Instead we refer to them as “moguls” and their businesses as “empires.” Our very language embodies the popular notion that big business is evil, that entrepreneurs are unlike pirates and crime bosses.

Around 1800 in England and Russia, the three main do-gooder activities were medicine, school, and alms (= food/shelter for the weak, such as the old or crippled). Today the three spending categories of medicine, school, and alms make up ~40% of US GDP, a far larger fraction than in 1800. Why the vast increase?

Everyone readily accepted lies about US housing debt that anyone with an ounce of common sense could have spotted an ocean away.

I’d like to inform you that there is a country where the average person’s carbon footprint is negligible (at less than one tenth of one percent of the per capita carbon emissions in the US, based on carbon emission data here and 2010 population levels), obesity rates are enviably low (standing at 15% of the population, lower than you’ll find in 178 other countries in the world, whereas the US has roughly 75% and is one of the ten most obese nations in the world), population growth is eminently sustainable (and the third lowest in the world), and almost all trade is local. What is this magical land, you ask? Afghanistan. A glorious place to which US progressives are emigrating in droves.

It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

There is now an ongoing attack on the free-enterprise system that for over a century has made the United States the greatest economic power in history. Trillions of dollars have been spent “pump-priming” the US economy. Additionally, the Federal Reserve has flooded the US economy with easy money that will rob Americans of the purchasing power of their hard-earned dollars. Ironically, all of this intervention is aimed at “stabilizing” the market and at reducing unemployment. But what has all this intervention accomplished? Not much.

So to recap: the Obama administration’s TAA legislation (i) is of unknown (but significant) cost; (ii) raises revenue by, in part, extending customs programs that don’t actually expire for almost 9 years; and (iii) contains offsets that raise taxes on imports and potentially violate WTO rules and US law. Behold, the new era of American fiscal responsibility! Bring on the debt ceiling! Ugh.

The merchant class is that which makes everything possible in our lives: our homes, our food, our medical care, our clothing, our air conditioning, our computers, our music listening — absolutely everything that makes daily life tolerable and joyful.

I think our economy can thrive even with an inefficient, bloated public sector. But the expansion of government’s sticky fingers into the day-to-day operations of businesses is much harder to overcome because it is hard to see and has consequences that are hard to measure. Sometimes political candidates talk about stripping away regulations, but neither party has ever shown an aggressive agenda for dismantling the regulatory state. Unfortunately, most companies don’t have the resources to fight the government that Wal-Mart or Boeing do, so they just knuckle under. The sad irony is that the Lefties promote these job-killing federal actions in the name of improving life for the working class.