Karl Marx

It has become increasingly difficult to believe that the nation the Founders envisioned will even be remotely recognizable in a couple of decades down the road.

Red is, of course, the worldwide color of Communism.

The Russian Revolution of November 1917, now being marked by its centenary, ushered in a hundred years of political tyranny and terror, economic suffering, exploitation and corruption.

One of the leading ideological punching bags for well over one hundred years has been the ideas, institutions, and impact of “capitalism” on society.

The main difference between Hitler’s form of national socialism and Mussolini’s concerned the meaning of “nationalism.”

Though it may seem strange, Karl Marx was not always a communist. As late as 1842, he actually said he opposed any attempt to establish a communist system.

Election years are depressing experiences for friends of freedom. The campaign stump, invariably, brings out even more of the worst in mainstream politicians who make their living by making promises they cannot keep through spending other people’s money. The 2016 presidential election cycle has only magnified this pattern.

Downtown Chicago, where I spend most of my time, has beggars on nearly every corner. Many of them have regular perches, like fishermen with favorite spots. Others, more creative – and usually more crafty – seem to wander around instead. But except for the licensed sellers of Streetwise and a truly unfortunate few, most of them are hustlers.

A new book by French economist Thomas Piketty on “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has recently caused a major stir on the opinion pages of newspapers and magazines. Piketty has resurrected from the ash heap of history Karl Marx’s claim that capitalism inescapably leads to a worsening unequal distribution of wealth with dangerous consequences for human society.

In 2013 the price of gold bullion lost 28 percent and closed near its low for the year. It was the first annual decline since 2000 and the worst since 1981. Gold ETFs experienced record redemptions, shrinking the funds 33 percent by year end, but they were the exception. Marcus Grubb, Managing Director of the World Gold Council, reported, “2013 has been a strong year for gold demand across sectors and geographies, with the exception of western ETF markets.” While investors were leaving ETFs, demand for gold jewelry, bars and coins was increasing, as were purchases by central banks. Globally, consumer demand increased 17 percent for gold jewelry and 28 percent for bars and coins.

The full bill for Obama’s failed economic policies has yet to arrive. But no such explosion of debt has ever escaped a day of reckoning, and no such monetary surge has ever had a happy ending.

Achieving and sustaining such economic growth should be the central focus of national economic policy, for it would solve every problem that plagues and threatens us today.

Barack Obama is finishing his fifth year as president, and continues to try to move America further in the direction of increased government paternalism with the implementation of ObamaCare, a push for a higher minimum wage, more intrusive business regulation, a drive for higher taxes to redistribute wealth, and a persistent insistence that individuals must sacrifice their own interests for that of “society.”