Obama’s Re-election: Capitalism vs. Big Government Socialism

Although I have never been a fan of Mitt Romney (largely due to his George H.W. Bushesque flip flopping) it is more than a little ironic that he will (hopefully) be the one to square off against Barack Obama in the general election because it will be a perfect showdown of economic freeedom versus central planning.

Obama and the Left like to talk about richer Americans paying their “fair share” but the facts are that the most wealthy 1% pay nearly 30% of the taxes already and the much quoted 15% tax rate is that way for a reason… so people will invest their money to grow the economy.

When John Kerry ran for president in 2004 tax records from the previous year showed he paid 13% (and he is a yacht tax dodger to boot).

It’s risky to take your money and invest it into a business… what if it fails and you lose it?  Companies like General Motors have failed as have other businesses known around the world like Hostess (makers of Twinkies), Lehman Brothers, Chrysler, Kodak, Nokia, and even Apple Computer was trading in the teens as revently as the mid-90s.

So offering an investor a 15% tax rate when it’s time for them to re-coup their money (if they make it to this point) seems like a pretty fair trade-off, doesn’t it?

Not according to members of the Left like Barack Obama who have never let things like honesty stand in their way.

Our friend Steve from America’s Watchtower writes of a Democratic proposal to regulate the profits generated by oil companies.  The so-called “Reasonable Profits Board” will somehow decide how much profit is enough?

As if something this stupid would do anything but cripple the energy market in this country (something the Left desperately wants).

Capitalism isn’t a very “touchy feely” way of life… a factory in one state may close ending 1,000 jobs while opening in another creating 500 jobs, a net loss.  Or that factory might re-open in another country where the wages are cheaper or it might never appear because technology made those workers obsolete.  But what is the alternative?  Have the company pay too much for labor and go out of business completely putting everybody out of work?

There is a lot of anger out there about technology putting people out of work… about how bad Capitalism is.  Nobody is suggesting people be forced to buy film cameras to keep Kodak in business or that electricity should be rationed so as to keep candle and lamp makers working full time.  That’s because we all understand, on a fundamental level, that things change… lifestyles, technology, and products evolve.

We’ve also seen how other systems work (or don’t as is the case)… namely the Communism of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, or North Korea.  The facts are that the poor in America live much better than most people in the world.  The average poor person has a car, cable television, an Internet connection, and is overweight.  If only the populations of countries such as China, the Middle East, and much of Africa and South America had such problems!

Even the oft cited “European Model” is going down in flames because such massive Big Government spending is simply unsupportable.  But this is exactly the type of system the Left, Barack Obama included, wants to install in America.  They choose Solyndra over Keystone (and it’s 20,000+ jobs).

Liberals will bemoan Mitt Romney and his time at Bain Capital and attack Capitalism without seeming to care that it is the relentless churning that stirs capital and creates jobs.