Fraud is a Feature

By Brent Regan

Is there a functional difference between socialism and fraud?

“To protect these rights, governments are created among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” The Declaration of Independence enumerates the proper roll of government, to protect the rights of the governed. As citizens we pay taxes to establish systems designed to protect our rights. We create a system of justice and laws to codify standards of behavior, resolve conflicts and punish those who transgress. Each individual surrenders a portion of their retained wealth to provide these protections.

It is a contract that we have with our government to provide services for compensation. Sometimes those services are direct. You pay taxes and water comes out your tap, your garbage is collected, your street is kept clear and if your house is ablaze the fire department will come put it out. The wealth you surrender as these taxes eventually comes back to you in the form of services including protection from disaster and lawlessness.

But we also have the progressive socialist taxes enacted with the promise of delivering “equity” but are functionally indistinguishable from armed robbery. The government confiscates your wealth so that it can be given to other people. Naturally these actions are done with the full support of the other people who benefit from the generosity of the representatives they voted into office.

Consider a situation where payment is demanded from you under the threat of punishment and the money that is taken is not applied to your benefit. Does this describe an armed robbery or socialist taxation? The answer is “Yes.”

A friend spent several years in Santiago Chile where she learned that if you left an item in your car and it was gone when you returned it was considered your fault, not the thief’s fault, because you didn’t protect your property. That is their culture. For most of human history, and many parts of today’s world, ownership is indistinguishable from possession. It is yours if you have it, regardless of where you got it. The idea that you can own legal title to something and the government will protect that title is a relatively new concept.

If you own title to something of value, like a house, you can leverage the value of that asset to create more wealth. You take out a loan using titled property as collateral and use that money to start a business, hire employees, and provide useful products and services which creates prosperity. Having titled ownership is an essential ingredient for the prosperity Americans enjoy and others envy.

Democrat supported taxation for socialist programs corrodes our idea of ownership. You don’t own it if it can be taken and given to someone else, making your confiscated wealth free for the taking to those that “qualify” and apply.

Democrats openly support and defend the immigration of millions from cultures that do not see ownership the same way you do and they arrive in sufficient numbers to form enclaves that resist acculturation and assimilation. The new arrivals see billions of dollars in benefits that can be claimed through a simple procedure.

We see what is happening in Minnesota as fraud, but the people committing the fraud see it as simply taking advantage of an opportunity enabled by socialist policies.

Socialism involves taking money from people that earned it and giving it to people that didn’t. You may call it theft or fraud but Democrats see it as the system working as designed, which is why they encourage and defend it. This shouldn’t surprise you.

It’s just common sense.