Growing the pie

When it comes to how to help the economy, many people are focused on getting a bigger piece of the pie - or in preventing others from getting a bigger piece of the pie.

Of course, this assumes that there is only one pie - and that the pie is a fixed size.

This is just one of the myths exposed in a new publication from Heritage Foundation, The Economy Hits Home: What Makes the Economy Grow?

Contributors for the paper are my friend, Leslie Carbone, the author of Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform (Potomac, June 2009) and Jay Richards, the author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, May 2009).

I hope you'll download the document, read it and reference it often when anyone tries to tell you that government's re-distribution of wealth is the solution to our economy. As the report says:

"Importantly, economic growth is not the consequence of government policies or of some master economic plan. It results from millions of people individually seeking what is in their own interests by providing what is in the interests of others, and the collective consequence of their actions is to increase the number of jobs in the economy, the wages earned by workers, and the income and wealth of the nation."

Quotes in honor of the Tea Parties

As we prepare for tomorrow's Tax Day Tea Parties, I thought these quotes from President Ronald Reagan particularly relevant:

"Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?"

"Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets."

"Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? ... Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp."

Also, for a perspective on WHY there are hundreds of Tea Parties, I recommend this post from my friend and author, Leslie Carbone.