Quote of the day......

An interesting piece by the oft vilified Charles Koch that one should consider reading. The money quote....

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers—not governments—to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

Recent studies show that the poorest 10% of the population living in countries with the greatest economic freedom have 10 times the per capita income of the poorest citizens in countries with the least economic freedom. In other words, society as a whole benefits from greater economic freedom.

Simple considerations that seem to be lost on many on both the right and the left. The Koch family has supported both candidates for office that support and further their philosophical drive to greater liberty and funded organizations such as the ACLU where their money was used against the post 9/11 Patriot Act.

One must also consider a basic fundamental premise that almost always gets lost on many debating issues today....government cannot create wealth, it can only redirect it. And this activity besides being inefficient, oft time ineffective and typically destructive, also crowds out other productive investments and changes natural incentives to markets. This extraordinary intervention is also not the function of governments that rarely have necessary capacity nor the extraordinary knowledge necessary to make such decisions. It has also transformed into a device for tyranny of one group over another in many places and this will also prove to be true in the US. Vilification of the wealthy and those productive members of society in order to strip them of their assets in order to redistribute them to others will only prove to be an incredible folly and ultimately destructive to wealth.

Charles G. Koch: Why Koch Industries Is Speaking Out - WSJ.com