Billionaire Mort Zuckerman Misses the Big Picture

Mort Zuckerman one of the top 200 richest men in the world and current editor of U.S. News and World Report has been painted by some conservatives as a liberal that has seen the light”. But has he?

Mort Zuckerman’s latest attack on the president’s policies occurred in an editorial in the U.S. News and World Report and was linked to on the DrugeReport last Friday.  http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2012/04/20/mort-zuckerman-president-obamas-economic-programs-have-failed.

In it he lambasted our current president’s economic policies and labels them a “Failure”. I agree with Mort on this point. Mort like a lot of Conservatives and every liberal do not get to the heart of what has been going wrong in the halls of Congress, in the Oval Office and the chambers of the Supreme court for the last 100 years. This is what Mort fails to realize is that the Collectivist Central Planning of Our economy and governing of Individual Behavior by all the previous administrations, along with the monopoly of the money supply and the setting of interest rates by the Federal Reserve and the endless wars overseas  has led us to the where we are today.

Mort’s failure to see that the Collectivist ideology that underpins the Entire U.S. Federal Government Budget is the ONLY REASON for the “Great Recession” that most of us are endruing today. (Around Washington D.C. there is no Recession.)  Instead of advocating for less Central Planning and Control by Politicians and Bureaucrats over the lives and wallets of individuals he advocates for more. Instead of Advocating for More Individual Liberty he Advocates for more Government Intervention.

Mort and his ilk are satisfied with the way the system works as a whole. Remember he wouldn’t be one of the richest men in the world if the “system” didn’t benefit him. All he wants to do is tweak the system not overhaul it. This goes for many conservatives as well who want to keep their social security and medicare, keep the war on Terror Rolling and keep Homeland Security “hunting terrorists” at home.

Mort does do an excellent in his article accurately describing the dismal economic picture in this country. He even looks deeper into the Labor Statistics than most media folks and gets it right when he says that unemployment is really closer to 15%. (That figure alone should be enough to see another indivduals sit in the Oval Office in November.)Mort also goes on to point out the unemployment rate for minorities a “liberal honey hole for votes” is incredibly high. Among hispanic teenagers the unemployment rate is 30.5% and among black teenagers it’s almost 40%. . But Mort fails to talk about how the minimum wage in particular has kept low skilled workers out of the work force and in fact was deliberately  designed to do so. He has in the past voted for politicians who supported the very policy that is keeping unskilled workers from entering the work force.

Mort goes on to lament the loss of  manufacturer jobs in this country. It’s no secret why people would want to manufacture overseas. Mort only sees how its the lower labor cost  that is “pulling” businesses off American shores. Which is  partially true. The truth is that the U.S. Federal Government is “pushing” businesses overseas to places like Mexico, Honduras, India and China because of the  EPA, FDA, OSHA, Labor Unions, Payroll Taxes, the uncertainty of Obamacare and the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Again Mort and his liberal and some many conservatives have voted to keep the politicians in Washington who do nothing except expand the very things that are destroying jobs in America.

The Payroll Tax in particular is an insidious impediment to job creation that Mort fails to attack. If businesses weren’t forced to pay for the retirement of current retirees out of their profits they would be able to hire more people immediately.. The cost of labor is higher in America because of GOVERNMENT and programs like Social Security.

Not only does Social Security hurt the hiring of new job seekers it kills the entrepreneurial spirit of the individuals who are working and makes sedentary those who have retired. Social Security was based upon the German model and was meant to “solidify” the nation and to make both young and old subservient to the State. That has been a huge success in this country. Look how the young are manipulated to vote for Politicians who promise to keep the payroll tax holiday if only the debt ceiling is increased.  The older folks don’t fare any better. Politicians are always using scare tactics to get them to vote for more and more Collectivist Politicians (Which is almost an oxymoron)  who will “shore up” Social Security so they won’t lose their benefits. It is just another lever used to move the populace to support the ever-increasing size of the State. Mort Fails to even mention this massive Ponzi Scheme or the Socialized Medicine of Medicare and Medicaid that we suffer under today. He lets down those who love liberty by not realizing  how much these types of Calcifiying Collectivist Programs  cost us all in innovation, entrepreneurship and preventing all of us from living life to the fullest.

The corporate income tax, the crushing business regulations, the payroll tax, and the minimum wage, the looming Obamacare; are all an impediment to running a successful business in America but so is  level of intelligence and skill of the average American Worker. This  plays a huge role in determining how much value an employee can offer to an employer.  Mort  doesn’t even think to indict the American Public School system as one of the main reasons why there isn’t a more robust and vibrant economy here in America. Everywhere that government intervenes the citizens loses. The Public School System in America is no different. It was based upon the Bismark model which was implemented during the Industrial Revolution in Germany. The Public School system in America was designed to create non-thinking, obedient, and easily led individuals. And that is exactly what we have today in America. A Free Market Requires Free Minds (a nod to Reason magazine), not automitons.

What is needed to revitalize the economy is to end the monopoly of the Public School system and let parents with the child’s input direct his or her education. If there was a free market in Education there would be as many different types of schools as there are places to shop. You would have the massive low-cost big boxes and the small high-end boutique schools. There would be specific schools for specific subjects just like there are stores that just sell camping equipment or building supplies. Only when a free market in education is allowed  would we see the one million new businesses created each year instead of the 400,000 that we currently have.  The Public School system has taught individuals to embrace the entitlement mentality not the entrepreneurship attitude which is needed to create for them personal prosperity which in turn would create an increased standard of living for all.

Mort at least is no fan of the Stimulus Packag or at least the White House’s stimulus plan. He accurately labels it as useless. But again he is blind to the underlying ideology behind the bailouts. In fact at the end of his piece he goes so far as to advocate for the “investing” in  infrastructure. That is always a code world for massive government spending. This goes counter to his indictment in the very same article of the Stimulus “Shovel Ready” Program of the White House.  Mort doesn’t see that the  problem isn’t the specific policies of the White House but the underlying ideology which has been the bedrock of this country’s laws for the last 100 years. Government spending will never stimulate the economy. If it did the Soviet Union would rule the world by now, Cuba would not be instituting Free Market Reforms and Venezuela, an oil rich country, would not have frequent rolling power blackouts.

Mort is worth over $2 billion. I’m not sure what his angle is here. He is currently in the business to increase sales of  U.S. News and World Report. Maybe he just wants to sell more magazines or maybe he genuinely wants to see the economy improve. His failing like a lot conservatives  to see that the politicians that he’s voted for in the past have passed laws based upon the same Ideology that the current administration’s policies are based upon which he labels in his article as “failures”. Mort should label Collectivism in any form no matter who is the “benevolent dictator” implementing it, as an Ideology of Failure, Misery and Poverty. In his Article Mort never even speaks about Individual Liberty, Private Property, auditing the Fed, ending the wars around the world, ending the U.S. Military’s mission as the overseer of the world, or ending the devastating war against freedom being waged at home by the DEA, Homeland Security, the FDA and the EPA. I’m not sure what he believes.

Murray Rothbard described the philosophical political spectrum as a ladder; with Liberty as the top of the ladder and Collectivism as the bottom rung. Our job who love liberty he said was to help others up that ladder, and if you just helped a person up one rung that was worth the effort. Mort Zuckerman maybe is taking his first steps up that ladder from the bottom rung of Collectivism. My only hope is that continues on his journey until he fully embraces the Freedom Philosophy and blessings of the Free Market.

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” Buddha

My only motive for writing this and any of my posts is to live as free as possible.  In order to do that I need others to want to be free as well so they will no longer support the Collectivst State that destroys Liberty.  Individuals when left to pursue their own rational self-interest while living under a Government that respects their natural rights will produce in abundance food, energy, clothing, entertainment, and things yet unimagined. People argue that this idea is a “Liberty Utopia” and it is just as farcical as  “Collectivist Liberal Utopia”. I would just ask them if they would rather have lived in the United States in the 1950’s (even though it was flawed) or in the USSR during that same time.

There will never be a perfect anything in this world. That doesnt’ mean that there isn’t an enormous difference between living mostly free and living mostly unfree. That is why it is imperative that every individual on Earth to not only desire to be free but to be working towards becoming more free everyday. Human beings throughout history, have when given small amounts of liberty  accomplished amazing things. Just imagine if everyone on Earth went up just one rung on the scale of Liberty and as a result supported less Collectivist Government, which meant less Politicians and Bureaucrats with the power to menace our Life, Liberty and Property. With less Government, Society which is the Private Sector is free to grow. If Mort Zuckerman wants to see “jobs” return to America he needs to first get rid of all remnants of collectivist Thought in this own mind and then use the U.S. News and World Report to campaign for the ending of all Collectivist based Laws in this country and around the world.

Brad Miller

AdvocateofLiberty and Searching for the Truth