Paul Ryan on entrepreneurial capitalism vs. crony capitalism

Worth your four minutes and twenty-one seconds:

(Hat-tip Robert Costa at NRO's The Corner.)

You want a "jobs bill"? Reform the tax code — flatter, simpler, fairer, with lower rates but no loopholes. Return federal government spending as a percentage of GDP to its historically successful and sustainable 19% level instead of the current ruinous 24-25% that has produced Obama's multi-trillion dollar deficits. Tax compliance will improve (i.e., more people will feel the system is fair and that they have less of an excuse to cheat; simple rules mean easy and more effective enforcement against those who do cheat); productivity will soar (as resources previously used to beat the system are redeployed to create wealth and jobs); and discontent with government will justifiably drop. Tax revenues will soar — and deficits will shrink — which will permit us to reform and save our safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security by increasing individual choice and by reintroducing market economics to healthcare generally and elder-care in particular. The pie will once again start growing for everyone's benefit as free-market transactions create wealth: TANSTAAFL, but every such transaction, by definition, leaves both sides holding something they value more than what they just traded away, and that translates into jobs, savings accounts, investments, and progress.

This photo (lifted from a Richard Brookhiser post at The Corner) —

— nicely illustrates the biggest and most obvious lie told in the Twenty-first Century so far:

"We've tried our plan — and it worked!"

Remarks by the President, Oakland, CA, July 24, 2012.