The Late Sheldon Adelson’s Billions Show the Folly Of Biden’s Plan To Waste Trillions

As many readers know, Sheldon Adelson died last week. With his passing, the U.S. lost one of its great visionaries who in many ways created the modern Las Vegas.

So what does Adelson, a long-time Republican donor, have to do with Joe Biden’s naïve plan for so-called “economic stimulus”? In many ways everything.

Biden unwittingly laments that “Just since this pandemic began, the wealth of the top 1 percent has grown by roughly $1. 5 trillion.” He doesn’t see that his ability to be generous with the money of others is directly related to the 1 percenters he takes shots at. Without the wealth-creating genius of individuals like Adelson, there quite simply wouldn’t be a way for Biden and a willing, Democratically-controlled Congress, to hand out yet another $1.9 trillion. Think about this statement of the obvious for a second.

And then contemplate the sad truth that political panic related to the coronavirus has been global. Even in intensely poor countries like the Philippines, errant politicians have forced the shutdown of quite a lot of economic activity. OK, so why aren’t there similarly ambitious and costly government “stimulus” programs emerging from Manila? The answer is kind of simple, but for those a bit slow on the uptake, Philippines President Duterte doesn’t have as many billionaires to fleece as Biden does.

Simply put, the U.S. political class can spend enormous sums (please keep in mind that the total federal budget during Bill Clinton’s last year in office was $1.8 trillion) on waste that will in no way boost economic growth because they’ve arrogated to themselves a substantial piece of the production of some of the world’s most enterprising people. Rest assured that Duterte’s relative parsimony isn’t a choice, or an economic statement….

Why won’t the $1.9 trillion boost growth? It won’t because as evidenced by the ability of Congress and Biden to extract nearly $2 trillion to hand out in politicized fashion, the growth already occurred. Precisely because the U.S. is pregnant with enormously productive people like the late Adelson, politicians once again have lots of money to throw around. Americans produce a lot of growth, politicians take too much of the monetary consequences of the growth, only to redistribute it. Get it?

To then pretend, as Biden et al do, that the spending will expand the economy, brings new meaning to double counting. They literally believe, or want you to believe, that the monetary consequences of growth can be commandeered by Washington, passed around, only for new growth to spring from the proverbial shuffling of previously-created wealth from one set of pockets to another. No, that’s not how it works.

To see why, look to Adelson again. Worth tens of billions, what the government didn’t take or borrow from him most definitely redounded to growth. Adelson could reinvest it in his casino empire, or he could have invested it in other ventures. What he didn’t spend wasn’t hidden under a mattress; rather it was reinvested. In short, the untaxed Adelson was the personification of economic growth. There are no companies and no jobs without investment, and Adelson had billions of unspent wealth that could only be invested.  

The above matters a lot. Congress aims to extract $1.9 trillion worth of unspent wealth from the U.S. economy so that Biden can claim his actions are boosting the economy. No, they aren’t. Or won’t. Wealth that otherwise would have boosted progress by virtue of it being unconsumed is now going to be handed out by Congress so that it can be consumed. In the name of recovery, Congress’s latest extraction will lay a wet blanket on it. Actions that subtract from savings and investment tend to do that. Or always do. Fear not, it gets worse.

It’s not just that Congress must penalize savers and savings in order to fund its waste. It’s that Congress is spending in the first place. Congress has no resources on its own other than the right to vote itself the resources of others. What this means is that every dollar spent by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Biden is an extra dollar of control they have over the U.S. economy. In short, growth is taxed at higher and higher rates every time Congress votes itself more of the wealth of the privately productive. Central planning that fails when tried in total also fails when it’s tried in limited fashion, and most certainly when it’s tried in near $2 trillion fashion.

Worse, it’s unnecessary. Was anyone naively calling for Congress to stimulate the economy in February of 2020? Obviously not. Americans weren’t locked down to varying degrees them. Duh!

Which means the only answer now is for the lockdowns to end. Growth is the logical state of being for economically free people, and it will be abundant when Americans are free again. It’s kind of simple.

It’s also simple that what weighs the U.S. economy down now is a lack of freedom. Yes, economic decline is the logical state for people suffering command-and-control from government. Biden’s $1.9 trillion spending plan amounts to more of the latter. Except that you don’t solve a problem of command-and-control with more of it. Get it?

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