Mike Adams - How Capitalism is Destroying My Neighborhood

Author's Note: If you don't get this, then you aren't reading enough Walter Williams. Of course, one can never read enough Walter Williams.

I used to be caring and compassionate and liberal. I supported gun control and the “right” of the government to seize a large chunk of my paycheck in order to plan my retirement for me. But, somewhere, somehow, along life's twisted way, I became a greedy capitalist pig. And, truth be known, it's affecting my entire neighborhood.

It all started on New Year's Eve when my friend Adam came by to help me with a small project inside the house. On that Eve, Adam informed me that my property wasn't exactly looking like the Garden of Eden. He suggested that I take the time to paint my front porch, which was beginning to look a little worse for the wear. The winter was mild (and the porch was covered) so I decided to try and knock out the project before classes resumed for the spring semester.

Unfortunately, when I repainted the front porch, I noticed some rot around a leaking gutter. I called Adam to fix the rot and the gutter. Adam focuses on structural repairs and does the very thorough work I can't always do myself given my hectic speaking schedule.

After I finished painting the porch, I decided to go all the way around the house and paint all the trim and windows while I was at it. Truth be known, I was concerned that there might be other rotting areas that had popped up in the five years since I had last painted.

Sure enough, I found two rotted window sills. I had them fixed immediately. While the work was being done, my across-the-street neighbor came over to chat. Realizing he hadn't inspected his upstairs windows and trim in some time, he climbed a ladder and got to work on his house. We both appreciated each other's efforts. In a few short weeks, we both got to look across the street at a freshly painted house instead of a dingy one.

Both of my window rot problems were caused by bushes that had grown against the house and trapped moisture on the window sills. So I decided to have all my flower beds flipped and all the bushes in them trimmed back away from the house. With so much work to do, I enlisted the help of my friend Mark who owns a lawn care business. We managed to shape up the entire property in just a few weekends - just in time for the azaleas to bloom in the month of March. Were it not for my Colorado summers, my North Carolina springs would be my favorite time of year.

The neighbors seemed to appreciate my landscaping efforts. A couple of them stopped by to thank me for motivating them to get to work improving their lawns. I'm not sure why they were thanking me. I wasn't doing it for them. But I'm afraid I'm getting ahead of myself.

When Mark came over, we discovered a problem with a small creek that runs along the line separating my property from my neighbor's. We followed the creek, which dumps into the intercostal waterway about 300 yards from my house. We discovered that some creek obstruction on a contiguous property was causing draining problems on my property. So we solved the problem by planting a grove of four Cyprus trees along the property line. Those trees suck water faster than deficit spending sucks the life out of the economy.

Shortly after planting the trees, I got a call from a neighbor who wished to thank me. It seems that my new row of Cyprus trees was placed perfectly in order to block the line of vision between his back porch and a neighbor's yard that was filled with unused equipment - including four empty boats. He said that my decision to plant those trees would greatly enhance the value of his home and his ease in selling it. Of course, I wasn't doing it for him. Now, I'm not so far ahead of myself.

My decision to start this spring's round of home improvements began with a realization that I needed to give my house a facelift in case I decided to sell it in the near future. I was not motivated by my desire to improve my neighbor's asking price. I was motivated by my desire to improve my asking price. I also realized that my structural rot problems had to be fixed before I closed a sale some time in the future. I could choose between a) having my friend fix it for a reasonable price, or b) operating on the terms of the buyer at a later date.

In other words, all of my decisions were motivated by self-interest. And each of them had a positive effect on other people. But none of the improvements would have been made had I not been personally invested in the outcome. The implications for our current assault on individual ownership and property rights are difficult to miss.

Of course, socialism is a cancer that rots deep inside of structures long before its occupants take notice. The longer we wait to treat it, the more everyone loses in the end.

Mike Adams

Mike Adams

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus.

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American History - Bill Whittle - American Exceptionalism

Bill looks at how America is indeed exceptional -- a once-in-history success militarily, economically, scientifically and culturally.

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Andrew Klavan - Obamanomics 101 - Understanding How the Obama Economy Works

As President Obama explains his economic policy (or explains away the consequences of that policy), City Journal's Andrew Klavan cuts through all the spin with this very, very important primer on both Obamanomics and the truth about capitalism.

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Star Parker - No Surprise When Cory Booker Defends Capitalism

Winston Churchill captured what this presidential election is about when he observed “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

It’s why the young black Democrat mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker, got high level repudiation from the Obama campaign, including from the president himself, when he insolently suggested that Bain Capital, the investment firm once headed by Mitt Romney, might actually do positive things.

Booker, an Obama campaign surrogate, went off script on Meet the Press when he refused to justify a campaign attack ad depicting the evils of Bain. “I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity….Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital.”

This was more than insubordination to Booker’s campaign handlers.

It was unmitigated heresy driving to the core of the Obama campaign message. The narrative, telescoping the theme of four years of this presidency, says that the American economy collapsed because of unbridled capitalism. To recover, the narrative continues, we must allow all knowing, all powerful, but compassionate political leadership in Washington to re-arrange the American economy and make sure businessmen never steamroller Americans again.

But Booker, educated at Stanford, Oxford, and Yale Law School, is a new breed of young black politician, who is actually trying to make a difference. And he is too close to realities on the ground to deny the truth he sees.

As mayor of Newark, he governs a city that is more than 50 percent black with a 25 percent poverty rate. It’s clear that what Newark needs is more business and investment, not more government.

George Mason University economist Walter Williams recently noted that America’s poorest cities with populations over 250,000 – Detroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, St. Louis, El Paso, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Newark – have one common characteristic. For decades they have been run by liberal, Democratic administrations. The mayors of six of them have been black.

The big government, high taxation, overreaching regulation model of governing has been a saga of failure in America’s cities. And it certainly has not served well the black populations that disproportionately populate them.

And interestingly, in another paradox of black political behavior (I wrote last week about the stark contrast between the values that blacks embrace in church on Sunday and the values they vote for on Election Day Tuesday), blacks are voting with their feet against the same political regimes that they are supporting in the voting booth.

The New York Times reported last March that, according to new census data, blacks are departing our failed northern cities and heading south. Blacks may be pulling the lever for “blue” candidates, but they’re leaving the blue states and moving to the red ones.

Michigan, Illinois, New York, and other major Northern black population centers have shown net black population decreases over the last decade, and “among the 25 counties with the biggest increase in black population, three quarters are in the South.”

Professor of history Clement Price at Rutgers University in Cory Booker’s Newark says “the black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.”

These black Americans on the move are young and educated – 40 percent between 21 and 40 and one in four with college degrees – and looking for opportunity.

And the places in America today with the growth and opportunity they seek are those areas that embrace freedom and entrepreneurship.

Cory Booker knows this. And he knows that fixing America’s blighted urban areas means pushing back on the smothering government that caused this decay and inviting in creative and courageous business minds and their investment capital.

So Booker’s defense of Bain and capitalism should come as no surprise.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Bill Whittle - The Coin of the Realm

What is the coin of the realm in a country filled with sanctimonious liberals like Michael Moore, Matt Damon and Jay Z? Find out as Bill Whittle talks about the unearned moral superiority of American liberals, and their demands to redistribute American wealth.

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Austin Hill - When Will the Economy Become a Moral Issue

“I only care about the moral issues.”

If I’ve heard that phrase once, then I’ve probably heard it a few hundred times in recent years. It’s a common response I hear when I’m among socially conservative faith-based groups and individuals, and questions about our economy arise.

As a writer and talk show host I covered the last presidential election cycle in detail. Hosting daily talk radio in Washington, DC back in 2008, it would become apparent when I was speaking with a faith-based or socially conservative caller to my show because such callers would frequently express concerns over some specific issues with the candidates. “I don’t think McCain is really pro-life” was a common concern. And “Obama says he opposes gay marriage, but I don’t believe him” was another.

To these types of statements about abortion and the definition of marriage, I would often respond with questions about economics, just to see where the discussion would go. “But what do you think of Senator Obama’s plan to raise taxes on rich people and to cut taxes for others – is that fair?” I might ask. Or “Do you think John McCain is right about the stock market crash when he says that it’s all because of ‘greed on Wall Street?’”

Generally speaking, my economic questions would bring these brief talk show conversations to an abrupt end. “I only care about the moral issues” was the response I’d usually hear – as though economic issues are morally neutral or of no moral significance at all – and then the caller would say goodbye.

That was in 2008. And today, as we close-out the year 2011 and prepare to elect a President again next year, I’m wondering if socially conservative faith-based America is now ready to regard economic matters as “moral issues.”

Given what has happened over the course of the Obama presidency thus far, it should be apparent that America is now in the midst of an economic policy revolution. Faith-based individuals and groups can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and pretend that economics is not a moral issue, nor can they assume that the various economic policies that get implemented at the federal, state, and local levels of government are all morally equivalent with one another.

Considering the severe mismanagement of private sector financial markets that helped lead to President Obama’s election in 2008, and the selfish and wasteful handling of tax-payer assets in Washington during these first three years of his presidency, the need for sound, moral understanding of the economy is as great as it ever has been.

One of the most important things that socially conservative faith-based Americans should be doing right now is thinking seriously, and critically, about people’s concerns and rejections of American capitalism. For example, one of the main reasons Americans cite for their dislike of capitalism is that they believe it is an idea based entirely on “greed.”

Just as Republican presidential candidate John McCain claimed back in 2008, there are many people today who still believe that our economic malaise was brought about simply by “greed on Wall Street,” and the solution to this all this greed is to simply empower politicians and government bureaucrats to place more governmental controls over bankers and “rich people.”

Faith-based Americans can respond to this by noting, first and foremost, that greed is a problem that impacts human individuals, and not specific institutions or economic systems. It is a “people problem,” and not a systemic problem.

From there, we can deduce that simply handing-over more control of economic resources to politicians and other government employees is not the solution to greed, because government employees are human beings and subject to being greedy as well (note the government entanglements with General Motors, Chrysler, Solyndra, and other for-profit corporate entities, and how in each of these cases public money is spent to advance the personal political interests of the politicians involved, the President’s included). Indeed, when employees of our government have the ability to control increasing portions of our wealth, along with the force of law on their side, their own greed flourishes, and we’re all worse-off for it.

Instead, faith-based Americans should be thinking more in terms of how we preserve our free market economic system, while at the same time exercising our freedom within that system more responsibly. “Greed” can be curtailed in the midst of our economic activities when businesses truly have to compete with one-another for clientele (and are thereby incentivized to treat their customers respectfully), and when each of us is truly free to both economically succeed AND to fail.

When people are allowed to experience the consequences of poor economic choices – they lose customers, homes, and so forth – rather than having their government “bail them out,” then they have an incentive to behave more wisely. And that makes for a better culture, and economy.

This is only one of many concerns that Americans face regarding our economy, and our economic system. Is the faith-based community prepared to begin addressing them?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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