Wealth production doesn't occur in government. The government prints money. That's it.

Amazingly the US populace has always been somewhat hazy on this because of the US Treasury and all the money the government always seems to control.

So the uneducated folks think that a "friendly" (aka socialist/liberal) government can somehow make the poor people richer.

However every penny the government spends for poor people has to be created by the REAL wealth generators - businesses and people working to generate wealth, buying and selling, creating, distributing and conducting commerce.

Give the government a blank check to control commerce and you effectivelyt destroy wealth generation. The government goes belly-up. Even now in DC the rumor mill is spreading that the US Post Office will be bankrupt and fold up this fall.

Attack the "rich" businesses that generate the governments wealth and you throttle the goose that lays the golden eggs. All the neo-Trotskyites here and elsewhere somehow believe that you can simultaneously have goose dinner and still expect a golden egg the next morning.

The US is in decline. Period. Its in decline because of the people. When a nation thrives it is because the people understand the elements of successful commerce and the government coffers fill up permitting the government to do more for the poor and provide services they could not afford to if it weren't for the hardworking wealth generators.

Each "stimulus dollar" is a dollar taken from the private sector and forcibly allocated.

The "stimulus" is nothing of the kind. Markets MUST, and I repeat MUST, be allowed to let the currency flow naturally. Any forcible allocation into any industry will not generate any stimulus. The auto industry should not be bailed out. No industry should be bailed out. Successful commerce doesn't work that way. If the US auto companies fail - so be it. New companies will emerge out of the wreckage - that's almost guaranteed. The factories, workers will be reallocated to new companies producing products that the market repsonds to and which generate wealth for the business owners and employees.

Wealth is cyclic. It follows a pattern of investment, production and return. During part of the cycle all the wealth is intangible and stored in goods and labor. A nation's wealth, too, is cyclic. The nation needs to CREATE as many businesses as it can, work them and then reap the wealth generated by them.

Stifling businesses out of the sense of "unfairness" is counterproductive. Exorbitant CEO pay and privilege should not faze one even a little bit. These folks are just slightly better than their government counterparts - feeding on the trough of large cash flows. At least, in a few instances, they contribute to the profit of the companies they feed on.

Ideally US citizens would view the rich as a flock of golden geese. That's what they are. Their wealth is flowing into the government and is redistributed to the poor by force. Get jealous and try to shackle these rich folks with more and more taxes, more limits on businesses, more inane politically correct directives to strangle businesses - and soon wealth decreases and the government gets LESS - not more!

Chavez and other socialist progressives unfortunately never know where to draw the line. Almost none of them have ever produced significant wealth themselves and so know nothing of welath creation - they only know how to TAKE wealth.

Looters. The looter is a byproduct of stupidity and ignorance. The US is in decline because schools now teach Looterism as a solution to the nations ailments, in lieu of WEALTH generation via COMMERCE. The folks in DC, like the last batch of CEOS groomed during the past two decades - are practicioners of the looterism they were taught by the schools and in the workplace.

Until more citizens educate themselves and abandon the comforting lullabies sung by looters, they will find this nation becoming poorer and poorer. The sooner they realize the rest of the world's nations are competing with us for wealth and survival - and are not part of some happy progressive global utopia - the sooner they can quit shooting up on the liberal morphine and join reality.

Our enemies overseas orchestrated this depression. They used Americans own increasing economic ignorance against them and exploited the greed in the financial sector. The only way to counter this is for government to get out of the way and let private wealth production kick into high gear.