The elite are looting America

By Benjamin Wetmore 

Only a generation or two ago, there was the concept of the national interest and the public interest that public servants sought to serve. This abstract concept said America was a special place, with good values, and certain things needed to be done to protect America’s long-term interests. 

Today, there are only ideologues. No one remembers any national interest. The race to overtake other competing ideologies means actual national interest will become a forgotten memory.  

Trillion dollar ‘stimulus’ bills like Biden’s $3.5 trillion “infrastructure” bill have nothing to do with stimulating the economy. They’re the economic simulation of stimulation. Rather, these bills and policies are payoffs. They’re the looting of America through Washington’s taxing power. 

They’re taking money from other people, to give it to some other people.  

Some may say that’s ‘redistributing wealth,’ but the people being economically dispossessed are middle class workers and small businesses. They are far from the ‘rich’ in this country. By adding trillions more to the national debt, they’re guaranteeing a reduction in services to America’s future poor. More so, they’re guaranteeing tax hikes on America’s future middle class.  

Will the rich ever pay their fair share of taxes? No, they won’t. They’ll move abroad, move money out of US jurisdiction, and utilize convenient ‘loopholes’ that benefit those with high-priced accountants and high-powered attorneys.  

As Trump said in the 2016 debates, the rich have plenty of tax loopholes and they know how to use them. 

Additionally, most of the wealthy have assets immune from tax. They don’t receive their wealth via income. Working folks earn income, while the rich gain dividends.  

The minimum amount earned to even have to file taxes is $12,400, a number that too rarely increases. Think of the enormous tax and compliance burden America could lift on the people earning hourly wages if that were $40,000 instead. But our political class isn’t interested in helping people with their actual lives. They distract us with emotional hot button political issues while they loot the country.  

There are also policies being developed that would further loot the country for the benefit of an elite few. 

Taxing nonprofits 

For years many, mostly on the left, argued for the need to tax non-profits. They say they drain the tax base of an area. While they certainly don’t add to the revenues of an area, taxing them would immediately cause governments to prey upon small churches and civic groups after having bankrupted many of their local businesses.  

A functioning city, county, state, and federal government should be able to meet its financial obligations without having to tax the Boy Scouts. But this is another opportunity for the wealthy in America to steal from an economic class meant to better the entire country. 

It’s a way for the rich people running the government to take more money from the public with zero accountability. 

Abuse of federal and public land 

Our national greatness comes in no small part from the availability of land. It’s given a frontier to settlers wanting to stake their claims, and it gave cheap homes to people wanting to start a family and live in peace. 

However, the federal government’s overt policy has been to lock up, restrict, and limit the use of land. That, and to constantly grow their dominion of land under lock and key. 

They remove this land from development and overregulate its use whenever they do allow it to be used. They also treat farmers, ranchers, and users horribly. 

Undeveloped land in one midwestern state was once leased to the willing for 99-year leases if they’d agree to maintain the land and alert the authorities if anything was wrong. It was a wonderful private solution to land management and forestry service. 

However, this policy was discontinued, and the leaseholders have been harassed into surrendering their remaining leases. This option has been permanently closed because official policy is removing citizens from their public land birthright. 

Environmental madness and expensive electricity 

Utilities were given monopolies to give the public reliable power at affordable rates. This legal arrangement, however, led many of these utilities to raise rates while providing worse service. The higher electrical rates are a key way to stifle new manufacturing growth as it’s often one of the main expenses. 

Many of these rate hikes are predicated on shifting to ‘green’ energy, usually solar or wind, both of which are unreliable and expensive. They usually produce electricity at times the grid doesn’t need it and come with major negative environmental and economic consequences when they’re decommissioned. 

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and we have enormous stores of natural gas. But instead, we grow our electrical grid by buying China’s rare earth minerals to make inefficient solar panels, and near-worthless wind farms. 

Some midwestern utilities have even been caught decommissioning carbon-free hydropower and biomass plants because the utilities don’t care about producing power efficiently. They build power plants designed to last 30 years. That’s the same length as the bonds they sell to Wall Street guaranteeing the dividends of the rate hikes they plan to foist on captive customers. 

These utilities don’t see their customers as their clients. They see Wall Street bond traders as their customers. So, service will never improve, costs will never go down, and rates will always go up.  

The only way to really describe what is happening is to say we’re being looted by our elites. We’re being stripped of our wealth and assets and being ransacked while no one is watching the cash register.  

Russia was looted by the Communists when they took power, and then looted again by the Communists when they were kicked out of power. Syria was looted. Libya was looted. Major countries and even major icons were looted during periods when power changed. 

During those times, no one cared about the common good anymore, only enriching themselves. Where did Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus go? Where did Bush’s trillions to Afghanistan go? The media doesn’t even bother to ask. 

We’re in that period of public looting now. Priceless things are being sold and transferred under our noses. Power is shifting under our feet. New billionaires are being created through public corruption. 

There might be merit to the argument we should redistribute such wealth to the poor, but no poor are beneficiaries.