The Wager?
With the stimulus plan behind him, Obama is moving forward. All the claims of the pundits that Obama really was not a radical but just another centrist Democrat, have certainly been shown to be wrong. Between all the things hidden in stimulus plan such as demise of welfare reform, and the transfer medical decisions from your doctor to a government agency, (Quiz: Did you know these two items were in there?) and now the further changes proposed in his new budget, it is clear that Obama is even more radical than even many of his critics feared.
When the ambition of Obama and the Democrats to radically reshape the country is combined with a supportive media, and a public that really has no idea of the ramifications of what is happening, it is pretty clear that they will get what they want.
The results of these changes are also pretty clear. What Obama and the Democrats are doing at the national level is basically what has already been done in some of the states that Democrats dominate. There is a very good reason people have been fleeing blue states for the red. Liberals claim this is because of the weather in the northeast, but if it were just the weather, then how can they explain the people who are fleeing states like California? California is not normally noted for its bad weather, but is a prime example of the fiscal chaos that the liberal expansion of government brings.
Democrats defend their program by pointing to European countries. There is a problem here as well. People in Europe have a lower standard of living, and up to now have been falling further and further behind the United States. One of the reasons Europe is not even worse off is because they have been able to sell goods and services to the United States, which is often referred to as the engine that drives the world’s economy. Yet now Obama and the Democrats want to transform the country from being the engine into being just another one of the cars.
Ultimately the massive spending will have to be paid for. Frankly if it were not so serious, it would be funny that the democrats who complain so much about deficits under Bush, now see the solution in deficits hitherto unimaginably large. There will only be two ways to pay for this; either massively increased taxes, or allow inflation to inflate the debt away. Either way will be devastating to the economy and the standard of living. Liberals claim they will do this by taxing “the rich.” But the rich simply do not have that much money.
The real question however is not whether or not these programs will work. They won’t, and based on the stock market, it is pretty clear what investors think is coming as each new announcement by the administration brings even further drops in the market. Last time I pointed out how when the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, the market began the solid growth that became the norm in late 1990s. Since the Democrats won back control of Congress in 2006, the market has now lost 50% of its value. Eventually as Obama’s programs go into effect and the standard of living begins to drop, it will become increasingly clear to the general public as well.
So the real question is not whether these programs will work, rather the real question is will we be able to reverse them? For example, once government is in total control of health care and the inevitable rationing begins, as it must, it will not simply be a matter of realizing the mistake and transferring medicine back to the private sector. Private sector medicine will have been destroyed. There will be nothing to transfer it back to. Sure in theory government could recreate a private sector, but where has government ever been able to do that, not to mention willing?
Obama and the Democrats are placing a huge bet on their ideology and against the history and experience that shows that it has always failed. Unfortunately they are wagering with the prosperity of the country. Hopefully, people will realize what they are doing before it is too late.
