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Why, if economic freedom has proven itself time and time again to be the engine of prosperity, do we keep moving toward Big Government? Why is a pro-freedom agenda so hard to come by and to defend? Why, no matter the rhetoric, no matter the mood of the electorate, no matter how much the weight of Big Government pulls down economic progress, do we get more regulations, more government spending, less economic freedom? The answer might surprise you. It has to do with something we don’t often talk about in explicit terms. It has to do with morality.
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The government currently has unfunded liabilities surpassing $66 trillion.57 That’s $66 trillion in expected entitlement payouts over the coming decades for which there is no known revenue source.58 If nothing is done to scale back the entitlement state, then, according to a report by nonpartisan financial analyst Mary Meeker, “By 2025, entitlements plus net interest payments will absorb all—yes, all—of” government revenues.59
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Our focus should be on making the most of our own lives, regardless of whether we start at the bottom or the top- not on envying the advantages and achievements of others.
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Money is what allowed the division of labor to extend beyond the confines of a small town to cities, nations, and ultimately the entire world.
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That’s why Henry Ford started paying his lowest-paid employees $5 a day in 1914, more than $110 in today’s dollars.13 He had to: Turnover at the company was 370 percent in 1913.
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This is the Free Market Revolution: It is the idea that economic freedom can flourish only in an America that celebrates selfishness—the individual’s pursuit of his rational, long-term self-interest—as a virtue.
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You must, said Benito Mussolini, accept “a life in which the individual, through the denial of himself, through the sacrifice of his own private interests . . . realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.
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You could turn to others for help, but you couldn’t claim their help by right.