WHY IS SOCIALISM INEVITABLE

1. Voters by and large are poorly informed with respect good and bad government policy (liberals, independents, and conservatives alike)

2. Voter ignorance is rational because the cost of becoming well informed is far greater than the potential benefit received from casting a single vote that most certainly won't change the outcome of an election (this is an economic concept known as "rational ignorance")

3. Most voters consequently cast their ballots based on emotion and/or potential to receive a financial benefit from government

4. Therefore, politicians get elected by appealing to emotion (fairness, equalty etc.) and by promising government handouts or free services (healthcare, safety net, etc.) rather than by promoting policies that are for the general good or that promote personal freedom

5. Ever more programs (without limit) are needed to promote more "fairness" and provide more free services

6. Government must control ever more financial resources (i.e., increased socialsim) in order to deliver the promised benefits

There is only one remedy: voter education

The best blog that I know of to get the average voter educated about good vs. bad government policy is:  http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/ PLEASE give it a try. If you agree with me about its value, pass it on. We need educated voters!

THE MORAL CASE FOR TAX HAVENS

"Tax havens" are viewed by the average citizen as being corrupt and something to be eliminated. But that is the politically correct view instilled by bankrupt (or nearly so) nations (like the U.S.) and, of course, propogated by the media. Here is another point-of-view worthy of consideration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xf14lkyH2dM

BYE BYE EXCEPTIONALISM

Here are some words of wisdom about American Exceptionalism from Nicolas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute.

From the founding of our nation until quite recently, the U.S. and its citizens were regarded, at home and abroad, as exceptional in a number of deep and important respects. One of these was their fierce and principled independence, which informed not only the design of the political experiment that is the U.S. Constitution but also their approach to everyday affairs. The proud self-reliance that struck Alexis de Tocqueville in his visit to the U.S. in the early 1830s extended to personal finances. The American "individualism" about which he wrote did not exclude social cooperation—the young nation was a hotbed of civic associations and voluntary organizations. But in an environment bursting with opportunity, American men and women viewed themselves as accountable for their own situation through their own achievements—a novel outlook at that time, markedly different from the prevailing attitudes of the Old World (or at least the Continent). The corollaries of this American ethos were, on the one hand, an affinity for personal enterprise and industry and, on the other, a horror of dependency and contempt for anything that smacked of a mendicant mentality. Although many Americans in earlier times were poor, even people in fairly desperate circumstances were known to refuse help or handouts as an affront to their dignity and independence. People who subsisted on public resources were known as "paupers," and provision for them was a local undertaking. Neither beneficiaries nor recipients held the condition of pauperism in high regard.

The U.S. is now on the verge of a symbolic threshold: the point at which more than half of all American households receive and accept transfer benefits from the government. (DWD-Compared to about 30% in 1980) From cradle to grave, a treasure chest of government-supplied benefits is there for the taking for every American citizen—and exercising one's legal rights to these many blandishments is now part of the American way of life. ...Citizens have become ever more broad-minded about the propriety of tapping new sources of finance for supporting their appetite for more entitlements. The taker mentality has thus ineluctably gravitated toward taking from a pool of citizens who can offer no resistance to such schemes: the unborn descendants of today's entitlement-seeking population. ...The U.S. is a very wealthy society. If it so chooses, it has vast resources to squander. And internationally, the dollar is still the world's reserve currency; there remains great scope for financial abuse of that privilege. Such devices might well postpone the day of fiscal judgment: not so the day of reckoning for American character, which may be sacrificed long before the credibility of the U.S. economy. Some would argue that it is an asset already wasting away before our very eyes.

—Mr. Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. Excerpted from "A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic," forthcoming from the Templeton Press. To read the complete essay, go to www.templetonpress.org.

 The above quote was extracted from a recent blog by International Liberty.