TANSTAAFL is a libertarian slogan, which simply means, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” I wear a tanstaafl button a lot of times, and love to tell people what it means. There’s a world of truth in that, and the more you think about it, the more logical is is. Think of the free lunches which politicos of both parties have rewarded the citizenry with since FDR’s time. Free lunches which taxpayers have paid dearly for, and which we all have paid dearly for with decreased value dollars. There really isn’t any free lunch, is there? All the handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, section eight and public housing, food stamps, farm subsidies, and subsidies of all sorts, including tax free properties such as churches, Masonic halls, VFW’s, and the list is endless. I am a registered Republican, but a life member of the Libertarian Party and was once Maricopa County Arizona county chair of the party. Libertarians got their start when Ayn Rand’s novel ATLAS SHRUGGED was published in 1957. Atlas Shrugged, second to the Bible, has been bought, read, and printed more than any other book, and I suggest that you read it now, to see how it is all coming true.
If everyone paid for what they get, we’d have no devalued dollars, high taxes, and inflation. If everyone paid for what they get, we’d have no underclass and decaying cities. If politicians had to find the money to pay for wars, there’d probably be none, because they’re hugely expensive, and all of them so far, have been fought with printing press money, which in three of the four printing press dollar episodes, have resulted in the dollar going to absolute ZERO.
The Revolutionary War was paid for with the ’continental dollar’ and was printed to pay for the war with the Brits. The expression, “not worth a continental” came from the fact that the continental dollar went to zero. That’s the one war we should have fought. The War Between the States, incorrectly called the ’Civil War,’ was paid on both sides with printing press money. The North printed Greenback Dollars, and the South printed Confederate Dollars. Both went to absolute zero, so many were printed. That was a war which Abe Lincoln should have never started, and a pox on his name and memory. That war had nothing to do with slavery, which was rapidly diminishing, but over a strong central government, which we have now, unfortunately.
Both the First and Second World Wars were fought with paper money, neither should have been fought, and both resulted in huge inflation to fight them, plus hundreds of thousands of dead Americans. Roosevelt goaded the Japs into bombing us, and Churchill goaded him into getting into his fight with the Germans, which Britain declared war on, not the reverse.
Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and the current Afghanistan, have cost trillions of paper, unbacked dollars, which have constantly gone down in value and purchasing power, the more that have been printed. Nixon removed the last backing of the dollar with gold in 1971, and the presses have been running 24/7 ever since.
This is a brief column, because the point of it is so simple. “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” There are no free wars, free handouts, free medical care, free schools, free housing, or free anything. Everything has a price, and everything must be paid for in some way or another. “Taxation is theft,” goes the old expression, and when taxes are levied without voter approval, it is outright, unconditional theft, and can be blamed on politicians in 100% of the cases. When voters approve taxes to pay for police, crime detection, courts, and jails, the voters know what they are voting for, and it is not theft. When a bureaucrat writes a rule or regulation, the costs of them are paid for by businessmen and the citizenry in general, and they are theft.
The South wanted the Tenth Amendment enforced, and Lincoln didn’t, so he started a war which killed 620,000 Americans, right on our own shores. The huge central government which Lincoln and Hamilton wanted and got, is suffocating us and bankrupting us to the extent that thousands have left our shores, taken their money and abilities with them, and moved to other lands such as Belieze and Panama. Many have moved to Texas, where there is no state income tax, and government is somewhat in control. The Northeast is suffering from huge population losses because of their liberal state governments and high taxes. A client of mine left his $11,000 a year property tax home in New Jersey, and moved here to an ever larger home with $800 a year in property taxes, with the same decreases in state income taxes.
Economics can be defined in two words, and that is, “People Act.” and that sums it up pretty well also. People act to save themselves by buying gold and silver with devaluing dollars, move to lower tax places, and do all needed to protect themselves. Those who are too stubborn or set in their ways to protect themselves by getting gold or getting out of big cities and the northeast will suffer eventually. I’m an eastern guy by birth, but I’d sooner get a fatal disease than move back there. Yuk.
Mitt McCain?
Think about it. Isn’t Mitt Romney a sort of warmed over John McCain? Would McCain have been better than Obama? Naturally, and Romney would be better than Obama, but who needs either of them with their ’moderate’ thoughts and practices? Romneycare was copied by Obama for his Obamacare, and he and McCain are troublingly similar. Can’t we elect a strong, anti-war, fiscal conservative?