Dangerous Words

I've said it before, but it is worth saying again. It seems, with rhetoric heating up on both sides of this election (and I'll admit that there are probably vastly more than two sides), defaulting to a label instead of addressing the real issues is the sign of a person’s weakness, not his/her strength. Here are some of the words and phrases that have particularly bothered me:

Socialism – Sounds menacing. Grrrr. You can tell if you are a socialist easily. You are a follower of Karl Marx. You want to redistribute the wealth. You want to impose restrictions on commerce. You believe in stuff like: “If you want to be perfect, sell what you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure…” We can't have government shifting wealth from one group and giving it to another!!! We should have one tax rate for everyone! The Federal Emergency Management Agency is wrong; let fire and flood victims fend for themselves! Let children pay for their own educations! Social security makes us lazy. We don't need the Food and Drug Administration – companies that put out tainted milk products will be eliminated by the marketplace; we don't need rules. Polluters are creating jobs; regulating their smokestacks will cause unemployment. Derivatives and subprime mortgages are just fine, because a few can get rich on the corpses of many – it’s a free market (and it will adjust). Oh, the above quote, for Bible readers, is Matthew 19:21.

Free Market – Two words in there. “Free” suggesting that rules are bad. And “market” which tells you that a willing buyer and seller will establish what is right. If produce is tainted, after a few folks die of food poisoning, the marketplace will put the seller out of business, assuming he or she stuck around for the after-effects. If a factory stinks up the water and makes the air unbreathable, that will so alienate consumers that they won't buy the products… so we'll move the factory outside of town where they can't see it.

Countries with Lower Taxes Create Jobs – Ireland is the example folks like to use most often. They lowered taxes, created subsidies to get businesses to relocate, and they postured the appearance of success… for a decade and a half! The October 7, 2008 finfacts.com observed: “For a number of years Ireland , with only 1% of Europe's population, attracted up to 25% of all US greenfield [non-polluting]industrial investment in our continent.” Then, it began to unravel. Without sustained subsidies (oh my, is that socialism?), the business models did not work. Unemployment began to creep up in 2007, and the return-on-investment numbers were not so rosy.

But Irish unemployment numbers, long touted as the “lowest in Europe,” were understated, new job creation was overstated – the government “cooked the books”… until it all collapsed, and finfacts.com goes on: “The dramatic events in Dublin, early on Tuesday, September 30th, when the Irish Government agreed to issue a State guarantee, with a value in the range of €400 - €500 billion, underwriting the Irish banking system, tolled the death knell of the Celtic Tiger and definitively brought down the curtain on the remarkable 15-year period of economic growth in Ireland. While some advances will endure as the fairytale ends, the debunking of the myths that have become ingrained during the period and the exposure of the reality of foundations built on quicksand…”

Investors ran; U.S. investment capital, much from hedge funds, retreated back to the U.S. , literally in days after the financial collapse… the U.S. ? With those higher taxes? Why would they do that?

Outsourcing your opinion to a label is doing yourself a profound disservice. In a modern complex world, simple labels don't really seem to describe anything that would really matter anymore. Time for a vocabulary update! Life ain’t that simple!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.