President Obama seems to be taking some pages out of the Socialist Economic Handbook by doing everything he can to further cripple the American economy even as he protests that he's doing what he can to 'fix' it. That kind of claim has been made more than once over the past 100+ years in a number of countries and every time it has led to economic malaise and eventual collapse. In some cases it's led to civil unrest which in turn led to civil war.
Take a look at Argentina if you need a present day example of how not to 'fix' an economy. The more control the Powers-That-Be took over the economic affairs within that nation, the worst the economy became. And so it is here in the US.
It’s true that Argentina’s politicians have been waging class warfare since Juan and Eva Peron–and they aren’t fazed when it turns bloody. Obama and the Democrats are relative newcomers to the game. But Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s wealth get mugged by those who spend it–as just happened this week in Washington.Poverty was shrinking in the US back in the early 1960's and if the trend had been allowed to continue, I daresay we would have had an extremely low poverty rate. But then came LBJ's Great Society and the so-called War on Poverty in 1965 and the trend in poverty reversed as the federal government took more control over social services that had once been the purview of the states and municipalities. The poverty rate skyrocketed and economic advances made by minorities were wiped away in less than one generation. Government dependence was the fate to which those seeking prosperity had been sentenced by those who believed only the government had the ability to eliminate poverty. It wasn't until many of the Great Society programs were weakened or dismantled during the Reagan and Clinton years that we saw poverty start to shrink again.
It’s the poor and the middle class, the very ones big government says it’s trying to protect.
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Far from adding to people’s standard of living, government is the number one cause of poverty in this country. It forces those who depend on its largesse to live hand to mouth, with no time or money to plan for the future. They become unable to fend for themselves---and increasingly resentful of those who can.
When the economy tanks and the government checks have to shrink, their only alternative is to take to the streets. That’s what happening in Argentina, and in Greece; and that’s where the growth of government is taking us here, as this current budget deal increases handouts–and more and more Americans are finding that an unemployment or Social Security disability check is their only life line.
Then came Obama and the push to make even more citizens dependent upon government (and hence under government's control), all in the name of “saving them.” The question is, who's going to save them from the government?
Will it take a second Civil War to break us out of this socialist/progressive/totalitarian delusion that the government is the end all and be all of our existence and show it to be nothing but a new form of oppression by the state, or worse, slavery to the state?
While I doubt it will become something like the first Civil War, it could still be bloody and destructive, particularly when those who are constantly punished by the government for being successful decide to fight back, or worse, decide to go Galt and let the economy collapse, and with it any government legitimacy. And when the government checks stop, those who had been impoverished by and indentured to the state will revolt, just as we've been seeing in Argentina and Greece.