In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.
It marked the end of an experiment that lasted almost a century, testing the premise that godless secularization—turning control of people’s lives over to other people to rule them, who decide what others need and how they should live and conduct their lives—is the answer for mankind.
In the free world, the collapse of the Soviet Union was cause for celebration. In the USA, it was widely viewed as a victory of the American way of life—a free nation under God.
But let’s not get confused between things and the names we give them.
Our own country—despite the words in our founding documents about freedom and God—has been on a path adopting the same premises about human reality that led to the collapse of the communist world.
This was evident in President Joe Biden’s message to the nation in his State of the Union address on March 7.
Biden, in so many words, delivered a message that the path for a better, wealthier, fairer America is more government.
Despite the reality that the country is being crushed with staggering debt, the result of runaway government, Biden and his party celebrate this and want even more.
The words find their way into numbers in the budget for the next 10 years that the president has just submitted to Congress.
Federal spending in this budget will stand in fiscal year 2025 at $7.3 trillion. One-quarter of our national economy consumed by the federal government.
This amounts to a 14% increase from where federal spending stood in the last quarter of 2023—$6.4 trillion.
Per the president’s spokesperson in the White House, this budget “invests in all of America to make sure everyone has a fair shot.”
“We leave no one behind.”
Translation: Government will accumulate more power and decide what is fair and achieve its aims with more government, paid for with other people’s money.
The beautiful language of leaving “no one behind” means government expansion into every area of our lives, including subsidized child care for families earning $200,000 and below.
The bill for the massive new spending, per the president’s budget, will be paid for with a total of $4.9 trillion in tax increases on the wealthy and on corporations.
I say “supposedly paid for” because expansion of government under the premises of raising taxes on the most successful sectors of our economy never works.
Renowned economist Arthur Laffer and Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore just published data showing that when President Donald Trump cut the highest individual tax rate and cut the corporate tax rate in 2017, the percentage of overall taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% of the population increased. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Before the Trump tax cuts, the top 1 % paid “a little more than 40% of the income taxes collected,” per Laffer and Moore. After the tax cuts, that percentage increased to almost 46%.
This was not something new. Laffer and Moore show data going back to 1980 showing general correlation of lower top tax rates with a larger percentage of overall taxes paid by the top 1%.
Freedom means unleashing productivity and creativity. Absence of freedom means punishing both and therefore getting less of both.
It’s why the Soviet Union collapsed. Godless secularism doesn’t work.
The latest edition of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education’s “The State of Black Progress” shows the uniform failure of expansion of government into health care, education, housing and retirement, all in the name of “fairness” and no one being “left behind.”
The truth really is, it’s more than this. It’s about politicians who love power buying it with gifts given with other people’s money. Harsh to say, but this is reality.
Only 19% of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country, per Gallup.
Most Americans feel something is wrong. We need leadership to take us back to freedom and God.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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