2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY #262 "TURN A CRUTCH INTO A LADDER"

 What if we could implement a system that would vastly reduce the intrusions, expense, bureaucracy and fraud now present with the IRS?  And what if at the same time we could pre-empt and abolish the welfare system except for those people with truly special needs?  What if we could provide incentives for everyone to earn the extra dollar and to improve themselves, which are demonstrably lacking in today’s system?  What if we could at the same time implement an institutional program to assist the homeless? Would you be interested?  In other words, what if we could vastly simplify the tax system and also change the welfare system from a Crutch to a Ladder?   Please review this proposal, because I believe it will accomplish these goals, thus making so many things better for virtually everyone (except for government bureaucrats and companies like H & R Block!)  As you will see, it combines a graduated flat tax with Milton Friedman’s proposal of a Safety Net.  So, with these figures used only for illustration, no one will pay any income taxes on their first $30,000 of income (which will be defined as net revenues from virtually any source, including wages, capital gains, interest, etc.)  Then they will pay a flat fee of 10 cents for every dollar earned between $30,000 and $100,000, 15 cents for every dollar between $100,001 and $500,000 and 20 cents for every dollar over $500,000.  No deductions, so the government won’t have any reason to pry into your private life to see how you spend your money!  But what about people who earn no income?  Well, regardless of whether they just lost their jobs to a robot, want to go back to school or are just plain lazy, if they are either citizens or hold a valid Green Card and are over 18 years old they will receive a stipend from the federal government for $15,000 per year, probably broken down into monthly payments of $1,250.  And, importantly enough, they would lose 50 cents of that stipend for every dollar they earned up to $30,000 – so they would always have an incentive to earn the extra dollar!  (Thus, as you can see, $30,000 is the cut-off point where people would pay no taxes but receive no stipend.)  Of course this incentive to earn the extra dollar is almost entirely lacking in today’s system, which often provides more incentives not to work than to be productive!  (BTW Milton Friedman called his system a “negative income tax,” but I don’t like the word negative so I call it a stipend.)  In addition, importantly enough, all other welfare programs would be abolished, except those for people with truly special needs.  Think of the benefits!  People’s tax returns could be submitted on a postcard, and the savings from not having to keep records and prepare taxes would be staggering.  And if the government tried to increase our taxes or – imagine this – reduce our taxes, it would be transparent!  Furthermore, imagine the effect of getting rid of all of the bureaucracy, administration expenses, government intrusions and fraud both regarding the IRS and the welfare agencies!  And a ladder would be extended where necessary to help people like single parents, veterans, people just released from prison and those going back to school to avoid or to climb up out of poverty.

                But what about the homeless?  To begin with, I want to make it clear that if I were bleeding on the street, no one would have a legal obligation to help me unless they caused my injuries.  But I believe that we will because we want to – we are compassionate people.  That would also mean the recipients would not be entitled to receive anything, so maybe they might even be grateful!  But if homeless people were receiving $1,250 every month automatically in their ATM accounts, the private sector would quickly create some fairly inexpensive room and board facilities where people could have a roof over their heads and three meals per day for about $1,100 per month, which would still leave the recipients some money to purchase clothing and other personal items.  In today’s world, politicians mostly on occasion throw lots of money at the homeless problems, like temporarily opening some shelters and soup kitchens or paying for the homeless to stay in various motel rooms for a while, etc.  But these “fixes” don’t last.  And, even worse, most of these governmental actions actually increase homelessness, because if people can receive free beds, televisions and meals at a motel, why should they go back to work?  But Friedman’s institutional response would last because it contains incentives for everyone to become more productive. 

I was in the Peace Corps – I care about people – and I believe that homelessness is a blight upon who we are as a country.  Of course, many of the homeless people have additional problems, such as mental disabilities, drug addiction and more.  But if people need a conservatorship or drug treatment, the local governments can and should address those problems.  So this is a program I am advocating out on the Libertarian Campaign Trail.  What do you think?  If you have suggestions or criticisms, please let me know.  But if you like the proposal, please help me by spreading the word.

Quote for the week: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what is an empty desk a sign of?  Albert Einstein

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on my website at www.JudgeJImGray.com, Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.  In addition, my new book entitled “2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: Solutions that are Practical, Effective, Responsible, Libertarian, is now available at Amazon.com.   Please read and discuss it with friends, and send in a review.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #252 "TIMELESS TRUTHS"

Issues and ideas come and go, but many “Timeless Truths” always remain.  What are some of these?  Here is a short Libertarian list:

·         The Law of Unintended Consequences: Life is complicated, and almost every time a law or regulation is passed it results in some or even many negative consequences that were not intended.  An example?  The minimum wage laws directly put many people they were intended to help out of work.  Why?  Because the reality is that some people are not (yet) worth $15 per hour.

·         The Law of Diminishing Returns: If a little is good, a lot is better?  Well, most of the time it is not.  Ask any managers or owners of companies.  Sometimes there are slight imperfections or flaws in products that could be addressed and fixed.  But after a while it is simply not cost effective to spend an extra $100,000 to fix a problem that ultimately will only cost a customer or the company combined only a much smaller total amount in delays or problems.  

·         The answer to most questions is: It Depends!  Once again, life is complicated.  So, for example, in answering the question “Should cheating at cards be a crime?” The answer is “It depends.”  Why?  If a person is playing for money and cheats, that would be a fraud and could, depending upon the circumstances, appropriately result in criminal prosecutions.  But if people were playing solitaire at home, they might be cheating themselves but, otherwise, they should be left alone.  So unless one is talking about a situation involving core values, (Should we sponsor another Holocaust?  The answer is not “It depends!) the realistic answer is as stated above.

·         The Law of Supply and Demand: The First Rule of Economics is that there are never enough goods and services to meet the demand, and the First Rule of Politics is to ignore the First Rule of Economics.  Thus Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” of economics is always a part of every commercial transaction, and always will be.  This means that people acting in their own economic self-interest – both as producers and buyers – will always be a part of the equation.

·         Murphy’s Law: “If anything can go wrong, it will.”  O’Rourke’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law: “Murphy was an Optimist.” 

·         Incentives Matter: If people are able personally to profit in some meaningful way from their work and other actions, they are much more likely to pursue them.  Of course, this rule applies equally to negative sanctions like punishments.

·         Dr. Milton Friedman: “We should judge our programs by their results, not their good intentions.”  Following that advice would bring a positive revolution to governmental programs.

·         Dr. Milton Friedman again: “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.”  When I buy my contact lenses solution the box includes a plastic lens holder “at no extra charge.”  But, since this “gift” holds about three times as much solution as the one I normally use, and probably costs the manufacturer a maximum of two cents, if only one person in ten uses it, the result will be the purchase of more solution and, thus more profit for the manufacturer sponsoring the “gift.”  So, yet again, TANSTAAFL applies.

As my US History Professor Dr. Keith Berwick at UCLA once told us in his lecture, “There is a definite limitation to the profitable elaboration of the obvious.”  So, with that, I will stop.

Lament of the Week: “Dear Algebra, Please don’t continue to insist that I find your X because she’s not coming back.  And don’t ask Y.”

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on my website at www.JudgeJImGray.com, Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.  In addition, my new book entitled “2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: Solutions that are Practical, Effective, Responsible, Libertarian, is now available at Amazon.com.   Please read and discuss it with friends, and send in a review.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #250 "NO ONE PROTECTS THE TAXPAYERS!"

      While I was still on the bench I heard from several members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office that they were set up financially for life because of the Sheriff’s Union.  How did that come about?  Because who cares more about which candidates are elected to the County Board of Supervisors than their union?  So they find candidates who are sympathetic to their cause, rally around them “for safety purposes,” and make sizeable donations to their elections.  Then, of course, when those candidates win, they pay the union back by providing them frequent raises in their salaries and also with lush benefits.  And, if the newly-elected supervisors don’t do enough for the union’s bidding after they take office, they know full well that the union will support a different candidate in the next election.  And the same situation is present for other public employees’ unions as well, like the state’s prison guards’ union.

      What kind of benefits do they get?  (You’ll love this.)  Most public employees through their unions have a provision that when they retire they will get let’s say three percent of their last year’s salary for every year they were employed.  So if they worked for 20 years, they would receive 60 percent of their last year’s salary.  (Conceptually I don’t think that is unreasonable, up to a point.)   But how is their last year’s salary computed?  Here is the huge problem.  They take all of the overtime in their last year that they can possibly take, and since their supervisors are a part of the game, that is a lot.  Then that is counted throughout their retirement as their last year’s salary.  But there’s more, because they also don’t take any of their vacation during that last year, which they sell back – and that counts as well!  So by the time the last year’s salary is computed, it often is more than 100 percent of what their base salary was – for the rest of their lives!  And with the so-called “California Rule,” it is prohibited to change that equation after they first are hired.  So throughout this process, no one is there to protect the taxpayers.  And that is mostly and precisely why most cities and counties have so much un-funded debt today.  And guess who will be saddled with paying those deficits?  Mostly our children and our grandchildren!   Does that make you as upset as it makes me?  In fact, you might remember that even pro-union FDR actually was against public employee unions.  So if you are opposed to what is happening so rampantly today, vote Libertarian every time you can!  We are basically the only salvation in sight.

      Irony of the week:  Probably the most misspelled word in our language is the word “misspell.”

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on my website at www.JudgeJImGray.com, Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.  In addition, my new book entitled “2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: Solutions that are Practical, Effective, Responsible, Libertarian, is now available at Amazon.com.   Please read and discuss it with friends, and send in a review.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #249 "EVEN MORE BUREAUCRACY!"

     As any reasonable assessment will show, the California government is top-heavy in bureaucracy, which directly hinders successful ventures and adds greatly to the burden on taxpayers.  And now, as if more governmental agencies were needed, California’s governor is proposing to add to that bureaucracy.  How?  By creating a new Department of Early Childhood Development, an Office of Health Care Affordability, and a Department of Better Jobs and Higher Wages.  Likely the only positive result of these will be for the governor to be able to argue to his constituents that he is doing something for their benefit.  Just the Department of Early Childhood Development alone will add $8.5 million to the budget.  And the Office of Health Care Affordability, which would be tasked with “cracking down on any part of the health care industry that isn’t doing enough to reduce costs,” will simply be heaping more compliance and legal costs on to our medical bills, etc. and etc.

     Does the governor actually believe that the government can mandate better early childhood development?  Perhaps by “teaching for the test,” which was the self-defeating result of the federal government’s intrusion into the national education system.  The fact is that if California were actually serious about wanting to create more high-paying jobs it would stop taxing and hindering successful companies so much that it chases those good jobs away to places like Texas.  And that is not even considering how this result would be compounded if the new state Proposition 13 passes, because this would further materially increase the costs of companies doing business in California.  So what we have here, as stated in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, is a “failure to communicate.”  And who better to communicate reality to the governor than the taxpayers and voters?  Let’s get busy!    

      Thought for the week: “Ban pre-shredded cheese.  Make America grate again!”

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on my website at www.JudgeJImGray.com, Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.  In addition, my new book entitled “2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: Solutions that are Practical, Effective, Responsible, Libertarian, is now available at Amazon.com.   Please read and discuss it with friends, and send in a review.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #230 "IN PRAISE OF SPECIAL FAVORS FOR AMAZON"

          Last year when Amazon was shopping for a location for its second headquarters, many states, counties and cities attempted to win that prize by offering Amazon special inducements.  Those included special treatment for purposes of taxes, zoning, impacts upon the environment and more.  Why would these governmental entities make such offers?  Transparently, they  were made because the offers would be of benefit to the company.  I think we would all agree about those benefits, so to all of them I give my praise!

         Obviously, where this huge company would move and do business would bring many benefits to that community.  Those benefits would include more investments and more jobs for workers, which would then, in turn, support the local barbershops, restaurants, stores, medical clinics and more.  All of this would then have increased the financial base of the community, and would also have provided much more tax revenue for all of those governments.  As such, all of these offers were legitimate and, in that regard, probably should have been increased.  So everyone would have won.  Well Done!  Oh, but just one more thing: If it would have been good for Amazon, it would be good for all other businesses as well, large and small, for exactly the same reasons.  So all of those offers should now be made to all businesses, so everyone would win also for exactly the same reasons!  It would not only be fair, it would be smart! 

Thought for the week:  Behind every successful man is a surprised mother-in-law.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #229 "I FELL FOR IT!"

         This past week I received a forwarded email from a friend with the title “Why Obama Hates Trump,” which stated that, since he had left office, President Obama had taken 692 travel days at the expense of the taxpayers.  It continued by saying that Obama had often taken with him not only his family members, but also friends and staff – to the extent that it had cost taxpayers about $214 million!  There actually is an allowance for ex-presidents to travel at public expense, but only reasonably and when on public business.  But, the article concludes, when President Trump found out about this activity, he immediately canceled the program, and stated he would call for Obama to reimburse the government for all non-work-related expenses.  Finally, the article encouraged the recipients to forward the information on to their social media friends – which I actually did to three people.  The next day, one of those friends responded to me that Snopes said this simply was not true.

           I fell for it!  And me, of all people!  Why?  Because within the last month I have taped interviews on my radio show* expressly talking about “fake news,” and how all responsible people should counteract it.  How?  By being skeptical before believing anything in the social media unless it was first checked out.  As you know, I am a Libertarian, and do not believe in censorship almost ever.  So that is not a way to address the problem.  And the government requiring private online groups to ban some groups or people is not what I believe should happen either.  Instead, we must all understand that sometimes the world can be a cruel and deceptive place.  So what is the answer?  Intelligence and skepticism in what we accept, what we believe and, particularly, what information we pass along to others as being true.  I hope and believe I have learned from my mistake, and for it I sincerely apologize to everyone – especially including former President Obama!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

On our recent trip along the Columbia River, our guide told us that the Lewis and Clark Expedition had started to spend the winter on the north side of the mouth of the Columbia, where it rained continually, was cold and had no firewood or game.  After a couple of weeks a group of Native Americans came over in a canoe to great them and told them they should stay on the south bank.  Why?  Because it was drier, had firewood, was sheltered from the wind, and had no sales taxes.  (Today the State of Washington has a sales tax, but Oregon does not.) 

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #222 "RESTORATIVE JUSTICE"

                Yes, lots of bad things are happening in the world, and we seem to be hit in the face constantly with that reality in our media and elsewhere.  But there are also lots of good things that are happening, and this edition will discuss one of those, which is the movement called Restorative Justice.  The fundamental basis for this approach is to bring the victim(s) of an offense and the perpetrator together, face to face, in a meeting monitored by a therapist.  The emphasis is basically to show the offender what effect the incident had upon the victim(s), on the one hand, and to explore the concept of forgiveness by the victims, on the other.  The intent is both to humanize the act in the eyes of the offender and to begin an important healing process for the victim(s).  And we are seeing success a great amount of the time in both of those areas.

                The idea of the criminal justice system is not to punish the offender, but is instead to reduce crime.  A big example of this is in the area of domestic violence.  If the batterer (mostly but not always a man) is forced to focus upon the position of the victim, as well as the physical and emotional trauma he has inflicted, statistics show that he is not nearly as likely to re-offend.  In addition, the healing and self-esteem process often get a jumpstart with the victims, which enables them more fully to get on with their lives.  But, all importantly, the victim is consulted by the court at time of the sentencing of the offender and, if leniency is being considered, this almost always requires the consent of the victim(s).  Happily, the approach has also been found to work well with burglaries and even assaults and batteries.  (But it doesn’t seem to work with tax offenses. . . .)  The lesson?  Like in many other aspects of life, humanizing the interactions among different parties can go a long way toward reducing friction and harm, and increasing empathy.  So progress is being made in the criminal justice system, and I thought you should know. 

Quote for the week:  “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  Viktor E. Frankl

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise!  The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss these and other timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  

You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  

You can also hear past shows as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #203 "COMPENSATION PACKAGES FOLLOW-UP"

     Last week’s edition brought up the dilemma of the Increasing disparity of compensation packages of high-ranking executives of public companies as opposed to the company’s lowest-paid workers, and requested a response from our “2 Paragraphs” Family as to how to address it (if it should be addressed at all).  Several of you responded, and I am following up this week with some of the thoughts expressed.  For background, one reader pointed out that CEO pay in the US was documented in the year 2000 to be 376 times the pay of the typical worker. In 1995, the ratio was 123-to-1, in 1989 it was 59-to-1, in 1978 it was 30-to-1, and in 1965 it was 20-to-1.  So the disparities have increasingly been wider over time.  (See [https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelliekarabell/2018/02/14/executive-compensation-is-out-of-control-what-now/#754ff6c0431f]).  So what were the suggestions?  One was to have governments implement higher marginal income tax rates for the very top public company earners, which would have a dampening effect upon increasing packages.   A second was to set high corporate tax rates for firms that have very high CEO-to-worker compensation ratios.  A third was for shareholders themselves to vote upon the compensation packages of high-ranking executives.  A fourth was for the law to direct public companies to have these compensation packages set by truly independent boards of directors.  And a fifth was to require public companies to disclose the range of the highest and lowest compensation packages so that the customers could use their inherent power to decide whether to purchase that company’s products and services or not.

     Personally, I think taxes are already too high even for high-ranking executives, and increasing them further would both produce even more “creative” chicanery in the corporate world, as well as having more of our companies take their business operations off shore.  And besides, sometimes these packages result in more innovations and productivity for companies, so society does not want to discourage those results.  The third suggestion has some superficial attractiveness, but the problem is that shareholders would mostly both be acting upon imperfect and incomplete information, and would also be easily subject to manipulation.  So that option is more likely to hinder than help.  And, although it certainly would be a good idea to have a truly independent panel set these compensation packages, probably based upon comparisons with similar executives in other companies, implementing the appointment process would almost be impossible from a practical standpoint.  (Not only is every company different, but imagine how many lawsuits would be filed contesting whether the boards were really independent or not!)  So all of these four suggestions would result in major unintended consequences.  That leaves the fifth suggestion, which rightly relies upon the Free Market for relief.  But to a large degree laws and regulations already require these packages to be publicly disclosed.  The problem is that no one really is digging into and widely publicizing the information, so the beneficial effect of this approach has been minimal.   Accordingly, other than renewing attempts more broadly to disseminate this information in the marketplace, and even though the status quo does sometimes give us some obscene results, I recommend that we leave this problem alone.

Question for the Week: How do billboards communicate?  Answer: In sign language.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY #188: “NO FREE LUNCH”

It was Milton Friedman who coined the slogan “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”  And this is exemplified by the following story that was recently sent to me, which is: Once there was a chemistry professor in a large college who had some exchange students in her class.  One day in class the professor  noticed a young male exchange student who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. When she asked the young man what was the matter the student told her he had a bullet lodged in his back.  He had been shot while fighting communists who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist regime.  In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"  The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke.  The answer is that you catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground.   The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn.  Then, when they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.   When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. So you continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.  The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, and then you can slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom.  They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.  But soon they go back to eating the free corn.  They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, and quickly they begin to accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America.  “The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops, welfare, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.  And then, in not so long a period of time, we are captured.”  So all of us should always remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch!  Dr. Friedman also gave us another eternal truth when he said that we get more of what we subsidize, and less of what we tax.  And the truth is that today we are subsidizing entitlements, victimization and even laziness, and taxing success.  So what are we getting more of?  Does this concern you?  It certainly concerns me.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Quotation for the Week: “I know that God will not give me more than I can handle.  I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”  Mother Theresa

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!