We Bank our Labor as Property

David Boaz recently wrote a commentary titled Bill de Blasio is America's Marxist Mayor and he quoted Mayor de Blasio as saying:

What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development….

Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.

Despite his Marxist desire to have the government control all property, Bill de Blasio has easily won selection by the Democrat Party to run again on their ticket for Mayor of New York City.

Property can be viewed as a way to store or bank the value of one's own labor. To claim that an individual has no right to the property that results from his labor is really just a way to deny ownership of one's own labor. If we do not own our own labor then we also do not own the time or the effort we devote to our labor. The very essence of living for the individual human being is the management of one's own activity including the most important activities of labor which provide us the means to maintain and secure our own life. Without the control of our own saved labor as property, we become subject to every vagary of life, including those of fickle government.

Deprived of our stored labor in the form of property, every fickle decision by committed socialists such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Bill de Blasio has the potential to be one of whether each individual will live or die. To give them this power is to forfeit all individual control over our lives, making each and every individual a slave to their whims.

Obama Administration Finally Reports October Unemployment

Not since the aftermath of Jimmy Carter's rampant inflation, which followed Nixon's price controls fiasco, have we seen such unemployment as that engineered by Obama and the Democrat Congress.  Yes, there was a major increase in unemployment under Bush and the Democrat Congress with considerable help from the Federal Reserve, but we would be recovering from that were it not for the remarkable ability of Obama and an energized socialist Democrat leadership in the House and Senate with their large majorities to create a horrible business climate.

Obama and henchmen would have us believe that our biggest problems are health care and man-made global warming.  And maybe that we have too few workers paying union dues and far too many workers in the private sector rather than the public sector.  Meanwhile, the private sector still employs most Americans, but it is employing fewer and fewer of them.  The official, but understated, unemployment rate at the end of October was an astounding 10.2%!  No wonder any hint of such a large increase was suppressed by the administration prior to the election on Tuesday.  This is the U.S.'s highest unemployment rate since April 1983, 26 years ago.  We have had job losses for 22 straight months.

Obama is conducting a string orchestra in a mad fiddling contest with the devil, the likes of which we have never heard or seen.  Nancy Pelosi is first fiddle and Harry Reid is second fiddle of the Congressional section, which is filled out with the fascist socialists of the Congress.  On the other side of the string orchestra are the Marxist and Maoist Commissars and Czars of his administration section.  They are all fiddling madly to celebrate and encourage the burning of the American private sector and that fable of a Constitution decreeing limited powers for government and that silly notion that individuals have sovereign rights.  They are laughing gleefully as they play the devil's tune.

Since December 2007, the U.S. has lost 7.3 million jobs, but we will all be delighted to know that Obama says he saved 640,000 jobs with the stimulus bill earlier this year.  Let's see, then $787 billion of stimulus created 640,000 jobs at $1.23 million per job.  It is good for people to have a work ethic and to want to work, but it sure is rich to charge taxpayers $1.23 million per job!  Or am I being unfair here?  After all, only about a quarter of the Stimulus Bill appropriations have been spent.  But, then why should we give the government any credit at all for taxpayer money spent just in time to buy as many votes as possible just before the 2010 elections?  Even in terms of the money spent, these would be very expensive jobs, at about $307,500 apiece.  The private sector would usually produce at least 6 or 7 new jobs with so much capital to invest and spend.  But Obama and the Marxists know so little about business and economics that they do not have enough sense not to shout about their "great job creation accomplishment."

So, we now have 15.7 million would-be workers unemployed.  Many of them have been unemployed for more than six months, a record 35.6% of them.  Before the recession, 63% of adults worked, but now only 58.5% work.  The Democrats have championed the little guy, those without a high school diploma, into 15.5% unemployment.  Unemployment for those with the high school diploma is a mere 11.2%.  15.7% of blacks are unemployed and 13.1% of Hispanics are also.  This is very effective support for these Democrat-favored minorities by the Democrats.  Somehow, being anti-business and anti-wealthy people, is not creating the jobs their supposed constituents need.  One should be arguing that being anti-business and anti-wealthy people is the equivalent of being anti-black and anti-Hispanic.  The private sector lost about 558,000 jobs, but the public sector lost no jobs.  The public sector and its employees is now being supported by many fewer people with private sector jobs and we should add the public sector to the enemies of blacks and Hispanics.

Those who have given up on finding jobs and those working part-time who wish to work or work more are now 17.5% of the available workforce.  The total hours worked fell another 0.2% in October and the average workweek is now a mere 33 hours. But, average hourly wages are up 2.4% in the last year, perhaps because job losses have been higher among the more poorly paid, who are usually the least productive workers and the first to be let go in hard times.  These workers are also the more likely to be intimidated or persuaded to join a labor union, which would further hurt a company's productivity.  Thus, it makes still more sense to let such workers go when unions are being favored by government.

There was some good news.  Productivity went up per employed worker at a 9.5% annual rate.  Unemployment decreased from 4.9% to 4.7% for those with college degrees.  Managers and professionals were being hired, so their unemployment rate fell from 5.2% to 4.7%.  The technology, education, and health care sectors were hiring.  Temporary workers were also hired.  But the situation was woeful still for construction, manufacturing, and service and retail.

Apparently, increasing taxes, deficits, government spending, regulations that serve no purpose, restricting international trade, taking over industries, dictating executive compensation, crippling oil and gas exploration and development, threatening the coal industry with extinction, and restricting fossil fuel energy use is not the way to produce jobs.  In fact, it is a very good way to kill jobs.  This is the Marxist, Maoist, fascist way.  The European socialist countries have had 10% unemployment rates very frequently.  Obama has imported these unemployment rates to the U.S.  The strange thing is, the Europeans have been turning away from some of their failed policies, even as Obama turns us toward them.  He is talking about increasing corporate tax rates and those on wealthier individuals, even as most European countries have been reducing those rates in recent years.  We and the Japanese now have the highest corporate tax rates in the advanced world.  It is hurting both of us badly.  But, lowering corporate tax rates just does not fit the Marxist rhetoric or the populist demagogue's style.

The Missouri Domestic Terrorist Report

The Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) issued a report in response to a request by the Department of Homeland Security in which they profiled as possible terrorists those individuals who were concerned about taxes, unemployment, illegal immigration, border security, gangs, abortion, gun restrictions, the high cost of living, the IRS, FEMA, and the Federal Reserve.  To this, MIAC added concerns about people who were attracted to gun shows, shortwave radios, action movies, movies with Rambo-like white action heroes, Tom Clancy novels, and Ron Paul, Bob Barr, or Chuck Baldwin.

Americans for Limited Government requested the report under the Missouri Sunshine Law and were told that the state of Missouri only had a draft version of the report, they did not know who had written it, and they had no documentation of the sources used for the report.  The report did directly cite the Southern Poverty Law Center and it lifted some information from the website of the Anti-Defamation League, which was not cited.  These two organizations also played a major role in the highly foolish Department of Homeland Security "rightwing extremism" report of several months ago as well.

Neither report is very reassuring with their inference that agents of the government view the exercise of free speech, use of the press, assembly, and petition of grievances guaranteed in the First Amendment with such suspicion, largely informed by the viewpoint of the far left.  As we can see on college campuses across the nation, where the left enjoys unchallenged power, there is no freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, or of petition in their docile domains.  We also see the very thin skin of the Obama administration already developing and their frequent put-downs of Fox News and conservative and libertarian radio commentators.  We hear Mark Lloyd, the Diversity Czar on the FCC, seeking taxes and fines to suppress our freedom of speech unless that speech furthers the aims of the left and who openly admires Hugo Chavez's suppression of freedom of speech, press, and assembly in Venezuela.  We hear Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, telling us she admires greatly and thinks constantly about Mao, who killed tens of millions of dissenters and millions who were not even dissenters, but who he suspected might become dissenters.

It has become clear that the socialist left has declared itself an enemy of our First Amendment rights in addition to many of our other individual rights.  Americans who believe in the Constitution and the sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must start taking this threat of the socialists and Marxists very seriously.

Hudgins - Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism

I am not pulling my punches in my evaluation of Obama and the Democrat Congress. I believe that they are taking the United States down an insanely destructive path. I would like to point out a very good article taking a similar stance by Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society. It is called "Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism."

I have heard and seen several references lately in which generally freedom-loving commentators are claiming that fascism is not socialism because socialism takes over the ownership of the means of production and other property. I think this is wrong. Socialism takes over control, sometimes ownership, of the means of production and of property. The Marxist forms of socialism, such as communism, take ownership, while fascism leaves nominal ownership in the hands of individuals or groups, but applies incentives, pressures, and force as desired to make those individuals or groups do the government's bidding. Both Marxism and fascism offer the people status as dependents by bribing them with health care and other state-provided or mandated benefits. It is the last coupled with the control of property and business that makes both fascism and Marxism socialism.

Mussolini and Hitler were of the socialist mindset. After being drummed out of the Italian Socialist Party for favoring Italy's participation in WWI, Mussolini started the Fascist Party with much of his viewpoint already set by his long allegience to the Socialist Party. Hitler gave his party the name National Socialist Party and even admired Joe Stalin, despite fighting the communists for power in Germany.

The United States has long been a mixed economy. The freedom of the individual to offer his services in employment, to hire others, to produce, to trade, to transport, and to control his property has long been interfered with by our governments. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson began controlling private property and business in heavy-handed ways long ago. The aspect of socialism in which the government heavily began bribing the people into dependency began with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was tinged with fascism and Woodrow Wilson was very substantially fascist. Woodrow even had the fasces applied to the dime in 1916 and was an admirer of Mussolini.

Many claimed failures in the economy have come about due to government intervention.
The recession under Hoover, which Roosevelt turned into the Great Depression is one such example. Politicians and governments of the modern era love socialism as a means to control and power. For most, it is irresistible. So, the Federal, state, and local governments of the United States have all heavily applied socialism, sometimes in the form of government ownership of property (public schools, roads, parks, national forests, mass transit) and sometimes by the control of property and businesses through mandates, subsidies, tax deductions, tax credits, safety and pollution regulations, zoning, licensing, tariffs, banking regulations, accounting requirements, and much more. These controls can be gauged by the very high rate of expansion of the Federal Register and other government publications of regulations and contracts.

The public ownership of property is very considerable (consider the western states with huge portions, often the majority of the land, owned by the federal government, see my entry of 8 November 2008). But, the principle means used by government in the United States to control the lives of the people has clearly become the fascist model, with a number of features adopted more to the American character, primarily as misleading deceptions. It is entirely reasonable to call this socialism American Fascism. The core of Obama's goal is to turn the United States into a subordinate cog in an international fascist socialist regime. Of course, he avoids using the honest terms fascism and socialism like the plague, which is exactly what they are.