Everyone knows that liberal politicians get into power by promising to fight the rich for the sake of the poor, which is known as [1] populism.  Modern liberals like Barack Obama tell us they want to jump start the economy with government spending, which will create more jobs.  They promise to increase forms of public welfare and expand things like health-care for everyone, because it’s going to benefit you–the little guy–mostly at the expense of the bourgeois.  Of course, anyone with at least a little economic common sense knows this is a bunch of bunk. In fact, by looking at numbers we can find their policies are helping few other than the rich, especially in the long term.

A)  The Liberal Flat Tax

Because the government doesn’t actually have the money to support the entire economy and pay for social entitlements and two occupations, liberal economists like [2] Paul Krugman claim the answer to our problems is [3] quantitative easing, or the government’s inflation of the dollar to jump-start the economy and pay for socialist programs like health-care.  This, he claims, would circumvent the problem of debt, as any reasonable person understands that debt ruins financial entities, and moral people realize that funding today’s poor with the future poor’s money–also known as putting it on the baby’s tab–is fundamentally unjust.  It places our needs above theirs.

But even in the event of safe inflation, inflation always eventually robs the little guy, regardless of whether new deficit-increasing socialist programs claim to be benefiting him.  If wages eventually rise with inflation, they usually follow a period of belt-tightening hardship, as everyone’s buying power is reduced.  This is aside from the fact that inflation imposes an invisible flat tax which liberals would claim to despise as being “regressive.” But even when the Federal Reserve [4] pumped a trillion dollars into our economy in March (right around the time the stock market really started to rally, might I add), we’d already seen the money supply increase in the months before, and to this day it still hasn’t helped “the people.”

B)  It’s Really for the Benefit of Financial Corporations

To display this point, any person can take a quick peek at stock charts and find some interesting facts (kudos to Chris Laird [5] for pointing the following out).  First, [6] what we notice is that the stock market is doing quite well, and has been since the beginning of 2009.  Then, by looking at the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s website, [7] what we find is that although stockholders–including working people with 401k’s–are happy, unemployment is getting worse, remaining at nearly ten percent and climbing. 

Despite claiming to benefit the little guy, what we find is that the liberal government’s spending policies have gone predominantly to financial corporations, as [8] the BEA claims a benefit to financial corporations to the tune of 144.4 billion dollars in the first half of 2009, while productive non-financial corporations (also known as ones with “working man” jobs) saw a decrease of 40.2 billion in one quarter, and only increased 29.8 billion dollars in the other.  So far, that means the effects of the stock market’s rally have been far from populist, helping create extra income for bankers and little sustenance for the poor.  Of course, one could argue that the money would eventually lead to more jobs, but who knew the Left was interested in Reaganomics?

To be fair, many liberal economists would argue that [9] 401k’s had a major resurgence because financial corporations rebounded, which benefits almost half of Americans.  But they always forget to mention one other thing: Americans are forced into risking their hard-earned money on the stock market because their dollars lose value if saved.  If the government hadn’t been devaluing the money supply by printing, far fewer people’s retirement savings would have been risked in the first place because they would have saved their money instead of investing it.  That means the government created the problem of forced investment, caused investments to go down the drain, then “fixed” the problem by placing us into more debt and inflating the money supply, and then claimed to be the hero.  All of this is bad enough without considering the most dangerous effects of populist policy, which will be shown below.

C) Robbing American Security

As background for this next topic, at this moment almost [10] all oil is traded with dollars, and almost 60% of all the world’s central bank reserves [11] keep dollar reserves.  This high demand is what keeps the dollar valuable, and the high demand was caused by the assumption that dollars wouldn’t drop in value too much over time.  In short, the dollar was a good store of value.  But if the oil-producing nations and central banks suddenly decided that the dollar–their monetary investment–was quickly losing value because we Americans were printing too much, and that oil-selling nations wanted to use another type of money, the dollar would become useless.  We would find ourselves inundated with rapidly depreciating dollars, causing goods and foods to skyrocket in price, similar to the recent Zimbabwean currency collapse.

Unfortunately these movements have already begun, with [12] Arab nations scheduling their own particular “EU” style currency for use in the coming years, threatening to completely destroy our dollar because we have been cheating our business partners through inflation.  Popular economist [13] Peter Schiff claims that when such a move is to take place, along with central banks losing their trust in the dollar’s stability, we will find shopping at Walmart comparably expensive to shopping at Nordstrom’s.  This is aside from the fact that world-wide competition over currency dominance and oil-trade could very likely start military conflicts.

In short, while our benevolent leaders–Democrat and Republican–may claim to be fighting for the little guy, are the effects of their policies truly populist? 

Is putting babies into debt? 

Is forcing savers into risky investments? 

Is stealing from savers? 

Is destabilizing world banking systems? 

Is giving money predominantly to corporations? 

Is cheating our business partners? 

Is threatening to dramatically increase commodity prices? 

Is imposing a flat invisible tax upon the populace? 

Is placing us in debt to communist China? 

If what you’re really interested in is policy that protects the little guy’s investments, keeps commodity prices low, and the chance of war to a minimum, I propose the following three programs.

1.  Balance the budget by any means necessary

2.  Establish a solid currency by setting a gold standard, and ridding government control of inflation

3.  End government bailouts of any industries

It’s called honesty, Americans.  If you don’t live by it, you die from abandoning it.