Pampered, Selfish Robin Hoods

Liberals love to pat themselves on the back for giving away other people’s money. Latter-day Robin Hoods, they love to tax the “rich” and give to the “poor,” but they’re as tight as the bark on a tree with their own money. Do they rationalize that they give away so much of our money that they don’t need to give away much of their own? “It’s more blessed to give than to receive,” goes the proverb, and liberals believe it’s most blessed to give what isn’t theirs.

Most of what federal government takes from me and about about half of all other Americans is used for social programs. The other half of Americans pay no federal income taxes and receive most of the benefits from those programs. All this was designed by those who called themselves “progressives” at intervals of Democrat rule during twentieth century. Whoever might disagree with them were, by implication, regressive. Progressives called themselves “liberals” later on, but now they again wish to be called “progressives” here in the twenty-first century because “liberal” has taken on a negative connotation. Whatever they’re called, their aim is the same: take as much as they can get away with from the most productive and give it all to the least productive. They use big, bloated government for this redistribution because they don’t want to use bows and arrows and live in the forest like Robin Hood. They want the support Robin Hood received, but also the creature comforts beyond even what the Sheriff of Nottingham’s lifestyle provided. They love performances at the Kennedy Center and lavish parties at the White House paid for by taxpayers.

Whenever progressive liberal Democrats are in charge, they ramp up promises beyond what government could possibly afford. FDR’s New Deal promised Social Security pensions for the elderly. That’s been increased since to include disability payments for people of all ages and may soon be extended to millions of illegal aliens as well if they get their way. Al Gore used to talk about a “lock box” for the money FICA takes from our paychecks, but that was a myth. All the money we send to the federal government for our old-age pensions is spent immediately by that bloated government. All Al Gore’s lock box would contain is IOUs. In 2016, there won’t be enough money to back up the millions of checks it sends out every month. Looking further ahead, deficits for Social Security run to $100 trillion over the several decades.

Liberals in LBJ’s Great Society gave us Medicare thirty years later. Projected deficits for that run into the tens of trillions. Also, Barack Obama gave us health care “reform” that will take $500 billion from Medicare that isn’t really there and spend trillions more that we don’t have either. What he’ll do is try to borrow more and add that red ink to the $14 trillion deficit he already run up. All this debt and the prospect of still more is what’s really depressing the economy today.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has been using FDR’s Keynesian defibrillator to apply trillion-dollar jolts to an economy that continues to flatline. While running trillion-and-a-half-dollar annual deficits that alarm our creditors so much they’re balking at lending us more, he wants to use the “progressive” federal income tax to soak even more out of the “rich.” He’s also using the Federal Reserve to buy US Treasury bonds nobody else wants, and pay for them by printing over $3 trillion. It’s not a question anymore about if it’s all going to come unravelled - it’s only a question of when.

Up to now, the half of Americans who pay no federal income tax have been inclined to vote for presidents, senators and congressmen who promise more and more benefits at the expense of the other half who pay for it all. Along with the votes of guilt-ridden, trust-funded liberals, they swept “progressives” into power in 2006 and 2008. Their policies, however, are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Cities and states like Detroit and California that progressive liberals have been in charge of longest are the closest to bankruptcy. Enough of the bottom half of Americans are watching their over-extended neighbors default on their mortgages and credit cards and realizing that our federal government is doing the same thing. Uncle Sam won’t be able to backstop it anymore. They’re realizing that if they keep voting for progressive liberals and their socialist policies, it will all come crashing down.

It’s going to be very interesting when votes are counted the evening of November 2nd.