Obama Stabs Automakers with One Hand, Offers Taxpayer Subsidies with Other

CFIF
1/30/2009

“The government’s view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” ~ President Ronald Reagan, 1986

President Reagan’s comment perfectly captures the bizarre, contradictory, suffocating, Orwellian essence of big government, as well as its self-perpetuating nature.

First, preening politicians scapegoat successful industries and businesses, baselessly accuse them of “gouging” and punish them via excessive “windfall profit” taxes or by facilitating class action lawsuits. Then, if the targeted industries survive, armies of bureaucrats impose innumerable and indecipherable regulations that even lawyers cannot reconcile. Finally, when that procession of taxes, lawsuits, bureaucrats and regulations successfully suffocates the targeted entrepreneurs, the same politicians heroically swoop in to revive the corpse that they themselves have created.

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