The Democratic Agenda

With the hope for a divided government aside, the reaction of many Democrats to this takeover is in error. I see them proclaiming that "the nightmare is over". What's irritating me here is that the nightmare is expressly not over. Common sense tells us that we are still in Iraq, we still have unilateral executive power, we still have a 9 trillion dollar debt, etc. In essence, all of policies and/or laws that you or I oppose are still in existance. Nothing has changed at all in this respect - all that has changed is that the Democrats control the legislative branch; this does not mean all of the bad stuff magically goes away, nor does it mean that it necessarily will. It does not mean that congressional corruption magically dissapears, nor does it necessarily mean that we will be making meaningful changes to the status quo.

"The idiots" have not all spontaneously combusted into nothingness, and, particularly in the senate, all it takes is a relatively small number of "idiots" on the Democratic side to ruin it. The nightmare has not ended, what has happened is that the Democrats have an oppurtunity to end it or reduce it. Yes, the Democrats have the OPPURTUNITY to change direction. But the question becomes (1) will they actually use their capital to be an opposition force and (2) will their changes all be good? Will the Democrats be total pragmatists, thereby not changing much of anything at all? On the other hand, will the democrats indeed push for changes? And further, if they do so, what will those changes actually be and will they actually be good? Let's take a good look at what changes, particularly economic ones, that the Democrats support.

It must be noted that, aside from abolishing bad Republican policies, the Democrat's agenda is terrible. Not only is it terrible, it's socialist. I am convinced that if we had a one-party state run by Democrats, given enough time America would be transformed into a total socialist state. They strongly believe in increasing the economic interventions that we already have in existance, not to mention adding much more on top of it. They believe in nationalizing/socializing many industries and services. For economics in particular, Democrats strongly believe in the concept of redistribution, and thus they also strongly support taxation, inevitably causing taxes to rise to pay for their economic policies. This is the expansionist part of the Democrat's agenda that should be fought toothe and nail. As the Republicans are under the illusion that they can use government to make people moral, "spread democracy around the world" and create total order, the Democrats are under the illusion that they can use government to heal the sick, make everyone equal and create a post-scarcity utopia for all. The Democrat's big government is robinhood on crack.

And the buzz word for them is "the middle class". But let us think about this for a moment. Want to help the middle class? Want to "increase wages"? Reduce or abolish people's income taxes then. This is the most common sense option, among many others. Making 6 bucks an hour but having trouble paying the bills? Well, if 3 out of the 6 dollars you were making wasn't stolen from you, you would be twice as prosperous. You are truly only making around 3 dollars an hour, and thus government has effectively cut your wages in half. Thus, you would be no worse off if you were employed illegally, I.E. under the table, at 3 dollars an hour, and you would be better off employed under the table at 6 dollars an hour then you would be if you had to pay half of it in taxes. Further, if those dollars werent depriciated by money supply increases, you'd be even more prosperous as the value of your money and savings is stabalized. If we would actually go after the causes rather then the symptoms, there would be no valid demand or need for most if not all of these economic interventions.

People don't seem to understand that the bulk of the problems are the effects of previous interventions, and the net effect of reacting to it with more interventions is that you are only perpetuating the very problem in the attempt to give it a "quick fix". You cannot solve the problems created by previous interventions by repeating the same thing again or adding new interventions. You have to remove the initial flawed intervention. You cannot negate the negative consequences of measures from the past by adding new positive measures on top of them, you have to get rid of the initial cause of the negative consequences. The very means of our political system requires these kinds of negative consequences, and so the more state power is increased the more such consequences become commonplace.

Government interventions like this inevitably divert resources and choice away from how the people would other voluntarily use them. In other words, any "net gain" to an individual or group from redistribution is inherently at the expense of overall social utility, first, for everyone else, and in the long-term for themselves. The cumulative result is a decrease in social utility across the board. The attempt to solve the problem becomes part of the problem due to the decrease in social utility required. The more redistributions increase, the more resources and free choice is diverted away from the public at large and towards political and special interests. It does not "benefit the community", it in fact has the opposite effect. It inevitably harms the community in the long-term in order to sustain a short-term gain for a special interest group, wether that be multi-national corporations or steel workers. These questions of which special interest it is blurs the issue entirely; it is irrelevant what the special interests are, the point is that society's wealth and interest is being diverted to political ends.

Therefore, I warn all those who are still skeptical about their government that the Democrat's economic policies will only further divert people's income and resources away from them and towards special interests, and this will inevitably increase violations of liberty. If the Democrats happen to be correct about some issues, such as the War in Iraq, do not construe this as a reason to support their entire agenda. Never support an entire party's agenda. Keep an eye out for the Democrat's socialist economic policies. Despite the potential for overthrowing Republicans policies being advantageous, the attempt to create new positivist policies should be rejected.