The Socialist Transfer of Wealth
Ignorance and self-infatuated stupidity cannot be discounted. But malice in the form of rampant self-interest and unadulterated greed is surely a significant factor as well. What goes generally unremarked is that such destructive wealth transfer schemes as we’ve been discussing, initiated by governments, NGOs, and international organizations like the UN, have less to do with the operation of “social conscience” and the amelioration of people’s lives, which are mere peripherals, than they do with personal aggrandizement and the amassing and ensuring of in-group prerogatives. Nations may flounder, and more and more among the growing sector of the jobless will find their entitlements and welfare payments progressively devalued. But those who have inveighed against the private accumulation of wealth and engineered the catastrophic policies that have only exacerbated the socioeconomic climate are themselves largely untouched by economic hardship. Indeed, whether they are unelected and unaccountable EU bureaucrats junketing in Brussels, UN functionaries enjoying the perquisites of Turtle Bay, or American legislators and government notables intent on preserving a tumescent lifestyle, they will not suffer. Their status, property, and fiscal assets remain secure.
For they are the real legatees of the wealth-transfer ideology. It makes little difference which political system they flourish in; it is easy to smell the fitch in their repertoire of inanities. In his major work The New Class, Milovan Djilas reveals how a cadre of theoretically ameliorist “managers,” supposedly adhering to socialist principles, acquired power, wealth, and privilege at the expense of “the people” whom they ostensibly served and for whose welfare they declared themselves ready to make any sacrifice. The dictatorship of the proletariat was really the dictatorship of a bureaucratic aristocracy. One is reminded of the old joke about Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, showing off his collection of vintage cars and priceless paintings to his visiting mother. “But my son,” she tremulously asks, “what if the Communists find out?”
Wealth has certainly been transferred, but in the last analysis not to the poor and needy, not to the jobless citizens of the West in a redistributionist fever of inflated currency or to the basket-case Third World nations under the aegis of global warming, but to the managerial class itself. The ultimate beneficiaries are the members of the oligarchic elite who make policy and control the flow of economic exchange. Their Swiss accounts brimmeth over and their investments are bundled together with blue ribbons. This is effectively how that deceptive euphemism, the “transfer of wealth,” works out in practice. And those who are implicated in the scam are the real 1%.
I think the correct term is ”nomenclatura” …..
What you describe is the creation of an aristocracy, the ”progressive” ideologies are in reality a throw-back to the Middle-Ages, to feudalism.
Actually, as far as a written record in the West/Europe is concerned, it goes back to Plato and his various constructs of a utopian economic/political nation. He had “Guardians”, “Auxiliary”, and “Producer” classes. That would correspond, today, to the political elite, the military, and the plebes. It didn’t work in Greece, Rome, Europe, the Soviet Union, and is failing in China, and, again, in Europe. It sounds good as an intellectual exercise and it makes the Leftist think they can do a better job this time around because they “believe” in the system. It is a religious calling destined to FAIL.
And the only difference here is that the military are the plebes. Many of our working and middle classes are veterans, and the enlisted men are their sons. The officers are sons of the middle class and businessmen, or else former enlisted or the kid who worked his way out of poverty by earning a military scholarship. A private can become a general or a seaman an admiral, if he puts in the work needed.
And the gaudiness of feudal nobility will be the story of the day as American and gawkers in many countries will adore the jewels, gowns, and hairdos on Hollywood stars. It is to be expected in a society that has not made the transition from feudal social relations to those appropriate to a free market, meritocratic society. Even Mark Twain, in his most anti-feudal novel, was ambivalent. See http://clarespark.com/2012/01/13/mark-twains-failed-yankee/.
Manliness may still be defined in feudal terms. I used passages from Huckleberry Finn to illustrate this point. See http://clarespark.com/2012/01/21/huck-finn-and-the-well-whipped-child/. This brief essay goes with the one I recommended above, and both relate to an ongoing tie to feudal social relations and values. In Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, he uses the term “gaudy” favorably, while denouncing the gaudiness of the English nobility in 8th century Britain in his Yankee book.
“Germany’s NZZ Online” – *lol, but won’t Switzerland just love you for this, Mr Solway?
Clue: NZZ = Neue Zuricher Zeitung, with Zurich being a town in, ehm, wait, I’ll google
)
Expertise. Quality. Distinction.
It’s not “transfer of wealth”. What is really happening is “transfer from the most productive”. Saying it’s “wealth” falls into the socialist field of play. You’ve simply ceded them the win by arguing on their terms. It’s as if “wealth” is sort of like a harvest of bananas sitting on the dock. Everyone should just be able to go buy and pick up their share of the banana. Even have their share delivered if they can’t run by the dock. It’s foolish. No wonder we’re were we are today. We play by their rules, using their game board, with their players and under their supervision.
Just say we’ll no longer work will not support the no counts, the freebies, the fools and ccupiers, the non-contributors – in short, the Democrats.
What you are suggesting is called ‘going Galt’. I know more than a few who have done just that.
The transfer of wealth, tax the rich language conflates wealth with income. The wealthy do not disgorge their wealth except by force. The wimpy progressives cannot generate this force and instead pick the pockets of those who are busy producing. The new class of wealthy are those who have created a COLA injected government pension enabling early retirement and a no worry stream of income. The new wealth will not be disrupted until the wheels fall off. When that happens, there will be not enough income to tax or money to borrow, hence a war between the new wealthy and the traditional wealthy. War of the worlds.
“?The wealthy do not disgorge their wealth except by force. ?” Disgorge; as in vomit? Or, do you mean surrender? When the bayonets start coming out the smart wealthy leave taking their gold with them.
I would guess that in the vast list of names pried out of the Swiss bankers’ hands, have a lot of wealthy Democrats on it. As Chris Christie said to Warren Buffoon, Just Shut Up and Write a Check. Its sums it all up.
Return to feudalism is correct.
Three generations of nihilist teaching have brought us to a place where our institutions of self-government overflow with greedy and pretentious bureaurats loyal to gangster princes.
Vassal and Liege. Makers and Takers. It’s all about the looters now.
Go Galt!
“…while those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder must be boosted upward, even if they happen to be afraid of heights and incapable of climbing.”
We see those folks every day with a smile on their face while gettin’ fat, watchin’ TV, and havin’ babies. They stampede the doors at Walmart but certainly not at the local community college. The only knowledge they thirst for is to find which new entitlement is there to be claimed or directions to the best tattoo shop. I’m getting sick of looking at them.
There really has been a divergence, and even conservative journals like National Review admit it and propose solutions to it.
The wages of blue-collar factory workers in America have been steadily bid down by robotics, automation, and foreign competition. Demand for American factory workers has declined sharply–down some 80% in the last 60 years. And reduced demand for such workers puts huge downward pressure on their wages.
And at the other end of the scale, there have been incredibly rich multi-billionaires created by those with the talents and knowledge to prosper in the computer/Internet age.
If you look at the world as a whole, there has been no divergence. Quite the contrary, the standard of living of the average Chinese or Indian has improved rapidly. But they have been competing with American workers, often at the Americans’ expense.
For years, we masked this divergence by giving working-class Americans the opportunity to own their own homes. These homes seemed to appreciate in value and gave the illusion of increasing wealth–on paper. But that bubble burst in 2008, and now the hollowing-out of America’s working class can no longer be ignored.
We are now learning the hard way that you can’t provide opportunities for all citizens in an economy based mostly on services and finance.
Your analysis is correct as far as it goes, I believe. But I’m not yet ready to give up on improving the lot of low skilled workers. I have never seen a convincing argument to the effect that service jobs — waiters, landscape men, unskilled construction workers — must inherently be more poorly compensated than the old, rote assembly line work which characterized much of factory work until comparatively recently. I think the key is the surplus we seem to have of such workers. While it might have been the case much earlier, it has only become a glaring issue in the last few decades. That time frame corresponds with two other phenomena — the dumbing down of the public schools, and the influx of large numbers of illegals.
I like the way the far left comes up with new names for really horrible things. For example, liberals are now “progressives,” socialism is now “social justice,” and communism is now the “redistribution of wealth.” The far left feels that if you put a new name on something, it will be much more palatable than its original definition.
Well it’s not. And people are beginning to see all of this new labeling for what it is, just re-hashed junk from the far-left’s “glory days” of the 1930s, when Franklyn Roosevelt was in office. The communist party was big in the United States in those days and now it wants to make a comeback. And with people like Obama and his minions in office, along with a news media carrying water for him, they think they can get away with it. But they can’t, because the American public is too smart for that. What was that saying Obama was laughing about during the 2008 election? It had something to do with lipstick and a pig.
“Fairness.”
I strongly object to the terms of 1% and 99%. It implies that there are only two classes and that each is homogeneous – with the 99% being the impoverished. Of course, such reductionism is blatantly false.
I also strongly object to the Occupier’s definition of power as related to the Production of Wealth (with wealth understood as surplus above basic Consumption needs). Power is, as noted by Dr. Solway, held by an emerging unelected Set of the population: the bureaucrats. These people make up the policies and programs that remove this surplus from the Producers and distribute it to Consumers.
An economy operates within three phases: Investment, Production and Consumption. Each of these function in different time spans and use of money.
Investment ‘invests or stores’ money into long term infrastructures and programs such as factories, research and development, dams, roads, railroads. The money ‘sits’ here for a long time in these basic infrastructures. This economic infrastructure is the basic strength of an economy. Reduce it and the economy has no ‘bones’ to use for its production of goods/services.
Production ‘uses’ money for short term work – such as running the factory, building the road, hiring more workers, producing the goods and services. This phase is equally vital to an economy – and when we see the results of union greed – the transfering of Production out of the country – we are in trouble.
Consumption ‘exchanges’ money for goods and services for Immediate Consumption. This exchange MUST generate surplus money. Why? Because that surplus then goes back into the activities of Investment and Production.
There are ONLY two economic modes which do not need to return Surplus Wealth into Investment and Production. They are both pre-industrial and both rely on no increase in population. One is hunting/gathering, where they rely on ‘Mother Nature’ to produce food for them. Hmm. But this type can only support a few hundred people and they must migrate to new camping grounds when the food runs out. The other is primitive agriculture where stringent tactics are used to keep the population low; this can support a hundred thousand.
But our large populations? We can’t rely on Mother Nature for our food and shelter. We have to manufacture it. That means – we must Invest and Produce our goods and services. Ourselves.
The socialist economy focuses totally, solely, ignorantly, on Consumption. It wants to take the surplus money from the ‘consumption exchange’…and distribute it right back to others, for more Consumption. It’s a circle. BUT – this starves the economy of any Investment and Production activities! There’s no money to build a new factory, develop new technology, hire more workers.
Then – the wealth available for redistribution dries up. Then, the population increases – and, the socialist govt moves into DEBT to keep the population able to Consume.
That’s the socialist economy. It is disastrous.
A robust growth economy MUST enable a strong productive middle class, the set of the population who start up new small and medium businesses and hire workers. It must also enable a strong and productive investor class – the middle class who invest their surplus wealth in shared new ventures such as funding research centres, funding large industries.
This rejection of our own involvement in producing our goods and services, and our reliance on the modern Mother Nature (the Government)means that we are alienated from the economy. We no longer relate our work to an economic result. So, in Greece, people riot when Nature/Govt says that it can’t provide for everyone. In the US, people riot and ‘occupy’ the streets when Govt says that ‘free’ tuition and etc..aren’t available.
What you say is so simple, clear and logical that it is self evident. It is beyond me how a modern society can produce adults who dispute your points, or an educational system that promotes its children to have any world view that does not rest on the foundation of what you have said above.
Thanks.
What really bothers me is how the Democrats and Obama get away with the blatant stupidity of their rhetoric of: Tax the Rich and Provide for the Poor – which is a focus that totally ignores the economic requirement for the nation to finance its Investment and Production Phases of the economy.
So, with Obama’s constant refrain of ‘the Rich’ who must ‘pay their fair share’ – which ignores that 47% of the population don’t pay any federal tax (how’s that for fairness) and that the wealth pay it all. The 5% pay 57% of the Government ‘Take’.
And, what Obama deliberately and maliciously does is to mislead the American public about this ‘fair share’. Those people who INVEST their surplus in the Investment Phase of the economy receive dividends or interest. This is taxed at 15%. BUT, what Obama doesn’t tell us is that this Interest has, before it even got to the Investor, been taxed at the corporate rate of 35%. So, this same money is taxed at 50%!!!! How’s that for fairness?
What bothers me is why the GOP don’t simply set up a chart showing the Three Phases of the Economy and explain how Surplus MUST be produced in the Consumption or Market phase.
Then, it can’t be taxed away by the govt to be distributed to others who will use it for that Consumption Phase. It has to be re-invested in the Investment and Production phases.
But, Obama and the Democrats deliberately set up the scenario where Surplus is viewed as being ‘greedily stored in old socks’ by The Wealthy. How unfair; it’s all in their old socks.
No – it’s Invested. In developing a new industry, in developing a new agricultural farm, in funding medical research.
Even if the Rich Old White Man (aren’t they all?) simply stores it in the Bank rather than his socks – the Bank can then loan this money to someone starting up a new butcher shop or a new shop to make pies and muffins.
Why doesn’t the GOP explain this – using charts and visual images of the Three Phases of the Economy?
Instead – they allow Obama to misinform and manipulate the people into thinking that wealth is created…in Magic Cauldrons..By the Evil Rich who bubble it up in their basements. Or, wealth is created when you, the poor consumer, buy that ovoerly expensive food with your food stamps..and the Evil Rich Man keeps it in his socks rather than returning it to you…or to the poor illegal who is toiling in the fields (and paying no taxes but sending billions back to Mexico).
What we see in the US – is the disappearance of the capacity for Investment, as the govt takes more and more money from Investors. So, it moves to China and India where Investors can put their money into factories.
Then, we see the disappearance of the capacity for Production. First, the unions with their overwhelming greed, so increased the big industry costs to manufacture goods in the US that these goods had to be so high priced that the Consumer couldn’t afford them. So, production moved out to China and India etc.
And in the US – increasing regulations of small and medium businesses as well as taxes – has driven this Production Sector out of business.
Therefore, the federal govt – since is has effectively killed big industry and small and medium businesses with its high taxes, its support for unions, and its regulations – AND since it has increased the existence of ENTITLEMENT CONSUMPTION in the population – is bankrupt. It turned to deficit financing for those entitlements – borrowing trillions and trillions from future wealth – to fund CURRENT CONSUMPTION within Entitlements. Disastrous.
So- the Democrats/socialists have, by their bankrupting of the first two phases of the economy: Investment and Production – and their movement into deficit and devt funding of current Consumption within Entitlements – destroyed the economy.
Why doesn’t the GOP explain this? Why does it allow Obama to tell us that the ONLY PROBLEM is that the ‘Rich’ (an amorphous group – he defines anyone with an income of 200,000 as a millionaire)…aren’t paying ‘their fair share’. Obama’s class warfare – based on pure lies – is all we hear about.
Where are the GOP? With simple diagrams, simple explanations…?
“Where are the GOP? With simple diagrams, simple explanations…?”
Well, ETAB… they tell us that they’re coming with the next generation of rising political stars. Unfortunately, they may be like the brand new fire-truck that arrives mere seconds after the house has already burned to the ground.
Maybe your question should be asked a little more painfully, “Hey GOP, where were you for the last fifty years, when we really! needed you… with your simple diagrams, and your simple explanations?
That so many of today’s elected conservative and main-stream representatives still cannot or will not learn to articulate some very basic, simple and effective talking points is truly shameful.
You simply can’t make this stuff up. I second Yooper’s comment, you see it everyday.
The pathetic waste of humanity is mindblowing, those who willingly give themselves over to bondage and to be managed like cattle by the “managerial masters” for a few crumbs.
It’s an obvious farce and sadly, they continue to fall for it and readily accept the leftist managerial training. Exactly how many generations of “everybody is a winner” and “throw me something mister” generational training will it take to suddenly create actualized humans?????
Normally the victim is blameless, but in this case they are willing participants in the ongoing crime.
Mr. Solway: What is the point of this? I agree with most of what you say here, but did before you even wrote this. Where is the new, or at least the better detailed evidence to buttress these beliefs in a way that has not been done before?
I for one would like to see a writer such as yourself present a piece that I could forward to left-leaning friends and associates — one that is not simply a restatement of values and opinion, but a really eye-opening and convincing bit of argument. Agreed, few have the talents of the late Hitchens, but his work is in many ways a great model. One might or might not agree with his point of view but he always came up with devastating arguments to support his point. He did not simply restate the usual opinions and wait for the usual applause.
I mean this as constructive, not hostile, criticism.
The fulcrum of the argument that, if pushed on, might be the game-changer, is that no wealth redistributionist system based on force and legal punishment is or will have a neutral effect on the quantity of wealth and value of the money supply that is left over and still available for use at the end of the exercise. If the wealth redistributors used the wealth they take to create profit and new market units of needed value (like food, shelter, clothing and energy, with all labor costs of such production paid out of the profits, etc.) then the growing value of the wealth in the market place, not burdened on the price end with any cost of labor who are compensated with full ownership of the factories rather than wages, can and will justify the growing value of the money supply that was ratcheted up to finance the increased production. Everyone gets richer from the growing value of the money and wealth supplies.
If the transferred money is instead used for looting purposes only, to line the pockets of the bureaucrats who are pursuing the transfers for their own selfish and hypocritical interests, then the value of the increased money supply will decline to the level of the decreased supply of market wealth being produced by or through the efforts of the looters, which, because of the thefts and diversions involved is actually negative. Then we will see the anti-progressive loot-meisters succeed in their stupid and evil plot to push us back to the days of the Black Death. All that separates us from the days of 1250 ad is the size of our money supply. The USSR did not fail because they forgot how to manufacture steel, mine ore or build tanks. They failed because they allowed their money supply to disappear because they forgot that the sole source of new money is the production of profit, and being prejudiced against profit, they had no source to create new money, which is the primary engine, if not the only engine responsible for the economic growth that comes with capitalist expansion.
Redistribution of wealth is unavoidable since all humans are mortal. But what you do with that redistribution, socially, after it comes into your mitts is what will dictate the amount of available wealth and money you will have at your disposal fifty years on. Remember. No wealth redistributionist system based on force and legal punishment is or will have a neutral effect on the quantity of the wealth and value of the money supply that is left over and still available for use at the end of the exercise. [Loop back to the beginning above].
Likewise, the Western Roman Empire didn’t “fall,” it went broke.
In response to ever-increasing taxation and oppression, people simply walked away from their farms, keeps and businesses. It was in essence, a total loss of confidence in their own civilization. Money fell into disuse, literacy went right out the window.
An empire based upon loot will sooner or later run out of victims to loot.
Some, like Titus Livy could see it coming when, in the introduction to his monumental history of Rome remarked that his purpose in writing was “to trace the progress of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.”
The remedies needed to cure our ills will be dire indeed, and it remains to be seen whether or not we can face them.
See David Hume, Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, chapter on justice. He describes in a few paragraphs what happens if the principles of justice is equality in distribution – destruction of wealth. Adam Smith was a good friend of Hume’s and wrote The Wealth of Nations. Socialists believe that government is God, and that they are the priests.
– the newly-discovered 800-page Bretton Woods transcript, if made free to the public now, would disclose the intent of the post-war planners.
Succinctly and well said. Many of these same ideas are in Levin’s new book, “Ameritopia”. He also notes that Tocqueville warned us of this – that egalitarianism could seduce people into giving up their freedom. Similarly, Benjamin Franklin warned that despotism would result if people didn’t continue to accept the responsibilities necessary to maintain freedom. Interesting how the Founders and political philosophers of old are treated as quaint and irrelevant by the left today – yet they understood people, power, and government so well that their observations remain relevant.
I also like how socialists treat wealth as a zero-sum game. If Joe gets rich, it is at Harry’s expense. Well, Bill Gates getting rich hasn’t cost me a dime – in fact, he has created products that have enriched us all. However, redistribution – taking a dollar from Joe to give to Harry – IS a zero-sum game.
Geithner said recently that the wealthy should pay more for the privilege of living in the U.S. Amazing; 50% of the people pay nothing for the privilege of living in our country, and 60% who receive more from the government than they pay in taxes – we are actually paying them for the privilege to live here! How can they say this stuff with a straight face?
Someone once likened it to a “river of money” flowing by, and demanded a government – supplied bigger bucket, assistance in dipping, guards to keep others away from the river, etc. GB[the real]USA
I just got a funny e-mail. The gist was that while liberals are redistributing our wealth, the park service has a policy discouraging people from feeding the animals – they might grow dependent and not be able to fend for themselves.
“Wealth has certainly been transferred, but in the last analysis not to the poor and needy, not to the jobless citizens of the West in a redistributionist fever of inflated currency or to the basket-case Third World nations under the aegis of global warming, but to the managerial class itself.”
It’s about time someone said this. Classic Lefty economic self-destruction at its finest.
It would be interesting to see how much of each dollar that passes through the hands of those who “redistribute” ends up in their pockets (salaries, benefits, pensions, bonuses, healthcare). “Raise my taxes!” they cry. No sh*t.
“Interesting how the Founders and political philosophers of old are treated as quaint and irrelevant by the left today – yet they understood people, power, and government so well that their observations remain relevant.”
Yes, they did see these BIG GOVERNMENT people coming, way back when. That’s because they were already fleeing BIG GOVERNMENT in the form of British royalty (is there really a difference?). Which makes the “Progressives” monicker even more laughable than it already is.
Exactly. The true progressives, the true revolutionary thinkers, were our Founding Fathers. They created a nation like no other. The “progressive” agenda is to return us to despotism.
DS: ““Wealth has certainly been transferred, but in the last analysis not to the poor and needy, not to the jobless citizens of the West in a redistributionist fever of inflated currency or to the basket-case Third World nations under the aegis of global warming, but to the managerial class itself.”
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
Almost everyone here is speaking in absolute terms, whereas in real life it come down to the numbers. A fair union becomes a greedy union at what number? We accepted the graduated income tax a long time ago and apparently thrived during some if not much of the ensuing period. Is the “managerial class” everyone whose incomes depend on tax revenues; from senators to government bureaucrats to policemen to teachers to soldiers to highway and defense contractors?
But still, let’s assume that a particular number IS important, like the fuel or temperature gauges of an engine. ETAB, can your re-state your analysis with numbers? Obviously, we are already a hybrid of capitalism and socialism, so absolute principles or sermons are of limited help since we are not going to completely throw out either of the two. We tilt back and forth within a few percent on tax brackets and on spending grow faster, or not as fast in any particular area.
It’s the Relations or Ratios that are important – not ‘the numbers.
So, a union can be legitimately defined as ‘greedy’ if its demands for wages, benefits and pensions are above the average in the local economy. We’ve certainly seen this as operative in the public sector unions where salary increase demands can be for twice that of the private sector and where pensions and benefits are non-existent as such in the private sector. Equally, when a union in the private sector’s demands are above the norm in the local economy – and beyond the carrying costs of the consumer in that economy, then the union is ‘greedy’.
As for other numbers, I’m not sure what you are referring to – are you asking what is the percentage of GDP that ought to be used in Investment or Production or Consumption?
There are many ratios used in Accounting, to guide business managers in Investment and Production – the P/E ratio of the cost of fixed assets vs the earnings those assets generate; the analysis of Capital Budgeting – which examines whether the long term investments (which takes money out of daily/monthly cash flow availability) are viable..etc.
There isn’t a fixed ratio for these two major economic phases: Investment and Production. It depends on the size of your market population, the changes in this market – is it increasing, decreasing; the changing costs of moving goods/services; etc…BUT – the key point is that the economy MUST INVEST a major portion of its wealth into long term activities.
These long term capital investments effectively remove money that the socialist govt might want for its distribution agenda. I’ve pointed out the disastrous effects of such a govt taxation agenda – it destroys the Production capacity of the society by stopping all major capital investments and job growth.
There has to be a ratio of constructive interaction between the amount the govt ‘allows’ to be held in private capital and the amount the govt taxes for its ‘socialist’ agendas. I obviously think that the major proportion of a nation’s wealth ought to be in the first two phases of Investment and Production (that’s where the jobs are!), with consumption operating as a free market – and the govt as small as possible.
The exponential increase in govt-mandated Consumption, with entitlements and the many social services, means that the economy is focused on Current Consumption rather than long term investment and jobs. This means that it has starved the productive capacity of the US economy and, because of its trillions in debt, starved the future productive capacity.
The entitlement phase has to be reformed and reduced, and dependency on govt for Consumption money has to be stopped – so that people will depend on the private sector jobs for Consumption money.
This is obviously a Hayek-view rather than a Keynesian view!
I believe 30% of people working/supported by a level of government seemed to work pretty well. We are now closing on 50% and this is not working. It is not dem vs con or lib vs con, it is people who pay vs the people who take. The government workers are the ones making all the money now, mostly in pensions and benefits. Why do you think they are the Dem’s biggest supporters. We need to rephase from “political party fighting” to “government people vs the producers”. Doesn’t matter anymore which party gets in, the beaurocrats are too deep and always win.
Write, write, write. It doesn’t matter. It’s not that Americans are stupid, only beseiged with propaganda from the Obama Administration and every Democratic administration before that, from schools operated by the pro-Democratic Party, anti-business, anti-success monopoly union bosses, from all union bosses (not the so-called rank and file, however), from far-left-wing university professors (and their weak-willed college administrations), from most lawyers, and most damaging still, from the far-left and blatantly biased television and newspaper “news” people. It is not news. This relentless messaging can’t help but convince voters of the ruinous greed of entrepreneurs and businesspeople. We as a country are lost until an Obama-like charismatic leader stands up with the truth. The people will follow such a free-market, pro-democracy, pro-the people person. Most of the Republicans over the past since-Reagan years are cowards, afraid of offending the Left and not getting elected. Officeholding is too cushy. We are doomed proving that democracy does not work.
That’s right Ted! College is a liberal conspiracy to turn your kids gay! Or wait, no, that’s not right, it’s a Marxist conspiracy to turn everyone into a useful idiot of dear leader Obama the muslm fascist… No no no! It’s to indoctrinate everyone to becoming a hippie loser who loves welfare and wants to suck the govt teat, or… Or !!! Arahahha! I suck at life so I will blame whoever and whatever is around me to avoid looking like the abject failure that I am. Here’s a hint Ted, take responsibility for yourself and go to a real college and get a job! Stop blaming alll your failures on everyone but yourself.
You are a a breath of frash air in these toxic news media spread everywhere now days. Read your comment everyday and it gives me hope to know that you are outhere and I am not by myself. God bless you.
Nick P
Go back to Romania you commie duck!
“If someone manages to turn a profit, James Bowman astutely suggests in a recent issue of The New Criterion, someone else is only comparatively poorer. He is not necessarily any worse off than he was before.”
Wealth creation derives from peoples desire to have a better happier life. If that means a kid wants to spend $200 for a pair of basketball shoes, it also means that Nike gains wealth as a result. These back and forth market interactions between buyers and sellers, whether it be goods or services, is what drives economies. Call it metaphysical fanasy, illusions, greed, ambition, this amorphous thing between our ears is what creates economic life. It absolutely requires individual freedom and social liberty, which is anathema to Statists. The Statist desire to control and manipulate it for political reasons will always force us into the dire predicaments we are now in.
The world was coming to this conclusion anyway but it was the drunken collapse of America propelled by the final-straw over-bearing Democrat policies that precipitataed the world financial failure. In the same way, if America does not get shed of the Socialist monkey the world will never recover and we are all likely headed to civil war.
“Ignorance and self-infatuated stupidity cannot be discounted. But malice in the form of rampant self-interest and unadulterated greed is surely a significant factor as well”
The above is a sentence that is both well-crafted and right on the money. Add in the “useful idiot” voters and supporters who can’t see this reality and you have a one paragraph explanation of the driving forces behind the “Progressive” hell toward which we all hurtle.
Our political system has been terminally and irretrievably gamed by these people. At some point a grass roots movement will arise that refuses to pay taxes beyond those that support the basic functions of government and declares excessive and unreasonable regulations to be illegitimate. Joining in will be both our duty as Americans and our only recourse.
I don’t think of them as the 1%. The 1% includes many hardworking productive and inventive folks. Many of the 1% are recently economically devastated by the .01% who are the overseers of these crony capitalist and bureaucratic “programs”. This .01% is “the real 1%” you mention, and many only see and work on their compartment. About 1% of those, (or about ten in a million) are “high” enough to see the big picture, and are actively coordinating the remainder in advancing the developing world gulag.
The “gap” in wealth or income complainants never seem to reflect upon the fact thast we now have 50% of our population “taking” (i.e. receiving entitlements commonly called welfare payments or poverty program assistance) from government.
If you have large numbers of people unemployed and or unwilling to seek employment in favor of living on welfare payments, food stamps, unemployment insurance, rent subsidies, or any number of other government benefits it is no wonder that the gap between working people and entrepreneurs and “takers” is growing.
It is shocking to learn that the average disposable income of working Americans is now not very different than the average value of welfare benefits paid to the recipients.
Clearly something is wrong with that picture that should indicate the “GAP” issue is overblown propaganda of the left.
The issue that deserves the attention of all of us is the fact that deficit spending is now adding to the debt that is larger than the nation GDP. Our children will not have an opportunity to maintain the standard of living they have been raised to expect.
Socialism or expanded Government benfits spending is a slippery slope that will ultimately result in there not being enough tax paying citizens to pay for the benefits because of the debt payments required
Very well argued,Mr Solway-lucid,almost irrefutable,except by emotivists.