Rescuing Blacks from the Slavery of Dependency

Dick McDonald Ownership Society Institute

On his program yesterday Fox’s Glen Beck was criticizing Democrats for the debilitating effects of big government dependency on the African American community. One of the all-black panelists put forth the idea that the disintegration of the black family may have been the root cause for the increase in dependency inasmuch as only 20% of black children were born out of wedlock in 1960 whereas today that figure has sky rocketed to 80%.

Glen noted that Bill Cosby had brought this up before but got hammered for it. He asked Brandon Brice (a community organizer and a Republican) for his comment. Brandon opined that Cosby had called for black males to be more responsible - he then made a 360 departure, changed the subject and said the following:

The more important thing when we look at things as Republicans and conservatives and when we talk of the fear of big government we have to remember that big government whether you like it or not - it’s the perceived notion that they are taking care of much of low income America right now especially at this time of depression. Maybe the solution should be a smarter and more responsible government and I believe that if that happens what you will have – you will shift to automatically smaller government because it will be based on principle. Right now much of the low income neighborhoods are dependent on this so you can’t speak against something that is supporting the lower masses whether you like it or not.

The community organizer hit it right on the head. Unfortunately it flew right over Beck’s. Brice opined that a smarter government would use principled legislation which would naturally result in a smaller government. Voila- an economic solution to poverty. That is what our Founders bequeathed to us. If the government were smaller the taxes taken from the people wouldn’t be so great and they could use that extra money to grow the economy and create and compound their own wealth.

Unfortunately instead of pursuing an economic line of reasoning Beck and the panel headed off into a rehash of the “social” effects of dependency. They eventually compared the black community to domesticated dogs who had to rely on their owners because they were never taught how to survive on their own. What a sad analogy – and from an African-American panelist yet.

The panel didn’t pursue how being smarter and more principled could possibly lead to an “economic” solution to poverty and the eradication of this endemic condition in so many parts of the black community. It was just another chance Beck missed to uncover a solution – a wall he butts into almost daily.

To change a cultural dynamic like poverty you have to have a reason for blacks to make a change. So why in the world would the black community presently vote for Republicans when Republicans have nothing to offer but the admonition to be “responsible”? Do Republicans believe they can shame blacks into voting to cut off their free food, free housing and free health care by proving that Democrats are corrupt capitalists posing as socialists? It hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work in the future save a massive change in the Republican political arsenal. Today Republicans are not even a perceived threat to blacks as they have been accommodating blacks for years by appeasing the entitlement cabal that has run up a $118 trillion debt.

So what is a smart principled legislature? Well it is one that knows a $118 national funded and unfunded debt is unsustainable and moves to extinguish at least the $110 trillion portion that represent entitlements. It would repeal and replace entitlements (or the “free stuff”) with programs that use capitalist principles to eradicate poverty, lower taxes and increase benefits. No matter how daunting a task this appears to be on the surface, it is doable today without sacrificing the relatively paltry benefits government presently doles out in entitlements nor cost a dime more than the taxpayer presently pay. The people would continue to be paid their full entitlement benefits required by law today as they would be legislated as a “safety net” under which no future benefits would fall. .

Increasing benefits like Social Security’s monthly check from $1,000 to $33,000 seems like a pipe dream. How could a legislature do that? Actually it can be done quite simply by removing the government from the equation - by privatizing Social Security, Medicare and Disability and letting the taxpayer keep the 15.3% in payroll taxes presently confiscated from him or her and letting them use those funds in a personal investment account to grow and accumulate over the years into a nest egg. Let’s take a simple example.

The average American household presently makes over $50,000 a year. That means they pay over $7,500 a year in payroll taxes. Over a 40-year working life that $7,500 amounts to a contribution of $300,000 to the government for which the taxpayer gets no nest egg. However, if those payroll taxes were the taxpayer’s own money and invested weekly in the stock market for 40 years the average nest egg accumulated would be $4,000,000. Just the earnings off the $4 million in the 41st year would equal $33,000 a month.

If you doubt these figures go to the tables on www.riseupamerica.us and review them. Even low-income taxpayers will end up with million-dollar nest eggs and tens of thousands in monthly retirement checks. As a policy matter individual and national wealth will accumulate and grow as it is willed from one generation to the next. We call the plan the Rise Up America plan (RUA) and the personal investment account a “USA” - universal savings account. It will end endemic poverty in the black community.

RUA and the USA are the type of tools it will take to motivate blacks to vote for Republicans and vote for capitalism. Today we have blacks like Oprah Winfrey mistakenly touting Denmark and its socialist government as the answer black Americans are looking for. When the richest black woman in America who has reached that pinnacle through her understanding and use of capitalism starts promoting socialism Republicans should wake up to the fact that they need to offer the black community more than an encouraging word to be more responsible. They need a pocketbook issue like RUA. It can be the one that ends black dependency on government.

Democrats Bleeding Taxpayer’s Dry

A Republican Solution

by Dick McDonald, Ownership Society Institute

The $780 Stimulus Bill was rushed through Congress so fast no Senator or Representative ever read the bill. President Obama assured us that it was the economic stimulus that would keep unemployment under 8%. Now that unemployment has raced past 9.4% just a few months later the Democrat-controlled media is still refusing to tell the American public the truth about Obama’s gross mismanagement of this stimulus package. To date only 15% of the funds have been spent and only 1% on the job-creating shovel-ready job-creating infrastructure projects. To say President Obama is an incompetent is to insult incompetents everywhere.

So where has the 14% gone? You guessed it – to pay the salaries and pensions of state, county and city employees. In other words to keep government employees and their unions “paid off” instead of laid off like the private sector has had to do. No wonder no jobs have been created – this Marxist-in-Chief is creating a depression he thinks he will solve like FDR. The only problem is FDR had a 14% unemployment rate on December 7th, 1941. He never solved the depression – World War II did.

The City of LA, like all of California, is bleeding from over-spending by Democrats. Recently they “solved” a current departmental wage crisis by giving early retirement – at 55 years of age – to over 222 government workers at 90% of their last year’s salary. As those salaries averaged $100,000 a year the 30-year cost to taxpayers will be $2,700,000 plus COLA for each one of the 222 workers. This is where the Democrats have driven the economy – into paralysis by their mobs of inside-the-government workers padding their own paychecks and retirement out of your dwindling wealth.

And the American public hasn’t got a clue. The Democrat-controlled media no longer investigates – it merely is a propaganda machine – blindly driving us straight into a wall.

Now do you get it. This is where your stimulus tax dollars are going. Not to stimulate the private sector economy where the people are but to the government employees and their unions. The stimulus is not creating jobs as Obama promised – it is feather-bedding government employees. It is similar to what Democrats did in allowing unions to blackmail the auto companies into bankruptcy by underwriting $150,000 a-year manufacturing jobs. Obama, the Congress and the state assemblies are stealing from the taxpayers to fill their own purse.

This is not a free country anymore. It bears no resemblance to the country our Founder’s created. It is a totalitarian regime of Democrat elites unmercifully taxing ordinary Americans to fill the pockets of their ruling class of government employees. Using the lie that they are for social justice, Democrats are pushing ordinary Americans – especially the “little guy” they claim to represent further and further into poverty and despair.

The Republicans are bleating that all of this is unfair but no one is really listening to them because the Bush regime ran up big budget deficits and created income disparity that dramatically illustrated the distance between the ordinary citizen and his American Dream. Of course Republicans are banking on Obama’s failure so they can take over Congress again in 2010 and return the country to it normal semi-socialist state which will still leave ordinary Americans penniless and the country with a $60 trillion unfunded entitlement debt.

There is a “solution” to this madness. We will have to take the Republicans to the woodshed and whip them to within an inch of their life so they will consider doing something for the “little guy.” Patriotic Democrats embarrassed by 70 years of unfulfilled promises to the poor should all come on board.

Every American deserves to keep and invest his own money in the fabulous American economy and over a lifetime generate a million-dollar nest egg with which to retire affluently. He shouldn’t have to be highly educated just reasonably industrious and stable during his lifetime. The Founders would have endorsed that philosophy.

We at the Ownership Society Institute have developed such a plan. It involves the creation of a national pension plan in which governments (Federal, state, etc) will no longer have to impose those entitlement taxes (Social Security, Medicare, Disability and the many state and local taxes) on the people and industry will no longer have to provide their employees with supplemental old-age medical or retirement plans. Each individual taxpayer will retain ownership of his “payroll taxes” and automatically invest those funds over their working life into the economy to grow into sizeable nest eggs with which to retire.

The plan is called the Rise Up America(RUA) plan and as an added bonus it will immediately turn our potential depression into the roaring free-market economy. It will do this by infusing monthly over $125 billion of “new” investment capital (those payroll taxes) into the market to grow it algorithmically. Besides being the biggest tax cut in history it will cut the national budget in half and immediately retire over $50 trillion in unfunded entitlement debt. The old Social Security, Disability and Medicare benefits will never be reduced again but will remain as the floor under which no future RUA benefits can ever fall.

Think about the relief our government and industrial complex will experience when they no longer have to finance pensions and old-age medical cost. Think about the taxes we won’t have to pay to the Federal, state and city governments. With the guarantee of sizeable nest egg everyone needn’t demand such exorbitant salaries during their lifetime to fund their own retirement.

The states of California and New York are presently hemorrhaging. RUA is the tonic that will remedy that hangover.

RUA has devised many ways to transition from our existing programs to RUA’s plan. All methods will result in the increase of national wealth in such a great amount that the value of the US dollar will naturally increase. The infusion of such great sums of investment capital into the market will also substantially increase “economic activity” to such an extent that income tax receipts should double within four years allowing excess tax receipts to cover legacy entitlement costs with amounts left over to reduce the national debt.

Of course RUA needs national exposure. We plan to finance that campaign by contributions by patriotic Americans willing to go back to our Founder’s principles to revitalize the country. We need everyone’s help to spread the word and need everyone’s help to fund our publicity campaign to inform all Americans that investing 15.3% of their working life income for a no nest egg whatsoever is a grossly unfair Ponzi scheme that has be stopped. RUA is the plan to stop it. RUA substantially increases retirement benefits – 20 to 40 times more than current Social Security checks and a massive decrease in taxes taken by our government. It will also make our country a more stable and vibrant wealth creating machine.

If you are a patriotic American worried by the direction our country and its economy is headed and want to do something about it contact Dick McDonald at 818-998-6800 for instructions how you can help.

To more fully understand the scope and workings of the Rise Up America plan go to www.riseupamerica.us. You and your patriotic friends can contribute there and get a copy of free e-book that is the blueprint of what we hope will be the most significant economic change in the 21st Century.