I love this video of Phil Donahue interviewing Milton Friedman.  People bandy about corporate greed, entrepreneurial greed, and excess profits like they can tell the difference between greed, profits or excess profits.  It is hard enough to know your own motives, let alone assign motives to others.  Entrepreneurs risk their capital and their must be a reward or no one would do it.  To call profits greed is insane.  In a true free enterprise system, no one is forced to surrender their hard earned money to a business.  If Starbucks can sell $4 dollar coffees, who am I to say Starbucks is greedy?  Didn't the customer willingly surrender their money for the coffee.  If it was freely given for the coffee; why would a third party, that wasn't involved in the deal, have the audacity to call it greed?  If someone in a true free enterprise system is making a billion dollars, they must be satisfying the customers.  If not, the customers will leave and go elsewhere. 

It is time people start thinking again.  Labels and character attacks are a cheap way to get out of thinking.  In my opinion, we need less name calling and more thinking.  Hey, I have a great idea, why don't we elect some government officials that can balance a budget and not just print money!  Just because we will be dead when the bill is due, doesn't leave us without a moral responsibility to future generations.  I better watch it, someone might call me a name for thinking.  If we had a balanced budget amendment, wouldn't the political leaders have to start making tough calls - like every family in the world has to make on finances.  No one has an unlimited budget, unless they are given the right to print paper money and own millions of acres of forest.  This is morally wrong and must be stopped.  Is anyone else concerned about the moral and fiscal responsibility gap between our elected officials and the hard working citizens? God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Here is a thought provoking article from Walter E. Williams that was sent to me from another hungry student of this blog.  Mr. Williams is a clear thinker and discusses the issues in a thought provoking style.  You cannot have freedom and tyranny at the same time.  Either our country believes in freedom that is grounded upon private property or it believes in theft mandated by those in power.  The American people are losing the ability to reason on freedom and tyranny because they are losing the ideas of our founding generations about these two terms.  When America forgets its past, it will fall prey to demagogues promising everything and delivering only serfdom.  Read the article and please share your thoughts. God Bless, Orrin Woodward  

Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. You say, "That's a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You'd better be prepared to back it up with evidence!" I'll try with a few questions for you to answer.

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends.  

In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else. If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.

The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda. A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind's most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another? A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government.

Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes. As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes? In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.

I am all too afraid that a historian, a hundred years from now, will footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed private property rights and limited government but it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs -- arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.

Here is an excellent analogy on socialism that was sent to me by one of the many hungry students on this blog.  I do not assume the story is real, but the principles are real.  You can go all the way back to the pilgrims and the shared field to see the effects of socialism. Imagine if education graded on a socialistic curve?  What a shame common sense is not common.  Free enterprise is not perfect, but it is head and shoulders above coercion, which is the only other option regardless of what name it is given.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

An economics professor at (Take your Pick) said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too, so they studied little.

The second test average was a D. No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else.

To their great surprise, all failed. The professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder it is to succeed the greater the reward, but when a government takes all the reward away, no one will try and no one will succeed...