Obama and the Continuing War on the Poor - Paul A. Cleveland - Mises Institute

Obama and the Continuing War on the Poor - Paul A. Cleveland - Mises Institute: "A mentor of mine, Clarence Carson, published a book in the 1970s entitled The War on the Poor. He took his title from Lyndon Johnson's so-called 'war on poverty.' Carson noted that actual wars are waged against real people rather than circumstances, and that if the government were engaged in a war it must be against some identifiable group of people. In his book, he identified the poor as that group by analyzing the economic impact of the various policies that Johnson pursued. In each new initiative of the Great Society, the effect of those policies was to raise prices on various products and cause the poor in America to suffer for the sake of a few special interests."

"[T]he failures of past policies are generally not pointed to as a reason for doubting current political promises."

"Whether we look at Obama and the Democrats' cap-and-trade legislation or their health care reform or their pork barrel stimulus bill, in each case they intend to raise prices and increase taxes on us all. While a few corporate interests will benefit grandly from such nonsense, the vast majority of us will be made poorer. The saddest part of all of this is that no one seems to care that the economic results will be most heavily felt by the weakest among us. The gross immorality of this oppression and tyranny should be evident to anyone who would but casually look at the situation."

"In this world there are only a few ways for each of us to obtain the things that we desire. We can produce the things ourselves starting from scratch, produce something valued by others and use that in trade for what we want, take the things from others by force or fraud, or receive them as gifts of charity. Only the first two of these are economic. Theft and charity cannot be universalized, because each can be achieved only by the prior production of others."