Why I Oppose the Stimulus Bill

by: Stephen Palmer Thursday, March 12th, 2009

A Commonsense Analysis

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

While President Obama is out seeking “grassroots” support for the stimulus bill, I thought I’d provide a grassroots articulation of why the stimulus bill, as well as the bailout packages, are wrong and tyrannical.

I’m not a rocket scientist or an economist. I don’t have an advanced degree. I’m not in a position of power or authority. I don’t “run” the country.

But I do run a household and balance a home budget. I’m just an average citizen who pays the taxes that support the “leaders” who are supposedly helping us “commoners.”

And the worse things get, the more I realize that it’s precisely common-ness that will save us — commonsense from common citizens who rise to their responsibility and take back their country from the corrupt experts and privileged elites.

Have you ever noticed that the more the elites try to “help” us the more help we need? If the government can save us, then why does the decline of our nation coincide with a rise in government power?

Consider the following commonsense reasons why every American should oppose the stimulus bill:

1. More Government Spending Leads To Greater Inflation

Since by nature the government cannot create or produce wealth, it has only two ways to secure money: 1) create more fiat (fake) money, or 2) increase taxes.

Inflation is the hidden tax. You and I always end up paying for it. The government either prints new currency or plays with the fractional reserve rate in order to pay off its debts, which are paid before inflation is realized. Then, as the effects trickle down and inflation materializes, we are able to buy less goods with our dollars.

Inflation isn’t rising prices. It’s the devaluation of the currency, which means that we pay for the government’s irresponsibility, greed, and fear.

2. The Stimulus Bill Leads To Higher Taxes

Of course, the government always does both of the options listed above. There’s no possible way for them to increase our liabilities by almost a trillion dollars without increasing our taxes. We’re seeing our debt rise on an unprecedented scale, one that will be felt for generations.

At the core, the bailouts and stimulus bills represent blatant, ugly theft. Not only is the government stealing from us, but they’re also robbing our children and grandchildren, for untold generations, blind.

3. The Real Solution is to Increase Production

The crippling lie that consumer spending drives the economy permeates our thinking. President Bush authorized stimulus checks in the hopes that we would spend the money to boost the economy.

How well does that work in your home economy? Here’s the logic: When you experience hard times financially, the way to get out of them is to increase your spending and consumption.

Yes, it really is that insane. The cure is the disease. Our bust was brought on by an artificially-induced boom — through inflationary policies — and now we’re trying to solve the problem with more of the problem.

Apply this once again to your home economy: You start to flounder financially, so, following the logic of John Maynard Keynes, you get more credit cards and start buying more clothes and trinkets to “stimulate” your home economy. As I said, I’m no economist, but it seems to me that that approach will only make the fall harder when the spending catches up to you.

What’s true in your household is true for the government. The road to prosperity is through honest production, not increased consumption.

“But,” protest the central planners, “we are increasing production by creating new jobs.”

It’s impossible for the government to “create” jobs. All it can do is transfer — through force — jobs that would have been created naturally by producers and entrepreneurs in the free market. The government can only take money from producers and redistribute — not produce — wealth.

This is the classic “broken window fallacy” taught by Frederic Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt.

The government makes far different decisions in the marketplace versus entrepreneurs. They operate according to completely different rules Why? Because they don’t have to deal with failure. They have access to unlimited funds. Incompetence and inefficiency are relatively unimportant.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, at least businesses who aren’t in bed with the government, have to be smart and efficient with their operations. They have to serve the marketplace and create real value. If they don’t, they fail.

The best way for the government to stimulate production is to stop manipulating the market through force and inflation — in other words, get out of the way and let people produce.

And to anyone who supports the stimulus bill because you’re hoping to be a beneficiary, I refer you to the quote by Benjamin Franklin at the beginning of this article. Furthermore, I would point out that any money you receive from the government was stolen from me, your neighbors, and our posterity. And yes, I hope that bothers you.

The only way they can sell this madness is through fear: fear that industries will collapse, fear of unemployment, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. This brings us to my last commonsense reason for opposing the stimulus bill.

4. America Needs To Experience Hardship

This reason is far more important than all of the other reasons combined. John Steinbeck expressed it far better than I ever could:

“Then there is the kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents are thrown down and at the end the child says – ‘Is that all?’

“Well it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many things they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty.

“If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.”

I’m not hard-hearted or indifferent to suffering. I simply believe in natural law. Ideas and actions have consequences. What goes up must come down. To violate natural laws is to suffer.

The truth is that I myself have struggled financially for the past couple of years because of real estate investment blunders. The struggles that my family and I have experienced have been the best thing that have ever happened to us.

We’ve grown stronger and become wiser. We’ve come closer together as a family. We’ve increased our faith in God. We’ve learned thrift and discipline. We’ve increased our production through trial and error. We’ve shed pride and embraced humility. We’re better people and our family has never been closer.

Furthermore, we’ve never been happier. I wouldn’t trade our experiences for any amount of filthy, rotten, natural law-breaking, bureaucrat-infected, politician-poisoned, stolen-from-my-neighbors-at-the-point-of-a-gun government handout.

But then again, I’m no expert. I’m just a common citizen trying to do my best and be responsible.

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Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.