Closing words at the end of the second presidential debate:
I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known. I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk takers being rewarded. President Barack Obama
Real Clear Politics reaction:
I have no doubt that Obama believes he believes in free enterprise — except in the case of health care policy, the auto industry, the housing market, education, banking, job creation, manufacturing, green energy and so on and so forth.
If you believed the free enterprise system is the mechanism of great prosperity, your crowning achievement might not be legislation that constricts competition in health care, layers it generously with regulations, institutes effective price controls, coerces participation and sets up a government board to mete out advice on rationing.
Put it this way: Folks who admire free enterprise seldom spend two months bashing private equity to kick off a re-election campaign for president.
About bailouts, by Steven Haywood:
Milton Friedman liked to say, the capitalist system is a profit and loss system. The losses are just as important as the profits because they discipline ongoing resource allocation. Bailing out losing firms assures us of mediocre economic growth. Haywood [edited]
When losses are made, under the present system these losses are borne by the individuals who sustained them and took the risk and judged things wrongly, whereas under State management all losses are quartered upon the taxpayers and the community as a whole. The elimination of the profit motive and of self-interest as a practical guide in the myriad transactions of daily life will restrict, paralyze and destroy British ingenuity, thrift, contrivance and good housekeeping at every stage in our life and production, and will reduce all our industries from a profit-making to a loss-making process. Winston Churchill 1947
If Obama is re-elected,
He will fundamentally transform America from a society that strives to eliminate class to a society of four classes: wealthy elites, government and union bureaucrats, the growing dependent poor, and a shrinking pool of working gainfully employed taxpayers supporting everyone else.
RANDOM THOTS 