It's a Wonderful Life: Or Why We Need More Billionaires

Since I was a young boy I always admired Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life. As a moral and spiritual story it is without parallel.

It only dawned on me today of a hidden lesson in capitalism contained within a specific segment of that film:

I was thinking today about the central argument of wealth-redistribution: what does any wealthy person in the world need all that money for. It was an argument that I myself had considered as valid for the longest time. After all, it's not like they could ever use all that money in their lifetime.

Today the central conceit of that argument finally hit me. Rich people don't actually have all that money.

If one takes the reactionary point of view that rich people are hoarding vast wealth for themselves and not spreading it around, sure you could believe that one never needs that money. But I can't really imagine Bill Gates owning a vault that on a weekly basis he runs into, diving into the money singing, "Look at me! I'm so rich! I can swim in my money! Yippee!"

Of course not.

In reality, they don't actually have that much money in their possession. That money is in investments here, there and everywhere. As such, rich people actually are using all of that money. And not in a self-centered way. It is being used via investment groups or banks to fund other businesses which in turn grows the economy resulting in further wealth for others. And this reclaimed wealth allows more people to invest which results in further growth which results in further prosperity.

As amazing as it is to say, Billionaires are themselves a form of wealth redistribution!

It all relates to that one scene in It's a Wonderful Life perfectly, to which I will paraphrase:

"The far-left is thinking about this all wrong. The money isn't in the rich people's pockets. It's not hidden away in some vault somewhere for them and them alone. It's in your homes. It's in your employers' businesses. It's the means by which you yourself are prosperous."

Every time a rich person buys property and builds a new house -- no, an angel doesn't get it's wings -- they are in effect redistributing their wealth to the people who supply the wood, to the companies that build the nails, to the chemical plants that develop the paint. Every time they furnish that house they redistribute their wealth to the stores they purchased them through, to the manufacturers who built their furnishing, to the raw material suppliers.

And in effect to every single person those channels employ.

By having all of this extra money, Billionaires take very little out of the economy while providing the means to actually build and grow the economy. It's the very reason why government stimulus spending is ridiculously inefficient when compared to broad-based tax cuts. Rich people actually have very little of their money available at any given time. Most of it is being used to build the economy. To grow businesses.

Dare I say... to employ people!

Until the far-left finally realizes that being rich doesn't mean hoarding but in fact means providing the means for economic growth, they will have little positive effect on the economy. We need more billionaires if only so that they can use their money to build the world's economy.

God knows the government ain't any good at it.

It's official: Obama is insane

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

So, you're the President of the United States. And there's a recession. You've just spent three-quarters of a Trillion dollars on stimulus spending and trumpeted the fact that you've saved 2 million jobs (translation: each job cost $379,000). The unemployment rate has risen from about 5-6% under the last administration to 9.6% under your administration even after this stimulus package.

The public disapproves of how you've spent so much, all signs indicate that the stimulus has been ineffective and you are facing midterm elections in less than 2 months. What do you do?

Well, if you were any sane man you would lick your wounds, admit that your approach has not produced the results you said it would and that you are going to retool your course and find a different approach. That's what any sane man would do.

Obama? Nah... he'd rather just toss out another $50 Billion.

Mind you, what he wants to put the money towards -- infrastructure -- is good. It's just that if he was going to do that he should have done it in the first place rather than wasting it on programs like employing non-Americans outside the US, build a firehall in an area that can't afford to hire firemen or weatherize homes to save $500 at the cost of $78,000 each.

It is as if Obama and the Democrats have a death wish. They have already damaged the ship with repeated iceberg strikes and still think that the path they are on is safe. And just like any gambling addict, they are sure that they are going to hit the jackpot soon. It's definitely going to be the next hand.

Okay, maybe the next hand.

No, no... the next hand for sure!

You can't spend your way out of an economic slump. It doesn't work on the individual front and it certainly doesn't work on the government front. Taking money out of the economy weakens the economy.

It doesn't matter if you as a government are going to spend that money because you're just adding more layers of bureaucracy between the money and its use. The public will either spend it right away or invest it with financial institutions who will reinvest it with others who will use the money again. Either way, the money will stimulate two or three economic activities before the government can even approve the spending for any single economic activity it would like to undertake.

But if your stimulus spending isn't achieving the results you thought it would, endlessly tossing good money after bad is nothing if not insane.

Free Speech VS Permissible Speech

It is somewhat disturbing to see the cavalier attitude that the political Left has with the idea of freedom of speech and expression. Freedom of Speech is defined as one of our human rights which Leftists will scream to high heaven they are the defenders of and the Right want to throw away.

However, the Left seems to be the ones who are eager to curtail freedom of speech further and further. First they push for hate crime legislation based upon what people say. And we can see the result being totalitarian enforcement by seemingly all-powerful organizations such as Canada's Human Rights Tribunal. They even have no issue in demeaning freedom of speech as an American Value.

(I'm sorry... is that supposed to be an insult?)

Then we see the Left wanting to restrict what one can say politically. The current brouhaha over Sun TV -- or as propagandists and their enablers call it "Fox News North" -- has revealed the political left for the opportunistic hypocrites that they are. The so-called defenders of human rights have revealed their true intention to transform the concept of freedom of speech into a freedom of leftists-speech.

But speech is either free or permissible. One can either be free to speak or permitted to speak. Just like life and death, married or not married, animal or mineral, there is no in-between for free speech and permissible speech. If one is under political pressure not to speak, that is an infringement on one's ability to speak freely. And at the very moment that speech is regulated, the absence of free speech is created.

It's as definable as something and nothing.

Some people will of course come back and say, "Well, what about Holocaust deniers? Do you think they should have the freedom to deny the Holocaust?"

Uh... yeah! They should! How else are we supposed to ensure that our children know that the Holocaust is real and that there are morons out there who refuse to acknowledge something with insurmountable evidence? In fact, letting Holocaust deniers speak gives us the best opportunity to deny them.

Sweeping a mess under the carpet doesn't clean up the mess. It just puts it somewhere else where it can build in the dark until it's a much bigger problem.

I'm an artist which of course means I'm a little bit sensitive to the notion of censorship. In my view, there can be no greater error in society than to deny expression. Whether we agree or disagree, we cannot give up this right. In conjunction to the right to life, it is the most important right in that afford all other rights.

If we cannot speak, we cannot fight for our rights. And if our speech becomes subjected to any other's opinion, we have lost everything.

The Left should celebrate an entity such as Sun TV. Unfortunately, they have failed the first test of freedom of speech, that being respecting the right to opinions they would disagree with. It is impossible for any person to be a champion of free speech at the same time demanding the prevention of opposing views.

The efforts of the Left to prevent Sun TV is nothing short of utter hypocrisy. And it is truly disgusting.

To become President Sarah Palin

First off, I am not endorsing Sarah Palin here. That is not what this post is about. This is about strategy.

Sarah Palin is a lightning rod for the American left. Every time her name comes up, venom. Every time she appears, venom. Every time it is suggested she could run for president, there is a storm of fire and brimstone of biblical proportions from the left-wing media.

And it is for this very reason that Sarah Palin should not run for President in 2012.

Which begs the question, what am I talking about in terms of Sarah Palin actually being President?

It's simple: the long game.

Stephen Harper has shown how sometimes it is not the short game that guarantees victory but rather a long, strategic chess game that runs your opponents into the ground via their own efforts. Harper has been a master in giving the Liberals enough rope to hang themselves. As such, Sarah Palin may in fact be the perfect game changer from the same fold.

There is little doubt anywhere that November is going to be bad for the Democrats. They are polling worse than has ever been seen for midterms. The pulse of the American public is that Barack Obama has not only sold them a bill of goods but has done so by enacting policies that are so far-left as to be contrary to everything that the USA is built upon.

As such, Sarah Palin -- the only name that appears relevant in US Presidential politics -- has become the target. The Democrats are after her. The media is after her. They are using up all their powder to destroy her. And yet she has changed the outcomes of every US electoral race since 2008. She is a voice that people listen to. And the left-wingers know it.

My opinion is that her best strategy is to let the left use up their powder on her. Let them focus on her. Let them drive all their efforts towards her... and then not run in 2012. This will give her all the attention of the American public as the media will have driven the public attention to her in droves and she will have humbled herself by not running. And humility is a virtue that Americans respect.

This will give her the ability to shape the entire 2012 Presidential race and influence voters to vote for whomever she feels would be the best candidate. The media will have little credibility in launching an attack against somebody who isn't even running and it will dilute the message of their Obama-favored agenda. And if Obama is replaced by her choice for President, the US will respect her more than they are willing to listen to the media.

In 2020 when her choice for the US President finishes his/her term, Sarah Palin will be in the absolute surefire winning position of being able to run with little ability of the media to tarnish her even a little bit. Their powder for attacking her will be spent in 2012 and she will have used the focus on her to completely change the US perception of her.

And her winning the Presidency will be a walk in the park.

Of course, this is all conjecture. I'm not a political strategist. But from what I have seen in how Stephen Harper has gained more and more of the approval of the Canadian public in the face of widespread media and political attacks, all the while being Prime Minister... Sarah Palin using the media microscope to dilute their effectiveness all the while not vying for the top prize will destroy their agenda from the inside out.

This will give her the time to redefine the US public opinion of her the way Harper has amongst Canadians. That's the only thing standing between her and being POTUS.

The perfect business partner!

My father forwarded me this article that discusses why there are no jobs in the US. And I have to say it is the most accurate description of what is going on that I have ever heard.

It always blows my mind how the far left think that the government is the solution to everything. It's the very reason why the Obama administration (and the Harper government to a lesser degree) believe that government stimulus can turn the recession around. At the same time Obama wants the Bush tax cuts to run out.

The snail's-pace bureaucratic mess that is big government is the least efficient means of stimulating the economy. After taking money out of the economy, they hold onto it, they take their time formulating a plan, they take forever fine-tuning (that being a delusion itself) the plan, they vote on the plan, they legislate the plan, they put the plan out to the different agencies who have to come up with their own plans on how to properly work the plan... with each level taking money out of the budget of the plan... all before any action is even taken.

While if you just cut taxes the effects are instantaneous. Either the consumer will spend more money that is automatically injected into the economy, or they will invest it in banks who will then in turn invest it directly into the economy in the form of either business loans -- which start up new businesses and thus raise employment -- or stock investments which provide funds to companies who will in turn invest it into growing their business -- and their employment -- which goes directly back into the economy.

Personally, I trust businesses to be better at running and growing businesses than any government.

The evil Harper government acting in secret? Oh... it's just McGuinty...

Seriously... it's amazing that the Toronto Star even reported the fact that the McGuinty Liberals have been holding secret talks with the unions in an effort to make a deal with them that would help the Ontario government get out of the massive hole they spent themselves into. Would it be too much for us to ask them to hold Dalton McGuinty to the same standard they hold the Harper government (mostly in a paranoid fantasy sense) to?

Of course it's too much!

Anybody want to bet that McGuinty was hoping this whole thing would stay under wraps so that he could make it look like he pulled some magic rabbit out of a hat to fix Ontario's problems? I am not even going to pretend like he had any intention of letting the Ontario public (you know, his bosses?) in on the game until it was too late to know what concessions were made. I bet he would even have found some way to ensure confidentiality in whatever deals he made.

Because he's just like that.

And all those people who complain that Stephen Harper's government is the most secretive, deceptive and unaccountable government out there? I doubt they'll even bat an eyelash over this one.

If Park51 is in fact just a community center...

...then doesn't that by extension mean that it isn't covered by the right to freedom of religion? I mean, there is no human right for freedom to build community centers.

I've seen far too many people who are arguing both sides against the middle that it is not a mosque but that if you oppose the building of Park 51 it means you're a bigot. However, if one side of the equation is right, then the other doesn't apply does it?

Either it is a mosque or it isn't. If it isn't, then there's no problem! We can even have the government step in, stop it from being built and nobody's human right of freedom of religion will have been stepped upon.

We all know that this is as duplicitous an argument as one can come up with. You can't simultaneously argue that it isn't a mosque and that denying it from being built is suppressing that right of people to practice their religion.

And to those who think that opposition to the mosque is a sign of bigotry and an attempt to suppress Islam, if you think that offering free land at another location is an attempt to suppress Islam... well... I see ignoring facts and reporting whatever you want to fit your narrative is actually quite the fad these days.

At least now we know whose reporting techniques you've been studying.