Some observations before I begin:
There are no tax loopholes; there are deductions, exemptions and credits in the tax code. A loophole is a political word.
Herbert Hoover was not a laissez faire president; federal spending increased, taxes increased, the Federal Reserve boosted the money supply, government got bigger and unemployment skyrocketed under HH. Dems have been successfully running against HH for the wrong reasons. FDR was the fiscal conservative in the 1932 presidential campaign. FDR expanded the HH’s expansion of federal government power. Result: depression lasted for more than a decade.
Obama 2016 was not very satisfying for several reasons:
- USA was not a paradise before Obama was elected
- Our problems have been building for decades; in short, both Dems an Republicans are complicit in the financial mess we have today and the untenable—and I would argue—and immoral foreign policy is also a major cause of our problems, economically and socially. Making the world safe for democracy==Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy–the rallying cry of the neoconservatives, who are left wingers, proponents of big government.
- Obama is in reality Bush’s third term, a continuation of the welfare-warfare state. Congress passes the federal budget, president does not dictate it.
- As one analyst wrote in a critique of the documentary, “We are living in a bipartisan, congressionally mandated train wreck.” The Congress could stop Obama or could have stopped Bush but they didn’t. Who put Congress in office? The American people.
- Obama is not the problem; his left-wing mentors are important but so is his Wall Street connections
- Finally, the Federal Reserve is the culprit; it created back to back bubbles, the dot com and housing bubbles. Not mentioned in the documentary.
In discussing the economy and social relations, we have to ask and answer one major question: does the POTUS, governors, mayors, CEO of companies, your neighbors have the right to use coercion to achieve their goals? In a free society, voluntary exchange is the essence of peaceful relations among the people.
Please look at the sheet about how an economy works: this is free enterprise, a market economy, capitalism, etc.
Role of government is limited. Essentially confined to a few duties.
Private and nonprofit sector would provide all our needs, and they do so without using coercion. In other words, the most terrifying sentence in the English language is “we are from the government and we are here to help you.”
As far the presidents who are pictured on the working cover of my book, they all began or have perpetuated Ponzi schemes, hence the title of the book…..Ask Me About My Ponzi Scheme: Deceit and Deception from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama?
Why do we have Ponzi schemes?
Social Security as a case study in creating a Ponzi government:
Ponzi Scheme: a fraudulent investment plan in which the investments of later investors are used to pay earlier investors, giving the appearance that the investments of the initial participants dramatically increase in value in a short amount of time.
—West’s Encyclopedia of American Law
I have amended this definition in my book to include how government is the leading creator of Ponzi schemes. That is, unlike Ponzi, Madoff and others, the government uses force and deception to perpetuate the welfare-warfare state—the greatest Ponzi scheme of all–transferring money to politically connected groups at the expense of the people. The federal government has created scores of Ponzi programs and has the means to preserve them, taxing, borrowing, regulation and printing money…