Federal government and the link to poverty

And here’s the scary part—this was all the case before the bailouts and stimulus package that George Bush began and Barack Obama continued and amplified. Not only do these bailouts threaten to massively inflate our currency, spelling disaster for those whose livelihood is based in hourly wages paid in dollars, but it also directly took from all of society, not just the rich or the poor, and gave to a few select corporate entities such as Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. We know this because every new dollar created by the government in the stimulus plan detracted from the value of every dollar already existing in the pre-stimulus economy (or will do so when released into the economy).

Does this sound confusing? It should, because it is, and that’s exactly how the federal government likes it.

While the federal government would tell us that they protect the poor from the exploitation of the rich, economics would tell us that it is in the fact that federal government itself that is the greatest exploiter of our nation’s impoverished, and it is this institution that in fact facilitates much of the disparity in wealth between wealthy national corporations and impoverished local communities.

Those of the small-government mindset who wish to rally more people to their cause should not go about proclaiming that we should be immediately getting rid of affirmative action and welfare for the poor, but instead should be putting forth a rallying cry against corporate welfare, an inflation-minded Federal Reserve System, and a law enforcement system whose economic penalties weigh heaviest on those with the least money in their savings accounts. It does not have to be out of selfishness that we advocate for a reduction of the federal nanny-state.  It can, and should, instead be out of a concern for the poverty and destruction of wealth that is directly generated by this institution’s misguided policies.

Elliot Engstrom is a senior French major at Wake Forest University, and aside from his schoolwork blogs for Young Americans for Liberty and writes at his own Web site, Rethinking the State.