Posted by
Randy on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 2:20:02 PM
Most Americans probably have at least a passing knowledge of the perils faced by the Pilgrims, especially during the first year. The difficult passage over the seas with the contrary winds, which delayed their arrival by months. How they landed hundreds of miles north of their intended destination right at the beginning of a New England winter. How they went through a difficult winter with severe shortages of food, so that half their number died of malnutrition and disease. How the Indians helped them plant their first cornfields in the spring, and the subsequent celebration of their first Thanksgiving the following fall. What is less known is that the Pilgrims nearly starved again two years later. Their experiment in what Karl Marx would later describe as the communist goal of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” failed miserably. While Barack Obama is not calling for the creation of a communist system in the United States, many of the same mal-effects of taking peoples’ hard-earned wealth and giving it to others will come into play.
If ever there was a place and a people on earth where the Marxian ideal of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” could have succeeded, it was in Plymouth colony. These were probably among the most idealistic people to be found; the crème-de-la-crème of the England’s Pilgrim sect, willing to risk it all and go across the seas to start a new life in an unsettled world. They’d put their lives in each other’s hands, confronting death through want and, at times, hostile neighboring native populations. Few live through this sort of bonding experience. Even with these bonds, the Pilgrims still possessed basic human nature, which, over time, has the unction to strive and to create and to enjoy the fruits of one’s own labor. Conversely this same human nature doesn’t like to see one’s hard work go to the benefit of another, unless it’s freely given, and especially to those who are capable of working for themselves.
This basic aspect of human nature came into clear view in the Pilgrim's initial farming scheme. During their first year in Plymouth, they farmed as a community. Given the exigencies of their situation, with their survival in doubt, everybody pitched in and they enjoyed a good fall harvest. In effect their labor in the fields was being 100% taxed by the government, who then in turn shared the resources as it determined best: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” With the arrival of new immigrants, who had not shared the first settlers' perils or worked in the planting and harvesting and with the passing of the sense of urgency, human nature kicked in. Young, single men, for example, complained that they were having to work hard for other men’s wives and children and married woman complained about having to clean clothes and do other household work for those outside of their families. The fields were not planted and cared for at nearly the level required to support their population. Food had to be severely rationed, much as it had during their first winter.
In response to this predicament, Governor William Bradford along with the colony’s other leadership decided to give each family its own plot of land and grouped single men in with particular families. Bradford reports that “This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Bradford went on to observe that no one should have been surprised at this result. It only validated what all of human history teaches regarding communal undertakings, contrary to what utopian philosophers taught. “The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.” It’s what the Soviet Union learned in spades when over three million of its population died of starvation following the collectivization of their farms during the last century. It’s what parents know, who have their children work for an allowance or to earn a particular prize: people work for a reward and will work even harder for a greater reward.
You do not have to full communist/100% taxing society to see the effects of taking the fruit of people’s labor from them. Barack Obama plans to grow the government massively in the areas of health care, education and energy to name three, and he plans to pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthiest, and often the most productive Americans: the people who have dared and risked and created new businesses and new technologies and thereby new jobs. He intends to raise their federal income tax rate to 39.6% and to eliminate or reduce tax exemptions and deductions. Couple that with state and local taxes these Americans pay, which takes another 5-10% of their earnings and payroll taxes for social security and Medicare another 7.65% (15.3% if self-employed/business owner), and you’ve crossed the threshold of taking over half someone’s income to feed a government bureaucracy. He also intends to raise the capital gains tax (the tax on investment income) to 20%, when several of our competitor nations have little or no capital gains tax. Even with all these new taxes, Obama projects nearly a $2 trillion dollar deficit this year, over a trillion next year and at least a half trillion for as far as the eye can see. This is unsustainable. The result of these taxes and massive deficits will be hundred of billions less in the private sector to invest and to create and to grow businesses and to remain competitive in a world economy.
The United States is at a crossroads: do we intend to go down the road of the failed philosophies of the past, which hold that government legislators and bureaucrats are the best arbiters of where the wealth in a society should go or down the road of encouraging private enterprise and individual industriousness? Governor William Bradford and the Pilgrims and societies throughout all of human history discovered the latter to be the better choice.
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Randy DeSoto is the author of the book We Hold These Truths, which addresses how leaders have appealed to beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence, throughout our nation's history.