Miseconomies for Sale: It's Economics, Stupid!!

The nation is in the throes of the climatic two weeks of the 2000 election campaign
at this writing. In recent weeks, it has looked more and more likely that George W.
Bush would defeat Al Gore in the race. Signs indicate that the Democrats may be
getting desparate. But their contortions over economics betray that something much
deeper than that is wrong. To paraphrase a 'sage' from the recent past, "it's economics, stupid!"

The Democrats have been running an ad on television stations challenging the
campaign proposal of Bush to begin to privatize social security in a small way
by letting younger workers opt to put some money that might go into social
security to their own investment instruments, which would be sternly under
the scrutiny of the government, by the way. They claim that this will 'remove'
$ 1 trillion from federal revenues over the next period.

On that logic, Gore should be determined to end the IRAs begun some years ago
under the Carter Administration, but that is only part of the problem. The ad also
claims that Bush had pledged to shore up social security with the same $ 1 trillion.
The fuzzy figures of the Gore strategy have been something that Bush made some
mention of in the debates, but this is beyond fuzzy! It is simply that Gore and his
friends have other plans for the surplus. (Gore is not singularly responsible for this
misrepresentation -- it was drawn (creatively) on a Wall Street Journal piece). Need
it be mentioned that this is not at all what Bush said, anyway?

The problem is clearly amplified by Gore's words in the commercial charging
(again!) that Bush wants to give tax cuts to the rich at the expense of 'ordinary'
citizens. Actually, that would be a great idea, because they would invest it, and
therefore the added economic activity would flow to the 'lower' classes (the connotation of the Gore class war rhetoric). They think that this is THEIR money!
It ain't!! It belongs to the taxpayers. It comes out of their incomes. It is merely
converted to governmental use by their policies.

In fact, the real 'raid' on social security revenues is the one begun by LBJ when
the Great Society Congress first allowed the federal government to 'borrow' from
the social security fund to finance the huge deficits that the Democrats knew would
emerge from the Great Society programs. They basically have 'borrowed' the entirety
of the social security trust fund! So, the assertion that Bush's plans would undermine
the social security system is not unlike the Corrupt Bargain of Andrew Jackson
which passed huge tax increase and then blamed it on Quincy Adams and his
compatriots. Gore and his party have been doing this, so they are blaming it on
George W. Bush!

Nevermind that the younger taxpayers will reap much greater returns from their
own investment than from social security and therefore be much better off. After
all, it will be revenue that the Democrats cannot take to finance their grandiose
plans or deficits. It will also stimulate the economy as only investment can do,
and thereby create real wealth, not an expansion of government spending --
which to Democrats is how to grow the economy!?

Nevermind that this kind of investment would lead to increases in government
revenue collection on the balance due to the raised level of economic activity.
That might mean that the surplus would be even greater than it is projected to be.
On the other hand, if Gore's proposals were to be enacted, you can kiss the
surplus goodbye, and buy a new red pencil anyway.

Until the most recent fiscal year, the claims of the Clinton Administration that they
had produced a surplus were thoroughly bogus anyway. What 'surplus' there was
has been almost exclusively a surplus in the social security trust fund which they
have used to cover the federal operating budget deficits, just as they have been doing
since 1965! And whatever constraints on spending that have contributed to movement toward a surplus have had nothing to do with Clinton anyway. Were his
programs enacted, there would have been more spending and no surplus at all.
Such movement is due to the Republican Congress. And to any extent that there
is any 'real' surplus, it is taxpayers money, not the government's, except to liberals,
and should be refunded.

It isn't just Gore. Democrats across the country are saying the same things. Michigan US Senate Democrat candidate 'Congresswoman' Stabenow is running ads
saying that Republican US Senator Spencer Abraham who is seeking re-election
has voted to raid the social security trust fund to pay for tax cuts for the rich!
Class war and fear mongering, trying to victimize the very senior citizens and
lower income Americans they claim to champion.

It is all part and parcel of the Democrat 4F strategy. That has nothing to do with
the selective service or the older, less mentionable interpretation of that phrase
(except in terms of its impact on the American taxpayer). Their primer on how to
win elections seems to have become Fiction and Fear, 'Friends' and Fraud.

The 'fiction' is such allegations offered as 'economics.' But it also reaches to such
nonsense as global warming and much of the false crisis mentality of most liberal policy initiatives. The 'fear' only begins with the direction of such allegations toward
senior citizens and lower income Americans. This is the same Al Gore who said
that Republicans in Congress wanted to starve old people, let sick people die in
the streets, and starve children by depriving them of school lunches! He also has
said that Republicans would kill people with their environmental policies. It is 'friends'
on the shady campaign funding (including huge injections of the soft money Gore
and his comrades say they want to get rid of! -- except of course the money stolen
from union members to finance liberal campaigns and causes which most of the
rank and file don't want). It is also 'friends' on the media buds who propagate the
party line, even when it is patently ridiculous and fraudulent. At present, they
are doing their utmost to keep this campaign 'close' in the eyes of viewers. In
recent elections, the 'close' contests have generally gone to the Democrat,
and that has largely been due to the fourth 'f', fraud. That reaches from the
streets of Chicago to the 'counting' of votes in Miami (the Attorney General's
old fiefdom), the Motor Voter registration in massive numbers of non-citizens
to vote and the mail-in election in Oregon, which should undoubtedly be tied
up in the courts for years. Such tactics loomed large in the elections of Kennedy
in 1960 and Carter in 1976.

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