag-tag army knew how to load, aim, and shoot (especially those Tennessee mountain boys). If the Continental Congress could provide the bullets, many of the colonists willingly provided their own guns and know-how.<br />
<br />
The Revolutionary war had ended eight years before by the time the Founders enacted the Bill of Rights. It was in that context – the aftermath of a small colony’s successful revolution against the most powerful nation in the world – that the Founders determined that American citizens would never again be subordinate to, rather than in control of, their government.<br />
<br />
For this reason, the first ten amendments to the Constitution do not define government power; they limit it. And more importantly, they limit it, not by having the government graciously extend a few privileges to America’s citizens, privileges that the government can as easily revoke, but instead by stating rights that are individuals automatically possess without regard to the government’s powers.<br />
<br />
The second of these amendments – and that only one which is dedicated exclusively to a single principle, rather than a blend of related principles – refers to every citizen’s inherent (not government granted, but inherent) right to possess arms:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.</blockquote>
If the Second Amendment were written in modern English, the Founders might have phrased it this way:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
The only way citizens can defend themselves against a tyrannical government is to create their own army (which, obviously, is separate from the government’s army). The people therefore have an overarching and innate right to have guns, and the government may not interfere with that right.</blockquote>
I know, I know! You want me to explain that bit about a “well regulated militia” phrase. You've been taught that the Second Amendment allows guns only if each gun holder gets together with other gun owners on a regular basis to create an army, complete with drilling and officers and such-like. (Of course, it's worth noting that, when groups do precisely that, they’re denounced as proto-military terrorist organizations and the government uses its armed might to shut those groups down.)<br />
<br />
Little "People's Armies" weren't what the Founders had in mind back in 1791. Then, although the federal government was small and weak, the Founders nevertheless worried that American citizens might in the future need to rebel against a government that had grown too powerful. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The revolutionaries' own experience had shown them that citizens don’t need to have a standing militia, that is always ready to fight. Instead, the citizens must only have the ability to come together as a well-regulated militia on an "as needed" basis (the need being the necessity to secure individual freedom against government). This ability to transform from peaceful citizens into an effective militia when needed requires a citizenry that, on its own initiative, is both well-armed and competent with those arms.<br />
<br />
Here’s another good thing about those Second Amendment weapons we possess: Imagine a Stalin, Hitler, Mao, or Pol Pot somehow attaining the White House through the ordinary election process. (And if you're a Progressive, I know that you worry that Donald Trump will be a Hitler, so consider this a real worry on your part.) </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because Americans would never elect someone who announced in advance his intention to become a murderous dictator, that candidate would have campaigned dishonestly, so as to sound as if he supported a free, republican democracy. The only tip-off that he in fact intended to govern without the consent of the governed would be his running on the Leftist platform of disarming all citizens (which, I'm sorry to say, kind of lets Trump of the hook, but puts Hillary and Bernie in the "should we be worried" spotlight).<br />
<br />
The Founders understood that every government has the potential to become tyrannical (although they couldn’t have predicted in their wildest dreams the mad scope of worldwide government killing in the 20th and 21st centuries). They therefore embedded in the Bill of Rights the ultimate barrier against tyranny: an armed population that, if needed, can instantly transform itself into a citizen army.<br />
<br />
Yes, some of those armed citizens will do bad things with their guns, but even at their worst, they are insignificant killers compared to rogue governments. As a matter of principle, supported by data, an armed citizenry is safer than an unarmed one when it comes to the biggest, most blood-thirsty, most deadly predator known to man: Government.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
III.</div>
<br />
Here's the third thing you need to know about guns: <b>Legal guns, in honest citizens' hands, are the best defense against race-based murders.</b><br />
<br />
Every black person knows that there is one American subgroup that dies more from gunshots than any other group in America: blacks, especially young black males. (Incidentally, <a href="http://americanthinker.com/2012/12/listening_to_the_latest_media.html">if you remove this group from American gun-death statistics</a>, America could be some peaceful European country when it comes to gun deaths.)<br />
<br />
Progressives respond to these tragic numbers by demanding ever greater gun control and claiming that anyone who opposes gun control is a racist. Then, when they achieve that gun control (as they have in Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Detroit, etc.), they are perplexed that black youths die in ever greater numbers in the cities with the most gun control. The only fix they can imagine is more gun control on an ever greater scale.<br />
<br />
I'd like to suggest that the answer lies with the simply stated NRA principle that, “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” Real-time data shows that, when law-abiding citizens in black communities are also armed, <a href="http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/FoxNewsSupremeCourtGunBan.html">the bad guys quickly start slinking away</a>.<br />
<br />
In 1991, Americans killed each other in the greatest numbers ever: 24,700 Americans died that year at the hands of other Americans. Since then, the numbers have declined steadily. In 2011, only 14,661 Americans were murdered, a 40% crime drop that reverted America to murder numbers last seen in around 1969, when 14,760 Americans were murdered. (There was an uptick in urban murder rates in 2015, which may have had to do with police becoming passive in the face of the Black Lives Movement, but that's a subject for another post, with its own analysis.) <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gunslott.html">As John Lott has pointed out</a> with almost mind-numbing repetitiveness, what happened since 1991 and today is that law-abiding Americans armed themselves in ever greater numbers.<br />
<br />
So what do declining gun crime statistics have to do with my claim that making it easier for law-abiding citizens to have legal guns is the opposite of being racist? It’s simple: People who are not racist want blacks to live and thrive in safe environments -- and those environments are best created and sustained when the predators are kept at bay by armed, law-abiding citizens.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, one of the things you might not have learned in school is that the Democrat party has always worked hard to keep guns from blacks. This is true for the slave era (Democrats were the slavery party), post-Reconstruction (Democrats controlled the South), Jim Crow (Democrats controlled the South), and present day inner cities (the most crime-ridden of which are all Democrat strongholds). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Except for a few racist, Southern-Democrat chapters, the NRA fought against black disarmament, reasoning correctly that giving blacks guns would protect them against slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow generally. (For more on the subject, read <a href="http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-04-18.html">Ann Coulter’s article about gun rights and blacks</a>, in which she summarizes with her usual élan the way in which the anti-black Southern hegemony worked hard to keep guns out of black hands in order to control and terrorize them more effectively. You may hate Coulter, and you're within your rights to do so, but she's got the facts on this subject.)<br />
<br />
To sum it up, if you're not a racist, you want American blacks to live and to thrive. They can do this only in safe communities and the safest black communities have always been those in which moral, law-abiding black citizens have been armed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
IV.</div>
<br />
Here's the fourth thing you'll find hard to believe but that's true about gun rights: <b>The safest communities are those with a strong moral compass and a lot of guns.</b><br />
<br />
This section basically summarizes the principles set out in the three sections, above. An armed society is protected against its government, and armed moral, law-abiding citizens are protected from the predators amongst them. If you doubt that, just look at England: Once it banned guns, it became a country with violent crime and murder rates consistent with South Africa’s – and that’s not something any civilized country wants to boast about.<br />
<br />
The current Progressive political stance is to demand total disarmament because “one death is one too many.” That is a naive and unrealistic demand that results in more deaths, rather than fewer. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mankind’s civilized veneer is thin at best. Turn on the news or read a history book and you'll be reminded that human beings are infinitely creative when it comes to killing. If I felt so inclined, I could kill someone by coming upon them when they’re asleep and stabbing them repeatedly in the eyeball with a Bic pen. (Don’t worry; I’m not planning this but, rather, positing the possibility.) The gun’s invention added to man’s repertoire, but it didn’t change his inclination to kill.<br />
<br />
What the gun did change is that it increased people’s ability to defend against the predators among us. If a huge man gives every indication that he intends to use his ham-like hands and jackbooted feet to beat me to death, or that wicked knife to stab me to death, my best defense as a small woman is several gunshots fired off before he can close in on me. Likewise, an armed homeowner can stop the intruder at the door before a murder, rape, or robbery even has time to get started. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2gCFOtaZPo">This video effectively makes that point</a>.)<br />
<br />
Putting all guns in police hands is not the answer and that's true even if one ignores the fact that too many governments have a nasty habit of committing mass murder, For one thing, even nice, neighborhood cops can get the bad idea that they’re “the King of the world” if they’re running around tanks, armed to the teeth, while unarmed citizens meekly obey them. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In addition, unless the gun violence is part of a rolling dispute that takes place over a long period of time, cops usually get to the scene long after the mayhem is finished. The NRA summed up this practical reality by saying “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” Indeed, if you have a Hurricane Katrina situation, the police may be days, weeks, or months away.<br />
<br />
Bad things happen. That’s life. But it’s certain that, on the whole, the best way for good people to defend themselves against bad people is for the good people to be armed. And maybe I'm naive, but when I look at Americans, I believe that there are many more good people than predators. <br />
<br />
This principle isn’t undermined by the stories that routinely appear about kids dying tragically from a gun accident at home. Just as the problem in World War II wasn’t the guns but was the Nazis, too often the problem in those homes isn’t the guns it’s the parents. These are the homes in which parents use drugs or too much alcohol around the children, the homes that don’t have smoke detectors, the homes with small children that nevertheless have unprotected access to swimming pools, and of course the homes in which parents don’t follow <a href="http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx">basic gun safety rules</a>. Their kids are unsafe under any circumstances.<br />
<br />
Additionally, sometimes freak accidents just happen, with or without guns. I remember in the 1980s, in Texas, a woman died instantly when she tripped in her living room and crashed into her old sliding glass door, which shattered into razor-like shards, one of which severed her aorta. There is no such thing as perfect safety.<br />
<br />
Even factoring in crimes, carelessness, and chance, the reality is that people are most safe when they have a gun. It is the best means by which they can defend themselves against all predators: humans, animals, ideologues, and governments.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
V.</div>
<br />
The fifth thing you need to know about gun control is this: <b>Those advocating gun control need to lie to promote their cause -- which should tell you that their cause is invalid.</b><br />
<br />
As I'll demonstrate below, when Progressives push gun control, they do so using false data. If you have to falsify data to support your position, you don’t have a case. It’s as simple as that.<br />
<br />
Here are just some examples:<br />
<br />
Gun control supporters published a Google map purporting to show 74 gun murders at American schools since the Newtown shooting in December 2012. Here's that map:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Alleged-school-shootings-in-the-US-debunked.png"><img src="http://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Alleged-school-shootings-in-the-US-debunked.png" /></a><br />
<br />
People who are afraid of guns find this map terrifying. It obviously shows that our children aren't going to schools; they're going to shooting ranges -- and they're the targets. The problem, of course, is that the map is based upon a lie, and the lie is that almost none of those little flags are school shootings of the type that happened in Columbine (or, after the map was published, up in Oregon). <br />
<br />
Charles C.W. Cooke <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380108/lying-about-school-shootings-charles-c-w-cooke">summed up the problems with the map</a>, noting that the Washington Post exposes some of them, while Charles Johnson exposes the rest:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Post is admirably clear that the map includes both colleges and schools, that it counts “any instance in which a firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds,” and that the data isn’t “limited to mass shootings like Newtown.” This point has also been made forcefully by <a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson">Charles C. Johnson</a>, who yesterday looked into each of the 74 incidents and <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/10/wow-journalist-attempts-to-debunk-anti-gun-groups-list-of-school-shootings-in-america-since-sandy-hook-heres-what-he-found/">noted</a> that not only did some of them not take place on campuses but that “fewer than 7 of the 74 school shootings listed by #Everytown are mass shootings,” that one or more probably didn’t happen at all, that at least one was actually a case of self-defense, and that 32 could be classified as “school shootings” only if we are to twist the meaning of the term beyond all recognition.</blockquote>
Why would gun-control advocates lie like this? Simple. The facts don’t support the premise that America’s schools are being turned into daily bloodbaths because of armed and crazed students. If you don't have those useful facts, you have to invent them.<br />
<br />
Here’s another lie, one that our president himself voiced: In a speech on June 10, 2014, after another headline about white people getting shot, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-needs-to-do-some-soul-searching-about-mass-shootings-obama-says/">President Obama said</a>, “We’re the only developed country on earth where this happens, and it happens now once a week. . . . I mean, our levels of gun violence are off the charts, there’s no advanced developed country on earth that would put up with this.” He added at another point in his speech that this level of killing is “becoming the norm.” <br />
<br />
President Obama <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-while-speaking-in-paris-on-planned-parenthood-shooting-this-just-doesnt-happen-in-other-countries/" target="_blank">made that point again</a> at the end of November 2015, after a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic that left three dead, stating, " I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings. This just doesn’t happen in other countries." Two weeks before, men armed with guns committed a mass shooting in Paris that killed 130 people -- so it does happen in other countries and in very terrible ways.<br />
<br />
Given President Obama's statements, it bears repeating here that, contrary to the sense that mass murder is omnipresent in America (a sense driven by the immediacy of internet news), our average murder levels have declined, returning us to numbers last seen in 1969. We’re not getting more violent, we’re getting significantly less violent.<br />
<br />
And while we all learned in school that correlation isn’t causation, there’s compelling evidence from Western nations the world over, not to mention the individual American states, that <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gunslott.html">violence goes down when legal gun ownership goes up</a>, and that violence goes up when legal gun ownership goes down. That’s a pretty strong correlation/causation argument.<br />
<br />
President Obama is also wrong to imply that mass murders are getting more common in America. Yes, last year was a bad year, but the reality is that, absent Islamist attacks (which can be likened to acts of war, rather than crazed mass murders), <a href="http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/12/professor-statistics-show-mass-shootings-not-on-the-rise/">mass murders are not on the rise</a>. They are now, as they always have been, statistical outliers that cannot be predicted by pointing to any trends.<br />
<br />
Let me reiterate the point I made at the beginning of this section: You know you’re right if your opponent’s only evidence is fraudulent.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
VI.</div>
<br />
To sum things up, it's entirely possible that everything you've ever believed about guns and gun control is wrong, and that Bernie's occasionally pro-gun rights stance is a virtue, not a problem. <br />
<br />
Any honest gun rights supporter will freely concede that guns can be used for evil purposes. What those who seek to control guns refuse to admit, though, is that history and crime statistics establish with almost boring repetition a few facts supporting more, not fewer, legal guns:<br />
<br />
Individuals with guns are (thankfully) inefficient killers when compared to individuals who use other ends to achieve their murderous goals (bombs, cars, planes, etc.). Even a few individuals working in concert cannot kill more than a few hundred people at a time. (And yes, that’s a few hundred too many, but it’s still less than innocents on the wrong ends of bombs, planes, etc.)<br />
<br />
Armed governments facing off against their unarmed populations are massively efficient killers, often leaving tens of millions of dead bodies in their wake.<br />
<br />
In the modern era, no government has attempted to go full-bore totalitarian when its citizens are armed.<br />
<br />
Communities that have more law-abiding citizens with guns than criminals with guns are safe communities, a reality that would most benefit black Americans.<br />
<br />
The bottom line is one that will make you feel uncomfortable, but that is nevertheless true: Guns kill . . . and that’s a good thing. By doing so, they serve as a bulwark protecting individual citizens from predatory people and governments. That’s why individual citizens must strongly defend the Second Amendment right to bear arms, resisting all government efforts to grab their guns, something that would leave them vulnerable, not only to criminals and jihadists, but to the government itself.<br />
<br />
And if I've convinced you about this, perhaps you ought to rethink your support of candidates who promise to take away all privately owned guns (and that includes Bernie), leaving all guns solely in government hands, and give another look at candidates who believe that the vast majority of Americans are good people, who will not (and have not, given the 300 million privately owned guns already in existence) turn America into a giant shooting gallery, complete with human targets. Sadly, those shooting galleries do exist in America, but they're confined to Democrat- and gun-controlled inner cities.</div>
</div>
</div>
Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-1816225138111426882016-02-03T11:36:00.002-08:002016-02-05T08:13:14.186-08:00"I heard he wants to raise taxes" -- you heard right, and it's going to hurtThe new website <i><a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/" target="_blank">I Like Bernie, But</a>...</i> tries to calm people's fears about Bernie Sander's socialist extremism. It states questions reflecting concerns that people might have about Bernie, and then provides pithy little answers refuting those fears. <br />
<br />
In <a href="http://idontlikeberniebecause.blogspot.com/2016/02/isnt-bernie-socialist-why-yes-he-is.html" target="_blank">a previous post</a>, I addressed the myriad falsehoods, omissions, and misconceptions in the website's assurance that Bernie isn't a <i>dangerous</i> socialist, he's a <i>good</i> socialist. This post addresses the misleading answer to a concern that "I heard he [Bernie] wants to raise taxes."<br />
<br />
Here's what <i>I Like Bernie, But</i>.... has to say about Bernie and taxes:<br />
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That's simply false. Here's the truth:<br />
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To fund his proposed 18 trillion dollars in new spending, Bernie is going to tax everybody and tax them hard. This is not a Republican viewpoint. This comes from <a href="http://www.vox.com/" target="_blank">Vox</a>, a internet media outlet known for its strong Progressive orientation.<br />
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Writing at <i>Vox, </i>Dylan Matthews took a look at the Tax Code if Bernie is allowed to go forward with his plans to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10783922/bernie-sanders-single-payer-plan" target="_blank">socialize medicine</a>; make <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/18/8621759/free-college-bernie-sanders" target="_blank">college free for everyone</a>, although he's already conceded that college graduates aren't getting jobs as matters stand now; <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-introduces-bill-to-rebuild-americas-crumbling-infrastructure-support-13-million-jobs" target="_blank">revamp America's infrastructure</a>, something Obama promised but failed to do; have the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/bernie-sanders-asks-congress-to-spend-55-billion-on-1-million-jobs-for-youths/2015/06/04/0354e9dc-0ae6-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html" target="_blank">government create jobs for young people</a>, a ridiculous scheme that Milton Friedman destroys with <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/01/13/enacting-useless-regulations-in-order-to-force-the-transfer-of-wealth-from-rich-to-poor/" target="_blank">a single question about spoons</a>; <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-social-security/" target="_blank">expanding Social Security</a>, a program that is already going broke and suck vast amounts of money out of the federal budget; and a whole bunch of other, smaller programs.<br />
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The first thing you need to understand, before we even get to the numbers, is that if you imposed a 100% tax rate on every single "rich" person in America (from the super rich to the pretty darn comfortable), you might be able to fund Bernie's plans for a month or so. Even if you followed that up by confiscating the assets from these same "rich" people, you still wouldn't be able to pay for even a fraction of Bernie's plans. <br />
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Don't believe me? Check out this video made when the Occupy Protesters started demanding that the 1% pay for everything:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/661pi6K-8WQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/661pi6K-8WQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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If you don't have time to watch a 9 minute video, you can get the same information from a clear and funny post entitled "<a href="http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-family-on-10-billion-a-day.html" target="_blank">Feed Your Family on $10 Billion a Day</a>." Whether you watch the video or read the post, you will learn more about actual money than you will if you spent weeks following Bernie around listening to his <a href="http://godfatherpolitics.com/bernie-sanders-tweet-disqualifies-him-from-holding-any-political-office" target="_blank">economically ignorant statements</a> about <a href="http://www.bookwormroom.com/2015/08/17/the-collected-nitwit-and-unwisdom-of-bernie-sanders/" target="_blank">money and wealth</a>.<br />
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After watching the video or reading the post, you will know with absolute certainty that "the rich" cannot fund Bernie's grandiose plans. That means that other people are going to be tapped for money -- and you might be surprised at how far down the economic food chain that tapping goes. Let's go back to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/22/10814798/bernie-sanders-tax-rates" target="_blank">that <i>Vox</i> article</a> (remember, this is a Progressive publication), to see what even Left leaning out let has to say.<br />
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Matthews notes that Bernie likes to throw out big, conclusory answers when he's asked where the money will come from for his plans:<br />
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And for every plan, he's got <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his-proposals/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">an idea to pay for it</a>. College? Slap a financial transactions tax on Wall Street. Infrastructure? Tax corporations on profits they earn abroad. Single-payer? Raise income and payroll taxes, and then <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10783922/bernie-sanders-single-payer-plan" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">a bunch of others too</a>. </blockquote>
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While Sanders tends to portray these as separate ideas with separate financing, I thought it'd be worth adding them up and seeing what the tax code looks like with all of them. I looked specifically at his changes to personal income, payroll, and capital gains tax rates.
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What Matthews discovered when he "looked specifically" at Bernie's tax changes is that all Americans will need to pay more taxes -- often significantly more taxes from those who can ill-afford them -- to finance Bernie Sander's dream of a government that will provide everything for everybody. For clarity's sake, Matthews leads with a graphic showing that everybody will be paying marginal increases on their taxes, whether they can afford it or not:<br />
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There's no doubt that those making more than $250,000 a year will bear the greatest burden under the new tax scheme:</div>
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Most taxpayers would see a single-digit increase in their marginal tax rate. People with taxable income below $250,000 would see an 8.8 percentage point increase.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But the very rich would see eye-popping increases in marginal rates: from 36.8 percent to 62 percent for people with taxable income between $250,000 and $413,350. The big change here is applying the Social Security payroll tax, which adds another 12.4 points.</blockquote>
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For the very richest Americans, with more than $10 million in taxable income, Sanders's proposal would produce a 77 percent marginal rate. That's not unprecedented — under Dwight Eisenhower, the top income tax rate was 91 percent — but it's higher than the top rate at any point since 1964.</blockquote>
If you're wondering, there's a reason that America did away with those top rates back in 1964: High top rates don't bring in more money. The reality is that the rich are better than anyone at protecting their money from what they perceive as unreasonable income taxes. They take it offshore, shelter it, hide it and, most importantly, refuse to invest it, leaving their wealth unavailable to the rest of the country for such useful things as business start-ups, employment, exploring innovative ideas, etc. <br />
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The clearest representation of the damage too-high taxes do to an economy is the "Laffer Curve," which Art Laffer came up with more than 40 years ago. It's a simple premise: If you make it too expensive for people to make money, they'll stop making money. Here's <a href="http://www.laffercenter.com/the-laffer-center-2/the-laffer-curve/" target="_blank">a more comprehensive explanation</a>:<br />
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As drawn, the Laffer Curve shows that at a tax rate of 0%, the government would collect no tax revenue, just as it would collect no tax revenue at a tax rate of 100% because no one would be willing to work for an after-tax wage of zero. The reason for this is that tax rates have two effects on revenues: one is arithmetic, the other economic. The arithmetic effect is static, meaning that if rates are lowered, the tax revenues per dollar of tax base will be lowered by the amount of the decrease in the rate, and vice versa for increasing tax rates. In other words, this is what happens when a hypothetical 1% tax collects $1 million, so people assume that a 2% tax would collect $2 million… and a 5% tax would collect $5 million. Likewise, under the same scenario people would similarly assume that a .5% tax rate reduction would collect only $500,000.</blockquote>
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That's all very easy to say, but how does the Laffer Curve really work? Well, it turns out that, when put to the test of real world economics, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-laffer-curve-at-40-still-looks-good/2014/12/26/4cded164-853d-11e4-a702-fa31ff4ae98e_story.html" target="_blank">the Laffer Curve performs as predicted</a>:<br />
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Solid supporting evidence came during the Reagan years. President Ronald Reagan adopted the Laffer Curve message, telling Americans that when 70 to 80 cents of an extra dollar earned goes to the government, it’s understandable that people wonder: Why keep working? He recalled that as an actor in Hollywood, he would stop making movies in a given year once he hit Uncle Sam’s confiscatory tax rates.</blockquote>
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When Reagan left the White House in 1989, the highest tax rate had been slashed from 70 percent in 1981 to 28 percent. (Even liberal senators such as<a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/99-1986/s529" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2e6d9d; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum</a> voted for those low rates.) And contrary to the claims of voodoo, the government’s budget numbers show that tax receipts expanded from $517 billion in 1980 to $909 billion in 1988 — close to a 75 percent change (25 percent after inflation). Economist Larry Lindsey has documented from IRS data that tax collections from the rich surged much faster than that.</blockquote>
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Reagan’s tax policy, and the slaying of double-digit inflation rates, helped launch one of the longest and strongest periods of prosperity in American history. Between 1982 and 2000, the Dow Jones industrial average would surge to 11,000 from less than 800; the nation’s net worth would quadruple, to $44 trillion from $11 trillion; and the United States would produce nearly 40 million new jobs.</blockquote>
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Critics such as economist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/opinion/paul-krugman-voodoo-economics-the-next-generation.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2e6d9d; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Paul Krugman </a>object that rapid growth during the Reagan years was driven more by conventional Keynesian deficit spending than by reductions in tax rates. Except that 30 years later, President Obama would run deficits as a share of GDP twice as large as Reagan’s through traditional Keynesian spending programs, and the economy grew under Obama’s recovery only half as fast.</blockquote>
All of this boils down to a single point: If Bernie's tax plan goes into effect, over time there will be less money available to the government, not more. People will earn less, create less, innovate less, spend less, and invest less. It just won't be worth it. <br />
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For the first year or two of the new, higher tax rates, the rates will look successful, because they'll sweep in money <i>already created</i> through investing, earning, innovation, etc. After that, though, the tax revenues will slide steadily as the economy becomes more and more sluggish (sort of like it is now, almost 8 years into the current recession). <br />
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At this point, if you doubt the problems with high taxes, you might be inclined to point out that the stock market is booming. However, if you've really been paying attention, you might also have noticed that this boom is entirely unrelated to job creation and other signs of a thriving economy. <br />
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What's happened is that, in a high regulation, high tax, unstable environment, the rich, rather than investing (and risking) their money in job and wealth creation, are just storing it in the stock market, waiting for a sign that investment will be less risky. With Bernie's proposed capital gains tax (going from an already high, compared to Europe, rate of 23.8% to a new high of 64.2% at the very top), most investment would stop altogether.<br />
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Again, don't believe me (a conservative); <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/22/10814798/bernie-sanders-tax-rates" target="_blank">believe <i>Vox</i></a>, a Progressive publication:<br />
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The Sanders campaign estimates they'll earn $92 billion a year from taxing capital gains the same as wages. But there's reason to think they'll actually <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">lose</em> revenue.<br />
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One thing that happens when you increase the capital gains rate is that people stop selling assets — and thus realizing gains on capital that can be taxed — as frequently. That means there's a point beyond which raising the capital gains tax would reduce sales so much that revenue actually <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">falls</em>.<br />
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Note that this is a very different question from whether taxing capital gains at a high rate hurts economic growth. Many economists <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/21/mitt_romney_s_effective_tax_rate_is_very_low_most_economists_think_it_should_be_.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-size: 1em !important; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; transition: all 100ms ease;">think it does</a>, but that effect would reduce revenue by lowering the price at which assets are sold, not making them less likely to be sold in the first place. The latter is a different effect whose existence is much less controversial.</blockquote>
By the way, if you're tired of hypotheticals and what to see what it looks like in places where Bernie's financial plans have already been put into effect, look around the world: Most of Europe is an economic basket case thanks to the withdrawal of American Cold War funding, the 2008 recession, the dramatic drop in birth rates, and the influx of immigrants who drew on the system without funding it, all of which made it impossible for European countries to continue what was essential a Ponzi scheme, whereby they kept taxing the up-and-coming generation of workers to pay for the perks accorded older people. <br />
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An even better example is Venezuela, which had such a rapid decline after socialization that you can see the problems playing out before your eyes. Venezuela implemented Bernie's socialism a few years ago and went from being one of the most prosperous Latin American nations (thanks to oil revenue) to being flat-out broke, with shortages of everything from food to toilet paper to (ironically) oil.<br />
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Government manages money very badly. When you have your own money, you presumably worked hard for it and depend a great deal on it. You'll therefore be careful with it, and quite possibly want to do things that make you earn more of it. <br />
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Government is different. The government workers who are making decisions about and spending your money didn't earn that money. They won't be affected if they spend it unwisely. <br />
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Worse, when they run out of your money thanks to unwise management, they don't have to work for more. Instead, they just have to demand more, since they have the vast punitive power of the government at their back to take that money from you. (Robin Hood, incidentally, didn't steal from the rich; he stole from the tax collectors, and gave the money back to the taxpayers.)<br />
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And one final point about those managers: As a friend reminded me, F. A. Hayek's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320553/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0226320553&linkCode=as2&tag=bookwormroom-20&linkId=BHBQEJN5Q47D2D4G" rel="nofollow">The Road to Serfdom</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=bookwormroom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0226320553" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i> makes the point that it doesn't matter how good, honest, and caring the manager is. There is simply no way for one person or government department to accumulate enough knowledge about what's going on in the economy for that person or department to make good decisions.<br />
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Even with powerful computers and all the technology of the 21st Century, the knowledge needed is so diffuse through the country and the population that shortages WILL occur....and then the attempt to deal with them will make things worse, and so on and on, <i>ad infinitum</i>.<br />
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Here's the bottom line: Governments do not create wealth. The only way they get money is to take it from people who have earned it. They then hand that money out to favored constituencies, picking winners and losers as they go. Invariably, because government is slow, inefficient, and cares more about reward friends and punishing enemies than profits and losses, the money dribbles away, having enriched a few and impoverished many. <br />
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At the end of the day when the government takes it upon itself to be the money manager -- to suck up everyone's wealth through constantly increasing taxes, and then itself to run the businesses and make the calls -- everyone ends up poorer. Just ask the people in Venezuela.</div>
Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8642600353891654441.post-53101041280743225582016-02-02T19:31:00.006-08:002016-02-05T08:12:54.218-08:00Isn't Bernie a socialist? Why, yes he isThe website <a href="http://ilikeberniebut.com/" target="_blank">I Like Bernie, But...</a> takes it upon itself to answer concerned readers who ask "Isn't Bernie a socialist?" It assures these people that Bernie isn't a <i><b>socialist</b></i> socialist. Instead, he's a <i><b>democratic</b></i> socialist, which the website promises is something entirely different:
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The above conclusions are just wrong, and they're so very wrong that they need to be corrected and explained in a lot of paragraphs. Here goes:<br />
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To begin with, you need to understand what it <i>really means</i> to be a socialist. Only then can you understand that putting the word "democratic" in front of "socialist" doesn't change anything.<br />
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So what is a "socialist" system? Think of the realm of available politics as a line moving from left to right. On the far left side are totalitarian regimes, which means government has all the control and the people have none. At the far right side is anarchy, which means there is no government at all, although the resulting chaos usually means that people have no control either. (Ironically, anarchy usually ends when a strong man takes over and creates a totalitarian regime.) <br />
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All political systems fall somewhere along that line. The further to the Left they are, the more likely it is that power is centralized, and the further to the Right they are, the more likely it is that there is minimal centralized power, leaving more power with individuals.<br />
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Socialism, by definition, is a system that vests power in the government. The government owns all of the means of production, as well as all of the things produced. All people work under government control and all goods and services are handed out pursuant to government mandate. <br />
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Theoretically, in a socialist country, the people and the government are one and the same. The reality, though, is that you can't have millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of people in management. <br />
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What actually happens, therefore, is that all power resides in a tightly-controlled government group that makes all decisions about everything. It decides what the country as a whole will build, produce, sell, etc. As part of this, the government has to to control every aspect of citizens' lives, in order to make sure that its social and economic goals are met.<br />
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Over the last 100 years, socialism has taken on many guises, from hard to soft. In today's world, North Korea, which vests all power in one member of one ruling family, is socialism's most extreme face. We know that hundreds of thousands of people who have displeased the regime live in concentration camps where those who survive work as slaves. <br />
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A small percentage of those North Korean citizens who are connected to the ruling party live good lives, with food, shelter, and other creature comforts. The military is heavily supported, because socialist dictatorships are paranoid. But for everyone else -- well, famine is a common occurrence in North Korea because, as you'll see repeatedly in socialist countries, government types are horrible economic managers. <br />
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The government also fears its citizens (because it treats them so badly), so they are spied on constantly and punished firmly. When you concentrate all power in one entity -- that is, all police and military power -- you're going to have an entity that can do a great deal of harm, both at home and abroad.<br />
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The former Soviet Union wasn't much better back in the day than North Korea is now. In its heyday, the Soviet politburo controlled every aspect of people's lives. During the 1930s, when Stalin headed the nation, he decided that the Kulaks in Ukraine, who were small farmers with privately owned farms, had to be destroyed to make way for large collective farms run under government control. <br />
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When the Kulaks refused to cooperate with Stalin's grand plan, he used his vast government power to steal their grain and starved them to death. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor" target="_blank">Millions died</a>. <br />
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During the 1950s through the 1980s, China had the same repressive government as North Korea and the Soviet Union. During the 1960s, when Chairman Mao announced his Great Leap Forward, which was intended to take China from a medieval economy to a modern one in around five years, tens of millions of people died because of starvation, torture, slave labor, and execution. Low estimates say that 40-50 million died. High estimates say that as many as 75-100 million died.<br />
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The Nazis, whom everyone today accuses of being on the "right," were also socialists -- that is, people of the Left. Their full name was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party." Where Nazi Germany differed from a hardcore communist country like the Soviet Union, China, or North Korea, was that the government didn't take over all the businesses. Instead, it allowed businesses to stay in private hands -- as long as the government made all economic decisions. <br />
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The government in Nazi Germany was still running things and the people had no choice but to go along with the program. Those who didn't were imprisoned or killed. Add in the toxic ingredient of nationalism, and you have a government engine primed to think it's entitled to and can achieve world domination.<br />
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Modern Europe has been the softest side of socialism. It lets people have their own businesses, but keeps services such as health care, railways, and heavy industry (coal mining, steel production), under its control. It also buries its citizens under regulations. Every single aspect of life in a modern European socialist country is regulated. <br />
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For a long time, Europeans thought they'd found the perfect solution in this "loving" socialism. Their citizens could run their own businesses and make money, so they had some economic growth. In addition, in exchange for extremely high taxes, the citizens got "free" medical care (which they'd prepaid with their taxes), low-cost train and bus fares, and good elder care. It all looked so beautiful in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.<br />
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What the Europeans conveniently forgot was that, after WWII, it was American money that rebuilt their infrastructure. This meant that Europeans didn't have to repay capital investments. <br />
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Europeans also liked to ignore that, during the entirety of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, America paid Europe's defense costs. That free up money for all the free medical care and cheap train fare that Europeans liked to boast about as a sign of their superiority. None would admit that they didn't have "free" medical care -- they had American-funded medical care.<br />
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Maggie Thatcher, who was the conservative Prime Minister in England during the 1980s, famously said "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money." In Europe, American money started vanishing when the Cold War ended. <br />
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In addition to losing American money, beginning in the 1990s, Europe had a few other problems maintaining its "friendly" socialism: <br />
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(1) Its population began to age -- people in socialist countries tend not to have lots of children -- so more people were taking medical care and elder care than were working and paying into the system. <br />
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(2) The 2008 recession affected the entire world's money supply, decreasing drastically the wealth in Europe. <br />
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(3) Europe invited in millions of immigrants who were not on board with the social compact that controlled European socialism. <br />
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In the years after WWII, Europeans collectively understood that, if everyone worked when young, then everyone would be cared for when sick or old (at least as long as the Americans took care of the defense bill). The problem was/is that the new immigrants, primarily from Africa and the Middle East, didn't sign onto this compact. They came, got welfare, and stayed on welfare, letting the Europeans work for them.<br />
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European socialism is in big trouble now that money is tight, the population is old, and the immigrants are continuing to pour in.<br />
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By the way, the semi-socialist programs we have, such as Medicare or Social Security, are also running on empty. The younger generation is just barely paying enough in taxes to keep those programs funding old people. However, when the generation that's paying for Medicare and Social Security now ages up to those programs, the best estimate is that there won't be anything Left for them. As Thatcher knew, government always is a remarkably poor money manager.<br />
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The minimum wage isn't anything to boast about either. Even the <i>New York Times</i>, before it slipped its moorings, understood that the minimum wage is a way to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/14/opinion/the-right-minimum-wage-0.00.html" target="_blank">keep unskilled labor out of the job market</a> entirely. Rather than paying people a living wage, it means that more people are paid no wage at all, putting further strain on social welfare systems that are barely in funds now.<br />
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That's what socialism is. It puts power in the hands of poor managers who too often abuse that power. It's a lousy system and has failed everywhere it's been tried, whether we're talking about the Soviet Union, China (which is now trying a weird controlled "market" economy), Cuba, North Korea, Europe, and every failed socialist experiment in Africa.<br />
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And what about that "Democratic" part? Here's the truth -- that word is meaningless.<br />
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"Democratic" means that citizens get to vote for their leadership, but it doesn't say anything about the political system itself. China styles itself the "People's Democratic Republic of China," but no one looks at it and thinks "Wow, that's a free country because it's got the word 'Democratic' in its name." <br />
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North Korea, the most repressive country in the world, has as its official name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." Again, as in China, people in North Korea don't have a <i>right</i> to vote, meaning that it's a voluntary activity; instead, they are required to vote, <i>or else, </i>and they'd better vote for the people their government has already handpicked as the winners.<br />
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During the Soviet Union's heyday, that nation always liked to boast that it was more "democratic" than America because it had a higher voter turnout on election day. Somehow it never mentioned that a person who failed to vote could end up in prison or that, when voters showed up, they had about the same number of candidate choices as they had food choices as the grocery store . . . which is to say, none.<br />
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Here's one other thing you ought to know: Bernie's never been shy about being called a socialist. It's only now that he's succeeding in the Democrat primaries that his supporters are trying to whitewash that "socialist" label. <br />
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And what about the other side of that line . . . the Right side. On the right side, as long as you don't stray too far into anarchy, you have small government and individual liberty. People get to decide what they want to do with their lives. They get to try to invent, build, serve, sell, buy, work, play, and anything else they please as long as they don't harm others. They get to buy what they like when they want to. Because they are allowed to own their own homes and cars and businesses, they have a stake in the success of each of those endeavors, and they work hard to achieve that success. <br />
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A free marketplace isn't controlled by a government that calls all the shots. It's controlled by every person, with their organically combined skills, knowledge, desires, energy, and ambition coming together to create the most prosperous economic engine in the world. And if you think that's a bad thing, think again. Thanks to market-driven First World capitalist energy, people live longer, healthier lives than ever before. Even poor people in America are rich and successful compared to poor people anywhere else in the world. <br />
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Here's a good summation of America's virtues, for rich and poor alike, back from the 1960s, when the hippies thought they knew it all:<br />
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Oh! One other thing: Totalitarian societies have no social mobility. Whether the society is a monarchy, aristocracy, military junta, or a socialist "paradise," you're either in the ruling party/class or you're not. Those with power and wealth hold on to it tightly and scatter just enough food, money, and medical care to the masses to prevent a bloody uprising.</div>
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In a market economy, though, not only does a rising tide lift all boats, wealth constantly moves around. Yesterday's immigrant may be today's innovator. And that rich grandfather might have seen his son waste all the money and his grandchildren become quite poor. </div>
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If you figure out how to use the internet well, you may get rich. On the other hand, if you decide to spend your time smoking pot and playing computer games, you'll probably be poor (and burn through whatever money Mom and Dad left you in their wills). </div>
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People who make smart choices can rise up; those who don't . . . well, life can be hard. But I'd rather live in a world that offers the possibility of success as opposed to a world that keeps everyone firmly down in the mud.</div>
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I don't like Bernie because he is a <i>socialist</i> and that's a bad thing in all places, at all times.</div>
<br />Bookwormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692907969177893526noreply@blogger.com6