Look at these quotes lifted from a recent New York Times story and guess which country the story is referring to: China or the United States.
- The country’s president “will pursue ‘common prosperity,’ pressing businesses and entrepreneurs to help narrow the stubborn wealth gap that could hold back the country’s rise and erode public confidence in the leadership …”
- “Officials are pledging to make schooling, housing and health care less costly and more evenly available outside big cities, and to lift incomes for workers, helping more people secure a place in the middle class.”
- “The ‘common prosperity’ campaign has converged with a crackdown on the country’s tech giants to curb their dominance.”
- And this quote from the country’s president: “Achieving common prosperity is not just an economic issue; it’s a major political matter bearing on the party’s foundation for rule.”
The only real clue that the story is about China is the term “common prosperity,” which Chinese President Xi Jinping has been using a lot lately.
So if you guessed President Joe Biden and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, you’d be wrong. But the mistake’s understandable.
When the vision and policies of the president of the world’s largest communist country sound like the vision and policies of the president of the world’s largest capitalist country, something’s wrong.
Not with Xi, though. His effort to control both the Chinese economy and people’s lives is perfectly consistent with communist ideology.
The problem is that Biden and progressive Democrats—who are the driving force in today’s Democratic Party—sound a lot like Xi. And the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package is their best bet to deliver on Xi’s … er …Biden’s version of common prosperity.
Of course, everyone knows the reconciliation package will cost much, much more than $3.5 trillion. That’s because Democrats and bureaucrats are juggling the numbers to make the bill APPEAR less expensive on paper than it actually is.
But it’s not just the financial cost. There’s the cost to individual freedom and liberty that comes with embracing Xi’s vision. Just ask those living in China—or Hong Kong.