When we kill the Goose, where will we get our golden eggs?
Southern Observer
By John Brock
After the 1890 US census was published, historian Frederick Jackson Turner noted that nearly all Americans no longer lived on the frontier. Most of the United States had been claimed. He took to musing about how this would affect the nation and came up with his “Frontier Thesis”.
His reasoning was that America was founded and was sustained by the frontier, therefore, the frontier shaped America and not the other way around as many observers claimed. Turner concluded that the face, character, quality of life, etc., of America had been created by a, heretofore, unlimited frontier. For the entire European-based history of North America, whenever one’s fortune was in doubt, one merely moved westward toward free/cheap land and opportunity. But now the frontier had run out, Americans would have to look in a different direction for the fulfillment of their destinies. They had “mined” the frontier out and would now have to direct their exploitation elsewhere.
Turner concluded that Americans, now that the frontier was “used up”, would turn to government for their good fortune. They would exploit (“mine”) the US government. History has proved him correct.
Some observers scoffed and it took another 40 years before they became true believers of Turner’s prediction. By the 1930s Great Depression and the advent of Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, most Americans had started looking to government to fulfill their collective and individual desires. Previously, the “unfortunate” in the community were taken care of by families, church, the local community, etc., but with widespread economic depression abounding, the government accommodated by promising to take care of us all – eventually, from womb to tomb. A new federalism was born and has flourished almost unabated since.
It soon became not just the poor who were the beneficiaries of government largesse but everybody (including business and industry) as they all clamored to get their fair share at the public trough. Supply/demand or need no longer ultimately dictated costs, price supports, wages, interest rates, importation, etc. – government now did!
We were left with two very different philosophies still in contention today. One wants to expand American’s dependence on the federal government even more by creating new, bigger and “better” social programs and oversight. The other side wants to curb government dependence and allow Americans to keep more of the fruits of their own labors via tax reductions, less regulation, etc. This seems fair enough since families, today, who are working two jobs to get ahead, are paying as much as a whopping 40% of their gross income for taxes of one sort or another as well as supporting government regulatory programs.
Now that the Federal Government’s resources are being depleted, Americans have discovered new entities to “mine” – namely, corporate America. Another “golden goose?” Even Frederick Jackson Turner was not clever enough to predict this one. We are starting to mine big business, whose astuteness and financial risk through the years has given us jobs, industries and our wealth via the unique American system of Free Enterprise. Now, we want to kill that goose as well while taking its last golden egg. What then? Government cannot create wealth. Only individual human toil can do so. Government can only redistribute wealth and manipulate it until its house of cards comes tumbling down.
If you doubt that corporate America has been discovered as the new source of exploitation, just take a look at the multi-BILLION dollar lawsuits that have taken place and are taking place. The tobacco industry alone has provided mega-billions of dollars to governments and individuals with more to follow. How can an industry that for two generations has been regulated into disclosing on their packaging and in their ads: “hazardous to your health - can cause cancer, heart disease, birth defects, DEATH, etc.” be held accountable for people voluntarily using their product? Beats me but courts are awarding mega-dollars. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and the health industry, including doctors, have been targets for years.
One can hardly pick up a magazine or newspaper without seeing a solicitation from a legal firm seeking participants in a class action suit against various industries.
Also at jeopardy for “free money” is the automobile industry. Big bucks have been awarded to parties injured by drunks and careless drivers, but, who pays for these awards? Not the drunks or the negligent, irresponsible drivers but the automobile manufacturer whose products, like tobacco, have been approved for sale to the public. This, of course, means that you and I will bear the burden with additional product costs and insurance. Who’s next? You can bet the alcohol industry has to be spending sleepless nights.
This wealth redistribution will continue as long as there are lawyers and greedy “victims” looking for a buck (I can’t wait until it’s the Lawyer’s turn to be exploited); the public will “mine” whatever target comes into their sights.
When we have tapped out all of the “mines” and the shaft is empty, what happens then? Well, the former purveyors of another failed economy, the communists, will have been proved right all along - we will have destroyed ourselves from within.
I fear there are not enough Americans left with the will to stop this foolishness.
Most conscientious Americans will grouse about it. Give lip service in objection to it but I don’t think we will do a damned thing to stop it – everybody greedily wants their share of the loot.
And that’s sad for our children and grandchildren who will be left with no goose; no egg just an empty nest.