The Death of Capitalism

During these past couple of weeks we've seen the United States government pouring countless billions of dollars into failing corporations in order to keep them alive, and all of that money is coming out of the taxpayers' pockets. And thanks to the government printing billions in extra money, what little money individuals have left is now going to be worth less than it was before all of this began. No one in Washington can truly claim innocence in this. The Democrats have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from these companies that are filled with fraud. The Republicans are going right along with all of this, including the President who at this point appears to have no fight left in him after 8 years of democrat and media attacks. He has endorsed this broad move toward socialism just like everyone else.

Imagine for a minute that the federal government is a farmer. And this farmer has a bunch of pigs. Now a few of these pigs are extremely old, flabby and pretty much immobile and have nothing useful to still contribute to the farm. But the farmer has been friends with these old pigs for quite sometime and so when they start dieing of natural causes the farmer starts taking food away from the young healthy pigs in order to keep the dieing ones alive. And pretty soon all that the farmer has left is old fat useless pigs that aren't good for anything but he's got no money and no room left for any new pigs to be born. The rest of the people in the town are angry and hungry and poor now because the farmer raised the prices on everything to support his friends the pigs. Stupid farmer.

This is where we find ourselves in America. Capitalism used to be about succeeding and failing on your own merit. Companies would fall apart and die and a new more nimble start up company would take their place. They might do things the exact same way but because they don't have decades of corporate bureaucracy and corruption built up inside the walls they are able to function more efficiently. Now the government isn't letting any of the old pigs die, no matter how corrupt and poorly run they are.

I am tired of having politicians tell me that it will hurt the economy too much if these companies fail. How is spending billions in taxpayer money helping the economy? If they really cared about helping the economy there are simple solutions. All those mortgages held by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac? They should have just canceled them all. What would have happened if all those homeowners suddenly just owned their house without a mortgage? How would millions of people having $500-1000 a month of extra cash have been bad for the economy? Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were corrupt corporate giants that deserved to die. Ask any of those homeowners if they feel the economy is better now that the government is holding the money that backs their mortgage.

If the other financial institutions that have been in trouble this past week had been allowed to die after running their natural course a new company would have taken their place. One that would likely be able to do the same job with much lower costs and therefore show higher profits which would have resulted in more tax income not tax money being spent to keep them going.

As someone who does not have tens of the thousands of dollars of debt (in spite of making a lot less money than many who do have that kind of debt), and as someone who did not buy a house I couldn't afford, and as someone who is not running a corrupt corporation, I fail to see how all of this government spending, inflation, and rise of socialism is good for the economy in any stretch of the imagination. Will someone in Washington please start to take Ron Paul seriously? He seems to be the only one who has any concept of how the economy works.