We live in a therapeutic age, one in which the old tragic view of our ancestors has been replaced by prolonged adolescence. Adolescents hold adult notions of consumption: they understand the comfort of a pricey car; they appreciate the status conveyed by a particular sort of handbag or sunglasses; they sense how outward consumption and refined tastes can translate into popularity and envy; and they appreciate how a slogan or world view can win acceptance among peers without worry over its validity. But they have no adult sense of acquisition, themselves not paying taxes, balancing the family budget, or worrying about household insurance, maintenance, or debt. Theirs is a world view of today or tomorrow, not of next year — or even of next week.
So adolescents throw fits when denied a hip sweater or a trip to Disneyland, concluding that it is somehow “unfair” or “mean,” without concern about the funds available to grant their agendas. We see now just that adolescent mind in Wisconsin. “They” surely can come up with the money from someone (“the rich”) somehow to pay teachers and public servants what they deserve. And what they deserve is determined not by comparable rates in private enterprise, or by market value (if the DMV clerk loses a job, does another public bureau or private company inevitably seize the opportunity to hire such a valuable worker at comparable or improved wages?), or by results produced (improved test scores, more applicants processed in an office, overhead reduced, etc.), or by what the strapped state is able to provide, but by what is deemed to be necessary to ensure an upper-middle class lifestyle. That is altogether understandable and decent, but it is entirely adolescent in a globalized economy.
Why so? In a word, the United States is not producing enough real wealth to justify a particular standard of living among its public workforce far superior to counterparts in the private sector. We are borrowing massively abroad for redistributive entitlements. We fight wars with credit cards. We talk of cap-and-trade and “climate change” without prior worry about how to fuel the United States, as we sink in perpetual debt to import well over half our oil. We have open borders and pat ourselves on our backs for the ensuing “diversity,” without worry that illegality and lack of reverence for federal laws, absence of English, no diplomas, multiculturalism instead of the melting pot, the cynicism and chauvinism of Mexico, and recessionary times are a perfect storm for a dependent, and eventually resentful, underclass extending well into a second generation, one that fumes over why things outside are not equal rather than looking within to ensure that they could be.
Who would not wish pristine 19th-century rivers to run all year long? But that same utopian rarely thinks like an adult: “I want water releases into the San Joaquin River all year long and am willing to pay more money at Whole Earth for my produce to subsidize such diversion of irrigation water; I do not wish any more derricks off Santa Barbara, so I choose to drive a Smart car rather than my Lexus SUV. And I want teachers to be able to strike, and receive $100,000 in compensation and benefits, and therefore am willing to close down a rural hospital in Wisconsin or tax the wealthy with full knowledge that many will leave the state. I insist on amnesty and open borders, and will put my children in schools where 50% do not speak English, and live in the barrios to lend my talents where needed to ensure parity for new arrivals. I want cap-and-trade and so believe that the lower middle classes should pay “skyrocketing” energy bills to subsidize such legislation.” And so on.
It’s even more.
Adolescents aren’t yet in full control of themselves and lash out when they are denied what they want. They call their foe names rather than trying to undestand the reason for the denial. They don’t understand the long-term problems of being dishonest and will lie or cheat to gain the upper hand. They don’t understand that laws usually are in place to protect everyone and that getting away with violationing the law probably won’t last for long.
But in general, I don’t put much blame for our current circumstances on the youngest generations. Adolescents are expected to act like adolescents. That’s what growing up is about. Indeed, it seems that there are a couple of million people in their 20′s and 30′s that are putting it all on the line for America every day of the week.
The real problem is our own generation…the baby boomers and the ones immediately following. We learned early that we could get away with almost anything in a world with just one colossus and wealth that was spurting out our ears. Some of us finally woke up in the last 20 years. Too many didn’t.
‘They call their foe names rather than trying to undestand the reason for the denial’
Good point Pro,
I make it a point to run over to the OTHER sites, Huffington, Move.on, Kos, WP comments, Times comments, etc. every now and again for a refresher on how hatefilled, arrogant, and the name calling fools we are up against.
It does them no good, but children don’t know this as they have not matured enough to understand.
The title of this article should replace the word ‘Adolescent’ with ‘Female’.
Women are not capable of adult-level judgment. When future historians debate the collapse of the West, many will come to the conclusion that the fatal error the West made was assume women could be responsible adults.
Read this :
Why Republicans will not Shrink Government Spending.
The Misandry Bubble.
I’m a woman, so my comment comes from that worldview.
I may quibble that women are “incapable” of adult judgment, but there is something in what you say, in my opinion.
It’s a sad day when men openly debase themselves for whatever reason, and we see it in the news, the movies, in our popular culture. The only men that are held up for popular support are the metrosexuals who are more effeminate than manly.
There is a need to reestablish Biblical gender-based roles for men and women. And no, this doesn’t mean restricting women’s opportunities in the workplace or denying us the right to vote or anything ridiculous. There is simply a gender-based pattern that has been established since before time began that we have deviated from, to our detriment.
Victor’s article is an example of one result of deviating from the idea of adulthood for both men and women. Disaster.
Kathy, you are absolutely right. Men have been emasculated in our society. Little boys are steered into feminine activities in school and are criticized for acting like boys. When I hear feminists proclaim that it is society that determines gender, I just roll my eyes. They are trying to erase every distinction between the genders. Good luck with that! We have been teaching our girls that they can be tough, competent women for decades. It’s time we start reteaching our boys that they should be true to their masculine characteristics (and I’m not talking about machismo) and once again become tough, competent men.
Right on Kathy – well stated. Toads have tiny brains.
I bet you are just dynamite with the ladies.
I agree. His honesty gives females the erotic shiver they feel in the presence of the Bad Boy but being that it’s only a verbal backhand he’s dishing out to them, it’s without the risk of real danger.
You bet. Women like a man who they cannot bend, and someone who is unashamed of dismissing conformity.
Conversely, women find a chivalrous suckup (i.e. the typical Republican man) utterly repulsive.
You need to learn more about how women think.
Toads, I think you are onto a few valid points about political movements which encourage financial dependency on government by women. But saying that “women are not capable of adult-level judgment” rather undermines your own credibility, I think. Your best points will be more compelling if you don’t get sloppy or over-broad in your generalizations. -
Are you really suggesting that Margaret Thatcher is not an example of responsible adulthood?
KarenT,
Using an outlier like Margaret Thatcher makes my point, rather than yours.
The bottom 90% of women are simply not responsible adults. That an elite 10% exists that are on par with men (as was Mrs. Thatcher) is irrelevant.
Create any intellectual contest between two randomly selected groups : adult women, 12-year-old boys.
The contest would be evenly matched. Be it chess, trivial pursuit, mathematics, etc., the adult women and 12-year-old boys would be evenly matched.
Feminism, far from helping women, has exposed the inherent mental and moral limitations of women that otherwise might not have been noticed. Feminism has exposed the empress for being nude.
Toads….I get your point however for the sake of some facts please allow me to defend the women of my generation. They could outwork any ten men of todays generations!
My grandmother raised fourteen children on the farm. Her day began at
4:30 am 7 days a week. She prepared the meals, made all the clothing and bedding, took care of all the barned and sheltered livestock, schooled all the young’ins, could drive a team like any man, break a hoss, doctor all the kids and animals when sick, could ramrom the farm and ranch when grandpa was down or gone, could handle the wood choppin, drying meats and fruits……..
Did I mention she had NO electricity, no running water, no plumbing (outhouses), ironed with a stone heated on a wood stove…..
Then I was born by a daughter right after the Crash, followed by the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression and then WWII…growing up on the same farm and ranch operation as my grandparents.
The women of my generation in many parts of the land were hard working women who would today work 10 men into the ground before noon.
“Research has shown that women, even professional women with good jobs and successful careers, tend to be less financially literate than men,” said Annamaria Lusardi, an economics professor at Dartmouth College who has studied the issue.”
You might want to read this article in the New York Times, of all places, Financial Advice by Women for Women.
Sorry but you are so wrong it’s unbelievable. How can anyone still have that point of view in this day and age. If anything, women are smarter than men, they certainly put up with more. I’ve seen so many instances of discrimination against my wife that it’s crazy. We go into a store for her to get something and the sales person (men and women both) will ask me if they can help me. I say talk to her. So they do for a moment then they are back asking me questions and trying to help me. It bogles my mind. Even women discriminate against women. WHY???
Chris the pedestalizer,
Women are smarter than men? Put up with more?
Clearly, you have no direct experience with women.
Actually, Chris is part of the ‘third gender’ forming in the West. They do have a role to play :
Pickup Artists want to have sex with (attractive) women.
Women want to have sex with pickup artists.
Chris gets to pick up the tab, in return for a ‘thank you’ from the woman.
Everybody (including Chris) gets what they want, so everybody wins!!
Toads is a perfect example of the adolescent mind at play.
Women might like strong men, but having a guy you cannot communicate with is exhausting and futile.
Many women work, supporting their men and children and run a house. This has occurred for centuries.
Sexism still permeates society at all levels, some of it very ugly indeed, much of it occurring simply from men being unable to conceive of a woman being an actual person who might not like being groped by strangers, for example!
It is frustrating for men to have to have their own male instincts frustrated but at the same time is a societal requirement to be disciplined and not have your impulses guiding your behaviour. That’s adult, and too many “men” I see simply do not have basic self-control, of their hands and their tempers, even if they have tons of degrees.
Of course, that makes the ones who do all the more appealing. Clearly Toad does not qualify.
Speaking of growing up.
Sad is the little man who utters big words from behind a Garanimals moniker.
Translation of what Tina said :
“As a woman, I know that I am a high-maintainence, amoral child. So please let me get away with it.”
Fat chance, lady.
Male-female pair bonds, lower status for women and children, hierarchical societies, are not Biblical or patriarchal or political. These are innate characteristics of Homo sapiens. Although nobody ever has tried to establish same-sex marriage, there have been numerous experiments with free love, no private property, pacifism, etc., which all failed. These unnatural freakshows will always fail because they attempt to override Human Nature, which exists, has always existed, is innate, and is immutable. BTW, please remember to include our ding-dong sometimes allies, the Libertarians, in the adolescent camp, as they are trying to abolish human society, with its dominance hierarchy and rules, just as much as Leftists. Sorry Ron, but isolationism doesn’t work since the steamship, high explosives, and airplane were invented (have you heard about this?).
Yo, Jacob, “lower status for women and children” isn’t a “natural” phenomenon which was created by men for men once they started figuring out the workings of sex and paternity. Just because you own a penis doesn’t make you superior. Anything but. Grow up, man child
You comment indicates a lack of understanding of the causation that Jacobite is referring to. Read some evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.
I’ve got to agree with you that the boomer generation is to blame for this adolescent, vile petulance. We see it everywhere. I’m a boomer, and feel responsible for helping to reverse the tide. Which means confronting my fellow boomers, and those children who have been badly raised who think this adolescent live-at-home and fight for “fairness” and “good faith” negotiations while the people working and paying taxes are going without.
Hi Pro
Ditto….
FWIW–I think it was us baby boomers Hanson was labeling adolescents…for unfortunately, too many of us STILL think that way, or worse.
In this regard, I think Tom Paine’s statement reflects to ultimate ADULT view:
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
That is NOT the view of the “Me” generation.
God bless
toads, at the risk of losing my feminist creds, i must concede that my own thoughts have ventured along that path.
however, i disagree with your use of the word “responsible.” women are at least as responsible as men, especially considering the rampant irresponsibility of many men upon learning that their female sex partners are pregnant.
my own conclusion is that the problem is this: women’s emotions have ascended to primacy in todays society. they have displaced logical, rational, dispassionate thought.
to begin with, schools have been taken over by women. their curricula are emotion-based. the child must not be forced to learn things like multiplication tables by rote, because he might feel his creativity is stifled. awards must be given for trying, so that no one’s feelings are hurt. the list goes on. difficult subjects like math and science have lost ground to amorphous subjects such as gender studies.
entertainment has been feminized. lock-jawed men of the past are rare, replaced by “sensitive” metrosexual men in touch with their feelings. yes, they readily engage in hand to hand combat, but deep down they are softies.
the justice system has been feminized. lawyers appeal to jurists’ emotions with tales of the melafactor’s dreadful childhood, abusive parents, etc. courts are clogged with cases of people “offended” by another person’s words, leading to a growing list of taboo verbiage.
feelings have their place, but it is not in the voting booth. unfortunately, our current president was swept into office on a tidal wave of feeling. what is hope but an emotion? what is worship but an absence of rational thought, i.e. emotion? what is charisma but an appeal to emotion? what is guilt but an emotion?
unfortunately, the proverbial genie cannot be stuffed back into his bottle. emotions are here to stay. let’s just hope (irony intended) that their dominance will be eroded by a more viable basis for a civilisation.
No, it is women who are irresponsible regarding pregnancy, not men.
Women will poke holes in condoms to trap a man into being locked into ‘child support’ which is really ‘babymomma support’. The woman clearly is using the child in order to secure a free ride for herself.
I consistently see that fathers put their children’s interests ahead of their own, whereas women put themselves first.
Oh, and ‘Pro-Choice’ is just code for ‘Me, Me, Me, Me, MEEE!!!!!’.
The ‘Deadbeat Dads’ lie is a creation of feminism, that is merely a projection of their own attitude towards children.
Go read The Spearhead to get educated about the feminist war against children.
You seriously need to hang around with higher class women. When you pick them up at bars, based on how fluffy their hair is, or how their butt looks in jeans, don’t be surprised what you get.
You and I don’t live on even the same planet.
I actually agree with several of yhour points, but would point out that a strong radical agenda is also responsible for much of what you point out.
However, you seem to be implying that men are always rational, logical creatures with no emotional sway whatsoever in their day to day conduct.
Get serious!! I have met many men who by virtue of their intellect and pomposity call themselves rational beings and still act like yowling infants.
Many of them are able to rationalise their emotional desires – Mohammed for instance. But then women can too.
There are far more similarities between women and men than there are differences, especially where the day-to-day parts of life are concerned.
Perhaps Toads doesn’t like the fact the fact that women can actually say “no” to him. That’s what I’ve found is usually at the base of these sorts of comments, especially when it’s about “women” instead of explaining an issue.
My reply was addressed to Stargirl.
I simply call it the ME generation, the age of entitlement.
I should send this to my 20 year old daughter but she would just get mad at me again.
Send it. She’ll thank you in 10 years.
It will likely be 20 years, not 10.
The old communist party had an interesting position, a ‘Chief Ideologist’.
Would that the GOP had such a position, so I could nominate VDH to serve.
[ I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult :-) ]
Indeed, VDH, indeed.
The adolescent mind is hormonal and impetuous. Consequences of actions are afterthoughts beyond “gimmee, buyme, takeme, bringme” demands.
They cover this childishness with a patina of “goodness”, so that they can dramatically pose for the photo-op shoot, that the demands are “for the children”, “for the poor”, “for the oppressed”…for the “victims”.
Reckless behavior, acts, words and deeds leads to “the morning after”. The adolescent mind trivializes bad outcomes, finds ways to make others responsible for the negative impact. The throes of passion last night can be wiped away with a little truth scrubbing.
Obama has been last night’s orgy. Today, we are wallowing in the morning after…suffering the consequences and wondering what happens now.
The adolescent mind is on to the next conquest. Twitter-bashing those “meanies” who want to deal with the reality of what has been left in their reckless wake.
We won’t produce our own energy, because it’s dirty…better to let the “little people” of other countries do that. We can send them money. Let’s march, let’s sing, let’s make smores.
Let’s soak the hard-working a little more…we’ll deal with what happens when they run out of money later. Or as they say in Chappaquiddick, we’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it.
“…as they say in Chappaquiddick, we’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it.”
That’s a real gem. I had to laugh. Thanks CF.
“We demand the world be the way that it cannot.”
If you read Whittaker Chambers book “Witness” this is precisely the reason he gives as to the motivational energy behind communists.
Communists, having no God above, cannot accept that the highest entity in the universe (themselves) could allow things in the world to be how they ought not to be. Thus, they MUST perform as God and save the world.
Good point. Another aspect is, an atheist/leftist has no one to forgive him for his human failures, no one to love him despite his human imperfections, and nothing to do to assuage his existential guilt. He has no myth to explain (accurately or not) why the world is so screwed up and why human nature doesn’t change. There’s just him and his actions. He feels brave because of that.
Superb post, Doctor; you’ve outdone yourself.
I think this is why the Left utterly fails to understand conservatives, why they continually project their world upon us (the Tea Parties are astroturfed just like leftist rallies, the Kochs are evil billionaire overlords just like Soros) while we understand them only too well: we’ve all been adolescents, but liberals have never become grownups.
“I think this is why the Left utterly fails to understand conservatives… while we understand them only too well: we’ve all been adolescents, but liberals have never become grownups.”
Excellent insight. And useful as well. They will never change, so to protect ourselves, we must treat them as children.
They CAN change, but only through epiphany. I had one not long after I voted for Carter. Eeeewwww. I realized i had really screwed up.
They don’t come very often. Solzhenitsyn warned about the “pitiless crowbar of events” that would eventually wake people up in the West.
I think the problem with adolescents and Leftists in general is best summed up by Pope:
When the mind starts to flower in late adolescence we feel empowered and wise because we compare our new found level of knowledge not with the sum of all knowledge but only against that which we personally knew a few months or years before. We feel that since we know so much more than we did, we must know all we truly need to know. This trait in youths has been noted since classical times. Usually, we only lose that arrogance when we graduate to life’s only true school, the school of hard knocks. The teachers in the school of hard knocks shove our heads under the water of the Pierian spring and force us drink or drown.
Unfortunately, many people never attend the school of hard knocks and never take those very vital deep draughts of experience. For those who spend their entire lives in government, activism or academia, unescapable physical reality never intrudes to disrupt the intellectual elegance of their fanciful hypothesis. Facts and physical limitations become strange mythological things spoken of only by the ignorant pagans in business, technology or the military. We grow up only when we have to. These people’s intellects and emotion freeze in late adolescence because they are never challenged to grow up.
A true education teaches humility. In a real education, every new thing we learn only expands the radius of our ignorance allowing to see how much more of the world actually exist and how very little of it our real knowledge covers.
A failed education, an indoctrination, teaches arrogance. It teaches that all one needs to know lies within the circumference of the ideology. Anything outside the circumference is trivial. That is what we see in various collectivist ideologies. “Our knowledge is so vast and so encompassing that we have right, even the duty, to impose our will on everyone for the collective good.”
Perhaps we could find the Perian spring, bottle the water and marketed as something rich people drink to help the environment. Only then can we force our hoards of adolescents to imbibed the wisdom they truly need.
And President Obama’s entire experience is academia and government.
He’s never worked full-time in the private sector. That part time law job when he was teaching doesn’t count.
I predict Obama will never budge on energy and he will cling to “green jobs and clean energy” as gas goes over $4.00 per gallon and the economy gets worse. As if that were even possible. 4,000,000 foreclosures this year. A historic number!
I fear that Jarjar and the First Wookie actually know exactly what they’re doing. And it’s a feature, not a bug.
You seem to forget his brief career in “distribution”. At least when he was (allegedly) pushing dope he had to learn about profit margins.
“I predict Obama will never budge on energy and he will cling to “green jobs and clean energy” as gas goes over $4.00 per gallon and the economy gets worse.”
About that $4/gallon gasoline…during the evil Bush administration as soon as gasoline went over $2.50 in the NY metro area, TV reporters camped out at gas stations & endlessly interviewed angry customers about how they would “cope” now that they had to put their food money in their gas tanks. WELLLLL…Gasoline’s approaching $3.50 & where, oh where, are the those pressing questions about choosing “filling up” over hunger? Oh, that’s right, it’s the Obama administration & the adolescents decided $4/gallon gasoline is not only acceptable in a bad economy, it’s downright American. Needless to say “the kids” moved on to “reporting” a far more significant story: the evil Wisconsin governor starving teachers who then die in the streets for lack of healthcare.
Great comment, Shannon. What I find pathetic is that these shallow drinkers spend their energy thinking dreaming up new wants instead of appreciating what they have.
Good point, I always liked that poem.
Good is the enemy of great. Having built the nation through the 1980′s to a height of prosperity not even dreamed about by the Founders, we then squandered our golden eggs of wealth on entertainment, recreation, and bourgoise lifestyles; shipped our manufacturing base overseas to gain a few more coins in the bean jar; and lived large on the fat of our forefather’s creation.
We allowed our political class to make promises they could never keep in great Ponzi schemes to pass it all off to future generations: Write those checks! Somebody else will pay for them! And we turned away from the great crony capitalist pay-offs (e.g. GM, GE) and Union-Democrat corruption that further weakens our liberty.
As VDH says: We never grew up.
Now the checkbook is empty, and our goose is gasping for breath. No wonder that the “entitled” dumb-masses will act like raging adolescents when the adults say they have to turn off the TV and do their chores.
Expect more of the same over the next 20 years.
A. Reasoner, right you are. I think that we are going through this because as a whole we are incredibly ignorant of the fact that all of our current human maladies have been chronicled by past cultures via Bards, history and philosophy. We simply live for the moment without regards or reflection on past lessons learned. Adolescents indeed.
Infantile regression comes to mind, but then it occurs to me that generally one must first be an adult in order to regress. A lot of baby boomers and hipsters just never grew up. And a lot of them didn’t make it to old age. Unfortunate, but on the brighter side at least their premature deaths cut some of the social safety net costs paid by the rest of us.
I’m reminded of one more fact…
When an adolescent throws a tantrum, the Real World does NOT give in. It applies the Cane of Reality to the brat’s backside until the lesson is painfully clear.
Ah but now if you apply the cane properly when needed you go to jail.
The philosophical cancer Mr. Hanson so eloquently delineates here is nihilism and emotional subjectivism, both of which are vestiges of pragmatism. Thanks
Yessir, Gene, agreed.
Reminds me of the quote, “Their non-material, non-profit worlds are realms where rivers run with milk and coffee, where wine spurts from rocks at their command, where pastry drops on them from clouds at the price of opening their mouth. On this material, profit-chasing earth, an enormous investment of virtue–of intelligence, integrity, energy, skill–is required to construct a railroad to carry them the distance of one mile; in their non-material, non-profit world, they travel from planet to planet at the cost of a wish. . . And that is the whole of their shabby secret. The secret of all their esoteric philosophies, of all their dialectics and super-senses, of their evasive eyes and snarling words, the secret for which they destroy civilization, language, industries and lives, the secret for which they pierce their own eyes and eardrums, grind out their senses, blank out their minds, the purpose for which they dissolve the absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality–is to erect upon that plastic fog a single holy absolute: their Wish.” – Ayn Rand
Thanks, Minroad, for that excellent quote… and that’s why Rand will always be relevant….
Victor vincit omnia. Maximas gratias tibi ago. Eheu, nec sapientia nec eloquentia flocci facit. Barbari iam per portas irruperunt. In arce sine spe finem expectamus. Obama est nobis et Romulus Augustulus et Odoacer. Tristene non est?
Certes, Obama abstrahendus est.
Tax cheats from the Left are always ‘forgiven’ by the left and the leftist media. Marital cheats from the left are always ‘forgiven’ by the left and the leftist media. Everything evil-Bush® did but eventually a Lefty does and even ratchets up a notch or two is ‘forgiven’ by the left and the leftist media. Am I the only doofus seeing a ‘pattern’ happening here?
Prof. Handsome Hansom, I wish more people from all walks of life both politically and personally could be reached by you, because, sadly, I feel my congratulations to you ring rather hollow in the echo chamber of preaching to the choir. We need to get your voice to reach out to the people with too much wax and wane in their ears… I try my best to forward your awesomeness to everyone I know, but, that’s just a tiny drop in a huge bucket of stupid we are dealing with.
We can do better and as much as I lament how low we have come…I would really like some solid solutions that can be implemented NOW before we sink fast and hard into the abyss of faux ‘compassion’, faux ‘green’, faux ‘equality’ and faux ‘money’.
Let’s not kid ourselves. This is no adolescent mindset on the rise. It’s totalitarianism, plain and simple.
.
Totalitarianism is exactly what you get when adolescents are put in charge. I read it in Lord of the Flies.
Let the conch soon pass from Obama’s lips.
Good one.
“Yet a common denominator is a national adolescence, in which we want what we have not earned. We demand the world be the way that it cannot; and we don’t wish to hear “unfair” arguments from “bad” and “mean” people.”
Vic forgot justice. No justice, no peace, remember? I have to wonder: Okay…just what will “justice” finally look like in spite of the past 40 years of welfare and affirmative action measures taken to assuage the rage?
As often happens when children play themselves into a state of exhaustion, frustration and hunger, this will all end in tears.
I’ve often said that liberalism is the terrible twos writ large.
We are now living permanently in the world of unintended consequences. The unions and their members demand that they get over $100,000 a year in pay and benefits? Sure, but who cares if the state goes bankrupt in trying to pay for all that. Tax the “rich” more to pay for all of Obama’s social-welfare programs? Why not, but what happens when you run out of these “rich” people to tax or they leave for other states or countries? Raise everybody’s real estate taxes to pay for union pensions? Right on, but what happens when you raise the real estate taxes on people who are unemployed or have been out of a job for over a year? Is that fair and sharing the burden of our state fiscal problems? But teachers take these jobs for the kids, correct? Yet how does it help the kids when you walk off the job for weeks? Cops and firemen hate the fact that they have to pay for insurance now and contribute more for their retirement? Well, at least they HAVE jobs. Roughly 14 million Americans can’t say that now.
Everybody wants something today, but nobody wants to pay for it. Being a sucker who was dumb enough to work in the private sector, I WISH I had tenure, I WISH my job was so protected that I would literally have to be found stabbing someone to death before being fired from my union job, and I WISH the health insurance for me and my family was almost free. But you know what my bosses always, ALWAYS told me? “If you don’t like it, leave.”
So why can’t we start saying that to union workers? Why are they so “special?” Like all kids, it’s time for them to grow up and join the real world.
I could not disagree more. It is not “adolescent” but rather the confluence of the two cultural patterns deeply embedded into American history. David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed” points out that the four British folkways are nearly always in conflict with each other.
Now, the Puritan/Progressive folks who founded New England are now mostly gone, but their culture lives on, with debased Post-Calvinism and utter, absolute hostility to “hillbillies” and the descendants ethnically and culturally of the British Borderer, Scots-Irish folks. Who in James Webb’s book were “Born Fighting.” The Utopian, one-world aspect of course comes from the Quakers/Friends whose cultural influence is massive. And who also despise the Appalachian culture in America, descended from the British borders.
YES OF COURSE the idea of “ordered liberty” where government does everything to everyone, creating a perfect Godly Utopia (just with Gaia not God) combined with Quaker/Society of Friends one worldism that holds that all people are exactly the same, and should be treated with the Golden Rule, in pacifism to the extreme, explains the cultural dilemma we find ourselves in.
Gramscian Long Marches pale in explanatory power to already deeply existing folkways that are like cement in American culture. Probably not even the spoiled Ayers and Dohrn ever read a page from Marx, but imbibed the idea of a perfect, ordered liberty that required communal violence (Puritans hanged lots of people who threatened their ideas about how the world worked) to achieve. From hanging Quaker preachers in the 1690′s and “witches” to Bill Ayers is a straight cultural line. Just with God replaced by other ideas of the Godly, and the “elect” being the same, the same “utter damnation” of people in a state of nature, Jesus dying only for the select, the other five points of Calvinism.
Combine that with Quaker crack-pot utopianism (treating your neighbors like yourself works well when they’re Amish, not so well when they’re MS-13) and you have a perfect cultural storm. Not the least fueled by hatred against “White Trash” aka the cultural and physical descendants of British Borderers.
Who are pretty much the Tea Party: belief in “natural liberty” that has the least infringing government possible, deep suspicion of authority and society (which is viewed as designed to oppress them by their enemies), reliance on clan-based mechanisms for fighting, high personal mobility and little property, deep personal loyalty, all derived from chaotic violence on the borders dating back before the Roman Empire.
American history suggests that the Borderers will not go quietly into the night; they never have before, and are quite likely to take their revenge on those they believe wronged them. From the Whiskey Rebellion onwards, this has been the pattern. For one thing they have little to lose.
Always interesting. But the good doctor wasn’t trying for an academic text; he was just pointing out a pretty obvious characteristic of the left in an amusing and readable way.
You are right about the Scots-Irish. It’s a good bet that a hefty percentage of people reading PJM are in that mold. And you betcha we won’t give up without a fight.
Your thesis also doesn’t take major factors into account. Notably, African Americans and Hispanic immigrants. They change the dynamic considerably, but perhaps with more time you could have described how you think they fit in. I would also suggest that Marx provided a mental framework that the british lines couldn’t have been thinking about when those divisions arose. It seems to me that 21st century America can’t possibly be fighting centuries old battles. There are just too many cultural influences to be still locked on that path.
Still, your post is interesting and informative.
Brother, I have no idea what you are trying to communicate. It seems you may have something to say, and at least one person found it “interesting” and “informative.”
Please, if you can, write in plain English so I can understand you. I’m a Calvinist, among other things, and I think you’re trying to say something about that, but again, your writing makes zero sense to me.
Kathy, you’ve found a better way to say what I was thinking. My thought was “HUH???”
Whiskey….your literature resources conveniently leaves out a very important part of the New American Project…..the CONSTITUTION.
OUR FOUNDERS WERE GENIUS FAR BEYOND ANY COMMON DEFINITION!
The root causations of today’s problems including the focus of this article by VDH is from the constitution systemically and systemactically being ignored and or redefined by the fine gents and ladies of our juris prudence systems. The most dastardly of all, being the ignorance or blind eye to the founders intent of Articale I, Section 8, Commerce Clause.
Virtually EVERY social, economic and political problem of today has its roots buried in the [abuse] of the Constitution and commerce clause by the three branches of the federal government.
That’s very insightful and a useful contribution here. I’ve been reading about post-Reformation England and have been struck by how many sects arose after the controlling hand of Rome was lifted. The Puritans were very admirable in many ways and attempted to find ways to exist within the Church of England. The Adamites were more loopy, believing that it was possible to reacquire the innocence of the Garden and that this could be evidenced by shedding their clothing around each other and apparently in public as well. The Quakers appear to have resisted religious authorities and it’s but a short step from there to skepticism of all received authority like fuddy duddy constitutions. Humans do love to cut their own paths through the forest and 20 minutes in Taos, Sedona or San Francisco will prove that big time.
The human mind can send its owner off on wild tangents just as its development can be arrested at the stage of adolescence. I think the arrested development argument is persuasive. I certainly know people who have adolescent ways of thinking. But I also know seemingly mature people who know so much that simply isn’t true. The credulousness and unmooredness of their thinking is what creates problems because they advocate destructive policies and, of course, they don’t care for any Constitution that purports to apply any kind of a brake to the implementation of whatever dumb scheme has wandered into their brains. “To each according to his need, etc.” Sounds good, let’s roll!
On Puritan hangings, I read of an well known case of a woman’s being hanged in the MBC. She was asked to desist from expressing her opinions on more than one occasion, subjected to house arrest, exiled, and exiled again before the Winthrop (?) had her hanged. Okay, not good, but the woman went out of her way to provoke Winthrop and simply would not avail herself of safer places and more compliant conduct that would have saved her. I hope I’m not too far off the mark on the facts here.
It happens that I have both studied the same texts you cite and am also an amalgam of the ethnic waves you mention. I think there is something to what you say. I look forward to hearing more from your perspective.
As others have pointed out, there are a number of strands you have left out, but your overriding truth is that our conflicts come from within us, ourselves, as they always have. The Islam thing is a little different, but it is refreshing to hear someone point out that the groups today come from patterns that have been long established in our culture.
So much of the grumbling here frames our latest problems in terms of AND WE HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE!! THE DEATH OF THE REPUBLIC IS AT HAND!! REPENT!!
One of these days I will get around to reading the Fischer and/or Webb books. You can hear the Scotch-Irish (half my lineage) strand here loud and clear at PJM. When you have the impulse to fight, on tends to stay in the present and not be distracted by history. At best, history is something to grab a small piece of and beat your opponent over the head with it.
But how about the Catholics? That seems to be the biggest piece missing from your value poles. All of the groups uou mentioned feared, despised (and probably hated) the Catholics. Now, ironically, is possible that the Papists are one of the predominant groups still holding us at least slightly together.
Hat tip, Doc. You’ve described Cloward & Piven’s 1966′s, ‘..War on Poverty’ to a tee.
Silly union workers. Useful idiots one and all..
Entitlements are consuming almost 60% of the federal budget – yes, Social Security and Medicare. Yet many on the Right do not want these programs touched. Too many retirees don’t want their kids to take care of them yet have no problem demanding that the taxpayers fund their SS checks.
It’s time to attack the sacred cow of federal entitlements. The retired are no more entitled to a portion of the treasury than anyone else.
Gee toady, the several hundred thousands of dollars my little social unit has had confiscated for Social Security (adjust for inflation and extremely modest returns and it’s around a million) makes me think that i DO have a call on the Treasury. As I recall, the confiscation wasn’t voluntary; I was told only about a thousand times that it was secure; and nobody was telling me that they were actually spending it to build an army of Union members that vote solidly liberal.
Sorry buddy, I don’t equate my “investment” in any way with your greedy desire to be paid not to work and to be given a free house.
So, if you want to get YOUR grubby hands on it, I suggest you lock and load, because I certainly am.
You and I were lied to. We were stolen from. There is no money with which to pay us. We’ve been screwed. That’s reality, so you can grab your gun and force the state to steal someone else’s money so you can “get yours,” but it will be theft all the same.
You have no more right to money that belongs to someone else than I do.
What are you talking about?
For one thing, SS is hardly in major jeapordy. Numerous studies have shown it can be made solvent with small adjustments to the retirement age, inflation adjustements, means testing (for future recipients) or other factors.
For another thing, none of the people who have poured trillions into that program were ever told the money was being squandered on the epa and other libwit boondoggles. For that reason, it’s the LAST program that should be altered in any way.
And for the last reason, many seniors are completely dependent on SS, with no other options. Tell me another program that would have that impact. There are billions and billions going to illegal aliens, young workers who are gaming the system and many other boondoggle programs. SS retirement fraud hardly exists. SS spending goes to people who funded it and who have geniune needs, with minimal waste and fraud…probably the only government program of ANY type that you can say that about.
The ONLY reason this kind of discussion ever comes up is because it is propaganda designed to scare old people into voting Democrat.
Any conservative that buys into the idea that SS is no different than the other unfunded, wasteful, give-away programs that the Democrats have used to bribe voters for decades is a damned fool. You are falling for a con.
(note: the disability aspect of SS is a different matter. That is rampant with fraud and needs to be curtailed. People who allow themselved to become obese in their 20′s are not disabled and should get nothing, as one example.)
“…many seniors are completely dependent on SS, with no other options….”
That is not my problem, your problem, or anyone else’s problem. SS was never intended to be the SOLE means upon which one subsists in their “golden years”; it was to be an adjunct to help prevent true poverty.
That so many have fallen for the progressive notion that SS = retirement income is shameful (particularly when the quarterly statements are sent and when you look at the numbers it is clear the payments will not be any kind of real “living” income), but even so it is not my problem, your problem, or anyone else’s problem.
That said, Congress’ largesse with SS funds is a theft for which there are no words. I would not be adverse to every living Congress critter finding their own lifetime benefits diverted into the SS fund as a meager start on making restitution for their wicked wrong-doing.
I paid into SS for years and years and in 2 more, I’ll be eligible to get some of it back. But I’d be happy if they would just abolish it along with all the other unconstitutional programs and agencies of the government.
Politicians have no incentive to control entitlement costs. On the contrary, they win elections by promising to spend other people’s money on their constituent voters. This is the Achilles Heel of democracy. Politicians correctly view any discussion on entitlement claw-backs as political suicide. Too many voters have that selfish, adolescent mindset – “I want what’s coming to me – damn the next generation of taxpayers.” However, we all know that pyramid schemes can’t be maintained indefinitely. Politicians hope to push off a financial collapse by rationing nationalized medical service, and by eroding the value of the dollar
through ongoing, gradual inflation.
Maybe you live in a democracy, but we in the U.S. do not. We live in a constitutional republic, although with all the AWOL democratic legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, it’s getting harder to make that case.
Our founders knew that democracy always devolves into mob rule and tyranny. They specifically rejected democracy as a form of government for the U.S.
That is very true, and we’ve been able to see that problem coming for decades now. Unfortunately, the last president to propose any changes to Social Security was Bush in 2005, and that was used as yet another way for the Democrats to demagogue the issue and to accuse him of being divisive, when they were the divisive ones for refusing to even discuss the issue or to propose any alternatives.
I’m always so amazed at todays generation casting stones at social security as an ‘entitlement’ program…at least when ignoring and not speaking to the origin and legislative intent.
Eisenhour, then LBJ, then virtually every congress since, robbed the social security fund leaving it broke and thus a welfare entitlement today. Though it can operate on virtually a net zero basis until 2037, the government hasn’t the ability to pay back the funds they’ve robbed for 60 years.
Social Security was originally set up as a federal bonds back investment program with a guaranted ROI of 3%….very similar to bonds investment instrument of today, less the guaranteed ROI. NOBODY has figured out how many hundreds of billions (even trillions) of dollars the fund would have today had the funds been secured in a lock-box and not congress who approved it to be robbed and never repaid. [Take a look at the paid-in versus the paid-out ratios over the many years since its orign...it has never been 1:1]
Medicare and Medicaid as envisioned by LBJ and approved by congress is designed to not only be a complete socialist entitlement but a loser.
Likewise, the labor union forced concept of employer paid benefits is a loser by design.
All that said, government and employer paid benefits; retirement and health care should be the total responsibility of the individual…except for ‘certain’ qualified veterans and LEGITIMATE disabled citizens. If this were to happen the cost of health care insurance and health care goods and services would take a dramatic decrease from the [arbitrary] inflated values of today, created by a [captive] non competitive marketplace.
Excellent post.
It remains to be seen whether Timmy Tantrum and Mary Mayhem get their way or if the adults in charge finally stand up and stop this nonsense.
In all too many households the adult KNOWS that he should put the brakes on his wayward adolescent but lacks the fortitude to do so in the face of extreme opposition.
Do we have any adults who are willing to put their foot down? I don’t see any from where I sit.
I hope I am wrong.
Lily:
You are not wrong Lily. Those who know better, for the most part, prefer to pontificate rather than actually rally to the cause of reversing the communist takeover of the nation.
As a matter of fact, most of the pontificators still can’t bring themselves to call the 2008 takeover of the government what it in fact has been proven to be. Totalitarianism, as in the President declaring that he and Eric Holder will, because they have the right and power, to deem things they personally dislike, “unconstitutional.” The law afterall, is an Ass.
And fulfilling his promise to redistribute the wealth of the suckers who had worked and saved for a lifetime to provide for themselves and their families, never understanding that the inflation monster would take off their legs while the unionized “public Servants” continue to retire and spend 30 or 40 years enjoying the good life made possible by pensions worth millions when income streams are projected into the future.
Question. How much money would a person need to have in the bank at today’s interest rates to have a pension payment of $80,000.00 a year? Do the math. Social Security is a poor and distant cousin.
And at the state level, elected representatives of the people go out of state to hide rather than show up at work and vote as they have always in the past been required to do and as they have sworn an oath to do.
2012 is the key and apparently, Mike Huckleberry Hound, will carry the spear for the make believe anti-communists at that time. The Fox News Band began to play the tune on the Hannity show this week. The con-clown is about to say yes, I am the savior and I will run and end the Obama reign of terror. I must because we have to stop the “cultist Romney.” And maybe John McCain will support him. Think so Lily?
Stop Romney, stop Sarah Palin and preserve the GOP/DNC criminal syndicate until the big White House becomes a pile of sand. None other than time tested professional political deal makers need apply. Harvard and or Yale degrees preferred, but then “good ol’ boys” are also needed from time to time.
Way past time to rally around an American Patriot. Talking is so much easier. Just my humble opinion to go along with yours Lily.
But then, we’re probably both just a couple of dolts in the “country class”, and what the hell do we know about anything in the view of the “ruling class” and their apologists? Especially those among them who know their Latin so very well.
Maybe John Edwards had it right afterall. There are really two Americas. Just as there are two kinds of people. Those who create, and those who create nothing, but only consume part of that which someone else created, and then live a lifetime making a case that they are “entitled” to do so.
David Horowitz is right: Liberals are not liberal about anything except drugs and sex. Liberals are destroyers. Conservatives are creators.
I don’t know, JK.
It’s not “just about sex” when a Sanford does it, only when a Clinton does it. It’s not “just about sex” when an Evangelical preacher does it, it’s just about sex when Roman Polanski does it.
It’s not “who cares about drug use” when a Rush Limbaugh or Mrs. McCain has a problem, it’s “who cares about drugs” when the entirety of Hollywood installs a red carpet at the Betty Ford clinic.
Lefists are not liberal. Certainly not in any logical sense of the word. Leftists are not progressive. Certainly not by any definition that makes sense.
Leftists are reactionary, regressive, narrow-minded, and dictatorial. Leftism is run like a cult. They have zero tolerance for divergence and an angry, venomous, bile spewing reaction to ANY dissent from rigid dogma and their playbook.
People make the mistake of confusing leftism with liberalism. They are not even kissing family members…but, let’s not get started on Woody Allen.
Excellent article!
It seems to me that the mindset of the Wisconsin unions and others like them isn’t truly adolescent. Adolescents are hormonal and therefore can’t exercise as much control over their behavior and thoughts as an adult can. The Wisconsin unions are grown adults, so they don’t have this excuse.
Adolescence is when people often get their first job, and so they are only in the learning phase about budgeting and saving. The Wisconsin unionites and their buddies presumably have worked for quite a number of years and are supporting families, so they shouldn’t have this excuse either.
Adolescents tend to be naively idealistic because they are just starting to experience the real world away from the shelter of mommy’s skirt. Again, the unionites are adults, so they don’t have this excuse.
Considering this, I’m at a loss as to what is going through their minds. It might be greed; not the good kind of greed, where you work hard because you want to enjoy luxury, but rather the bad kind of greed where you want other people to give everything to you in exchange for as little work as possible.
The only logical conclusion is that they are mentally ill. Either that or they simply don’t care if the state goes broke or not.
There are times when even a comment is superfluous. I think this is one of those times.
Sooner or later, retired teachers start talking like this. “Durn kids today want everything on a silver platter.”
It’s not true, but that never matters to them. The fact is that unions paid heavily for every gain they made on behalf of American workers. Many people died for the eight-hour day. Many more were beaten, imprisoned and purposely denied employment.
And if I may say so, it ill behooves a product of hippie-era UC Santa Cruz, the most decadent and self-indulgent pleasure palace since Tiberius closed up his villa, and employee of the the California State University System in its all-too-generous glory days, to lecture workers in today’s much harsher, more brutal work environment.
I am consumed with chagrin when I contemplate how “brutal” the working conditions of Wisconsin public union employees are. Perhaps these are the reasons that it is the union members, not the bosses, who are resorting to ugly speech and threats of violence.
“I am consumed with chagrin when I contemplate how “brutal” the working conditions of Wisconsin public union employees are.”
Oh, I dunno…..working in an environment that uses Oil-Based NOT the “union approved” Latex can be pretty tough on the nerves. Throw in “the oppressors” trying to pass off Semi-Gloss as Satin & it could get pretty loud. Management’s choosing “Desert Sand” over the union’s favorite “Fawn Beige” could very well result in a knock-down, drag-out that qualifies as “brutal”. YOU, Noesis Noeseos, are NOT a compassionate person!
Yeah man, “reality” is just a right-wing plot. Like algebra. Bummer,dude.
Transference – (psychoanalysis) the process whereby emotions are passed on or displaced from one person to another; during psychoanalysis the displacement of feelings toward others is onto the analyst
this is a surface analysis
we — especially here at PJM — should examine the mechanism that puts irresponsible people into important positions in government, and deeper yet why We the People have been inured to accept, yes, to expect, incompetence in our government
I commend to readers Ben Franklin’s remarks on the nature and Character of the men in government. this was presented Sat. June 2 during the debates on the Constitution. you will find the original in Madison’s Notes.
http://my.net-link.net/~napfn/franklin_character_of_men_in_government.html
Courtesy of the 1960s, the culture has tended more and more towards the idiotic pursuit of self-gratification and “self-expression” at any cost. Ego and base greed have become the norm. Woe to us that the worst of those seek high political office.
50 years ago, I would have been astounded to see the House and Senate filled with people such as that; today, I can’t see how it would possibly be otherwise.
Whatever
The next time Obama holds one of his faux town hall meeting, I wish some would ask:
“Mr. President, what are you going to do for an encore….
after you’ve destroyed the USA?”
After USA becomes the economic equivalent of Argentina, what are they going to do?
Actually this is what left wishes for, the final evisceration of the middle class with a protected government employee class and a sufficiently large government assisted underclass to perpetually elect their political benefactors.
Stagflation? Who cares? I don’t own a business, I don’t risk capital, I don’t have to perform, I don’t have to service my customers —
I have my government guaranteed pension!
The unemployed? I’m in a union, I’ve got seniority, it’s not MY problem.
Nobody wants to buy our bonds? We’ll just print our way out and destroy the bondholders’ wealth, the rich are evil anyway!
After USA becomes the economic equivalent of Argentina, what are they going to do?-The Hallucinogenic Toreador
Ayn Rand explained the looter mentality in Atlas Shrugged. Looters take for granted that another producer will show up to be consumed as soon as they’ve finished with the one they’re eating now.
Let me explain what happened in Wisconsin:
Unions (or Democrats, whichever you prefer) took their members (or constituents, whichever you prefer) out for ice cream on the taxpayer credit card, consumed everything in the store, and threw a temper tantrum when they found out that the taxpayers (or grownups, whichever you prefer) cut up the credit card and closed the account. It’s really no more complicated than that.
Elections do indeed have consequences. The unions – oops Democrats – lost. Complete disregard for simple mathematics, replaced by emotional sentiments such as “fairness” and “equality”, has been tried with disastrous results, and those of us who retained our 3rd grade math lessons are simply trying something different. We’re getting back to the basics where merit is in and tenure is out, where economic realism is in and defined benefits are out. Relax, public union members. We know change can be scary, but you’ll get used to it. The private sector has a “new reality” already. Welcome to the party – you’re very late.
The unions (oops, Democrats) still haven’t figured out “bargaining” w/less than zero money results in a BIG number ONLY if you’re “bargaining” w/Democrats (oops, yourself). If you have at least one functioning brain cell AND a Republican in the Governor’s office, “bargaining” w/less than zero money means….Democrats run off to another state.
If the gap between rich and poor hadn’t been growing at such a fast clip since 1980 then your argument would hold more water. The fact is the rich are taking in more while the poor are being taken from. Unions have a valid place in our society and most people support having unions. Walker is not so much trying to balance a budget as to use the budget crises to break the union. My dad was a steelworker for most of his adult life and was a proud union member. He saved his money and was very frugal and was able to provide security for my mom and his family so that we would have a leg up as we moved into adulthood. How is that adolescent or un-American?
Haven’t you heard? Wanting to live in a first world country with decent social services and a non-crumbling infrastructure automatically makes you an immature Che-shirted twerp.
The gap between the rich and the poor is no different than it has always been. You need to read something other than marxist propaganda.
If you want to get a feel for a real income gap, go visit the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, or the palaces of Europe.
When I see some kids poor kids without $100 sneakers and i-phones, and when the biggest problem of “poor” America ceases to be obesity, then I’ll begin to worry about why my taxes are so low.
The fact is the rich are taking in more while the poor are being taken from.-Morty62
You don’t get your own facts, Morty62. The reality is that “the poor” in America now have a higher standard of living than ever, as proreason’s examples illustrate.
People who are doing something to help the poor are the ones desperately trying to shrink the cost and reach of government. If they don’t succeed and the looming ever closer crunch finally comes to pass in America, the poor will be crushed. Or are you going to give up your home to a couple of poor families, Monty62? (Think real hard about your answer.)
“Unions have a valid place in our society and most people support having unions…”
Not all unions are created equal. The issue in Wisconsin (and most bankrupt blue states) is the predatory public sector unions. We’re not talking about steelworkers fighting corporate tycoons. We’re talking about state government employees, eg teachers, fighting a governor making cutbacks to address a budget shortfall. This tiff with the unions is fundamentally a political fight, not a labor management issue. Walker made clear during his campaign what he was going to do to balance the budget. The people of Wisconsin elected him and now a minority of them stand see cutbacks in their over-indulgent benefits and pay. Elections have consequences. How this compares to the Steelworkers’ Union is beyond me. We should have listened to FDR and never allowed public sector unions in the first place.
Unions in the private sector had a role in the early industrial days, to deal with exploitation by private industry owners, safety issues, etc. But then govt regulations of safety, wage levels, hours worked etc took over. Unions in the private sector became unnecessary.
What the unions did, because they continued, was to drive up the cost of those products manufactured beyond the profit margin of the industry. About 80% of the income was spent on wages and fringe benefits. Nothing is left to invest in building more factories, upgrade equipment..HIRE MORE WORKERS…So, the companies went bankrupt (car companies??) or moved overseas.
Then, the unions moved into the public sector. Here, there is no competition for the goods produced — as there is in the private sector. Public services are monopolies. The taxpayer has no choice; he can’t refuse the higher costs and purchase his goods/services elsewhere. And remember – unions themselves produce NOTHING. No goods, no services. They are parasites on the workers; all the union money comes from dues.
The public service unions take in millions, and I mean millions in dues every year. To get this – they have set up an Elite Set of Employees. The public service. You want to object to a gap between the rich and the poor? Well, the comparison is right here. The gap between the public service employees and the private sector…is enormous.
The RICH are the public service – with their high salaries, their annual increases that are double to triple that in the private sector; their benefits and pensions – all unavailable to the private sector. The Poor – ar those taxpayers who fund it all: fund those high salaries, fund those benefits and pensions. Fund those union millions.
And – the Poor have no say in the matter. The negotations for Higher and Higher pay and More and More benefits…or…we’ll strike and you won’t get your garbage picked up or your streets cleared or…. Well, the negotiations are between the unions..and the government. BOTH are funded by the taxpayer!!
So- higher wages and benefits to this Rich set…come from the lack of such wages and benefits to other workers. The poor; the private sector.
Unions seek to increase their take – ahh..dues..by increasing the wages and benefits and thus, increasing their parasitic dues. Oh – and increasing the numbers of people they represent. That’s why unions insist that in order for you to work …you have to be a member of the union.
Then, these public service unions corrupt the political process. They use the dues to buy politicians by funding their election campaigns. The individual employee may not want their dues to be used to support the Democrats (and it’s always the Democrats)..but the Union doesn’t ask them.
So- these unions – which are long, long past their Charles Dickens time, are now extremely harmful to the working people of the US. They have set up a huge gap between the Rich and the Poor – and certainly, this Rich Set of Public Employees have no interest in seeing their high salaries, bonuses and untaxed benefits and pensions lowered..or..redistributed to the Poor Worker..who pays for it all.
Why do you care how much a rich person has if you have more than you “need?” Rich people don’t sit on their money, they invest it. Investing it creates jobs, jobs which people who are competent fill and earn money from. Take everything from the rich and you end up with nothing.
Good points. Yet even if the rich burned all their money, none of it is Morty62′s to covet.
Envy of others rots the soul. So does the desire for the unearned (a.k.a. “greed”). Just look around you, the ones angry that those with more than they’ve got aren’t being hit with higher taxes don’t often look like happy, content people.
FFS
because public sector doesnt create anything– it is flayed off the backs of the private sector
now, public sector salaries and benefits outpace private sectors– inevitably the discrepancy = bankruptcy and middle-class ruination
these fantasies about “rich” and “poor” are smoke screens
besides, public sector union leaders are the real “rich” and the “poor” are the private sector schlubs forced to fund this insanity
I was out on the manufacturing floor a few minutes ago and time to leave and read Pajamas Media before I go. Victor Davis Hanson said what several of our associates just said, “In a word, the United States is not producing enough real wealth to justify a particular standard of living among its public workforce far superior to counterparts in the private sector.” We had a pay cut in 08 while the government workers received a cost of living, we don’t get the sick days and we have no pension plan, just what we put in 401. Not sure of their political leanings but they lean toward being fed up with Wisconsin and Indiana.
Excellent column, VDH.
And #27 Mike Acker – thanks for the link. I see your point about the conflict between the Rulers-Ruled with regard to power and money; however, Franklin was writing in a period when wealth could be understood as capital in the form of land ownership and rents. To move into public service, now, without a salary, would mean that only the wealthy could do so.
However, the fact that our public service, as unionized, has set itself up as an elite set of employees with wages and benefits totally alien to the average person in the private sector – that’s the problem. Milton Friedman in ‘Free to Choose’ has some excellent comments on the pervasive harm of modern unions to the workers, to the economy, to the whole nation.
Well…I’m just going to pick up my ball and go home to be with my aged parents who love me and will take care of me. You people are so nasty and mean spirited. I won’t be sharing any of my food stamps with the likes of you!
Interesting that this post isn’t based on any peer-reviewed studies or hard empiricism, but just folksy anecdotes and golly-gee-isms.
Even top-notch scholars are allowed to voice their OPINIONS without including a freakin’ annotated bibliography.
Would that be like the peer reviewed empirical evidence in the global warming material? Or all the evidence qualifying BHO for president? Just askin’.
Hey, this might have someone to do with our problems:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
Yes, the charts explain why people who can’t think froth at the mouth when they read the propaganda marxists and other political criminals produce to make them froth at the mmouth…and that IS the biggest problem the country faces.
btw, are you enjoying your i-phone, plasma tv, 500 cable channels, 2 automobiles, microwaves, clean and dry living quarters, the ability to fly 3,000 miles for $200, and posting to websites with information you couldn’t have imagined 15 years ago?
Perhaps instead of eating your guts out with envy over someone who has even more than that, even though you have what you couldn’t have dreamed of when you were a child, you should concentrate on the fact that you live like royalty did 100 years ago. That might help with your ulcer and anger managerment issues.
Yes, I enjoy living in a country with one of the lowest life expectancies in the industrialized world:
At least we still kick ass at locking up our own population and arming the world.
BUT WE INVENTED I-PODS GUYS!!!!! USA #1!!!!!
The lowest life expectancy is also a lie. Countries all count infant deaths differently. The US counts all infant deaths whereas other countries do not. This skews the statistics dramatically.
Lifestyle issues also have a big impact. The democrat underclasses kill each other with regularity, when they aren’t killing themselves with drugs, booze, lethal sex and food. That skews the statistics.
Americans also have higher road deaths because we do a lot more driving.
Whenever the studies do a like-to-like comparison, the US is at or near the top of the list for longevity. For example, US cancer survival rates are the best in the world. And they also contain the democrat created underclasses, so they are also skewed low.
But you don’t need statistics. Try visiting a foreign country. Except for a handful of the smallest, richest European countries, the blessings of America are undeniable.
If we could get rid of the people like you filled with rage and envy we would be even better off.
But Jabba, I don’t blame you. You are only repeating the nonsense they have been pouring in your head for 20 years. The said part is that you are too dense to get it.
You are absolutely right. In European countries, infant deaths are not counted for 60 or 90 days after birth, depending on the country. If an infant dies at day 59, it is not counted as an infant mortality. If it dies on day 60, it is. The U.S. counts infant deaths from birth. It’s not hard to have a low infant mortality rate when you count this way. How many babies that make it to 60 or 90 days die? Not that many. The same is true for death rates. The U.S. counts all deaths, including accidental deaths and murders, while European countries don’t. That is why their life expectancy rates seem to be higher than ours. Search on infant mortality rates and life expectancy rates and you will find out how countries figure these statistics. The U.S. actually has the lowest infant mortality rates and the highest life expectancy rates. The U.S. is infinitely more honest in its reporting on these statistics.
One of the beauties of living in this glorious Republic is that you are free to leave and live elsewhere any time you wish.
I’d be willing to start a charity to provide one-way plane tickets to anyone who thinks their parasitic ways would be more appreciated anywhere else in the world.
But in order to qualify you’d have to pay for your own passport, be willing to denounce your citizenship and sign an agreement stating you will never again disgrace the Founders by setting foot on American soil.
@proreason,
Congrats for two great posts on the same thread: #1 and your answer to the congenitally lame AJB. As a member of the generation that came before the Boomers, I watched it happen as you described it, and you are one of the very few Boomers that recognize and attest to it. I will be looking for more of your insightful posts.
@AJB,
“Peer review” does not mean review by those who hold the same beliefs; and “peer review” is only valuable if the peers have credibility in the subject they are reviewing. It is an example of a scientific term that has been hijacked for use by non-scientific minds.
Adolescents have a lot of energy, but little stamina; a lot of passion, but little focus; a lot of ideas, but few accomplishments; a lot of bluster, but little courage. That’s why we grownups will win.
The attitude of young Americans begins before they ever go to school. somehow so many of them believe that the world owes them …..everything. I hired two young teen brothers to shovel my very short driveway in Northern Virginia. They arrived eventually with a stool which one sat on while the other shoveled. At least they took turns. I had to pay them at least $25 for shoveling about a 30 foot driveway.
A few years ago, ‘THe Washington Post’ had a column comparing the differing social mores of blacks and whitea….there was probably a third group also. People were to tolerate some behavior because it was theirs. I remember going to my large supermarket where the cashiers talked and joked with each other, family and friends visited and we customers waited to be checked out. It seems that talking with friends was part of the mores of that minority group which probably had to be hired because it was a minority group.
You can do what I do, get their names and phone the corporate offices and complain or compliment as appropriate. Really gets some results if you tell them you are going to shop elsewhere if their standards don’t improve.
The permanence of adolescence predates the baby boom generation: The WWII-generation of greedy geezers continually has screamed for more, more, and more (with the added claim that their generation deserves munificent benefits). They demanded (and got) bigger Social Security payouts when the cost of living went DOWN. They demand (and got) more health care coverage while simultaneously complaining about the co-pays. They demanded (and got, from Republicans, no less) the expensive addition of drug coverage. And, like stereotypical adolescents, they care nothing about where the money will come from, who else will lose out if they get more, or how the younger generations will pay for the Ponzi schemes they got into early enough to win big.
Yep they did. RINOs should be fired along with the democrats.
The grownups continue to do what they’ve always done: work hard, learn, question, seek to identify constants, look as far into the past as they look to the future, and not be too concerned with what’s fashionable or trendy. The adolescents continue to do what they’ve always done: seek to be entertained, worry about what others have, consult the tea leaves and entrails of popular culture for gyroscopic advice on a proper heading. So, ever the gap stays.
AJB,
Sure, income inequality sucks for those of us in the lower strata. I can state with confidence that I, personally, reside in the bottom 20%. But how does it follow that in order to get more wealth, I should simply protest for it, or enlist public officials to confiscate it on my behalf?
Once you legitimize this sort of institutionalized theft, you’ve undermined our entire society, whether you know it or not. If you can simply vote yourself a share of my labor, I’ve lost all incentive to participate in your democracy.
And how much of this income inequality is the result of a massively-powerful government working hand-in-hand with equally massive corporations? Implicit in your comments is a faith that only a powerful government can make this right. Well, our government has only gotten more powerful since the founding, and especially more-so in the postwar era. When do you think they’re going to make this all better? Or could it be that money and power are natural bedfellows, and those with one will often trade it for the other?
The Tea Party generally doesn’t care about cutting corporate welfare or taming the military-industrial complex and their stated concern over the TARP bailouts reeks of tokenism. Plus their love of Medicare scooters makes their constant bleating about “socialism” hard to take seriously.
The only “welfare” they oppose is government spending that helps low-income groups. When it comes to subsidies and other goodies for big business, they either don’t care or enthusiastically support it.
AJB – what does ‘corporate welfare’ mean? Do you mean the high salaries and benefits and pensions of the public service – which are far beyond the reach of the people in the private sector? After all, unions are massive corporations! They take in millions in dues every year.
Did you know that the businesses with the highest donations to the Democratic Party -were the unions? Unions gave MORE in political donations than any other corporation! Did you know that? Oh – and all the money for the public service unions came from …the taxpayer. Mostly the private sector taxpayer. But the left/Democrats support unions – heh – that’s a key means of funding Democratic political campaigns. Using taxpayer money (union dues)..to fund Democratic political campaigns. Neat tactic.
The basic axioms of the Tea Party are lower taxes, limited government, reduction of the deficit and debt, and adherence to the Constitution. Do you have a problem with these?
Government spending helps low income groups? What cloud do you live on? Do you know how much in taxation income goes to support the public service employees? They are the rich! Do you support this? As for spending on ‘low income groups’ – explain your point. Do you mean that the unskilled worker picking strawberries should have his pay increased by taking money from another taxpayer – someone who has developed his skills, invested his time and effort and worked hard to earn let’s say, double that income…? Could you explain why?
Yes, we do, actually care about the croney capitalism that is rampant today. It must be stopped, I think we’d agree on that.
And yes, there is certainly some hypocrisy within the Tea Party participants; we’ve seen it, too. The “Get rid of entitlements, except mine” mindset. I disagree that most of us just want to end entitlements for the poorest among us, but we do see that entitlements are destroying our poor people, and we want that stopped.
Your comment seemed bitter. Am I wrong here?
“corporate welfare”
“military-industrial complex”
“tokenism”
“low-income groups”
“big business”
this is exactly why gov walker needs to bury the stake through the blood sucking heart of public sector unions and where the left protests the loudest make sure you twist and turn that stake with impunity for we have reached a vital lifeline of the tyrannical left
I am reminded of the 1996 Democratic Party Convention where they did “The Macarena” every night—I watched in amazement, wondering, “Where are the adults?”
A straw in the wind.
Ah yes: adults don’t dance.
If only you people could travel more and absorb warmer, more humorous ways of life. In other countries, middle-aged people dance, in public, and enjoy themselves. It isn’t “adolescent.” It’s a pleasure, a part of life.
Here? Well, on the column opposite this one is the headline, “Bomb Libya.” Perhaps it would be better if middle America moved into adolescence, a more sensual and sexy time, away from the celibate bloodlusts of childhood.
FFS SERENITY NOW!!!
RE: Protests of public school teachers against the duly elected governor and the duly elected Republican legislators:
(!) Public employees, protected by civil service benefits, should not be allowed to have unions. It is corrupt, for they bargain collectively with those they put in power with the money collected by union dues. The public school teachers in Wisconsin should not be allowed to have a union.
(2) The protests are also against the rule of law, against democracy. The union objects to the results of the ballot – that the governor and the Republican legislators were duly elected. The Democrat legislators are also against the rule of the elected representatives by refusing to be present for votes.
I keep saying this: Nothing will change until the system is completely destroyed, bankrupted and ended. People will not act as grown-ups until they are forced to.
I attend Tea Party meetings. 95% of the 225 monthly attendees are 65+. Why such a demographic disparity? Because they are the fgew among us that remember what it means to act like a responsible grown-up instead of a spoiled adolescent who thinks he can vote himself into prosperity.
So. Doom it is then. The sooner the better, says I.
Tea partiers should look at photos of other tea parties across the nation to remind themselves not to buy the Left’s narrative that the movement consists only of elderly people. Though it’s true that there doesn’t seem to be many people in their 20′s or younger participating, there are a lot of gen-Xers out there who have decided to be slackers no more, along with concerned people in their 30′s with young families.
As someone turning 40 soon, I may be old to a college kid, but I feel pretty young compared to some of the dinosaurs who have been spewing the same leftist garbage since before I was born.
To Parapharse,” Why so? In a word, the United States is not producing enough real wealth to justify a particular standard of living among its public workforce far superior to counterparts in the private sector.” Maybe? I think it depends on which couterpart of the private sector. To make just a general statement of comparisons with no real comparisons doesn’t look good.
Second, people seem to have forgotten how this finacial mess began in the first place. Our politicians were encouraged to loosen up on a few laws that would allow the banks to generate loans to anyone and serve the very wealthy . Banks were the first to be bailed out with tax dollars . Bankers received large bailouts at the sametime. Threw big parties on our money to boot. Many Americams lost jobs ,homes etc in the process. And still will.
Can anyone blame us for the way we feel? Americams are being divided further and further apart. The haves and the have nots is not a new slogan today. The middle class has been shrinking for a long time. As far as I am concerened we all have misplaced anger , weather intentional or not and this guy writes garbage to stir trouble between people in order to have a job himself. Why have we invested so much in all these wars. Does it make money for the arms industry? Why have jobs been outsourced to other countries. Which bussiness prospered from this over the last 15 years. How come illgale immigants were practically escorted across the boarder in mass to perform cheap labor and undermine the private sector? How long has this been going on and what were the politicians position all along and for whom?
No, I think instead of writing something that tears the average citizens apart , something that unites us as one as Americans would be better.
Like I said I think it’s a bad case of misplaced anger.
I’m a teacher and was just wondering. What would these teachers do if they had a student or students that refused to follow a classroom rule or refused an assignment they thought unfair and left the classroom. What about calling in sick to protest and incompetent teacher?
Once again VDH you have come through with brilliant insight to explain what is going on. I think there are lots of adults among us and, for sure, on this comment page, but I cannot understand how the adults lost control so many years ago. It seems like forever to me. It also seems to me the adolescents are running everything (except maybe China where some real cold-blooded adults are running things) and have for a long time. It has been very difficult for the adults among us to reassert themselves. Are we that out-numbered? How did the West lose it’s way. How long before we have an optimistic leader challenging the American people to their greatness within and not to some socialist claptrap? How long before we send Marx and his crowd of selfish nihilists and narcissists to the refuse pile of history? Will we ever?
Just as T.T. Thomas writes below, the technology has created shortcuts to knowledge alongside, in my humble opinion, the natural arrogance of youth. This is a natural outcropping out the ideas implicit in automation (programming). Expert systems continue to develop and advise.
Lately there have been many an essay in Pop culture about the rise of the metrosexual, extended adolescence, and other mind-numbing social norms. Though it is certainly wise to beware geeks come bearing formulas, or Sherlock Holmes characters engaged in trivial pursuit, I think that future hopes rest upon the next evolution of secular authority: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
RDG asks, “How did the West lose its way?”
Here’s an answer I made at another thread:
“Perhaps because the West has turned its back on its Judeo-Christian roots, as in no respect for either God or His Ten Commandments . . .
“In his fine essay ‘The Abolition of Man’, C.S. Lewis wrote . . . ‘In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.’ . . .”
“Kyrie eleison.”
VDH…I’m starting to like you…more! Not that I’ve ever disliked you. :)
Here’s my take! I’m very upset with one heck of lot of the tail end of my gneration. I think rightfully so, we’ve been labeled as the “Great Generation” by some. The blemish is, that a lot of my generation spawned what I have no doubts history will label as America’s ‘Worst Generation’ by far.
This new generation has no knowledge or ability to do a real hard days work…been replaced with technological advances that thinks for them, does most of the traditional hard work while the workers complain of unbearable work conditions.
This new generation has no repsonsible concept of the value of the dollar as credit is just a swipe away or a signature away.
This new generation is indoctrinated and reliant upon every kind of socialist government investment and entitlement imaginable and don’t even have a clue.
This new generation is America’s FIRST “Me-Me” individualist society….including greedy, greedy and anything for nothing invested.
And the list goes on and on!
All the tough rhetoric of the awakened ‘conservatives’ (whatever that truly means or represents) is as shallow as the pigment of ones skin color. The social moral and political sickness that has besieged America crosses ALL political and socio-economic lines. Relevant analytical reasoning seems hoplessly beyond their grasp….and on and on.
For example. The rage now is to bust the labor unions. Some folks of the conservative side are all excited at some the the States initiatives while federal law protects labor unions rights to organize…even in right-to-work States….escapes their reality. Public service unions inspite of some brief periods of denial, have long, long established an unabated precedence of legislative protections.
I use this example to show that most ever problem in America’s today has a trail of stench leading back to the United States Congress and their legislation or their long history of transferring their constitutional mandatred powers to the Executive Branch.
Point being, that ONLY a MAJORIY of the people AND congress can effect the changes demanded by the rhetoric of some…..and the constitutional processes of congress is not likely going to make that very easy…unless they (conservatives) gain a super-majority in the House and Senate, plus the White House, in which case, they can ‘ram-rod’ such legislative through. The same procedure that lit their fire when the recent democrats had such an environment and process.
Anyway, I suspect that the recent polling showing 61% of American’s were NOT supportive of busitng the unions is actually higher. In which case….
Your article about our new generation is spot on!
TT, thanks for coming to America’s defense when you were young.
But I think you are too harsh on your fellow greatest gens for what followed. It should all be viewed in context.
Your friends and parents had come through the toughest times Americans had ever seen; 12 years of a brutal depression, followed by 5 years of a horrible war. Why kick yourself for wanting to make your childrens’ lives much better than your own. Maybe, looking back, you could have taught a bit more responsibility, but jeez, give yourself a break. In those years as well, communism was still a life-challenging threat and had to consume at least some of your attention.
No, it is more about the boomers, and a too eager willingness to give-in to the easy pleasures without ever thinking about costs. As I said earlier, some of us finally woke up, but too few ever have. That selfishness and short-sightedness is now contributing to a crisis that may end up doing what the 30′s and WWII couldn’t do…destroy the best thing the world has ever had. The statist marists have jumped on that selfishness just like they jump on every weakness in any culture and are using that as a wedge just like the wedges they have forced between races, sexes, religion and philosophies. But again, TT, it isn’t your fault, by a long shot.
Thanks proreason! If only we had a majority today like yourself! I thank God everyday that our children, some nearing retirement themselves, our grand children and great grand children are rooted firmly in traditional American values and ethic. They all have the complete personal and earthly resources to survive without the technologies of today that most Americans are totally reliant upon and cannot survive without them. Maybe I should pity the majority for what potentially lies ahead of them but then there is that part of me that says….stupid should hurt! Best wishes to you and yours!
I’ve no wish to pile onto T.T., but I don’t buy the attempt to take his peers off the hook. Wanting a better life for one’s children is pointless or even poisonous if you have no definition of “better” beyond “richer and more comfortable.” The ’60s generation wreaked disasters on American society, but THEY DIDN’T COME OUT OF NOWHERE.
Something in the water did not make them different from their parents. Something made their nigh-permanent adolescence possible, and it wasn’t a generation-wide mutation in their genetic code. If the “greatest generation” deserves general praise for youthful heroism, it’s earned equally broad censure for its post-bellum attempts to immunize their families against reality, and its post-retirement devouring of the U.S. economy.
Professor Hanson, a wonderfully-insightful column, even by your lofty standards. Sandy, re: “Unfortunately, many people never attend the school of hard knocks and never take those very vital deep draughts of experience”… very well-done, a precise statement of what ails the leftist mind. All I can add is that while affluence can lead to corruption and denial of reality, hardship has a way of knocking down those illusions. Time to hand out some diplomas from the school of hard knocks!
Sounds Socialistic
grow up
Best post: “Yeah man, “reality” is just a right-wing plot.”
Reality is the current situation – which is always in flux. Liberals live off somebody, but so do conservatives. If your parents saved enough for you to inherit, then you live off them, unless you saved enough to let your children inherit, in which case they will live off of you. Those with nothing to inherit demand an inheritance from the government in the form of Medicare, pension, and Social Security – because they are available to some.
The way things used to be is that children lived off their parents and then the parents lived off the children. That was how the world proceeded. Indeed, it is high spending boomers who have caused the present disaster. Having saved nothing for their children – or very little – the children will demand sustenance from anyone around them as they age – in particular, the government. Now the government has an upper limit. Poverty will ensue. Some will try to claw their way out of poverty, but those at the bottom of the pit will pull them back in. “Poverty for all!” “Equality of poverty!” “Poverty redistribution!” We are in for a rough ride.
WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?
The Michael Jackson of American politics.
The same argument can be made in Europe where the “kids” want the same thing.
Multiculturalism, no matter whether there are proliferating no go zones across Europe where non-Muslims fear to enter; where women, gays and Jews fear to walk down a public street.
Free lunches. In many countries of Europe people on the various doles – disability, unemployment, poverty – outnumber the producing members of society.
Where the various peoples of Europe having spent all their own money, borrowed all the money they can on their own credit, are looking at OPM (Other Peoples Money) in the few productive counties left – Germany, Netherlands, Finland – and have every expectation of making use the their remaining cash and credit all the while calling the Germans the bad guys and the looters the good guys.
Where “climate change” and green politics reign supreme even as they epically fail while impoverishing the people and nations of Europe.
Like children liberals want to be told what to eat, when bed time is and what to read and watch and think. They are more concerned with what’s cool over what makes sense. And while we all make mistakes liverals refuse to learn from theirs. Instead forcing everyone else to cover for their ignorance and changing the rules when theey begin to loose. However our problem is not just that they are children. It is that they are children who fully believe that whatever they do is justified. Lie,cheat,steal or kill. It is all fair game if they get what they want. Unfortunalty the time for reasoning or time outs is over. Now is the time to put these kids over our knees and spank their asses purple. Like children you try to reason only so far until the answer must be “you will do it because I’m bigger than you and I told youyou to!!”
Outta the park again this time professor.
31; TLM
Please explain why Texas has no “predatory public sector unions” and is in as bad or even worse shape than even California budget wise. You would think Texas wouldn’t have such an abysmal public school system without all of those pesky adolescent union teachers?
I agree with the adolescent mind theme. We are all childish victims looking for someone else to blame for whatever ails us. It’s childish behavior to transfer blame elsewhere (union labor) than to look within for the solution. What was not explored in this article was the theme of Globalism. It’s easy to keep on living high on the hog far beyond anything previous generations experienced. We do so on the backs of illegal immigration and those 3rd world workers willing to sacrifice for our ever bigger TV’s and next gen pocket electronics. This applies across the board from the clothes we wear to the food we eat. But someday those Chinese will want those false teeth and we won’t be able to afford the new hip. Whistling past the graveyard, whatever analogy you want to use. Like the dog who looks away when he is being scolded.
I’m optimistic. This is a great country and California is a great State! No other country has what we have in our human resource. We will grow up one of these days. The post baby boomers are figuring it out.
More nonsense.
People are flocking to Texas and leaving California in droves, despite the fact that California is a physical paradise and most of Texas has a climate that approaches hell. If the climates and terrain were reversed, every person in California except for the million or so marxist fanatics would be in Texas in about 5 years. Then the fanatics would give up because they wouldn’t have anybody left to exploit besides themselves.
You need to do fact checking “pro”reason. Believe whatever you want to believe. Anyone who wants to is more than welcome to move to Texas.
Here is a little help:
http://www.cbp.org/pdfs/2010/CaliforniaBudgetBites/100329_budgetmyths.pdf
“…(T)here has been no substantial business exodus from California
and there has been little if any change in the rate at which
businesses are leaving or avoiding California…(T)he negligible
role of business relocation in employment change also indicates that
any public policy focus on business relocation would be badly
misdirected…Examination of employment trends since the mid-
1990s suggests that California has been more or less in line with the
rest of the nation and other western states in terms of job growth
and unemployment.”
David Neumark, Junfu Zhang, and Brandon Wall
Public Policy Institute of California
From the LA Times:
“…place California’s projected 2012 deficit at $19.2 billion, or 18.7% of its general fund, and the Texas deficit at $7.4 billion, or 17% of its budget.”
Because of the recession almost every state is facing budget shortfalls. If you wish to compare CA and TX, then I have a simple question: why is a high tax state like California in (slightly) worse shape than no state-income-tax Texas? With their exorbitant tax revenue you’d think CA would be sailing through the hard times compared to TX. Where’d all that money go?
The second part of your post (1st para) has to do with the relative performance of each state’s education system. This is an entirely different issue. I didn’t blame state teachers’ unions for lousy teaching. However, I don’t see any evidence states with teacher’s unions do a better job of educating their kids. Just look at Wisconsin.
Simple answer! Texas, like Southern California has a hugh immigration problem that takes the States coffers to the outhouse! Send all the illegal immigrants and daily border jumpers (huge numbers of children who cross the borders to attend Texas public schools and get health care along with their parents and return back home daily) back to Mexico for their educations, health care and welfare, Texas would be a thriving economic metropolis.
California’s voters, with a majority of its Hispanic voters agreeing, passed Prop. 187 to block illegals from accessing state government programs – other than for matters of immediate life-and-death, of course (Californians aren’t heartless, you know).
Then Tejas Gobernador Jorge W. Bush spoke out against it. (So did Arizona Senador Juan McCain.) The Federal 9th Circuit Court agreed with both and overruled the decision of California’s voters.
So, does a Texicano have any right to bawl that border-crossers are costing his state government too much money? Think hard before answering!
“Public service unions inspite of some brief periods of denial, have long, long established an unabated precedence of legislative protections.”
You’re losing me here, T.T. Bad ideas, regardless of how long they’ve been around, remain bad ideas. And I don’t think there’s anything in the constitution about public employees and collective bargaining. That’s a states rights issue and the US Congress ought to butt out. The people of Wisconsin voted and their duly-elected representatives are attempting to do what they promised they were going to do, as I understand it.
propercharlie…You are correct! I was making a point…a point that Americas government bureaucrats and the upper courts of several decades now, seemingly rule by precedence rather than the Constitution.
While sadly true, this post only tells a one sided, biased less than half story.
Where is mention of the HUGE defense budgets that have fueled endless wars since WW II?
Do a little detective work on the Internet and you soon discover that defense has cost the US more than 40 trillion dollars since 1945 and where did some of that money go—one example was the air force toilet seat that cost more than a thousand dollars while the same seat could be bought at Home Depot for about $12 and weapon systems that never came to production or reached the battle field but cost hundreds of millions to develop while the cost overruns doubled and tripled for weapons that did reach the troops.
The knee jerk reply would be President Reagan spent that money during the Cold War to defeat the USSR and see, we won. However, historians and other experts say the USSR would have collapsed anyway. It was only a matter of time.
The Socialist, Communist, Stalinist, Leninist, Marxist economic model was unsustainable. All Reagan did was outspend the USSR driving the US into debt to speed up the collapse.
Where is mention of all the other entitlement programs that go to millionaire farmers not to grow crops; subsidize turning corn into ethanol while there are cheaper more efficient ways to create this alternative fuel; pay high school drop out single parent mothers not to work so they can have one illiterate gang banger child after another so the entitlement check grows larger.
Then the second Bush in the White House rewards the multi millionaire bankers on Wall Street that caused the 2008 global financial crisis hundreds of millions by handing them a 750 billion dollar blank check to spend any way those bankers wanted to spent it.
To make the 2008 global financial crises happen, Republicans and Democrats passed laws that made it legal before for those bankers to raped the world causing 64 trillion in global loses while tens of millions around the world to lose jobs (mostly at the bottom of the labor pool—people that weren’t living off entitlements but were willing to work for low pay) — 9 million in the US and 20 million in China and that is not mentioning all the other countries where people lost jobs, which may be the reason that we are seeing this wave of rebellions in the middle east sweeping dictators out of power—dictators that were supported by the US for decades in Tripoli and Egypt while the US was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to do some democratic nation building with no guarantee that the final product won’t be another Iran run by fundamentalist Islamists with goals to destroy the US.
No, this post only finds blame for less than half of the people responsible for what is happening in America without mentioning that the GOP and there neo-conservative nation building with blood, fundamentalist evangelical Christian, corporate coalition regains power and rapes the world a few more times so the wealthy get richer is just as guilty.
The country spends about 3-4% on defense. For an averge middle class family, that is between $2,000 and $3,000 p.a.
We spend more on drugs, booze, nicotine and porn than defense; probably a lot more.
Lloyd Lofthouse wrote, “The Socialist, Communist, Stalinist, Leninist, Marxist economic model was unsustainable.”
All systems are unsustainable. Things get out of whack quickly or slowly, but always inexorably. The only question is how things get set straight – evolution or revolution. Unions were good, but now they are very bad. They will be good again and bad again from a systems perspective.
You wrote, “Where is mention of all the other entitlement programs that go to millionaire farmers not to grow crops”
Generally speaking there are no millionaire farmers. All their money is in their land values and equipment. Lifestyles, though, are extremely modest. Our inheritance taxes had the unintended consequences of causing farmland to be sold to large corporate entities that could pay for the land and so there are indeed millionaire farm corporations. They are the recipients of the largest sums about which you write. Our taxation system has reduced profitable farming to an activity of the rich. Small growers have a difficult time making any profit at all. In one area with which I am familiar only 20% of the farms are profitable. Prof. Hanson has written about this problem.
Lloyd-
While I’m very sympathetic to the examples of government sloth, corruption and stupidity you cite, your blanket condemnation of defense went over the top for me. Yes, we spend a lot of money on defense – far more than any other nation. In fact more than all of the EU, Russia and China combined. No doubt there is a significant layer of fat that can be cut from defense. Our Pentagon’s fixation with gigantic and mostly impractical weapons systems like new submarines and high altitude bombers is a dumb waste when we can’t even outfit all our land combat forces deployed today with adequate body armor and modern small arms.
But that aside, what we’re actually purchasing is insurance and as many will tell you, defense spending generally fluctuates between 4-5% of GDP. Think of it in very personal terms: is it unreasonable for a household to spend 4-5% of annual income on all types of insurance?
Fundamentalist evangelical Christian make me cross too.
Let’s all agree, both liberal and conservative to cut the budget. We’ll cut defense 5% per year and you cut entitlements 5% per year. I think this would solve our budget problems. Are you with me Lloyd, Jerry, proreason, MisterH?
Yet another great article, Dr. Hanson. I’d like to add that inherent in the left’s intellectually immature rantings is a lack of respect.
“When I see some poor kids without $100 sneakers and i-phones, and when the biggest problem of “poor” America ceases to be obesity, then I’ll begin to worry about why my taxes are so low.”
Exactly. As Milton Friedman, the great economist, said, “Today’s poverty was yesterday’s plenty.”
Everyone should read F.A. Hayek’s book, “The Road to Serfdom.” It should be required reading, taught in a college course, for every college student. What’s playing out in Wisconsin right now is described in detail in the book, which was first published in 1944. Hayek described how society becomes chaotic and dangerous when private workers realize how much better union workers have it than they do. The generous salaries, fringe benefits, and outrageous pensions of teachers are now common knowledge. Wait for the backlash. Really tough times are coming. By the way, I am a teacher of 40 years, retired now, who NEVER wanted to belong to a teachers’ union. I was FORCED to pay union dues every month of every year I taught, if I wanted to continue in my chosen profession.
in the current crop of cry-baby males there are only whiny little boys who sound worse and more pathetic than the annoying feminist psychos who play the victim card where there should be none. we men create the wars and it is we men who have to finish them. blaming women for the decline of the west is ridiculous considering men have not been manning up to their responsibilities for decades now and expect the government to play daddy to their impoverished broods. black men are the worst at this but white men are catching up quickly in the mack daddy game of spurting their loads into as many random females as possible and then running off when the babies come. free love and easy sex seemed like a great deal for the man boys until the bills came and they did not want have to pay for their fun times they had with their genitalia. frankly, boy men should have never gotten the vote because all they do is piss and moan about how tuff they have while spouting out of the other side of their mouths about how many babes they bag or cheat on or pump and dump. frankly i would not mind women in charge for a change and sarah palin will definitely get my vote. victor hanson and men like him are a dying breed never to be seen again. the pansies with penises of this day and age could not hold a candle to the real men from days of yore.
whiskey tango?
You shouldn’t drink, dance, and type at the same time.
Cheers!
Another incisive article, Dr. Hanson. Thanks.
I see no end to this ‘conspicuous consumption’ any time soon. But, more like a reinforcement of it, since, it is being displayed so blatantly by, not only the occupants of the White House, but every politician from there on down.
With the leader of the free world organizing for the government busting unions to break the backs of a state government, and disenfranchising the voters of that state; With the main stream media and state legislators, sticking their fingers in their ears, and saying “la-la-la-la-la-la, I can’t hear you” to the public; With the blatant recalcitrance shown by the Congress of the United States and State representatives; With the highest law enforcement officers in our land refusing to uphold our laws and their oaths of office; This trend is becoming even more fashionable.
Anarchy is boldly marching in. We might just as well empty the prisons. It’s becoming a free for all anyway.
I think that the union people will get their come-uppance and soon. The larger issue of consumption and the general state of our economy is much harder to address. In the past, righties would defend conspicuous consumption when I talked of some of my own attempts to conserve water, electricity, and oil, because we had plenty of resources, the economy needed to be stimulated etc and they were probably as correct in that view as I was in mine.
I can get by with liberal doses of firewood, well water, venison, home-grown veggies, line drying etc., whereas most of society, urban and urbane as they are, whether of the right or left will not willingly go that route. Hell, even I do it more as a habit and a hobby than a necessity. It permits me to save a few thousand more dollars per year, and I am willing to spend the time. Had I not retired, I could have used that same amount of time to make many multiples of what I am now “saving.”
Our whole national way of life depends on buying, consuming and selling a lot of stuff, much of which is no longer made by American workers. Frankly, I don’t see that either side has answers to this one. Let’s assume that we can reduce the money going out to public employees by current union-busting, program-cutting etc. Let’s assume that we stop Obamacare dead in its tracks. Two moral victories will have been achieved by the right, but foreclosures will not stop and American workers will still not have enough stuff to make at what they consider a living wage, and healthcare will still be a Ponzi scheme.
In the past, the magic of the market has always provided a cure, albeit with ever-present doomsayers saying that we are just postponing the big one. The last two bailouts may have also postponed the big one.
I’m coming Elizabeth.
Every politician, today, thinks they deserve better cars, vacations, tanning salons, menu’s, pedicures, travel, and living quarters, than any of their voters.
I can look out my front window, at the house across the street, where only three women live, and see 5 cars, and one boat. All these vehicles are new, except one antique.
The boy in the White House makes any lavish dictator, of the past or present, look like middle class Americans.
IT’S SUPPLY AND DEMAND.
And if you don’t supply yourself with all these ‘accessories’, the current regime will demand that you take them anyway. Case in point; ObamaCare. That’s all the evidence I need.
Chris Baker
Are you a metrosexual?
It’s okay, ma, I’m only dyin’—thanks, Bobby Dylan!
Everything is ALWAYS relative, and, anyway, as a wise old adult once noted, there’s a lot of ruin in a nation.
The United States of America ARE easily morphing into the Disunited States of Ruin.
De jure is also ever catching up with de facto, and this is easily understood by clear-eyed and open minded observation of the climaxing battle in Wisconsin—-of all places!
Allow me to leap in consciousness to another hot spot, Egypt.
If you believe the adolescents are in control of America, well—-
I’ve recently been overwhelmed by a simple fact, which I think needs to be regularly trumpeted whenever ANYTHING about Islam is in the air:
91% of Egyptian females have had their clitorises MUTILATED!
Forget about all the other de jure crap having to do with the “true” Koran, etc.
ACTIONS speak louder than words!
They say, “follow the money”, and you’ll find the source of destructive problems.
Well, in the case of Islam, “what did THEY know, and when did they know it?” translates into—WHO ordered clitorectomies, and who DID IT? Actually, just as wrt to abortions, statistics tell us that every X minutes one is done, the same kind of TRUTH is applicable to fresh adolescents who happen to be female in Islamic lands.
I FEEL their pain! Right NOW!
On another subject, which I believe also indicates the killing condition of Western man, the fact that probably 95% of us eat SLAUGHTERED animals also shows me the future—kill on, McDuff!
“365 Good Reasons to be a Vegetarian”, by Victor Parachin, from 1998, just found my hands.
One of these reasons deserves a denial or confirmation by VDH, given his awesome expertise about ancient history—
Supposedly, the conquering Roman Legions ate mostly plant life, and some fish, especially loving corn. When they “had to” eat meat, they complained!
And, consider all the most powerful animals, like horses, oxen, and elephants—all of them are VEGETARIANS!
Ah, the meat-eating adolescents of the West are rising up to fight to the death the clitoris mutilating children of Islam!
Buy gold!
PS—Bob Dylan is a vegetarian.
Let me refresh that cool aid for you, sir.
“Suicide is painless, and it brings on many changes.”
It’s the only solution for a carnivorous homo sapiens.
Relax; Just relax.
Dr. Hanson, Maturity’s the thing we all want the other fellow to have! But when we have to buy it ourselves, the price always seems exorbitant.
Shannon Love’s reference about drinking deep the draught of maturity is spot on.
I have been a student of broadcast Christianity, and find it to be universally puerile. Elementary vocabulary, no Western Enlightenment references, no references to general history, no talk of anything except what’s between the first and last pages of the bible, yet somehow the reduced-mental capacity of such leaders… is the fruit of connecting with God’s mind? Is the Creator of the Universe limited in mind, or His (so-called) Christian leaders?
At times, dear professor, you and your readers who post on this site seem to share the best thoughts of the universe, thoughts which are timeless and eternally proved true.
Anyway, here is a little ditty about the process of maturing…
Captain of the Be
By Robert Winkler Burke
Copyright 9/26/08
My men are full of elementary lust,
Of hate and misery,
I cannot seem to discipline them,
Said the Captain of the Be.
Then they have scurrilous, mutinous thoughts,
A cruise will wake them up!
Send them out of safe harbor in a nasty storm,
And let them all throw up.
Said the wise, old Admiral of the Fleet,
Any questions, Captain?
Yes, many, sir. My men are immature,
I fear what will happen.
Captain of the Be, this is tough,
I loathe immaturity,
But fear not. We will prevail,
This is the military!
Send them out on endless drills,
Sailing just around,
Tell them they’ll get nowhere,
Until they are sound.
I’ve tried that, Admiral, and,
They evermore complain.
Oh, then this is serious, Captain,
One thing does remain.
Send them to war, to war, to war,
Then they will mature,
When they realize it’s life or death,
They’ll improve, I’m sure.
But Admiral, cried the captain,
Isn’t there an easier way?
No, my friend, there isn’t,
When rebels won’t obey.
It seems to me that meat eaters epitomize adolescents.
Consider—
“One of California’s leading environmental problem is drought. Listed below are the amounts of water used in California to produce one edible pound of each of the following:
Tomatoes—-23 gallons
Lettuce——23 gallons
Potatoes—–24 gallons
Wheat——–25 gallons
Carrots——-33 gallons
Apples——-49 gallons
Eggs——–544 gallons
Chicken—-815 gallons
Pork——1,630 gallons
Beef——5,214 gallons.”
“365 Good Reasons to be a Vegetarian”, page 131
America, the Adolescent!
there is a difference between a drought and intentionally severing the water supply for some smelt
HAHAHAHA.. you’re using ‘regulation by death’ California for nonsensical validity for your post? Come on..
Your sanctimonious fiction is no different than UNICEF, Peace Corps types saying ‘Africa’s drought doesn’t allow for proper vegetative growth..’.
A majority of the African continent receives ample amounts of monsoonal rain each year. The problem being the ‘locals’ don’t allow for the vegetation to grow, expand and flourish.
Nope, instead the aforementioned ‘help groups’ do ALL the work, continuing to ship in and replant, replant and replant crops which get stolen when they grow to weed size. Instead of encouraging the natives/local government to do the work themselves and get rid of the corrupt autocrats. Go visit the dark continent some time and witness it yourself.
you’re full of baloney
This column superbly illustrates Dr. Hanson’s exceptional analytical skills and his remarkable ability to express his ideas clearly and concisely. Thank you, Dr. Hanson, for your continuing excellence in clear thinking and precise communication.
How do we send these types of people to their rooms without their dinner?
Cybergeezer—Sir, or madam, a bullet to the head or heart by one’s own hand may be painless.
And, wasn’t the movie MASH fabulous?
Allow me to share what seems to me to be the irrefutable present day trajectory of most Americans, concerning what they put in their mouth, both for sustenance and pleasure, or both, simultaneously.
First, as human beings, we don’t breathe and eat because it “feels good”. These ways of transferring elements from the outside to inside the body’s envelope are basic activities for survival.
So, witness the Growing (FAT) of America, led by the habit of devouring killed animals.
To me, most Americas are currently committing suicide, thereby.
And, how about the onset of more and more pain, at earlier and earlier ages!
As children of “children”, who teach well, grow ever more gross and diabetes becomes more and more prevalent among them, well—what else can one say, except, hello painful suicide!
Also, anyone who pays the slightest bit of OPEN-minded attention when watching TV cannot escape the ubiquitous ads for the many pills meant to ameliorate all the PAIN quickly aging bodies suffer.
Of course, I’m no saint!
I grew up in a family of meat cutters, or BUTCHERS, and paid for college by working in their meat market.
Also, I enjoyed a moderate amount for marijuana, until I finally “matured”, and had two great reasons to stop.
First, I projected my later years with smoke caused lung cancer, and as one who hates pain, I finally realized the cost absolutely outweighed the benefit.
But, when I felt the connection of the entire MJ chain, from grower through trafficker to dealer, all of which was illegal—well, I just couldn’t take supporting criminals!
So, knowing what growing animals for human slaughter entails, for the animals and the water supply and the overuse of corn and soybeans, etc for feed, and the essential acres used—well, how could I support this abomination, any more?
Finally, let me relax anyone reading this, by another epiphany that helped solidify my happy release of the meat eating habit.
Years ago, knowing what I did about the dirty “bomb” of growing commercial cattle, such as antibiotics, hormones, preservatives, etc, I checked out buying an organic cow, and cutting it up into packages and freezing them.
But, I HAD TO KILL the poor beast. ME!!!
No way, Jose.
Thus, my ongoing “killer” app insight wrt eating animals—
Meat eaters should be required to kill AND eat their own pets, first.
Enjoy your succulent and bloody steak!
Eventually, I think, if mankind doesn’t destroy itself, it will evolve into vegetarians, and meat eating will be seen in the same light as smoking tobacco.
It’ll probably take thousands of years.
But, just as abortion lovers are self-selecting a path to demographic demise, much the same choice is the inevitable result of chomping down on killed animals.
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’—-
i have both a son n daughter…both married with 2 kids each and both very successful in their fields of study …one a CPA the other a consultant with a major consulting firm…my point is they both one year or the other sent me a card…thanking my for being a hard task master & sob…they were expected to bring home A’s…on the athletic field nightly..games or events saturday…i sent them both to “speech camp”…went on to SLO and West Piont …why ? i expected the best out of them..they delivered
Quite sobering editorial from the LA TIMES:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-pensions-20110226,0,7405680.story
Best quote:
“But a new report from the Little Hoover Commission in Sacramento makes a more troubling point: Many state and local government employees have been promised pensions that the public couldn’t have afforded even had there been no crash.”
The LAT isn’t exactly a conservative anti-union pro-Repub rag. If their editors are saying this, the problems for CA’s public pensions are even worse than we thought. And you can’t blame it all on the financial meltdown. The public sector unions who worked hand-in-hand with liberal lawmakers to gouge the public in this fashion, and eventually bankrupt the State, are going to suffer the political fallout. That’s what’s happening everywhere. The cat’s out of the bag on public sector unions.
Can’t wait to see the CA version of a protest sit-in at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Lot more whackjobs in CA than in Wisconsin.
A look at a Wisconsin state of mind from a different era of strong Republicans:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/there-must-be-blood-letting/?src=fbcivilwar
I blame Jesus and all his crazy liberal teachings. It all went wrong when people started ‘loving thy neighbor’ and ‘doing unto others as they would have done to them’. Unbelievable – hippy talk!!!
So many ways to dice up every aspect of why the new left is out of touch. I hope that the republicans can hone a succinct message for 2012, it is so easy to get bogged down in partisan name calling. Right now, regarding wisconsin, republicans need to educate the public to the fact that Liberals want what they want (pensions for public sector employees, enless welfare benefits, unfettered immigration and the associated costs) without the slightest regard for the financial burden. Yes, this is adolescence, but the sad thing is that 50% of the voting public might not know what that word means. For the political wonk, all of us who care to think about this enough to blog, it’s a no-brainer, but the average guy/gal out there doesn’t understand how and why the pensions got out of whack. The RNC should start now with an ad campaign that floods the media with facts and figures. One man’s opinion
Dr. Hanson has made a truly eloquent analysis but unfortunately uses the word “left” too often and “Socialist” too little, and fails to summarize operatively.
Obama has demonstrated very clearly his deep and dedicated commitment to the Stalinist brand of Communism exemplified by his mentor, Bill Ayers, with his Red Star Rising. Briefly stated, his ision remains to “change” this Nation into a Socialist Republic in a World Alliance of Socialist Republics, with himself as Supreme Leader.
Dr. Hanson lucidly defines the many issues. The election of 2012 is the most critical In our history. There should be only ONE issue: Do you wish to live in a Socialist state? Surely we should have learned from 2008 where the Republicans nuanced and issued themselves into defeat, and the words “Socialist” or “Chicago Machine” never passed their lips. They could not, as Noel Coward out it, “be beastly to the Huns”,
It was an American Communist who said, in effect: American voters will never knowingly elect a Socialist government”. That remains true today. We need to hammer the Obama Campaign with Socialist!, Socialist! A substantial number of the 45% do not realize that they are de facto Socialists. They just think they are compassionate.
The Obamists are already in attack mode, and will spare no Alinsky dirty tricks. We Exceptionalists need to rock them back on their heels, put them on the defensive, crying “No! No! There’s nobody here but us progressive lovers of the poor and protective guardians our fragile planet.”
Please, good Doctor, stop calling them “leftists”.
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