The Tiffin Party
Although the NYT’s recent article on the political awakening of the Indian middle class describes it as the “Hazare movement”, many might be forgiven of thinking the words “Tea Party”. The NYT describes the sea-change in Indian politics.
A generation ago, the Indian middle class was smaller and centered around civil servants who lived in government housing and sent their children to government schools. Today’s middle class is a creature of the economic reforms of the 1990s and is tightly wedded to the private sector. Its success is celebrated in Bollywood movies, and the Indian news media serve as a bullhorn for its views.
If the earlier middle class saw some politicians as heroes, idolizing Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, this middle class mostly regards politicians with contempt, placing more faith in business leaders or, in some cases, in nongovernmental organizations. Government is no longer regarded as a provider or enabler, but as an obstacle.
“This middle class is less about ‘what the state can do for me’ than ‘the state is preventing me from doing what I want to do,’ ” said Devesh Kapur, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania.
The shift from a middle class based on civil servants to one founded on the private sector is fairly recent. Civil servants in India were practically as rare as hen’s teeth 65 years ago. In the heyday of the Raj the Indian civil service numbered just over a thousand. It ruled with a light hand. But Jawaharlal Nehru, who called it the “steel frame” of India, then proceeded to expand it. By 2011 there were 10.5 million bureaucrats in Indian federal and state agencies and it had become a world unto itself. The former “steel frame” had become a tangle of barbed wire which regulated everything; and it became the basis of the “middle class” and perhaps not so coincidentally, the foundation of Indian one party rule.
Leland Hazard, an American academic writing in the Atlantic, circa 1965, described the India he saw. “India is said to be the world’s largest democracy, 480 million people, increasing 10 million per year, one seventh of the world’s population. But one party of the politically elite, the Congress Party, which Gandhi and Nehru dominated during their lives, rules India — despite some permitted minority parties — as completely as the Communist Party rules Russia.”
It will be said that there is nothing wrong with India which cannot be cured by a 5 or 6 percent annual growth rate. That is like saying that there is nothing about war which cannot be cured by brotherly love, but how to get the growth rate or the brotherly love remains unanswered. …
First, the Indian economy should be more fully decontrolled. It is now subject to a hodgepodge of price and other economic and bureaucratic controls which make fruitless jobs for acres of clerks, create innumerable bottlenecks — often ultimately broken by graft — and provide power-seeking bureaucrats with opportunities for maintaining their own private pen-and-pencil armies. Even Russia uses price and competition as methods for allocating goods and for getting efficiency in production and distribution more than does India.
The old-line bureaucrats are as confused about Nehru’s “socialistic pattern” as middle-aged mothers watching their sons in a football game. Many of the civil servants have said to me, “Since in our government-owned enterprises we do not have the profit motive as a stimulus for efficiency, we must maintain tight supervision and control.” What the criteria are for the supervision and control they do not say, for the good reason that valid criteria do not exist. Control means control from Delhi, in a country where it takes hours to get through a telephone call over but a few hundred miles, and sometimes days for mail to travel the same distance. (There are some teletypes, but they are too often out of commission. Sections of transmission wires in India are cut and stolen for sale in the black market — one of the aspects of the controls.) Of course India’s government-owned plants must be in business for profit. If not, then who but the taxpayers will pay the losses?
Decontrol the economy. Get the taxpayer off the hook. Be in business for profit. It is well that Hazard was writing about India in 1965. Had he lived today he might have been accused of ghostwriting for Herman Cain.
Eventually the Indian rising middle class noticed their chains and took notice. The NYT describes how a the protest of a woman called Hazare became the subcontinental equivalent of the Rick Santelli rant. It was insignificant in itself but it caught fire because it touched a chord.
The Hazare movement rattled India’s political establishment because it offered a glimpse of what could happen if the middle class was mobilized across the country. Professionals and college students provided the organizational spine, and money, that brought hundreds of thousands of people of all backgrounds onto the streets in what many described as a political awakening. …
“Here” was Jantar Mantar, the famous protest site near the Parliament building in New Delhi, where Anna Hazare was waging his initial hunger strike against corruption. Mr. Roy had not been paying attention to the news and knew almost nothing about Mr. Hazare. That night, he turned on his television and saw thousands of people rallying as Mr. Hazare, 74, campaigned against the government. He was jolted. …
Mr. Hazare’s April hunger strike forced the government into negotiations over a proposed anticorruption agency, known as the Lokpal. After those negotiations collapsed, Mr. Hazare, who is based in the western state of Maharashtra, returned to New Delhi in August for a new hunger strike, sparking demonstrations across the country. This time, Mr. Roy and his friends rushed to support him. Mr. Hazare fasted for 12 days before the government accepted some of his key demands. Mr. Roy rejoiced.
Suddenly there emerged in India a political movement that rather than expecting help from government hoped it would get out the way when its interventions were unnecessary. This marked a reversal from the post-war conventional wisdom and a challenge to the established cultural and political elites.
Like the Tea Party, there is a debate over how far the Indian rebels can go. “The question now is whether the middle-class activism is merely an outburst of discontent or the makings of a movement. … The disagreements underscore the movement’s lack of ideological coherence: Some critics have been suspicious because of the support given to Mr. Hazare by right-wing Hindu groups.” There are also questions about the competence and honesty of the rebel leaders. But they have posed the question. The cat is out of the bag.
But though the names may never coincide, the concepts do. Ross Douthat of the NYT, though he never uses the ‘Tea Party’ word, clearly echoes some of their ideas in his latest opinion piece, probably because they are so obvious as to be almost self-evident.
The public-sector workplace has become a kind of artificial Eden, whose fortunate inhabitants enjoy solid pay and 1950s-style job security and retirement benefits, all of it paid for by their less-fortunate private-sector peers. Some on the left have convinced themselves that this “success” can lay the foundation for a broader middle-class revival. But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door. …
The story of the last three decades, in other words, is not the story of a benevolent government starved of funds by selfish rich people and fanatical Republicans. It’s a story of a public sector that has consistently done less with more, and a liberalism that has often defended the interests of narrow constituencies — public-employee unions, affluent seniors, the education bureaucracy — rather than the broader middle class.
The similarity of the Indian response to the condition of overgrowth in bureaucracy to that of the American Tea Party calls to mind the principle that “form follows function”. Similar problems will create similar solutions.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law.
Ironically the globalized economy may create the equivalent of a general model of governance, but not the kind that pundits had expected.
For many years after the Second World War it had been supposed that like Jawaharlal Nehru’s “steel frame”, national governments would grow until they encompassed everything, culminating in Global Governance which would supervise individual power until a kind of lasting peaceful stability was achieved. It was less apparent then that the price of such a control mechanism would be a kind stasis and corruption that would choke everything; perhaps to the point where it would endanger everything including the life of all it was supposed to protect.
What may actually happen, if “form follows function” is that governments will fall to an equilibrium level that roughly corresponds to what societies can actually afford. In the end the most successful societies will have as much of a “steel frame” as they need, and no more.
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Well, it’s nice when Douthat agrees with us, though I suspect this is a first.
But I’m not sure about the Indian parallel. India may have previously had fewer public servants (though rather more private ones!), yet its model through the 1990s was socialism if not communism.
OTOH, the American civil service through about the 1990s was generally the poor stepchild of private enterprise, horrible salaries but generous retirement packages.
Some time later, both changed. India started to loosen up towards capitalism, and I think the Internet and H-1B both were LARGE factors in this. In the US, especially California, the generous retirement packages became humongous – look at this craziness we just had in South Gate (?) where the guy was paying himself millions, with millions more in retirement that may be protected by the union contracts? But our police, fire, and prison guard retirement packages are equally absurd.
What ALSO changed is that the private sector started going down the toilet. So, if the larger American civil service just stood still as it was in the 1960s, suddenly it looked MUCH BETTER in comparison. And, indeed, through the 2000′s, civil service salaries continued to creep up, because they always had, even as private enterprise salaries started to creep down, because that was the reality of the world economy.
So now, as Douthat has miraculously noticed, it seems an Eden.
And as you have noted, with a snake.
“Ironically the globalized economy may create the equivalent of a general model of governance, but not the kind that pundits had expected.”
It is also ironic that it was the subcontinent that produced the word “pundit.” Perhaps the subcontinent can coin a new term for those who truly understand the realities of how the real world works.
“But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door. …”
Love that line. And so the ruling elites with their public sector sinecures are fleecing the poor private sector. Liberals railed against the Man until, of course, they became the Man. Liberals lead in the suppression of liberty. It would be so much easier if countries like India could take up the cause where America once led. What will it take to understand that the inequity of our current system comes from our political class?
OK, maybe I am obtuse but why is the title “The Tiffin Party”?
NIMBY vs Erewhon.
““In a different place, in a different time, the Big Society is not a bad idea. ””
““There’s a lot of cynicism around the ideas of the Big Society, and that’s because people can’t untangle it from the cuts that are happening at the same time,” Mr. Thompson says. “In a different place, in a different time, the Big Society is not a bad idea. ””
“Britain’s ‘Big Society:’ Noble experiment in volunteerism or cynical politics?”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/giving/giving-news/britains-big-society-noble-experiment-in-volunteerism-or-cynical-politics/article2218407/
btw, the billion dollars a minute on the previous thread is *way* too high, that would make power generation about 10,000x the total US economy, so the fusion bullets better be about 10,000x cheaper than even ten cents each … or else there are further problems with the stated numbers, but my take is that they were already bad enough so the article just charitably lopped off the other five orders of magnitude.
And then there’s Auroville….
The relationship between the public and private sectors was always governed by a social contract in the U.S.
The public employee agreed to make a VASTLY smaller salary, much smaller than the average private salary without regards to education or training, for which, in exchange, the private sector gave him a MODEST pension and bulletproof job security regardless of politics and the ups and downs of the private economy. Both sides benefited, the taxpayers got the services of the functionary for a low rate and the functionary got what most people seeking public work want more than anything else, the ability to dodge any anxiety whatsoever about income stream security.
Starting in the 1930′s and gaining strength in the post Vietnam era, though, the public sector began to violate the contract. They bloated their pensions slowly over time. Then they bloated their pay. Then they took ridiculous levels of benefits. Since the private sector was doing so well they weren’t overly concerned-knowing that the publics were trashing the social contract but not caring, instead taking the attitude, “Hey, what do I care, I’m doin’ OK.”
Now that the SHTF, the private sector no longer has patience for these contract breakers, and is, rightly, in a mood to enforce. Whether you’re talking about the WI teachers demanding that taxpayers must accept all risk for increase in health care cost or underfunding in pensions, or Boston firefighters refusing to submit to drug tests unless they get a pay raise, or CA municipal officials getting giant pensions, those who have violated the contract will no longer be ignored and the violations will be noted and addressed.
“‘the state is preventing me from doing what I want to do,’”
Nehru, a confirmed socialist and admirer of the USSR, once said, “I’ll hear nothing of profits” when the Indians were figuring their economic model.
For that matter, I believe Gandhi envisioned a society of spinners.
“A Socialists is a Communist in a white shirt.”
#4 CBDenver
I think Wretchard is referring to the Anglo-Indian custom of serving a light meal (called tiffin) in midafternoon (which would be tea time in England). So “Tiffin Party” would be the Indian equivalent of “Tea Party.”
I think that the US civil service turned a corner in the 1990′s. It had always been seen as work with good but unspectacular pay, very good benefits, and most importantly of all, reliable steady work.
But the 1990′s began with the massive downsizing of DoD, the largest since the end of WWII. Dozens of bases that went back decades or more being closed, with the attendant civilian and military workforce reduced sharply. If you had told someone in the mid-70′s – not an era noted for big military budgets – that not one but TWO USAF Air Logistics Centers would be closed and the work distributed over the 3 remaining ALC’s, they would have considered you a lunatic.
Then under the Clinton Admin, Algore’s Reinventing Government Initiative called for the elimination of 30% of all Federal civil service jobs. The basis was the idea that if you got rid of a large part of the workforce the rest would simply have to become more efficient – but this was coupled with the requirement that all rules, regulations, laws, and Congressional Mandates still had to be followed. This was attendant to making a car “more efficient” by reducing the size of the gas tank. In other words, you could cut back on the work to support the actual mission in response to a reduced workforce but not reduce the bureaucratic nonsense that dragged you down.
I think all those cuts showed the civil servants that the politicians were out to get them, and from multiple directions. They had to become more politically active in order to defend their jobs. I remember a USAF GS-12 in 1974 bemoaning the fact that no politician cared about him and it was not possible for he and his fellow workers to lobby them. I think they finally decided to fix that.
Control means control from Delhi, in a country where it takes hours to get through a telephone call over but a few hundred miles, and sometimes days for mail to travel the same distance.
And the Peak Oil doomers are afraid of Indians getting cars.
Here in the States, I can hop in my car at 6 AM and be 786 miles away checking in at a hotel near Yellowstone National Park at 7:30 PM. Can you do something like that in India or China? Or do they just go from home to work so they can pay off the nut on their condo that is twelve times their annual salary?
12. RWE: But the 1990′s began with the massive downsizing of DoD, the largest since the end of WWII.
My installation, through 2 RIFs and 3 BRACs went from 3,500 civil servants in 1995 to 1,200 in 1998. That’s almost 2 out of 3.
The French air attack that so angered the Italians two days later grew from French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s desire to launch an early, symbolic strike before the official start of the [Libya] campaign.
A century ago the same Europeans had an “eleven” fetish, and set the Armistice of the Great War for 11/11, at 11 AM. It was signed by the Germans at 5:10 AM. In those six hours, the British suffered 2,400 casualties. The French suffered 1,170 casualties. The Germans suffered 4,120 casualties. Americans suffered 320 killed and 3,240 wounded in those last hours, spilling their blood and lives for a war that had already been won.
…and all this time, I thought Wretchard was talking about Tiffin Wallas…
4. CBDenver
“tiffin” is an Indian English word for a light lunch, or for a snack between meals. A tiffin box is a lunch box.
The “Licence Raj” that held sway in India before the reforms of the 1990′s did rival the Soviet Union. For example, an Indian factory making bicycles needed government permission to increase its output, or to reduce it, or to start making a new kind of bicycle.
Social change linked to economic growth and economic freedom is happening in the Indian middle class. Expectations of rising living standards are more widely held than they were under the Licence Raj. Even real economic growth of two percent per year over and above inflation is enough to double a society’s output every 35 years. Economic growth in India needs to be higher than that because its annual population growth rate is 1.6%. I think if India could clean up the widespread corruption it could do great things.
Given the parallels, admittedly thoroughly stretched across unrelated cultures, between the Hazare Movement and our TEA Party; you have to also look at at least one of the differences.
What strikes me is what it took to get a favorable government response. In India, out of a population of well over a billion in April 2011 when Hazare began his hunger strike; it took 12 days of public fasting and demonstrations of tens of thousands out of that population to move the government. This, granted, is in large part based on the dynamics of the Indian efforts against British rule where hunger strikes and non-violence had a large role in achieving their goal of independence.
In this country, the TEA Party has had several gatherings in
MordorWashington, DC. While there is some argument as to the size, [with the state controlled media lowballing the figures] if you use aerial photos, the crowds were bigger than the attendance at Obama’s inauguration. Which is purported to have been on the order of a million people. Let us say for the sake of argument, the number of Patriots equaled the size of Obama’s mob. And let us note that simultaneously with the DC gatherings, there were local gatherings all over country that in sum may have equaled the DC gatherings. All in all, a much higher percentage of our population than Hazare could mobilize out of his. I will grant a lack of hunger strikers; but there is no similar tradition here, and no indication that it would be effective here.A totally different response. Defiance, cramming through Obamacare unilaterally, refusal to pass any constitutional budget through the Democrat Senate for going on three years now, calls for canceling elections, and support for [and organizing of] demonstrations demonizing capitalism.
While there may be similarities between the “Tiffin Party” and our TEA Party, [and Hazard may sue you for comparing what he said to what Cain is saying now] the differences are overwhelming. We cannot hope for any moral sense to sway TWANLOC; and now the odds of them voluntarily yielding after losing the election are questionable. Our plans for the future had best include the possibility of the necessity of vis cum armis as the ultima ratio.
Subotai Bahadur
In my opinion, the important thing the Tea Party in the US did was not so much showing the left how much they were opposed but showing the conservatives how many there were that shared their viewpoint, and gave the optimistic impetus for political organization, esp. at the grass roots level. The demonstrations with the help of a rising alternate media, burned through the smoke and fog of the main stream media.
The number and variety of arms and ammunition, the amount of communication links is far greater than the left imagines since despite their “educations” they have demonstrated remarkable ignorance of mathematics and history.
Today’s middle class is a creature of the economic reforms of the 1990s and is tightly wedded to the private sector. Its success is celebrated in Bollywood movies, and the Indian news media serve as a bullhorn for its views
Today’s Formula One race from India was an example of that. A $400 million state of the art race track financed by the private sector without any governmental role. It was a smashing success, unlike last year’s government-run Commonwealth Games which were an embarrassment.
The contest for the next 50 years will be between India and China. I’d bet a dollar on India winning that race. If the US and Oz align with her, bringing Japan and Korea etc. in tow, the fix will be in.
A parent should be proud when a child surpasses them. England may boast of India. By comparison other colonial powers did worse. A child should mourn when a parent stumbles. India should weep. Britain gave India many great legacies. Unfortunately it also educated the Indian elites at Cambridge University at the exact moment when the traison de cahiers was gathering steam. As in America there was a conceit that the foibles of the academics in the Social Sciences and Arts had no practical affect. Britain’s commercial and industrial strength was based on trade and engineering and men who never punted on the Cam. Externally the result was the Socialism of Nehru, and similarly miseducated men such as Nkrumah and Kenyatta. Internally the result was the penetration of government and society by traitors such as the Cambridge 5 spy ring, Philby et al. Perhaps now India having cast off that vestige of colonialism can help free the rest of the Anglosphere as well as the post-colonial world.
I have an Enfield rifle made in Ishapore, India.
They started making the Enfield at that Indian factory in WWI. After the end of the war they changed it only slightly and kept making that model, not converting over to the later WWII style, not even after WWII. The rifle I have is dated 1965. It’s made of a more modern alloy and is chambered for the NATO 7.62MM round instead of the .303, but overall they made the same rifle from 1921 to at least 1965. And the Indian Army quit using that rifle in favor of a more modern semiauto rifle in the 50’s – but the government factory still made the 1921 gun, for the Indian Police. Why do the police need their own rifles? Well, I guess it makes a better club than a modern gun.
That’s what you get from a huge civil service workforce.
bftp @ 20: The contest for the next 50 years will be between India and China. I’d bet a dollar on India winning that race.
I dunno about that. China as a nation and a culture seems very laissez faire, communist tinted or not. India is slightly more organized, but seemingly to small benefit, hold themselves back as often as helping to move forward.
Individually, in IT I work with immigrants, new and old, temporary and perm, from both India and China. As individuals, the Chinese are head, shoulders, hips, and knees above the Indians.
Strangely enough, I think the organizational skills that distinguish the US are more Anglo-Saxon than anything else. It’s hard to point it out, and harder yet to bottle it.
But I’ll take the other side of your bet. Chinese have all the British influence they want out of Hong Kong, or by direct hire of Americans today (rather than British 150 years ago).
India’s advantage has been that they learned to speak English long ago, for the most part, kind of, though spelling and capitalization rules seem to not work in that part of the world. Don’t know how long that will hold them. Sometimes feel like us Americans better learn Chinese. Ni hao.
Why rifles instead of pistols, price more than anything in India. The nature of police work in India and the initial cost of a pistol vs. a rifle. The training required to use a pistol for police work is more expensive. There are probably a lot of people in India sitll that have training and experience with the Enfield and know how to instruct people in its use as well as use it. As stated the Enfield is dual use, not only can it be used as a firearm but also as an impact weapon. A drawback is that it is a pain to carry around on foot. The round either .303 or .308 over penetrates for urban use so you have to be careful of the backstop. On the other hand if you have a barricade situation or in a rural area the range and power and the available ten rounds are quite comforting. I imagine there are some L. A. police officers that wished they’d had the Enfields in their cars when the North Hollywood shoot out went down.
Having worked with a lot of Indians and a fair number of Chinese I much prefer the Chinese however I do believe the one child policy has probably done more to wreck the culture than communist ideological indoctrination ever could. The average Indian spends more time and effort trying to toad up to his superiors and browbeat his subordinates than he does on actual work. There are exceptions of course and most Indians I like on a personal basis but the culture definitely has its shortcomings.
As for the US Tea Party it has not yet managed to capture the Republican Party let alone a dominant position in the media or the middle class and is unlikely to nominate a true conservative for the presidency this time around. The consequence of that is that despite his disastrous policies Obama has a pretty decent shot at winning re-election which will be an economic disaster for the country.
Right now every “civil servant” in the country is one step away from attaching von to his name and making their status as the new noblesse formal and well they should because they are sucking the life and wealth out of us geworfene.
Americans learned their organizational skills, that is there skills at self-organization on the playgrounds and ball fields. That was then taken into a vast multitude of social organizations from the Lions to the Elks, to the Mardi Gras Crewes and everything in between. Those skills are now being beaten out of them by their teachers, parents, and the politically correct. I think it will die when the Boomers pass.
That ability to self-organize was the greatest cultural advantage we had as a nation. It produced just the right chief for the task at hand and retired him when the task at hand changed and a new set of skills were needed. It was egalitarian, democratic, and hierarchical all that the same time. Nothing teaches important life skills better than a group of boys getting together and choosing up sides – alas as soon as you make it coed it goes to hell
I have one of these;
http://www.gibbsrifle.com/historical_remakes_.html
The model 7 in .308. It is what I carry in my truck. Winchester 1300 in the top rack and Mr. Gibbs on the bottom. CZ75 in the glove box. I used to tote a mini-14 in the bottom rack then went to a mini-30. That 30 kicked to the point where I figured I might as well get a real rifle. Traded the 30 straight up for Mr. Gibbs. I think I got the better of that deal.
How Members Of Congress And Federal Employees Are Living The High Life At Our Expense
Washingtonians now enjoy the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the country, and five of the top 10 jurisdictions in America — Loudoun, Howard and Fairfax counties, and Falls Church and Fairfax City — are here, census data shows.
The signs of that wealth are on display all over, from the string of luxury boutiques such as Gucci and Tory Burch opening at Tysons Galleria to the $15 cocktails served over artisanal ice at the W Hotel in the District to the ever-larger houses rising off River Road in Potomac.
#1 When you total up all compensation (including health care and benefits), the average income for a federal worker in the Washington D.C. area last year was $126,369.
#2 In 2005, 7420 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year. In 2010, a whopping 82,034 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year. That is more than a tenfold increase in just five years.
#3 In 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense had just nine civilians earning $170,000 or more. When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. Department of Defense had 214 civilians earning $170,000 or more. In June 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense had 994 civilians earning $170,000 or more.
#4 Last year, federal employees “earned” approximately 447 billion dollars in total compensation.
#5 According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, federal workers earn 30 to 40 percent more money on average than their counterparts in the private sector.
#6 Today, one out of every 12 people living in Washington D.C. is a lawyer. In New York City, only one out of every 123 residents is a lawyer.
#7 More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires.
#8 The median wealth of a U.S. Senator in 2009 was 2.38 million dollars.
#9 Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress – and they refuse to pass a law that would change that.
#10 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.
Meanwhile, most of the rest of America has been going through economic hell….
-The standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. history.
-According to the Federal Reserve, the combined net worth of American families has fallen by $5.5 trillion since 2007.
-Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
-According to Paul Osterman, a professor of economics at MIT, approximately 20 percent of all employed Americans are making $10.65 an hour or less.
While the average American family is deeply struggling to pay the mortgage and put food on the table, the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. are busy shopping for the latest cell phones and trying to figure out what brand of new car to buy next year.
Over the past couple of decades, the federal government has absolutely exploded in size, but this has not helped the poor. We now have more poor people in this country than ever before and over 2 million additional Americans slipped into poverty last year.
No, the reality is that the people that have reaped the rewards of a much larger federal government are the lawyers, the lobbyists and the bureaucrats.
This is the kind of thing that the American people should be protesting. Almost everybody in Congress is rich. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are living the high life. The lawyers, the lobbyists and the bureaucrats are having a field day.
Doug, why should the American people be protesting success? What the American people should be protesting is not the wealth (affluence) of the establishment but the lack of trickle down. Ever since we climbed down from the trees (an idea some are still not sure of) there have been haves and have nots.
The haves (establishment) have because they are willing to do whatever it takes to get. The have nots aren’t. Have nots always outnumber the have. Some time shortly after cities were invented (by haves to protect their stuff) The have nots got tired of the haves and their strange ways. So they did various disgusting things to them. It didn’t take long for the have nots to discover the city fell apart without the haves doing their thing.
So a thing called a “Social compact ” was invented. That compact is that the establishment keeps the wheels, gears and cogs of civilization working in turn for a large share of civilizations fruits. The have nots grow the fruit and do the scut work.
The problem today is that the Haves have not been taking care of the have nots. Soon the have nots will do various disgusting things to the Haves. That will restart the cycle.
The Establishment deserves to live the good life when they do their job. When they don’t they deserve the rope, the guillotine, the 9 behind the ear (AKA the Quaddify).
Well since I explained the history of civilization to you in 5 paragraphs, maybe you can do me a favor. I suspect I’m going deaf. For years I have been trying to figure out the words to this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_fCqg92qks&ob=av3e
The questions are: Why is 1950s-1970s socialist India the model for the Obama administration? (With the Republicans playing the role of political untouchables?)
(Answer: Because Obama has seen the Socialist Past-Present-Future and it—in his perfervid, ideologized imagination—works!!!)
And why is the American rank and file acquiescing to it?
(Answer: They’re not. Still, Obama has 14 months left to wreak and to wreck. And he will to his damnedest to do what can be done.)
File under: But we got to blame someone…. (Read it and weep, no, rather get angry: http://pjmedia.com/blog/blame-the-predecessor-not-the-ideology-a-historical-leftist-tactic/ )
Our ABC/BBC/CBC missed this: O’s Crisis. Please forward.
“@Peston: MF Global collapse first serious US victim of eurozone debt crisis. London employee tells me he & colleagues have been sent home.”
…-
“European debt crisis live: Markets fall as optimism fades
• Italian bond yields hit 6.13%
• Markets fall as bailout deal euphoria peters out
• Euro crisis drags MF Global to the brink”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2011/oct/31/european-debt-crisis-markets-f
28. stoicheion,
I think the words refer to the video as being a visual portrayal of the demise of civilization.
They keep saying bond holders will take a “hair cut” but every time they say that the size of the hair cut goes up. Pretty soon they’ll be talking scalping and heading toward decapitation. It is also interesting that both “conservative” and “labor” UK news papers are saying the party is over and here comes the splat.
In the opinion of a lot of people the gas port on the Ruger Mini-14 was too large. I guess they made it that way so it would work with the worst mil-surp 7.62 X 39 mm ammo on the market. http://www.mini14gasblock.com/
Some people did a do it yourself reduction to reduce the felt recoil and battering.
re: India’s bureaucracy and corruption: bureaucratic corruption serves to promote stability of oligarchies. When some smart and energetic nobody tries to create a business and grow it, he faces an endless series of demands for bribes and payoffs in order to be allowed to operate, which saps his energy and prevents him from being as successful as he otherwise would.
Contrast this with the offspring of a prominent and “connected” clan: an attempt by a low-level bureaucrat to extort a bribe from HIM results in the bureaucrat being given a swift lesson on who’s business ventures it is not safe to bother.
The net result is that it enables stupid and lazy offspring of the elites to be successful, while suppressing the efforts of the un-connected.
re Enfield rifle: when dealing with civil unrest, a rifle with bayonet can be very intimidating. You can poke people with the bayonet or butt-stroke them with the stock, besides shooting. With a pistol, you can only use it to shoot
stoicheion, What words? There are words??
Yeh, Herb, The words are rumored to be posted somewhere. My brain shuts down around the second pelvic thrust, so I am unable to verify that. I can verify that Deanne Berry is smoking hot!!!
http://www.dasurf.com/deanne-berry/
She’s an Ozzie and a Fox girl.
Has the BC been taken over by Theo Spark? Division of Labor and all that. Careful or you’ll have the union on you.
My prior comment about China vs India did not allude to the capabilities of the people, while we can consider all arguments about Bell Curves read and admire both groups I agree that individual Chinese and the culture they embody are impressive if sometimes challenged regarding ethics outside the family. My point was that the authoritarian nature of the CCP argues against the long term stability and success of China. India is our natural ally now and we should act accordingly.
stoi@28: So a thing called a “Social compact ” was invented. That compact is that the establishment keeps the wheels, gears and cogs of civilization working in turn for a large share of civilizations fruits.
Quite agree. In fact that’s what I was taught as a kid – mind your own business – anonymous adults were quietly “taking care of things.”
Fother-Mucking Wittle Leasels.
Steve Liesman is right. Deficit concerns are over-hyped. (Consumer debt is at the lowest level in 6 years.) The priority now is employment.
Elvis has left the building.
You describe a monumental change in political tides. I am reminded of John Quincy Adams, and Calvin Coolidge, who, in different words, said that the best foreign policy America could have was not to enter foreign entanglements, but rather to maintain liberty at home as a beacon and example to others. This new Indian middle class learned its lessons from Indian entrepreneurs in America.
s @ 28: So a thing called a “Social compact ” was invented. That compact is that the establishment keeps the wheels, gears and cogs of civilization working in turn for a large share of civilizations fruits. The have nots grow the fruit and do the scut work.
I’d have to reread Rousseau, but that’s not my recollection of quite how he states it. What he *meant* by it is perhaps another matter.
I’d say more but need to spend more time working out the words to that song …
25 MILLION hits. Less then 10% are mine, I swear. Who knew aerobics was so popular! We need to open Aerobics franchises across Europe and Russia. Make a little money And put a halt to the declining birth rate. Not to mention testing the instructors, although that could prove hazardous.
Doing the history of civilization in 5 paragraphs requires a certain amount of simplification. Sort of like the History of Rome. Gibbon took either 12 or 24 volumes, I forget which. Julius Caeser needed 3 words, veni, vidi, vici.
37. YBR
The Deficit = Taxation
They are an IDENTITY in the mathematical sense for a fiat issuing power.
The crazy notion that our children will be forced to pay these deficits is entirely absurd.
WE are paying for these deficits in the present
There is NO delay.
This tax is levied in the capital markets.
Like the other opiates deficit spending — when you’re the global reserve currency emitter — induces narcosis.
The effect is so profound that EVERY manner of rationalization is prompted — from Summers to Klugman — by the shaman-class.
——-
Folks, it is imperative that every citizen come to understand that the currency emitter, the rules maker, is ENTIRELY unlike ANY of the other players in the room.
It can chase you, jail you, execute you. It can remake the rules on the fly. It can issue checks with zero balances — and they don’t bounce. It gets to print currency out of pure air/ electrons. It can never die. It can collapse, though.
It also cannot escape the NOW. It can only ever tap what really exists in the present.
It also can — and normally does — warp the marketplace. It is normative for the politicians to operate anti-economically — right up until they hit the wall. The Duck of Death being a concentrated, pure exemplar of the phenomena. Indeed, it is hard to describe ANY of the despots of history without noting their anti-economic ambits.
It’s their defining characteristic.
In that sense, the Wan is of a like mind. His entire philosophy is Marxist and anti-economic. Fortunately, there is a lot in America for him to ruin.
In Canada the entitlement culture is spreading to new populations and it’s costing us deer, er dear. Standing on the front porch this morning in my robe, I watched three deer eating from the flowerbeds in the yard across the street. It dawned on me that deer feel entitled to the products of other’s efforts. Those fricking deer are COMMUNISTS!
Over at Commentary, they point out that an NYT writer has an entirely different take on the Hazare thing:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/31/keller-income-gap-wealth/#more-772830
He compares it to #OWS.
stocheion; here’s another rather Freudian video that most of the ladies won’t see the point of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5bYDhZBFLA
Sorry for derail.
I got a new money scam in the mail today. I was a bit confused at first but it was a business letter (mailed with a stamp!) from canada claiming to be hiring me to be a secret shopper. The novel part was the $2000 check in the letter. The check was drawn on a cleveland bank.
Supposedly I should desposit the check then go and make a few selected purchases. $30 walmart, $30 JC Penny, $1500 western union, whoa what?
My first thought was “money laundering?” Then I thought about it a bit.
They want me to do the transfer within 48 hours. What are the odds of that big check clearing…
It appears that they get people to wire them large amounts of money for the hope of a small profit. Classic confidence game. The hook is that big check in hand.
Then again, maybe someone just mailed me a $2000 check because I’m awesome. Yeah.
Anyone else get the same offer?
Think we should be able to tie this topic in with today’s news. The ultimate welfare dependents of international government fantasy finance and politics are the so called Palestinians. Today they were admitted to UNESCO with Obama responding by a fake cutting off of funds. Fake since he has shoveled billions to the Palestinians and fake international Educational Cultural and Science projects, read pork, that flows back to the UNESCO affiliates.
aaron…
Western Union itself should be shut down as a RICO operation.
Most of its activities are tied to fraud. BTW it has no connection with the classic name other than picking it up after the former outfit was liquidated.
Paypal and kin have entirely ruined the economic purpose of Western Union. It can’t survive on legitimate wire transfers in the modern age.
Re: 8. no mo uro. Saint JFK was the one who allowed Federal employees to unionize and it was Jerry Brown, in his previous incarnation as governor of California, who allowed state employees to unionize back in the 1970s. John Lindsay, another liberal saint, equalized the pay of police, firemen, and -garbagemen- back in the 1960s. In his spare time, he vastly increased welfare rolls.
State and municipal employees and government officials are a self-licking ice cream come. They provide campaign contributions and workers to elect Blue politicians who return the favor by increasing the employees’ pay and benefits with Other Peoples’ Money. The feds continue to enable the governments to lie about the soundness of their employee pension funds by letting them assume the plans will make 8% a year.
YBR/37:
Fother-Mucking Wittle Leasels.
Is Ben Stiller in the movie, by any chance?