America is being led into socialism in such a way that most of us won't even know where we're going until we're there. First came the bailouts. Had to do it to keep huge institutions and corporations from failing. Had to save jobs and keep the economy from crashing further. Even we regular folks without economics degrees could understand that and so we went along.

Continued...

Then came the nationalization of those institutions and corporations, pouring in billions and billions more taxpayer dollars to buy controlling interests which in the administrations view is not only majority ownership but the absolute right to run these businesses as the administration sees fit. The ruthless takeovers of the past few weeks have made the corporate raiders at their greediest 1980's worst seem like lambs in the meadow.

Next came the appointment of a Pay Czar who will have broad authority to set pay limits for the top 100 employees of institutions that have received a substantial amount of TARP funds. (source)

Then the administration places its own choice as the head of General Motors; a man who stated plainly "I Don't Know Anything about Cars". (source) A little scarier for us regular folks but we could still go along because this was all still confined to those companies that took billions from the government. You make a deal with the devil, we rationalized, you have to play by his rules.

This brings us to today with the glaring headline Administration: Rein in Pay in US Private Sector. No longer content to control institutions and corporations he has purchased with our money, President Obama is taking the next step toward capping the compensation of all private sector workers. Oh they aren't calling their idea "capping" yet. They are just submitting “guidelines" to the House Financial Services Committee. No potential for the abuse of power there, right?

Still the majority of us regular folks aren't ready to get out of line; to stop marching toward socialism yet. Class warfare, as waged by the Obama administration, is a very effective tool in tough economic times like these. It's easy to make "the top 100 employees" of major corporations into the bad guys. While the regular folks are worried about losing their modest-paying jobs, there's very little empathy for those rich, successful executives. The vast majority of regular folks could never hope to advance to the level the government is going after with their guidelines and pay limits and ever-higher tax rates.

But here's where class warfare can bite the regular folks in the butt. Once the freedom of one group is restricted by the government, it's much easier to move on to the next group until every aspect of our free market is controlled by the federal government. Not only will that take away the uniquely American opportunities for regular folks to succeed, it will take away the opportunities of their children and grandchildren. "You can grow up to be whatever you want to be" will change to "You can grow up to be whatever the government says you can be".

It's time for the regular folks to stop going along and to start realizing that what this administration is doing to "the rich" is their plan for us all.