It's time to put the ship back on course...
By: Jeff Bennett - February 21, 2009These are certainly some unsettling times. Bank failures, the mortgage crisis, job losses, declining values of real estate and investment portfolios... the list goes on and on.
And while the current circumstances are somewhat unique, this country has a long history of dealing with economic downturns. The people of the United States have endured the Great Depression of the 1930's,
stagflation and recessions of the 1970's, the 1981-82 recession, the stock market crash of 1987 and the aftermath of 9/11. And through all of these troubling times the U.S. continues to be the greatest wealth-building nation on the planet.
Capitalism has a special way of taking care of itself. This country will get through this difficult stretch, but only if we allow the free market system to operate in a manner that will promote
financial healing.
Stimulus packages, bailout plans, and nationalization of commercial enterprises, in my opinion, are not viable solutions. The U.S. government
has a poor track record when it comes to running businesses. When faced with fiscal challenges, the easy answer has always been to raise taxes and spend more
on government programs. Although these may seem like intelligent things to do (from the people who want "quick fixes" and "easy outs") they are not,
and significantly hinder the efforts of our great nation whose cornerstone is a free enterprise system.
If the plan now is to re-distribute the wealth, level the playing fields, payoff the mortgages of those who could not afford them and
print trillions of dollars in legal tender to "stimulate" the economy, then the healing process will take much longer than if we just left it alone.
The tax base (that allows the government to operate) is generated by businesses that create jobs and put people to work. People in the workforce also support Social Security
and Medicaid through payroll deductions for the welfare of our nation's aging population.
One of the great attributes of the United States of America is that anyone in this country can develop an idea, a product or service and establish a business
to take these things to market. Profit motives are the fuel of innovation. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, the Wright Brothers and Bill Gates are
a few examples of those who made their dreams into profitable realities. They also put people to work, reinvested profits into other ideas and created entirely new industries and service offerings from their inventions.
I applaud the pioneers of industry and the modern day businesses that continue to carry this entrepreneurial flame for our future generations.
This is not a time to lie down and allow socialism to take over. This is a time to stand up, say what you feel and turn the ship back on course.
This is a time to tell the politicians to go back to the history books and take a long hard look at what works and what has not.
I will close with an excerpt from a famous speech that Teddy Roosevelt gave back in 1910.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
I do not wish to live in the U.S.S.A. (the United Socialist States of America). I hope that you will join me in the fight to keep the spirit of free enterprise alive.
Thank you and God bless America.
Jeff Bennett
Bennett Resources
jeff@bennettresources.com
