16 October, 2009

Quote of the day

From "Lessons from Chairman Mao", by Dan Freeman, on Big Government:

Is Mao an isolated case? Not likely since the same story has been repeated in so many other communist states. Or can we say that the very nature of concentration of power in the State is evil? One fundamental and misguided belief that lies at the root of not only communism, but also its more acceptable cousins, socialism and progressivism, is that the state knows what is best for us. Hence President Obama’s ongoing narrative about what he can do to help us. Progressives, having learned that the private sector is the creator of wealth, do not want to eliminate it. Rather they just want to control it, and redistribute it.

Yet the very notion of redistribution of wealth—a common theme among many of the President’s Czars and other advisors—is a fallacy. When wealth is redistributed, it is largely destroyed. In fact, if we just transferred all the wealth from the private sector to the Government, the Government wouldn’t be “rich” for very long. The wealth would evaporate as it moved from the productive, innovative, and efficient private sector to the unproductive, stagnant, and wasteful public sector.

Lessons from Chairman Mao

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