Bonnie Alba
The biggest U.S. business is...?
By Bonnie Alba
Straight-faced, with neither a blink or a wink, Pres. Obama presented his rendition of Health Care 'insurance' reform to Congress and the American people. It would have been easy to sit back and enjoy the speaker without evaluating or critiquing his words and just accepting all that he said. After all, he is The President and we want to believe what he says as honest and straightforward.
But, Who can we trust? Having read some of the provisions in the much-touted congressional House Health Care Bill, there's plenty of room for government expansion included in it. Despite what the political community might think, the American people are not just the unknowing masses without thoughts of what once was, what is, and what could or should be.
When I want realism, I go to Michael Hodges Grandfather Report (http://mwhodges.home.att.net/) where the past and present are presented in a factual manner and the future is there for all to see.
Hodge's facts and charts provide more than enough evidence of who is the biggest U.S. Business. For instance, the U.S. Government share of the American economy is no longer a myth.
** Pre-1930: The U.S. Government held about a 12-percent share of the U.S. economy while the Private Sector's share was 88 percent.
** Post-World War II (1947): The Government's economic share grew to 22 percent and the Private Sector's share was 78 percent.
** Jump to 2008: The Government's economic share is 45 percent while the Private Sector has declined to 55 percent. [Government share is larger than this if regulatory compliance costs are added.]
All the above percentages were put into Pie Chart form on Michael Hodges site which is loaded with encyclopedic information about our government, the economy, debt, trade and much more.
America's past history is a portent of our future. We have forsaken a constitutional Republic for a Socialist Democracy, much like the European nations.
For too long, while the people thought they prospered, the government was in the hen house stealing the eggs and killing the economic chickens through regulatory policies and laws that ever expanded itself beyond constitutional boundaries.
The public expression manifested in recent protests at town hall meetings and the ongoing march on Washington of the Tea Party this weekend should be a wake-up call to the politicians. The People are awake. We received many clues, including from previous Pres. Bush. His "destroying the capitalistic system to save it" bailout set up the government to push the economy off the cliff. Pres. Obama is just following in his footsteps — full speed ahead.
Wiser and more knowledgeable men in our history have noted truths which imperil America's historical view of her nation, government and people.
Thomas Jefferson once stated: "Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tolls for the designs of ambition."
[Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIX (1787).]
In Democracy in America, Tocqueville warned that America may follow other nations in future: "an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they fill their souls."
Government becomes the Nanny as "It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates their successions, and divides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?"
Tocqueville concludes that a sovereign or a government "does not destroy, but it prevents existence; rather than tyrannize, it inhibits, represses, saps, stutifies (a people), till each nation is reduced to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd."
[Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Part 4, Chap. 6 (1840)]
Pres. Obama and Congress are attempting to sell us in economic bailouts and healthcare reform a further expansion of the government. Either we put on the brakes now or we will end up as Tocqueville so adamantly described — sheep being led to the slaughter.
From all signs, we're well on our way.
© Bonnie Alba
September 10, 2009
Straight-faced, with neither a blink or a wink, Pres. Obama presented his rendition of Health Care 'insurance' reform to Congress and the American people. It would have been easy to sit back and enjoy the speaker without evaluating or critiquing his words and just accepting all that he said. After all, he is The President and we want to believe what he says as honest and straightforward.
But, Who can we trust? Having read some of the provisions in the much-touted congressional House Health Care Bill, there's plenty of room for government expansion included in it. Despite what the political community might think, the American people are not just the unknowing masses without thoughts of what once was, what is, and what could or should be.
When I want realism, I go to Michael Hodges Grandfather Report (http://mwhodges.home.att.net/) where the past and present are presented in a factual manner and the future is there for all to see.
Hodge's facts and charts provide more than enough evidence of who is the biggest U.S. Business. For instance, the U.S. Government share of the American economy is no longer a myth.
** Pre-1930: The U.S. Government held about a 12-percent share of the U.S. economy while the Private Sector's share was 88 percent.
** Post-World War II (1947): The Government's economic share grew to 22 percent and the Private Sector's share was 78 percent.
** Jump to 2008: The Government's economic share is 45 percent while the Private Sector has declined to 55 percent. [Government share is larger than this if regulatory compliance costs are added.]
All the above percentages were put into Pie Chart form on Michael Hodges site which is loaded with encyclopedic information about our government, the economy, debt, trade and much more.
America's past history is a portent of our future. We have forsaken a constitutional Republic for a Socialist Democracy, much like the European nations.
For too long, while the people thought they prospered, the government was in the hen house stealing the eggs and killing the economic chickens through regulatory policies and laws that ever expanded itself beyond constitutional boundaries.
The public expression manifested in recent protests at town hall meetings and the ongoing march on Washington of the Tea Party this weekend should be a wake-up call to the politicians. The People are awake. We received many clues, including from previous Pres. Bush. His "destroying the capitalistic system to save it" bailout set up the government to push the economy off the cliff. Pres. Obama is just following in his footsteps — full speed ahead.
Wiser and more knowledgeable men in our history have noted truths which imperil America's historical view of her nation, government and people.
Thomas Jefferson once stated: "Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tolls for the designs of ambition."
[Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIX (1787).]
In Democracy in America, Tocqueville warned that America may follow other nations in future: "an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they fill their souls."
Government becomes the Nanny as "It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates their successions, and divides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?"
Tocqueville concludes that a sovereign or a government "does not destroy, but it prevents existence; rather than tyrannize, it inhibits, represses, saps, stutifies (a people), till each nation is reduced to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd."
[Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Part 4, Chap. 6 (1840)]
Pres. Obama and Congress are attempting to sell us in economic bailouts and healthcare reform a further expansion of the government. Either we put on the brakes now or we will end up as Tocqueville so adamantly described — sheep being led to the slaughter.
From all signs, we're well on our way.
© Bonnie Alba
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