Walking a tightrope at full speed

1) Working for an employer for wages, salary, stock options and perks.

2) Engaging in a privately owned business that requires monetary risk and management responsibilities.

3) Promotion and entrepreneur endeavors, using other people’s money, to acquire equity and compensation without personal investment.

4) Investment of accumulated capital with the expectation of earning sufficient rates of return.

5) Using borrowed or saved funds to gamble, win a lottery or simply pay bills.

6) Gaining a political position or a civil service occupation from the public sector.

7) Join a clergy that will supply your earthly needs.

8) Relying upon family resources, charity or social welfare programs.

9) Involvement in illegal activities of stealing, extortion or counterfeiting that takes or makes the money.

10) And the last and most successful means for acquiring, controlling and growing income - by directing and ruling economies - taking percentages of tribute in varied forms of interest, fees and manipulated markets.

We all are subject to some form or combination of the above. The timely and fundamental question becomes: Is your individual income situation improving or has your cash flow declined? Your answer may reflect at what stage you are within your earning years. However, as a society the current trend has the following dismal anticipation:

1) High paying jobs are vanishing as careers become far more uncertain and scarce.

2) Private businesses are hard pressed to sell at a profit or survive against corporate monopolies.

3) Returns from investments are minuscule as risks out strip rewards.

4) Inflation in basic and essential goods and service continues to rise.

5) The purchasing value of your money declines in worth.

This is a formula for a significantly reduced standard of living. The ordinary consumer is assaulted each time they attempt to provide for their family. When wealth shrinks the cost of survival extracts a much higher price. If bare essentials demand more sweat and guile, what are the prospects of most citizens keeping pace with a declining engine of affluence? Spiraling expenses for advanced education pushes most families to the wall or shackled with enormous debt. A common response is to remain single, childless and reduce expectations for a comfortable habitat.

Others take the opposite approach and continually demand from government that “free” services expand and become a ‘right’, while those still productive are sent the bill for payment. Deficit spending never disappeared, and is back with a vengeance. The continuous cycle of the tread wheel is not new, but its acceleration and the scarcity of alternatives has raised the stakes dramatically. Today, the future for the American economy looms uncertain, if not bleak.

The short circuit that has blown the economy, stems in a design flaw with the conversion from a free enterprise economy to a corporate/state redistribution system. Socialism in any and all forms is the tormentor and foe of entrepreneurial innovation. Wealth cannot be created by legislation. Capital cannot be earned without its access and availability to fund commerce. However, when macro economic policies are intended to restrict or eliminate the means to secure private financing through a system of public favoritism, the consumer is relegated to the inferno of usury credit card interest rates. The small businessman is edged out and often removed as a competitor. Only an apologist for elites will claim there is any sort of a level playing field.

NAFTA is a fine example of an organized transfer of riches and resources from productive domestic enterprises to foreign operations. The U.S. manufacturing trade deficit tells the tale. This is real money migrating from our economy, resulting in permanent lost jobs. The disconnect that most people undergo from the facts of empirical economic reality, avoid the crucial and systemic problem. State/Capitalism is not Free Enterprise!