Archives for October 2011

People sometimes don’t realize the points they’re really making — and this Occupy Wall Street protester is definitely one of those. She says she inherited some money — she doesn’t say how much — and she believed that she should have been taxed. So she says she gave away 80 percent of the money and kept 20 percent for herself. Did you notice what she did? She proved that it’s possible to do through voluntary action what she’s calling for government to do.

You see, her issue isn’t really that she believed she should have been taxed. After all, she proved that she could (and did, assuming she’s telling the truth) give away money without government agents holding a gun to her. No, she wants other people to be forced to make the same choice she made. The people who claim they want to be taxed more are liars. They can give away every penny of their money anytime they want. Their real desire is to control other people — to take away the choices that they themselves had. It’s vile. It’s dishonest. It’s immoral.

The video comes from Reason TV.

We’ve seen beyond a shadow of doubt that the Occupy Wall Street protesters don’t understand economics and don’t understand the source of our financial problems. Until now, though, I could say, “But at least they all understand bailing out the banks was a bad idea.” Unfortunately, even that was too charitable.

The first professional survey data about the protesters is out, and the information is pretty interesting. The thing that really jumped out at me, though, was the news that half of the protesters believe the big bank bailouts were necessary.

So let’s try to wrap our heads around this. They are angry that the banks got our money, so they’re protesting there. But a full half of the protesters believe it was necessary for the government to give billions and billions of dollars to the banks. How do their heads not explode from holding this contradiction inside?

Do these people not understand that businesses which take unwise chances and lose deserve to go out of business? Do they not understand that what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” is necessary for the market to work?

The survey from which this information comes was done by long-time Democratic Party pollster Douglas Schoen. Anyone who’s under the illusion that these are just frustrated mainstream types hurting from the bad economy needs to listen to what Schoen writes about them:

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Politicians don’t make mistakes. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. They’ll have serious trouble coming up with examples of anything they’ve done wrong.

In 2004, Democrats howled with laughter and amazement when George W. Bush couldn’t come up with any examples of mistakes he had made since the terrorist attacks in 2001. “Dumb ol’ Bush is making mistakes all over the place, but he won’t admit it,” was the prevailing attitude among Democrats then.

Well, the tables have turned and Republicans are able to howl with laughter at Barack Obama’s blindness about the same issue. After three years in office — and with the economy continuing to fall apart instead of performing as he told us it would based on his “stimulus” spending — Obama is still convinced that he’s made all the right economic choices.

In an interview with ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Obama concedes that the election next year is going to be close because of the economy, but he’s not willing to take any responsibility for having made things worse:

“I guarantee it’s going to be a close election because the economy is not where it wants to be and even though I believe all the choices we’ve made have been the right ones, we’re still going through difficult circumstances. That means people who may be sympathetic to my point of view still kind of feel like, yeah, but it still hasn’t gotten done yet.”

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