Free tuition - Really?

I was watching some the “young” people for Bernie Sanders speak about how great socialism is and all the great and wonderful things it will do for America. Duh? These people really don’t get it. I learned years ago that the human brain does not fully develop until about age twenty-five. It appears to me that these kids are definitely still in the under-developed category. My son told me that when he was eight years old he listened to his first presidential debates. Again when he was twelve he listened to the debates and he said that at that age the ideas of the democrats sounded really good. Now that he is grown he sees the fallacy of those ideas. People who buy into socialist ideas are either totally ignorant or their brain development is stuck somewhere around the twelve year old stage. They cannot comprehend the dangers and evils that socialism brings.

One of the ideas that Bernie is selling is “free tuition”. If you ask one of them who is going to pay for it they will usually answer “the rich”. Somewhere (any guesses?) they have been taught that rich people are bad and not deserving of what they have. To be fair the government should take away all the “rich” people gains and give to someone more deserving (like them).  To be really fair let’s look at how the rich person gets rich.

First, a person does not get rich sitting around watching TV all day or thinking about is who is going to be the next American Idol. People do not get rich by going to class till they are twenty-plus, getting a job and do the same routine over and over for forty years, never taking a risk, having a creative idea or stepping out of the norm to be different from the rest of the world. No people get rich by creating a product or service that people want (i.e. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Jeff Bezos [Amazon]) and in doing so to provide those goods and services they had to hire people, create jobs, expand and create more jobs. People get rich by creating jobs and opportunities for everybody. How many people are making money on the internet? A lot of people now make their money from the internet. None of that could have happened if there were no personnel computer, Windows or Apple operating system. If there were no internet switches (like Cisco) and fiber optic cable to tie us all together. All these came to being because someone didn’t just go to school and get a job and work the rest of his life. No, someone had an idea and took a risk. Many started out taking a big risk by signing onto a big loan to get started. Then they endured the stress of repaying the loan, paying bills, employing people and making payroll. Starting out they worked long hours and basically invested their whole lives into making their business a success. This is how most rich people get rich, hard work, long hours, risk taking and high stress.

Then along comes a kid who has probably never worked a real job or even had a job, and he wants to take from the hard working rich person to pay for his schooling. He wants the Bern(ie) to take from somebody else and just give it to him for free. But then here is the real problem the young knucklehead doesn’t see. The rich guy got rich by hard work figuring on a fair return for his risk, time and investment. If Bernie get his way, 90% of the rich guy’s income (through taxation) will go to someone else instead of his own family. After a while the rich guy will decide it is not worth the effort and quit doing the things that once made him rich. Now there is no more money to tax. What’s more other potential future entrepreneurs will see the lack of reward and won’t even try because the risk will not be worth it. Now, no longer are there any rich folks but now there is no one to replace them. As the old adage goes; sooner or later socialist run out of other people money. Then there is no more free stuff.

Speaking of free stuff, another problem with Bernie’s plan is he is going to raise taxes on the poor. Well not directly. He says he is going to tax the rich but if they are small to medium size business people then they will pass those taxes on to their customers. The price of everything will go up. Taxes are always passed down to the lowest level. If I have a small business and my taxes increase that’s an expense that doesn’t add any value to my goods and services. I have two choices, raise my prices (which may mean fewer customers) or lay people off and try to do the same job with less people. That is what’s happening when governments raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage is really a tax on employment. If I’m operating on a 5% or 6% profit margin then to maintain that margin when there is a minimum wage hike; I can lay people off, increase prices or find a machine that will do the same job for less or just go out of business. None of this is going to make Bernie’s utopia work.

You could write all day on the failures of socialism. Name one country that socialism made prosperous. You can’t, there isn’t one? People use Sweden as an example but what has Sweden produced? People there are happy to live out a simple complacent life paying more than 50% of their income to the government. But name any new product innovation that comes from Sweden, very few if any. They are content to live in a 19^th and 20^th century world.

In the end socialism bring nothing but death, suffering and bondage. First we start with politically correct speech and government think speak. The punishment is public humiliation. Then we go to group speak and intense sensitivity training is required. Then group speak will be demanded and legalized and the punishment will be reeducation camps. A Vietnamese friend of mine said his father spent five years in a reeducation camp. Really it was just a prison camp where you are punished for “wrong” thinking. If you think we could never get that bad think again. There are too many of us who will not buy into their socialist scheme. After they take our guns away they will have the same problem that Stalin and Mao did, and they will eventually come to the same solution. Over 100 million people died under Stalin and Mao.

If you know one of these “Feel the Bern” kids, take them aside and let them know the truth. If we can’t convince them then America could be lost forever.