Teaching Economics to a Community Organizer

Recently a surreptitiously taken video of Mitt Romney during a private fundraiser revealed that Romney had noted that 47% of the US population pays no income tax. Romney then erroneously concluded that these people will inevitably vote for Obama. Romney has therefore has written off this 47%.

In the aftermath of Obama's disastrous Oct. 3 debate against Romney, many on the left suggested that Obama should have gone after Romney's writing off of one half of America. Romney's vulnerabilities remain.

By choosing a creative narrative, Romney can redeem his disparaging message of the poor, increase the nation's capacity for self-government and seize the moral high ground. Further, by directing this narrative to a prototypical community organizer, Romney can communicate this message at Obama's expense and in an entertaining way.

Whereas community organizers are passionate about both basketball and economics, it can be said that community organizers understand something about the game of basketball. Therefore in order to explain economics to a community organizer, we make an analogy to the game of basketball.

Whereas in the game of basketball, success is measured in terms offensive and defensive statistics, in economics, success is measured in terms of profits, market share and capital.

Michael Jordan's unparalleled performance has elevated the game, increased revenue for the NBA, advertisers and athletes. MJ's world-beating play has been a standard of excellence and a source of both enjoyment and inspiration to hundreds of millions.

So along comes not a basketball player, but a basketball organizer who starts agitating for a leveling of the NBA playing field. For the sake of "fairness," Barry begins to demand that the basketball success metrics be made to be more difficult to achieve for the highly accomplished. So MJ is saddled with some cement shoes. Predictably, MJ's success metrics decline. Interest in the game declines. Revenues decline. Inspiration in many disciplines wanes. Dreams are stymied. The hopes of young and old to achieve great heights are attenuated.

Change had come.

Noting the change, someone comes along and advocates that MJ's cement shoes have some cement removed. But to Paul's surprise, Barry argues that such an adjustment would be an unfair performance break to the accomplished.

Then Barry doubles down and creates incentives for a race of people who can't jump. Barry makes it more attractive for teams to hire people from this race.

The effect of Barry's heavy-handed interference served to demoralize excellence. Dreams were dashed. The creation of wealth became anemic. Race relations soured. People felt de-humanized, and lost for a sense of right and wrong.

So befuddled was the political ethos of the age that

• while slavery was rightly deemed to be evil, elective abortion and the forcible removal of the fruit of one's labor were celebrated as a good
• Those who resisted the forcible confiscation of wealth from producers for the purpose of subsidizing other's immorality were denounced as warring against women
• While the government claimed to have a zero tolerance policy toward trafficking in human persons, the government actually gave 501(c)3 economic privileges and moral cover to an organization that not only traffics in human persons (e.g., Koran 4:3, 24 where the sexual slavery of non-Muslim women is rolled into the euphemism, "right hand possessions"), but practices religious apartheid as well (e.g., Koran 9:29 where non-Muslims are given an onerous tax for the purpose of making them "feel oppressed")
• Sexual deviancy was deemed to be such a fundamental right that government forcibly removed the fruit of one's labors in order to combat diseases that were uniquely the natural result of such deviancy.
• So sacrosanct has sexual deviance become to Hollywood, that while showcasing a homosexual coming out of the closet has become so trite as to be passé, Hollywood is nonetheless unable to celebrate a former homosexual transformed—whether by psychotherapy, a personal decision or religious experience—to become a faithful heterosexual.
• Not to be one-upped by Hollywood, California's governor recently signed a bill making it illegal to help victims of either sexual abuse of parental neglect to escape feelings of same sex attraction.
• Despite The Declaration's teaching that people have unalienable rights bestowed upon them by the Creator God of the Universe and despite there being not a single example of random processes producing a beneficial mutation, government will not even tolerate criticism of an evolutionary "nothing times nobody equals everything" origins narrative

At the end of the day, it is moral virtue that creates wealth. A civilization that understands that

• they have intrinsic value
• they are endowed with unalienable rights by their Creator, and that
• their rights must be therefore exercised with respect to their Creator

is well-poised to create wealth. Profit, being the difference between one's revenue and one's expenses, is, as George Gilder explains, the difference between one's service and one's self-sacrifice. Profit, in the free market, is thus a metric of altruism.

A society that does not celebrate profit is not well-poised to either dream or inspire.

Whereas a minister of God will enter a community and speak against the social ills that beset the advancement of the community, a community organizer will, albeit perhaps indirectly, move against the social virtue that supports the natural disincentives for social ills.

And so it became that evil was called "good," and good "evil."

While I doubt that Mitt can jump, has the head of the GOP ticket, it is vital that he seize the moral high ground.

Just because one is poor, does not mean that one is evil. Whereas Obama is working to make America more poor and more evil, Romney can champion a free market vision of rugged individualism that creates both wealth and virtue.

Pieder Beeli, Ph.D. (Physics)

Dr. Beeli is a homeschooling father of five beautiful children and has contributed articles to WND, The American Thinker and Tea Party Nation.