Ironically, the cascade of clichés concerning our economy evades the necessary reasoning to manage the free enterprise system we enjoy. Labeling someone a socialist because it is suggested government money be used to provide health care to the poor evades the exercise we should all be doing together. There are many government programs necessary to support our free enterprise system. Help me come up with a list. Interstate highways built and maintained by our government and collectively paid for by all of us falls into the definition of a socialist program. So is flight control, federal drug administration, patent office, police, military, traffic regulations…the list goes on. Calling someone a socialist merely because he/she supports a program that makes sense for us all is intellectually wrong. The debate that normally draws the socialist accusation has to do with providing medical support for the disadvantaged. Yelling socialist is not an intellectual argument. One could argue that providing health care for the poor could increase a healthier reliable workforce and less expensive ER visits. Even if the conclusion is to refuse care, it should be reached by some other method, other than an inaccurate use of the label of “socialist”. 

I digress. There are two elements in our society that are much more dangerous and need careful consideration by us free enterprise advocates.

The fundamental characteristic of a free enterprise system is the free and easy ingress and egress into the market place. As in Monopoly, the game loses its viability if one of the players ends up owning most of the property and hotels. The advantage becomes too great for others trying to play. Today top 1% of US citizens own $29.57 trillion while the bottom 50% suffered a decrease in ownership to less than zero. This disbursement is unhealthy for a free enterprise system 

I do not argue for a remedy but merely point out that this is a much more profound concern to our free enterprise system than medical check-ups for the poor.

The reason I make these observations is to lay groundwork for another concern I have for the preservation of free enterprise. This is the issue of money spent for national defense. First let me say I have profound respect for those in the military and don’t think we should provide anything less than the best for our men and women in uniform. I am also a believer in providing military help for our allies if necessary.

Having said that, I see a problem in our ability to oversee our structure on this issue. The military budget we can see is about $720 trillion for this year. This budget puts the US well over the combined budgets of the next 10 countries.

China 168

Saudi Arabia 83

Russia 63

The foundation to this is that such an expenditure may be necessary for our nation’s safety but there is little visibility as to the inner workings of the small number of corporations taking contracts for military equipment. It is at best monopoly. As President Eisenhower said, when leaving office, “Beware of the military industrial complex”. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know if we need to spend so much money for the military over all other countries in the world. Much of the manufacturing is protected by necessary secrecy I don’t see a check and balance in this monopolistic industry to substitute for the natural controls provided by free enterprise.

There you go, I’ve pointed out some concerns but no reasonable solutions. My only suggestion is that we start worrying about the true threats of our system and quit using energy throwing labels which have no value in the discussion.