Profit vs. epic taxation

If I am a farmer and you are a farmer, and I grow wheat, and you grow tomatoes -- By ourselves we have a poor diet.  But if we each exchange part of our produce, we will have a better diet.  Both of us profit -- both of us win.

A well timed trade can give each of us more profit, like if we make the trade in the Autumn rather than waiting until the next Spring, when the produce has been in storage longer.


Free trade is the source of profit.   Free trade can be applied to any size of market, from farm produce to barrels of oil.  No matter how complex the market, free trade will make profit appear where there was no profit before.  The profit costs nothing, but gives increase to everyone who is involved in the trade.  Society is advanced.

Obama and the Left see profit as an extraction:  In the leftist mindset, profit means someone took what someone else loses.  (This is called a zero sum. )  The Left says all profit is socially unjust.  So they have  government stepping in to force you to lose your profit. 

Ironically, when government takes away taxes, the structural case for profit extraction is met.  That is, there is no social gain at all.   When the Left propels government to tax, the government's gain is exactly what the citizens lose.  Government can get so fat that the appetite for taxes eliminates all social advance.

I am not sure how close we are to elimination of social advance.  We have a $16 trillion debt and a misfit president.  Worse, our society has a large contingent of people addicted to government handout.  If the burden of supplying all the addicts exceeds the will of the workers to work, social collapse is inevitable.

Obviously freedom is better.  It is also the best repair for social stagnation.  I just hope the voters will agree.  Or else the nation is doomed to decades of malaise.