Just Say No to Class Warfare

What is it with these liberal, lefty, tax-the-rich, economic class warfare zealots who seek to penalize successful workers and hand out government subsidies to everybody?

Why can’t they adopt a growth agenda?

Look no further than David Wessel’s column in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Wessel, the great chronicler of liberal economics and unsubstantiated assertions, offered up no facts and no real analysis behind his class warfare rhetoric.

Close on the heels of Mr. Wessel is the multi-cagillionaire, Roger Altman, the former John Kerry advisor who delivers a similar class warfare screed (see his op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal). Altman and the rest should know better.

The reality is that the American economic pie has been growing uninterrupted for 25 years, ever since President Ronald Reagan put into play Milton Friedman, Art Laffer, and Robert Mundell’s ideas.

Just because a bump up in higher gas prices slowed down average wages for a little while means nothing. Now that gas at the pump has dropped a dollar, wages are rising and so is wealth.

Unemployment is at historic lows. Household wealth is at an all-time record. More people own stocks than ever before in our nation’s history. Tax-free savings accounts are proliferating everywhere. And the middle class -- which aspires to be richer -- owns a larger piece of the rock than ever before.

Living standards have been rising, and rising, and rising. Incidentally, one of the things boosting this -- apart from the technological advances (which makes all goods and services better), is free trade (which makes all these goods and services cheaper).

And the latest talk about a government-sponsored health care system is the biggest potential mistake since France was reincorporated after WWII. In fact, if you look at all their plans, the basic theme is let’s make the United States look just like France.

Well, some people need to be reminded that free market capitalism is about equality of opportunity, not equality of results.

Remember, the greatest “equality of results” experiment in human history was the Soviet Union and we already know how that worked out. Doesn’t anybody think of that anymore? Even communist China gave up on that loser.

Milton Friedman had it right about limited government. He was also dead right about low tax rates, putting a cap on spending, and deregulating across-the-board.

One of the major problems I see right now is that Republicans in Washington are motionless. They are blinded deer caught in the headlights. They are in total denial that they just got whooped. They are not countering these silly liberal, lefty economic plans.

At the end of the day, these lefties want to remake America into France. You know what I think about that model.