Sunday, January 30, 2011

OBAMA CANNOT INVENT AN EDISON

I was thinking this morning about government money and wondering why the American people are suddenly so enraptured with using taxes for inventions. Yes, this is another article telling you that, as Reagan said so eloquently, "Government is the problem."

Obama gets out there for the SOTUS and says we need inventions, technological innovations, all funded by....you guessed it, your money. Which made me ask the question: "Who funded Edison?" That may sound simplistic, but the truth is that most (I'm guessing more than 99% of all) innovations and inventions have come from entrepreneurs who put their own livelihoods on the line in order to create great things. The answer on Edison came from Here  And Here Mr. Thomas Alva Edison funded his own research and development. His early years were not wealthy. He made his way through life with his wits and his moral courage and eventually found success for creating devices that benefited our entire society. The Federal government had nothing to do with it. Neither did State or local governments. The governments stayed out of his way and allowed Edison to pursue his dreams. If those dreams had failed, it was Edison who would have lost his investments, not the taxpayers. Since those dreams succeeded, through the freedoms he was afforded, our lives have been enriched in immeasurable ways.

The rewards for freedom are too many to count here, but one of them is surely the open ended ability to go after a dream in moral ways and succeed or fail on your own. The punishments for tyranny are also too many to count here, but one of them is surely the trampling of dreams and the failure to inspire people to create and invent.

Evidently Mr. Obama does not grasp the origins of either freedom or creativity / innovations. Have you ever heard the concept of, "Nothing good can come of ill gotten gains?" Proverbs   Mr. Obama and the recent crop of politicians prevalent in all levels of our government at this moment seem to have no knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, Biblical lessons, or even a smattering of English proverbs. ("ill gotten gains shall not prosper")

In case you are wondering where these government elitists are getting their twisted and infernally ignorant information, there is a Harvard professor of economics named Edward L. Glaeser who wrote recently in an op-ed in the New York Times, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/the-moral-heart-of-economics/

"Economists’ fondness for freedom rarely implies any particular policy program. A fondness for freedom is perfectly compatible with favoring redistribution, which can be seen as increasing one person’s choices at the expense of the choices of another, or with Keynesianism and its emphasis on anticyclical public spending.
Many regulations can even be seen as force for freedom, like financial rules that help give all investors the freedom to invest in stocks by trying to level the playing field."
 Fortunately, a rebuttal to this is printed below:

"In fact, a presumption in favor of freedom rules out virtually everything that modern governments do, certainly nearly everything they do in interfering in economic affairs. Redistribution of income, for example, requires that the government rob Peter in order to benefit Paul (and its own functionaries, who serve as middlemen in this transfer). This action is not freedom; it is a crime against Peter, a raw violation of his right to his own legitimate property. Keynesian countercyclical spending requires the government to spend borrowed money whose acquisition is premised on future taxation (that is, robbery) of taxpayers in order to service the debt and repay the principal. Again, innocent persons have their rights violated. How can anyone fail to see that robbery is incompatible with freedom? Finally, the financial rules that Glaeser finds compatible with freedom entail threats of violence against financial transactors who do not follow arbitrary government rules—often extremely foolish and even destructive rules—in making their transactions, notwithstanding the fact that the parties to the transaction may be perfectly willing to proceed without such regulatory compliance. Such regulation is the very opposite of freedom; it is instead the sheer imposition of outside force, intruding on willing transactors, and thereby discouraging them to some extent, if not entirely, with consequent loss of the wealth that such transactions would have created, in addition to the loss of liberty."

Mr. Obama and all of the other wannabees in our government can wish all they want for great new technological innovations, but they cannot force creativity through government corruption, government regulations, and stolen money.  It doesn't work that way.  Creativity comes from the heart and not from stealing someone else's money to make it happen.  Creativity is a gift from God, not from the government.  And the more the government tries to meddle in the affairs of God, the more punishments we will have to endure.

( I wasn't intending a Sunday sermon when I started this post, but I guess it looks like it ended up that way.  Hat tips to God the Father (no accessible link other than prayer) and thanks for reading!

4 comments:

  1. Beautiful. Very well done, Cheryl Pass. How could I possibly add anything to you words.

    Cheers and Thanks

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  2. Thanks for visiting, and reading, and all of your encouragement, Jim! Keep up your great work, too! We'll not give up the ship!

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  3. Excellent piece. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see you note the distinction between cheerleading rhetoric to actually producing something. Had Obama had a lick of work experience or stood at the controls of a small business...perhaps he could understand the major disconnect here...

    Brian

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  4. Thanks, Brian! Asking for Obama to "get it" is like asking for ice water in hell....sorry to say.
    My best to you...
    C

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