Equality 7-2521 meets Winston Smith

Clcken la imagen para ampliar

La historia se parece un poco a la de la novela de Ayn Rand Anthem, y otro poco a la novela de George Orwell 1984. (¿Será la inspiración? Yo creo que sí).

Day By Day Cartoon


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Tal cual (Puede fallar)

Opinador

BlogBis

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United States of America

A veces se vuelve hasta fastidioso que el hobby de gran parte de la humanidad sea hablar mal de los Estados Unidos.
Hasta los hispanos que tienen en los Estados Unidos más de media vida, no encuentran nada bueno qué decir de USA, pero ahí siguen, pegados como garrapatas y no regresan a sus países de origen....

Aquí hay ejemplos de respuestas ejemplares a dichos comentarios.

1ro: Cuando en Inglaterra, durante una gran conferencia, el Arzobispo de Canterbury le preguntó a Colin Powell si los planes de USA hacia Irak no eran otra cosa que mas construcción de 'el imperio' por parte de George Bush, este le respondió lo siguiente:
Con el transcurrir de los años, los Estados Unidos han enviado a muchos de sus mejores jóvenes, hombres y mujeres hacia el peligro, para luchar por la causa de la libertad mas allá de nuestras fronteras. Las únicas tierras que hemos pedido a cambio han sido apenas las necesarias para sepultar a aquellos que no regresaron.'
Se hizo un gran silencio en el recinto...

2do: Durante una conferencia en Francia, en la cual participaba un gran número de ingenieros de diversas nacionalidades, incluyendo franceses y americanos, en el receso uno de los ingenieros franceses dijo 'serenamente': ¿Han escuchado la última estupidez de George Bush? ¡Envió un portaaviones a Indonesia para ayudar a las víctimas del tsunami!. ¿Que es lo que pretende hacer, bombardearlos?
Un ingeniero de Boeing se levantó y respondió 'serenamente': Nuestros portaaviones tienen tres hospitales a bordo, que pueden tratar a varios cientos de personas. Son nucleares, por lo que pueden suministrar electricidad de emergencia a tierra, tienen tres comedores con capacidad para preparar comidas para 3.000 personas, tres veces al día, pueden producir varios miles de galones de agua potable a partir de agua de mar y tienen media docena de helicópteros para transportar victimas desde y hacia el buque. Nosotros tenemos once barcos iguales. ¿Cuántos buques así ha mandado Francia?
De nuevo... silencio sepulcral

3ro: Un almirante de la Armada de los Estados Unidos estaba en una conferencia naval que incluía almirantes de las Armadas americana, canadiense, inglesa, australiana, y francesa. Durante un cocktail se encontró con un grupo de oficiales que incluía representantes de todos esos países. Todo el mundo conversaba en inglés mientras tomaban sus tragos, pero de repente, un almirante francés comentó que, si bien los europeos aprenden muchos idiomas, los americanos se bastan tan solo con el inglés. Entonces preguntó '¿Por qué tenemos que hablar Inglés en estas conferencias? ¿Por qué no se habla francés? El almirante americano, sin dudarlo, respondió: 'Tal vez es porque los británicos, los canadienses, los australianos y los americanos nos las ingeniamos para que ustedes no tuvieran que hablar alemán por el resto de sus vidas'.
¡Se podría haber escuchado la caída de un alfiler...!

¿Saben donde está el secreto de los americanos?.

Muy sencillo, hace mas de 150 años aprendieron algo que en Latinoamérica pareciera que no hemos querido ni queremos aprender.

Son solo diez muy simples premisas:

1 Usted no puede crear prosperidad desalentando la Iniciativa Propia.
2 Usted no puede fortalecer al débil, debilitando al fuerte.
3 Usted no puede ayudar a los pequeños, aplastando a los grandes.
4 Usted no puede ayudar al pobre, destruyendo al rico.
5 Usted no puede elevar al asalariado, presionando a quien paga el salario.
6 Usted no puede resolver sus problemas mientras gaste más de lo que gana
7 Usted no puede promover la fraternidad de la humanidad, admitiendo e incitando el odio de clases.
8 Usted no puede garantizar una adecuada seguridad con dinero prestado.
9 Usted no puede formar el carácter y el valor del hombre quitándole su independencia (libertad) e iniciativa.
10 Usted no puede ayudar a los hombres realizando por ellos permanentemente lo que ellos pueden y deben hacer por sí mismos.

DECÁLOGO DE ABRAHAM LINCOLN
And... That's all folks


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YODA

Yoda: ...a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.

Luke: Vader... Is the dark side stronger?

Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.

Luke: But how am I to know the good side from the bad?

Yoda: You will know... when you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

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Girl talk

Este es un fragmento del libro de Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged, extractado de la tercera parte A is A, capítulo IV Anti Life.

The doorbell rang.

When she opened the door, she saw the silhouette of a girl with a faintly familiar face—and it took her a moment of startled astonishment to realize that it was Cherryl Taggart. Except for a formal exchange of greetings on a few chance encounters in the halls of the Taggart Building, they had not seen each other since the wedding.

Cherryl's face was composed and unsmiling. "Would you permit me to speak to you"—she hesitated and ended on—"Miss Taggart?"

"Of course," said Dagny gravely. "Come in."

She sensed some desperate emergency in the unnatural calm of Cherryl's manner; she became certain of it when she looked at the girl's face in the light of the living room. "Sit down," she said, but Cherryl remained standing.
"I came to pay a debt," said Cherryl, her voice solemn with the effort to permit herself no sound of emotion. "I want to apologize for the things I said to you at my wedding. There's no reason why you should forgive me, but it's my place to tell you that I know I was insulting everything I admire and defending everything I despise. I know that admitting it now, doesn't make up for it, and even coming here is only another presumption, there's no reason why you should want to hear it, so I can't even cancel the debt, I can only ask for a favor— that you let me say the things I want to say to you."

Dagny's shock of emotion, incredulous, warm and painful, was the wordless equivalent of the sentence: What a distance to travel in less than a year . . . ! She answered, the unsmiling earnestness of her voice like a hand extended in support, knowing that a smile would upset some precarious balance, "But it does make up for it, and I do want to hear it."

"I know that it was you who ran Taggart Transcontinental. It was you who built the John Galt Line. It was you who had the mind and the courage that kept all of it alive. I suppose you thought that I married Jim for his money—as what shop girl wouldn't have? But, you see, I married Jim because I . . . I thought that he was you. I thought that he was Taggart Transcontinental. Now I know that he's"— she hesitated, then went on firmly, as if not to spare herself anything— "he's some sort of vicious moocher, though I can't understand of what kind or why. When I spoke to you at my wedding, I thought that I was defending greatness and attacking its enemy . . . but it was in reverse . . . it was in such horrible, unbelievable reverse! . . . So I wanted to tell you that I know the truth . . . not so much for your sake, I have no right to presume that you'd care, but . . . but for the sake of the things I loved."
Dagny said slowly, "Of course I forgive it."

"Thank you," she whispered, and turned to go.

"Sit down."

She shook her head. "That . . . that was all, Miss Taggart."

Dagny allowed herself the first touch of a smile, no more than in the look of her eyes, as she said, "Cherryl, my name is Dagny."

Cherryl's answer was no more than a faint, tremulous crease of her mouth, as if, together, they had completed a single smile. "I . . . I didn't know whether I should—"

"We're sisters, aren't we?"

"No! Not through Jim!" It was an involuntary cry.

"No, through our own choice. Sit down, Cherryl." The girl obeyed, struggling not to show the eagerness of her acceptance, not to grasp for support, not to break. "You've had a terrible time, haven't you?"

"Yes . . . but that doesn't matter . . . that's my own problem . . . and my own fault."

"I don't think it was your own fault."

Cherryl did not answer, then said suddenly, desperately, "Look . . . what I don't want is charity."

"Jim must have told you—and it's true—that I never engage in charity."

"Yes, he did . . . But what I mean is—"

"I know what you mean."

"But there's no reason why you should have to feel concern for me . . . I didn't come here to complain and . . . and load another burden on your shoulders . . . That I happen to suffer, doesn't give me a claim on you."

"No, it doesn't. But that you value all the things I value, does."

"You mean . . . if you want to talk to me, it's not alms? Not just because you feel sorry for me?"

"I feel terribly sorry for you, Cherryl, and I'd like to help you— not because you suffer, but because you haven't deserved to suffer."

"You mean, you wouldn't be kind to anything weak or whining or rotten about me? Only to whatever you see in me that's good?"

"Of course."

Cherryl did not move her head, but she looked as if it were lifted— as if some bracing current were relaxing her features into that rare look which combines pain and dignity.

"It's not alms, Cherryl. Don't be afraid to speak to me."

"It's strange . . . You're the first person I can talk to . . . and it feels so easy . . . yet I . . . I was afraid to speak to you. I wanted to ask your forgiveness long ago . . . ever since I learned the truth, I went as far as the door of your office, but I stopped and stood there in the hall and didn't have the courage to go in. . . . I didn't intend to come here tonight. I went out only to . . . to think something over, and then, suddenly, I knew that I wanted to see you, that in the whole of the city this was the only place for me to go and the only thing still left for me to do."

"I'm glad you did."

"You know, Miss Tag—Dagny," she said softly, in wonder, "you're not as I expected you to be at all. . . . They, Jim and his friends, they said you were hard and cold and unfeeling."

"But it's true, Cherryl. I am, in the sense they mean—only have they ever told you in just what sense they mean it?"

"No. They never do. They only sneer at me when I ask them what they mean by anything . . . about anything. What did they mean about you?"

"Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality. He means . . . What's the matter?" she asked, seeing the abnormal intensity of the girl's face.

"It's . . . it's something I've tried so hard to understand . . . for such a long time. . . ."

"Well, observe that you never hear that accusation in defense of innocence, but always in defense of guilt. You never hear it said by a good person about those who fail to do him justice. But you always hear it said by a rotter about those who treat him as a rotter, those who don't feel any sympathy for the evil he's committed or for the pain he suffers as a consequence. Well, it's true—that is what I do not feel. But those who feel it, feel nothing for any quality of human greatness, for any person or action that deserves admiration, approval, esteem. These are the things I feel. You'll find that it's one or the other. Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you'll see what motive is the opposite of charity."

"What?" she whispered.

"Justice, Cherryl."

Cherryl shuddered suddenly and dropped her head. "Oh God!" she moaned. "If you knew what hell Jim has been giving me because I believed just what you said!" She raised her face in the sweep of another shudder, as if the things she had tried to control had broken through; the look in her eyes was terror. "Dagny," she whispered, "Dagny, I'm afraid of them . . . of Jim and all the others . . . not afraid of something they'll do . . . if it were that, I could escape . . . but afraid, as if there's no way out . . . afraid of what they are and . . . and that they exist."

Dagny came forward swiftly to sit on the arm of her chair and seize her shoulder in a steadying grasp. "Quiet, kid," she said. "You're wrong. You must never feel afraid of people in that way. You must never think that their existence is a reflection on yours—yet that's what you're thinking."

"Yes . . . Yes, I feel that there's no chance for me to exist, if they do . . . no chance, no room, no world I can cope with. . . . I don't want to feel it, I keep pushing it back, but it's coming closer and I know I have no place to run. . . . I can't explain what it feels like, I can't catch hold of it—and that's part of the terror, that you can't catch hold of anything—it's as if the whole world were suddenly destroyed, but not by an explosion—an explosion is something hard and solid—but destroyed by . . . by some horrible kind of softening . . . as if nothing were solid, nothing held any shape at all, and you could poke your finger through stone walls and the stone would give, like jelly, and mountains would slither, and buildings would switch their shapes like clouds—and that would be the end of the world, not fire and brimstone, but goo."

"Cherryl . . . Cherryl, you poor kid, there have been centuries of philosophers plotting to turn the world into just that—to destroy people's minds by making them believe that that's what they're seeing. But you don't have to accept it. You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is—say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

"But . . . but nothing is, any more. Jim and his friends—they're not. I don't know what I'm looking at, when I'm among them, I don't know what I'm hearing when they speak . . . it's not real, any of it, it's some ghastly sort of act that they're all going through . . . and I don't know what they're after. . . . Dagny! We've always been told that human beings have such a great power of knowledge, so much greater than animals, but I—I feel blinder than any animal right now, blinder and more helpless. An animal knows who are its friends and who are its enemies, and when to defend itself. It doesn't expect a friend to step on it or to cut its throat. It doesn't expect to be told that love is blind, that plunder is achievement, that gangsters are statesmen and that it's great to break the spine of Hank Rearden!—oh God, what am I saying?"

"I know what you're saying."

"I mean, how am I to deal with people? I mean, if nothing held firm for the length of one hour—we couldn't go on, could we? Well, I know that things are solid—but people? Dagny! They're nothing and anything, they're not beings, they're only switches, just constant switches without any shape. But I have to live among them. How am I to do it?"

"Cherryl, what you've been struggling with is the greatest problem in history, the one that has caused ail of human suffering. You've understood much more than most people, who suffer and die, never knowing what killed them. I'll help you to understand. It's a big subject and a hard battle—but first, above all, don't be afraid."

The look on Cherryl's face was an odd, wistful longing, as if, seeing Dagny from a great distance, she were straining and failing to come closer, "I wish I could wish to fight," she said softly, "but I don't. I don't even want to win any longer. There's one change that I don't seem to have the strength to make. You see, I had never expected anything like my marriage to Jim, Then when it happened, I thought that life was much more wonderful than I had expected. And now to get used to the idea that life and people are much more horrible than anything I had imagined and that my marriage was not a glorious miracle, but some unspeakable kind of evil which I'm still afraid to learn fully—that is what I can't force myself to take. I can't get past it." She glanced up suddenly. "Dagny, how did you do it? How did you manage to remain unmangled?"

"By holding to just one rule."

"Which?"

"To place nothing—nothing—above the verdict of my own mind."

"You've taken some terrible beatings . . . maybe worse than I did . . . worse than any of us. . . . What held you through it?"

"The knowledge that my life is the highest of values, too high to give up without a fight."

She saw a look of astonishment, of incredulous recognition on Cherryl's face, as if the girl were struggling to recapture some sensation across a span of years. "Dagny"—her voice was a whisper—"that's . . . that's what I felt when I was a child . . . that's what I seem to remember most about myself . . . that kind of feeling . . . and I never lost it, it's there, it's always been there, but as I grew up, I thought it was something that I must hide. . . . I never had any name for it, but just now, when you said it, it struck me that that's what it was. . . . Dagny, to feel that way about your own life—is that good?"

"Cherryl, listen to me carefully: that feeling—with everything which it requires and implies—is the highest, noblest and only good on earth."

"The reason I ask is because I . . . I wouldn't have dared to think that. Somehow, people always made me feel as if they thought it was a sin . . . as if that were the thing in me which they resented and . . . and wanted to destroy."

"It's true. Some people do want to destroy it. And when you learn to understand their motive, you'll know the darkest, ugliest and only evil in the world, but you'll be safely out of its reach."

Cherryl's smile was like a feeble flicker struggling to retain its hold upon a few drops of fuel, to catch them, to flare up. "It's the first time in months," she whispered, "that I've felt as if . . . as if there's still a chance." She saw Dagny's eyes watching her with attentive concern, and she added, "I'll be all right . . . Let me get used to it—to you, to all the things you said. I think I'll come to believe it . . . to believe that it's real . . . and that Jim doesn't matter." She rose to her feet, as if trying to retain the moment of assurance.

Prompted by a sudden, causeless certainty, Dagny said sharply, "Cherryl, I don't want you to go home tonight."

"Oh no! I'm all right. I'm not afraid, that way. Not of going home."

"Didn't something happen there tonight?"

"No . . . not really . . . nothing worse than usual. It was just that I began to see things a little more clearly, that was all . . . I'm all right. I have to think, think harder than I ever did before . . . and then I'll decide what I must do. May I—" She hesitated.

"Yes?'

"May I come back to talk to you again?"

"Of course."

"Thank you, I . . . I'm very grateful to you."

"Will you promise me that you'll come back?"

"I promise."

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Mientras tanto, en las montañas de Afganistán...

Telegraph

Hat tip: Rogue Gunner

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Cierra un blog

En Defensa de Occidente anunció que dejará de actualizar su blog.
Pero nos deja una invaluable serie de citas para meditar

• Rothbard
• Hayek
• Smith
• Sowell
• Churchill
• Twain
• Revel
• Braun
• Tocqueville
• Franklin
• Thatcher
• Aznar
• Friedman
• Goldwater
• Wojtyla
• Von Mises
• Fallaci
• Rand
• Reagan

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Sanata

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell
Politics and the English language.

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Peronismo

"To complain of lack of leadership is, in the field of political affairs, the characteristic attitude of all harbingers of dictatorship."

Ludwig von Mises

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President

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Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

Citado por Louis en el Opinador, este artículo de Peter Hitchens:

They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

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Once upon a time...

Había una vez un muro, que estaba edificado sobre esta línea.

Por casualidad, o no, ayer me encontré con un compañero de estudios al que no veía desde hace mucho tiempo, que, justamente, por casualidad, o no, estaba de luna de miel en Berlín el día que derribaron el muro.

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Stencil

La resignación es un suicidio cotidiano

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Guy Hawkes Day

A tirar cuetes!

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Se abren las apuestas

Carrera Presidencial EEUU 2012

Tiempo disponible:
1461 days, 5 hours 42 mins

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

Barack Obama

1.80

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

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unavailable

Sarah Palin

17.00

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

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Joe Biden

21.00

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

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unavailable

Michael Bloomberg

21.00

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unavailable

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Mitt Romney

21.00

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unavailable

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Bobby Jindal

26.00

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unavailable

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unavailable

Hillary Clinton

26.00

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unavailable

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unavailable

Mike Huckabee

34.00

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unavailable

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unavailable

Tim Pawlenty

34.00

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

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unavailable

Charlie Crist

41.00

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unavailable

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unavailable

David Petraeus

51.00

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unavailable

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unavailable

John McCain

51.00

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unavailable

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Mark Sanford

51.00

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unavailable

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Newt Gingrich

51.00

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unavailable

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Mark Warner

67.00

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

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Al Gore

101.00

Tiempo disponible:
unavailable

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unavailable

Brian Schweitzer

101.00

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unavailable

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Jeb Bush

101.00

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unavailable

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Ron Paul

101.00

Ladbrokes

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How may votes did you cast today?

ACORN

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Cita del día

"The fate of the country ... does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning."

Henry David Thoreau




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Nationalize This!

The New Republic

By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

How America's financial meltdown gave Argentina's president an ideal opportunity to plunder people's savings.

WASHINGTON--I recently suggested that the U.S. government's bailout of the financial system, which includes the de facto nationalization of several banks, would arouse populists around the world and give them the perfect alibi to confiscate private property. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina has been the first to confirm my prediction.

Terrified that she would not be able to pay off about $10 billion of public debt fast approaching maturity, Fernandez de Kirchner nationalized her country's private pension funds. The 10 affected funds constituted the biggest source of savings for Argentina's economy and the financial system's primary source of liquidity. With the stroke of a pen, the savings of 10 million people--about $30 billion--have been passed on to the Peronist government, which is sort of like putting the family jewels in Ali Baba's care.

Unlike what happened in other Latin American countries that privatized their social security regimes in the 1990s, Argentines who opted for private, individual accounts were allowed to go back to the old system if they so wished. When Cristina's husband, Nestor, was president, the couple announced that they would change their own private pensions back to the state-owned system.

If that is not enough indication that the hand of the authorities was never too far from the workers' pockets, consider this: The government was already using a large chunk of the money belonging to the private pension funds by virtue of the fact that 60 percent of their capital was invested in government bonds--something that was required by law. Given the magnitude of the government's spending commitments and the national debt, not even that was enough.

The government wants to pay off the debt that will mature in 2009 so that it can request new loans and sustain its populist model. With a 30 percent inflation rate and the prices of commodities going south, the model is already in dire straits: The price of soybeans dropped 50 percent this year, as did the price of oil. (Argentina exports natural gas, whose price shadows that of oil.)

One-third of the 10 million Argentines who owned individual pension accounts were still economically active and contributing 11 percent of their wages. The government is betting on those contributions as a source of funding for its ongoing populist spree once it pays off part of the debt.

The financial meltdown in the U.S. and around the world gave Fernandez de Kirchner an ideal opportunity to plunder the people's savings. "When the interventionist policies are adopted by the United States," the president said, sarcastically, "they are charming and intelligent, but when Argentina adopts them they are statist and populist." The pretext was that if the government did not nationalize the private pension funds, their investments would be dragged down by the financial crisis. Of course, as soon as the nationalization was announced, the Argentine stock market collapsed. The ripple effects were felt as far as Spain, where the markets also suffered dearly.

Unlike six years ago when Argentines took to the streets in order to protest the freezing and devaluation of their bank deposits, this time there has been little initial reaction. "Now," says Argentine economist Gabriel Gasave, "you will not find the victims of this plunder in the public square. Many of the people affected are future retirees for whom retirement funds are an abstraction."

Under the Kirchners, Argentina has been living in a world of make-believe. Following the old populist recipe, the presidential couple raised public spending 200 percent and salaries 40 percent in the last four years, kept interest rates artificially low, established price controls and created state-owned enterprises. But the truth is that there was little private investment and scant wealth-creation. Foreign direct investment dropped almost 30 percent in the last three years. Sooner or later, reality was going to explode ... in the faces of the middle class and the poor.

The Kirchners have prolonged Argentina's modern tradition of self-destruction. To think that six decades ago, when Europe was engulfed in World War II, Austrian author Stefan Zweig could write in his famous autobiography that in Argentina, "there was an abundance of food, wealth, surplus, there was endless room and hence food for the future!"

The delicious irony here is that even Juan Domingo Peron, the legendary populist whom the Kirchners regard as a national hero, declared in the 1970s that "nationalizing private pensions is theft." He was talking about his own heirs.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is the editor of "Lessons from the Poor" and the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute.

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Argentina Impoverishes Itself Again

Wall Street Journal

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder."
-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law," 1850

Our subject today is not Barack Obama's "change" plan to "share the wealth." But readers who want to know what happens to a nation that legalizes plunder -- as the 19th century French economist termed the taking of private property for socialist ends -- will want to pay attention just the same.

Argentina is a constitutional republic with many historical similarities to the U.S. It has a rich immigrant heritage and an abundance of natural resources. But the U.S. is a rich, advanced country and Argentina is poor.

How did the breadbasket of South America fall so far behind? One explanation goes back some 90 years, when the Argentine Supreme Court began chipping away at property rights as a way of addressing economic inequality. Argentine politicians quickly learned that lawful plunder was their path to power.

This history is still being written, and the latest chapter ought to frighten Americans.

After seven straight years of driving up government spending and hammering every capitalist in sight, the Argentine government, which went bust in 2001, is running out of money -- again.

No surprise there. For more than a few years, analysts have warned that inflation, trade protectionism, disregard for contracts and confiscatory tax rates were having a deleterious effect on capital flows.

Suboptimal investment rates, the same analysts warned, would mean economic trouble when global growth began to slow and the commodity boom came to an end. But former President Nestór Kirchner (2003-2007) and his wife, current President Cristina Kirchner, had promised to bring change to Argentina and didn't want to hear it. They thought they saw better returns to their own bottom lines by stoking class warfare while increasing government spending.

That revenues would, at some point, fail to meet the rising expenses of the welfare state was predictable. The only mystery was when the wall would be hit and how the further plunder to make up the difference would be carried out.

On Oct. 21, Mrs. Kirchner ended the suspense by announcing that the nation's private pension system -- with a stock of $30 billion and a flow of $5 billion annually -- would become government property. To put that in words that Americans can more clearly comprehend, it would be as if the assets of all 401(k)s were suddenly swept out of owners' accounts and into a single government account.

Mrs. Kirchner defended her decision to seize the pension assets by asserting that the market is too risky for retirement savings, and that the returns earned by private-sector fund managers are not adequate.

That's quite a claim considering that the average annual return of Argentina's private-sector pension managers over the past 14 years is 13.9%. But it is even more absurd if one compares the private-sector returns to those of the government's pay-as-you-go social security system over four decades.

Last week La Nacion columnist Adrián Ventura reminded his compatriots of this "history of state fraud." In the 1960s, "the law guaranteed retirees 82% of their salaries," Mr. Ventura writes. But, he says, "it became impossible to calculate." How come? Because the government did not publish the true rates of inflation and, more broadly, because politicians had zero interest in protecting the assets. "The government did little to maintain its promise to pay good pensions to workers," Mr. Ventura explains, "and it did a lot to make use, for itself, of their savings."

The columnist was not just teaching a history lesson. He was reminding change advocates that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Today, the Argentine central bank stands accused of manipulating official inflation data and, because politicians have been spending like mad, between now and the end of 2009 the government will encounter a $10 billion financing gap.

By law half of the privately managed pension assets are already allocated to government debt. But it is not unreasonable to suspect -- as more than 70% of respondents in a Buenos Aires poll said last week -- that Mrs. Kirchner is acting not to achieve better returns, but to get her hands on the rest of the money ahead of midterm elections next year.

Mr. Ventura echoes the fears of many when he writes that her legislation "puts almost no limits on how the money can be used, and if it did, nothing would stop the government from modifying it or ignoring it."

Long-suffering Argentines know well that once converted into "an instrument of plunder" there is no limit to the pain the law can inflict. Americans might note that even when government is already highly interventionist, things can get worse.

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On the Road to Argentina and Tyranny

Blog Critics

Written by Dave Nalle
Published October 28, 2008

With the election almost upon us and most polls showing Barack Obama with a substantial lead, many people are wondering what the future might look like with the Democratic party in control of the White house and both houses of Congress.

Speculation and fearmongering abound. Obama's Marxist background and openly socialist rhetoric have raised fears despite the moderate positions and conciliatory statements which have characterized his campaign. Talk of redistributing wealth and proposals for raising taxes on corporations, small businesses and individuals are a cause for concern. How will Obama pay for all of his promises and massive expansion of social welfare programs without huge tax increases? Based on the extraordinary level of hate-filled rhetoric coming from leftist partisans it's hard not to believe that they will be out for political revenge once they come to power.

It's unlikely that every dire scenario and gloomy prediction will come true, but recent events may be giving us a sign of what is to come. There is no question that Obama will need money for further bailouts, to pay for new programs like socialized medicine and just to meet already existing obligations and ballooning debt from entitlement programs. There is an absolute limit to how much he can raise from taxes, even if he taxes the middle class at unprecedented levels.

Yet there is one source of substantial wealth which could be tapped into, the nation's investment in pensions and private retirement plans. Pension funds, 401k plans and personal IRA accounts have a total value of trillions of dollars. If the government were to seize those assets and then replace them with low-yield, low-risk government bonds of equivalent value, it would give the government a huge cash infusion, and offer a more stable alternative to private citizens than controlling their own retirement investments. It would essentially be a second plan similar to social security. It might cause devastation in the stock market and retirement savings would probably grow more slowly than inflation, but President Obama would be able to pay his massive bills.

We can already see the model of this plan being implemented in Argentina, where socialist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is preparing to seize private pension plans with a value of about $30 billion to keep her government operating and make credit available as Argentina faces the same kind of banking and credit crisis which is afflicting many other nations worldwide. In response to this plan Argentina's stock market fell 13%, further contributing to the worldwide financial crisis.

Congressional Democrats are already discussing similar proposals. Listening to the advice of economist Teresa Ghilarducci of New York's New School, Representative George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and Representative Jim McDermot who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are seriously considering eliminating tax breaks for 401k accounts and redirecting future 401k funds into a system of government-run retirement accounts to which all workers would be required to contribute. Individuals would no longer control those investments, but would instead be required to invest in government bonds with a yield of only 3%.

The details have not all been worked out, and while it would not amount to outright seizure of assets, it would take away the tax benefits which encouraged people to invest in 401k plans in the first place; taking away future earnings and replacing them with a new social security style plan with a yield lower than the rate of inflation. Our current 401k plans would become regular stock accounts and 5% of our future earnings would go into government held treasury bill accounts. The 3% interest on those accounts would be added to our Social Security payments, while the government would keep the principal in the account for its own use. Paying 5% a year for a 3% return in the future really isn't a very attractive deal.

This $80 billion in bonus revenue and the gradual future infusions of cash into the government coffers from this plan will only provide a fraction of the additional revenue the Obama administration will need. Once they start down the road of taking private investment benefits away, why should they stop? Who could stop them if they control both houses of Congress and the presidency? The demand for money will far exceed what they can raise from taxes, and there's an awful lot of money sitting in private pension plans, IRAs and other retirement accounts. Why not take it all and pay the owners in government promises?

Of course, all of these different retirement accounts are the result of agreements between workers and their employers or citizens and their government. They are essentially contracts, and the sanctity of contracts is the most fundamental cornerstone of the law. When you put your money into a 401k, you did so on the basis of promises made to you by the government about how that money would be treated in the future. Without those promises you might have kept the money and used it for something entirely different. You scrimped and saved and denied yourself the benefits of that money you earned, and, if Obama and the Democrats have their way, you may not get the benefits they promised. Or, if they follow the Argentine model, you may lose all control over that money, trading it for a few hundred dollars added onto your social security check at a rate set at the whim of government bureaucrats.

There is a marked tendency among those who have been too long in government and especially those who subscribe to the share-the-wealth philosophy of socialism, to believe that all money essentially belongs to government and that it is only in the hands of private citizens because government chooses to let them keep it, at least temporarily. For them, the needs of government are greater than the rights of the citizens; once they reach the limit of what they can feed into the giant maw of the state from taxation, they will start to look for back-door taxes, and pensions and retirement accounts will be hard to resist.

This attitude is fundamentally wrong. It is a critical violation of the right to own property and enjoy the fruits of your labor, which is part of natural law; fought for in the revolution, explicitly recognized in the Bill of Rights. The money in your 401k, or any other retirement plan, is not the government's money. It is not your employer's money. It does not belong to the collective population. It doesn't belong to the "less fortunate." It is your money and belongs to no one else. When government tries to take it in violation of the terms they previously agreed to, they are no longer a legitimate government. On that day they will have become tyrants.




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Mala imagen

Encuesta: Datamatica
Hat tip: La hora de maquiavelo

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La reina se asusta de su sombra

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