Barack Obama- Execs Shouldn’t Take Bonuses…

Barack Obama expounding on his economic philosophy:

When people are pulling down hundred-million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people’s money, that indicates a sense that you don’t have any perspective on what’s happening to ordinary Americans.

Ok, firstly, someone ought to tell Barack Obama that in a free market economy, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. It is that plain and simple. Barack Obama might want to spend some time reading and understanding Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, specifically

“The real price of every thing … is the toil and trouble of acquiring it”

The person who gets a $100 million-dollar bonus gets that amount because his contribution to the business entity where he works is considered to be worth $100 Million by the market. Whether it’s other people’s money or his/her own money, the person who takes the risk does so because the market has decided that s/he has the competence to do just that. Kind of like the electorate has decided that Obama has the competence to lead (sigh).

Of course if these individuals work for entities that receive federal funds in the form of a Bailout, that makes Uncle Sam a shareholder, and with a controlling stake he can choose to limit or eliminate compensation whichever way he deems fit. Incidentally, I am anti-bailout, as I think the role of the govt in commerce should end with it being an arbiter, and not an investor.

Secondly, “ordinary Americans” are “ordinary Americans” because their contributions to the economy are exactly that, ordinary.

However, because we live in a free-enterprise system, an “ordinary American” by the fruit of his/her labor and the limits of his/her desires can strive to be a captain of labor, industry, commerce or even all three. Barack Obama merely needs to go to any public library, where he’ll find numerous biographies that attest to this assertion.

Thirdly, while we should all show compassion for those less fortunate than we are, this compassion should not come at the price of giving up what we deserve merely so that others do not get their feelings hurt.

Such thinking guided the Soviet Union for 70 years before its inevitable collapse, and such thinking guides Cuba and North Korea, neither of which is a bastion of prosperity. Incidentally, there is a word for an economic system based on this sort of thinking, that word is Socialism.

It bothers me to no end that Barack Obama is sayin what he says so blatantly and more people are not realizing the gravity of his statements. When we wake up and discover we live in a full blown socialist state, it might be too late.

Posted by PUMA Pundit

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