Dear Friends,
It seems to me, there is no reason why every man woman and child on the planet, cannot live a lifestyle equal to Americans. People like Barak Obama, George Soros and others believe in their hearts that it is not possible, and trying to do so would lead to environmental catastrophe. They understand that folks in America, even the poor, are the one percent in the World. People who hold this opinion, feel that it is unfair that Americans live the high standard of living we do, and therefore seek to lower the US standard of living… as a matter of fairness. With this understanding, crippled as it is, they set themselves to create a situation where there is a managed decline in America and Europe. This leadership will never raise anyone’s standard of living, it can only result in a diminished way of life, not only for Americans, but people the World over.
The standard of living in the US exceeds Europe in any metric you care to use. Americans almost universally have access to personal transportation in the form of a family car. This allows US citizens the unlimited ability to freely move about. Unlimited in the sense that Americans need not watch a train schedule, we don’t have to submit to screenings to get to work, and work can start at anytime it makes economic sense to do so. Americans, even the poor, have more living space than any other people on the planet, food is so available that obesity is a problem of the poor in the US, and our access to healthcare is unmatched in the World, despite the many single payer systems that attempt to give better access to everyone. Think of it this way, where do the uber rich go to have their operations? Where does George Soros go to get his prostate reamed out?, not Cuban, North Korean, nor Argentinian or even European hospitals… they go to American hospitals. The same ones destitute Americans are treated at.
The notion that the environment would be degraded, if everyone on the planet’s standard of living were raised to America’s, is pure sophistry. China today is industrializing at a rapid rate. They are using the flawed model of Japan but the standard of living of the Chinese citizen has undergone a paradigm shift. The Chinese middle class is growing by eating the ranks of the poor. The imbalances in their society have less to do with environmental degradation than they are generated by government policy. It is true that China is experiencing pollution similar to what America experienced at the height of the industrial revolution, but it is not from the capitalist expansion, it is due to an all powerful government ordering by fiat what will be built, without regard to anything other than the Party’s wishes. That is why, as Joe Biden said, China has state of the art Airports and cities. There is no public input to their construction and so the monetary cost is much lower while the environmental cost is much higher.
The market system is based on revolutions in manufacturing, organization and data. These revolutions, that create the business cycles economists are so scared of, and politicians are fond of, because they “justify” political meddling in the economy, allow the needs of human beings to be produced at ever cheaper rates, opening them to more and more of the World’s people. Obviously, the ability of the market to create these things, is effected by government policies. It is government policies that diminish the ability of entrepreneurs to make the next cotton gin… through taxation, regulation and cronyism. Governments around the World love to decide who gets what, in the name of fairness, while nothing could be further from the truth. This propensity of government to meddle in the market to change outcomes, is always used to benefit their political cronies, and is largely why so many people live in abject poverty around the World… while the people who advocate more government influence, like Soros and Obama, live in the lap of luxury. They create the conditions that immiserate the people of the World by their egoistic notions of fairness.
The answer then, is not to lower the standard of living of anyone on the planet, but to allow the market system to raise the World’s poor to equal America’s middle class. It is self evident that people who have no access to the market system have lowered expectations of prosperity. To claim that it is impossible, or that the planet couldn’t take it, is simply evil. Every man woman and child on Earth deserves better. That will only happen however, when the egoists that seek distributive justice by political favor, are denuded of their power to meddle in the economy. Until that time we will labor under the heavy jack boot of the Obama’s and the Soros’ of the World…. to everyone’s detriment. In the end, what could be less fair than trapping billions of people in unending misery, by lowering the top one percent in the name of fairness, and protecting the top one thousandth of one percent’s perpetual prosperity?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
