Massachusetts seems to be quite adept at producing glittering jewels of colossal ignorance.
They also create some pretty good felon senators and representatives.
Their institutions of “higher” education have obviously deleted any standards (save, perhaps, for MIT’s science departments). Harvard has become an open joke.
So, what exactly is the reason that we do not use that forsaken state for a bombing range?
“Trucking firms contribute $12.1 billion of the total dollars going into the federal Highway Trust Fund, or about 30.6 percent of the total $39.5 billion.”
In a conversation with a relative, I was told about a certain client who is a long-haul trucker. He paid $3,500 for fuel in April of this year for that month alone.
Great article, thanks for posting it.
It is true that no one has ever gotten rich without help from others.
It is a more operative truth, in our system, that no one in the private sector has ever gotten rich without enriching others.
Only in government can one become rich without enriching others.
I agree. I believe Warren said something like “all of us have skin in the game”.
Not true!! Almost 50% of Americans pay no federal income tax - as the article pointed out.
So her rant falls as a house of cards based upon this fact alone - although there are other points to be made to refute this absurd Marxist position as well.
The privatization of water in Bolivia—
from a San Francisco corporation, Bechtel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw5Fon_EjGw
As far as "not paying their fair share," here are simple facts:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.”
It’s a strawman argument. Capitalists don’t believe that there is anyone who got rich on their own. The entire capitalist system is based on the notion of competition, which in itself acknowledges the existence of more than one person and the interaction between them.
She’s trying to come up with a fairness argument that says something like, “You did not make this wealth without the assistance of others, and therefore I can take it away from you.”
It doesn’t follow. If I use public roads to take my product to market, that does not entitle as a matter of fairness the government to simply seize my product, as she argues. Of course, if they announced that rule before hand, it might be different, but then I would not use their roads.
Our government is run by the people, and the people don’t want that rule. There is no such rule. If Elizabeth Warren comes in as an afterthought and says “You use our roads, we get to take your product,” there is no fairness in that. Also no efficiency. In fact, if she does that, then she is violating the social contract because part of the concept of public roads is that the public gets to use them.
That sounds fair tome. They and their media elected him. As long as they support him they should pay.
I think the Democrats should take a pledge to never take contributions from anyone with over 200,000 dollars worth of income.
None of them are federal. Even highways are state projects with perhaps some federal funding that comes (or should come) from the gas and other road taxes.
So I ask Ms. Warren - "Liz, name one such service or product that requires the Federal Government."
There is only one: National Defense. And I bet Liz Warren would love to see enormous cuts in that expenditure...
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
- Robert Heinlein
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
The accumulation of great wealth is dependent on individualism and individual personal traits. The relative amount of income one earns typically reflects the relative rate of profit one earns on one's capital. Basically those individuals have the greatest accumulated wealth who earn the highest rates of profit and save and invest the greatest percentage of their profits.
“The average Harvard professor now has a salary of about $185,000 per year. Professors in the right disciplines, such as business, can reportedly double their salaries through outside consulting and other income sources. In 1980, the salary of a Harvard professor was about 5.5 times the average US per capita income; today, $185,000 is about 7 times the average national per capita income, and can often be leveraged into much higher actual annual compensation. “
http://theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-tax-free-hedge-fund
2008 figures
I wonder if Warren gets to keep her Harvard salary in addition to her federal salary.
“GOP presses Harvard to end pay for Warren
Democrat in Senate run”
September 21, 2011|By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff
“’Of equal concern is that Harvard runs the risk of jeopardizing its tax-exempt status. As a nonprofit charitable institution, Harvard is prohibited from taking a position on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate. Your payment of a salary to Professor Warren causes reasonable-minded people to conclude that Harvard is supportive of her candidacy,’ Little wrote.”
