“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes.”
Kurt Vonnegut
I agree with KV and so do many others.
The American people are doomed to be dragged lower and lower in that the National Debt, interest paid on Federal Debt and spending levels by the Federal government doesn’t leave much left over (actually none) to start new business, expand the economy, hence employment.
In addition the regulation and rules and law “rent seekers”, all of whom want a piece of the action for doing exactly — nothing — is bleeding the economic and fiscal system dry.
Just think of the rent seekers clustered around a simple purchase of product X, made in the USA. First the producer has to have licenses, inspections, fees, income tax and all manner of rent seeking blood suckers attached to his jugular. Then the wholesaler, who has to have a permit to operate, OSHA inspections and fees to insure his warehouse and distribution center is – what – up to snuff to suit some do nothing bureaucrat that contributes nothing to the production of distribution of the product. Next, comes the retailer who must also buy licenses, tax permits and a multitude of other non-productive crap before he can sell the widget to a customer, you. Guess who pays for all these rent seeking bloodsuckers?
You do!
I need a rear body panel touched up to fix a ding in my car’s rear end. Tacked on the cost of buying the parts, installing them and painting it is a $2.50 charge that the body shop must pay the EPA for the privilege of using paint. WTF????
The EPA, in this case as in most where it is involved, is a rotten, good for nothing rent seeker, sticking their ever hungry sucker into my business, costing me an extra $2.50 for what? NOTHING!
Yet multiply that $2.50 by tens to hundreds of thousands of paint jobs and touch ups (mine is a mere touchup) and you figure out how this rent seeker is scalping off the economy for adding nothing to it.
This is a very small simple illustration of what rent seekers do that is and will destroy our capitalistic system, turning us all into paupers and eventually seeing to it that we are equally poor as they skim slices of every transaction that happens.
This must stop.. Now..