The coming year will see Biden Democrats walking slowly through a vast field of small businesses exhausted by the battle with the coronavirus, shooting any who can still move. Big Tech will hold a pillow over the faces of those who cry out too loudly.
The destruction of the independent American middle class is one of the highest policy goals of the hard Left. It is finally at hand, thanks to the coronavirus and its political aftershocks. A year ago, they could not have dreamed they would get such a perfect kill shot.
A true middle class has economic interests that run counter to command economics, confiscatory taxation, centralized power, and other features of socialism. It also has the numbers to protect those interests at the ballot box. Of COURSE the Left hates it and wants to subdue it.
Small business is the vital engine of middle class prosperity, and the specific enemy the Left hates the most. Small business owners - and their sharpest, most ambitious employees - place a high value on capitalist freedom and competitiveness. They know the value of a dollar.
The small business experience is defined by the atmosphere of competitiveness that statism and socialism are sworn to destroy. Local enterprises appear quickly in response to demand that cannot easily be seen by distant central planners. Entrepreneurship requires agility.
Entrepreneurs aren't obsessed solely with national policy and politics. They are keen students of their local economy and its resources. They need low costs and a low regulatory burden in order to quickly exploit the opportunities they discover.
Small business owners often make tremendous short-term sacrifices to build successful enterprises. Ask any of them what the early days of their business were like. You'll likely hear tales of financial hardship, grueling hours worked, fearful risks taken.
The employees of small businesses sometimes hear these tales and learn a great deal about what it really takes to found and manage a successful enterprise. Some are inspired and go on to become entrepreneurs themselves. For others, local business is a vital on-ramp to employment.
That's just INTOLERABLE to the socialist Left. They don't want people learning how business really works. They want you to see all businesses as fat pinatas stuffed with cash that rightfully belongs to The People.
And above all, they don't want you learning to appreciate free-market capitalism or feeling like you're a vital part of it. A small business owner is a middle-class American who risks his capital in the pursuit of progress. UNACCEPTABLE! That's the antithesis of socialism.
You can see the Left's vision of "managed capitalism," or whatever they decide to rebrand socialism next, very clearly after the coronavirus: huge corporations with national interests, using their clout to achieve left-wing political ends in partnership with the State.
The State gives its corporate partners taxpayer financial support and protection from competition as its end of the deal. Big corporations don't like having to worry about nimble, innovative competitors dancing around their feet and stealing market share.
Here comes the "Build Back Better" agenda, which will drop huge tax and regulatory costs on small businesses that have already been severely damaged or nearly wiped out by pandemic lockdowns. Giant corps can afford those costs or use political clout to get exemptions from them.
We will move much closer to the fusion of Big Government and Big Business, which is incredibly dangerous because it puts coercive power at the disposal of corporate interests, and corporate resources at the disposal of authoritarians.
And there will be less room for truly independent middle-class people who see themselves as eager competitors in vibrant capitalism, rather than wards of the State who rely upon the "generosity" of government for their livelihoods. In other words, socialist utopia. /end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
