Thursday, July 18, 2024

Populism vs Socialism 7-18-24

Populism is a movement that encourages self-reliance and requires personal responsibility for ourselves to become economically self-sufficient and provide for our own food and shelter. This requires that we work and that means we need to have jobs and eventually earn enough money to take care of ourselves. To do that, we require an economy that will give us money in exchange for our work. We normally begin our work-life in jobs with simple tasks, working in service jobs like retail, restaurants and other entry jobs. We should begin to work part-time and summers when we are in high school. We should already know how to do jobs around the house like home repair, lawncare and kitchen work. The goal of populism is to create an economy that allows this to occur.

The work we choose to do should be in jobs we are good at and enjoy doing. I was good at music and was able to become self-employed at age 14 and the leader of a “soft rock band”. We worked 3 nights a week and played 3 hours per job. We made $5 per hour and that amounted to $45 per week from 1957 to 1961. We were fortunate because most other student jobs paid $1 per hour. I was able to work 6 nights per week, plus summer jobs to earn enough to pay for my college and other expenses from 1961 to 1965. I was married in 1964 and we bought our first house in 1966. We were blessed. The US economy was excellent. I began my corporate career in 1965 but continued to play jazz on weekends for recreation until 1975. I worked as a Personnel/HR Director from 1971 to 1993 and was kidnapped by the Atlanta Electronics companies to open a consulting practice from 1993 to 2017 when we retired. We were able to help our 6 kids pay for their cars, tuition and living expenses. My wife worked as a Dental Hygienist. Both of us loved our jobs.   We lived our working lives in the Private Sector Economy in a Meritocracy where Populism was in play and we benefitted from our good decisions. We watched our Meritocracy being replaced by Socialism and fear that our children and grand children will not have the advantages we had.

Socialism is a movement that puts the government in control of the Economy. It is “Communism Light”. It leads to Communism where the government owns the land and buildings and rents them to the population or leaves families homeless. Families are not able to accumulate generational wealth that comes from home ownership and lower taxes. The Private Sector that produces the wealth is under attack in socialist countries. We have been watching the US Private Sector GDP shrinking and the US Government GDP expanding since 2021. We see government regulations shrinking the production of oil and keeping gasoline prices high. We see food prices staying high because of higher transportation and fertilizer costs. We see auto repair and insurance costs increasing due to poorly maintained and mis-designed road and highways. Socialism begins with promising “free stuff” and spawns protests and then foments into chaos, violence and civil war. What you get is a failed state with no economy and lots of death, starvation and migration. Poor countries with large populations are the most vulnerable to socialist revolutions. Socialist countries tend to have militarized intolerant governments that don’t allow decent by the populus. North Korea is the poster-child for Socialist countries.

Human Nature eventually demands Populism. Citizens in Socialist countries are worn out paying high taxes and getting poor service. We see this in Europe and US and other developed countries.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

 

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