A couple of key points:
More than half of Americans receive some form of government assistance. It's everywhere - hidden right before our eyes within massive programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Some of it is obvious: Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits and a thousand other lofty-sounding programs. Let's call all of this what it is: welfare. If you take one dime more from the government than you pay in, you are receiving welfare and your neighbors are giving you handouts. Still more welfare is doled out to corporate America in the form of bailouts, subsidies, targeted tax breaks and the like...Dr. Wolf also discusses how the ever increasing tax and regulatory burdens are strangling American prosperity and innovation.
We pay people not to work and then act surprised when they don't. We reward businesses for failing and then act surprised when they do.
His solution to our problems is simple:
It's time America reintroduce freedom back into the free market. Every government regulation is a limitation on free choice, and this ultimately destroys opportunities, jobs and wealth. Americans are not allowed to buy an incandescent light bulb, flush a toilet, start a lemonade stand or invest in a multibillion-dollar enterprise unless some all-powerful bureaucrat grants permission.(Read the full text of "Upgrading America".)
Dr. Wolf's last point echoes a sentiment expressed by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged:
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed.America is not doomed yet. But unless we make a 180-degree course correction, we will be soon. Fortunately, many Americans are starting to wake up to this fact.
