Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Economic Poison

Economic Poison
By Lash LeRoux

Those who believe we can improve our free market system by integrating within it limited socialist policies, fail to realize such policies undermine and subvert our entire economic system. If a teaspoon of cyanide were added to a glass of water, you would not drink that water. Why? Because you know that no matter how minuscule the amount of poison added, the damage is done. Just as even a drop of such a substance spreads and perverts the entire glass of water, so, too, does even the smallest and most benign of socialist policies corrupt our whole free market system.

To prove this point, we need look no further than our current economic recession. This downturn was precipitated by a crash in the housing market instigated by a record number of borrowers defaulting on their home loans. This following a decade where home ownership in the United States was at an all-time high. We dig a little deeper and we find the misguided hand of government in the cause and effect of this scenario. We can quite easily trace our current trouble back to the Clinton administration and their advocacy of the “Fair Housing Act.”

This legislation ushered in a policy of mandated mortgages for minorities and low income citizens. Liberals championed this program as a means of economic equality. However, they failed to recognize that it wasn’t prejudice in the free market system that prohibited minorities and low income citizens from owning homes, it was their lack of any ability to pay for said properties. For liberals, that point was insignificant. As a result, financial institutions found themselves holding a large number of high risk loans in order to meet government mandates. When it became apparent that those debts could not be satisfied, our entire financial market became unstable. Of course, our liberal friends are quick to blame corporate “greed” for this implosion of our capitalist system, but we know in reality the wheels were set in motion long ago by politicians who sought to take from the “haves” and give to the “have nots” in the name of social and economic justice.

Yet, how is it just to provide for on group of citizens on the backs of another group of citizens? Our free market system, known as capitalism, works so well because it rewards those who contribute to society through hard work, sacrifice and entrepreneurship. But when politicians seek to provide these same rewards to non-contributors, they are poisoning America’s economic water.


July 17, 2009