“We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don’t get richer.”
A Nation of Peasants?
By Victor Davis Hanson
Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.
In contrast, Western civilization began with a very different ancient Greek idea of an autonomous citizen, not an indentured serf or subsistence peasant. The small, independent landowner — if left to his own talents and if his success was protected by, and from, government — would create new sources of wealth for everyone. The resulting greater bounty for the poor soon trumped their old jealousy of the better off.
Citizens of ancient Greece and Italy soon proved more prosperous and free than either the tribal folk to the north and west, or the imperial subjects to the south and east. The success of later Western civilization in general, and America in particular, is testament to this legacy of the freedom of the individual in the widest political and economic sense
We seem to be forgetting that lately — though Mao Zedong’s redistributive failures in China, or present-day bankrupt Greece, should warn us about what happens when government tries to enforce an equality of result rather than of opportunity.
Even after the failure of statism at the end of the Cold War, the disasters of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, and the recent financial meltdowns in the European Union, for some reason America is returning to a peasant mentality of a limited good that redistributes wealth rather than creates it. Candidate Obama’s “spread the wealth” slip to Joe the Plumber simply was upgraded to President Obama’s “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
The more his administration castigates insurers, businesses and doctors; raises taxes on the upper income brackets; and creates more regulations, the more those who create wealth are sitting out, neither hiring nor lending. The result is that traditional self-interested profit-makers are locking up trillions of dollars in unspent cash rather than using it to take risks and either lose money due to new red tape or see much of their profit largely confiscated through higher taxes.
No wonder that in such a climate of fear and suspicion, unemployment remains near 10 percent. Deficits chronically exceed $1 trillion per annum. And now the poverty rate has hit a historic high. We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don’t get richer.
The public is seldom told that 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 40 percent of the income taxes collected, while 40 percent of income earners are exempt from federal income tax — or that present entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are financially unsustainable. Instead, they hear more often that those who managed to scheme to make above $250,000 per year have obligations to the rest of us to give back about 60 percent of what they earn in higher health care and income taxes — together with payroll and rising state income taxes, and along with increased capital gains and inheritance taxes.
That limited-good mind-set expects that businesses will agree that they now make enough money and so have no need to pursue any more profits at the expense of others. Therefore, they will gladly still hire the unemployed and buy new equipment — as they pay higher health care or income taxes to a government that knows far better how to redistribute their income to the more needy or deserving.
This peasant approach to commerce also assumes that businesses either cannot understand administration signals or can do nothing about them. So who cares that in the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement, quite arbitrarily the government put the unions in front of the legally entitled lenders?
Health insurers should not mind that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just warned them to keep their profits down and their mouths shut — or face exclusion from health care markets.
I suppose that no corporation should worry that the government arbitrarily announced — without benefit a law or court ruling — that it wanted BP to put up $20 billion in cleanup costs for the Gulf spill.
What optimistic Americans used to call a rising tide that lifts all boats is now once again derided as trickle-down economics. In other words, a newly peasant-minded America is willing to become collectively poorer so that some will not become wealthier.
The present economy suggests that it is surely getting its wish.
This is superclass propaganda. They want to maintain their wealth and power and they have their spokesmen out convincing the public to oppose reforms.
America is no longer capitalist, it is owned by superclass fascists who have a total monopoly over the wealth and power of the nation, Everyone else gets the table scraps and forced slavery. All else are lies.
Everything everyone thinks they know about the economy are lies, distributed by the MSM owned by the superclass.
Almost all people know nothing about the relations between the owners , the major politicians and the msm.
They never even think about it, It’s like a dead spot.
Knock,knock anyone alive in there?
Unfortunately not. That is the power of superclass indoctrination and influence in the socialization process and MSM control.
If the American middle class is a form of slavery than I think most Americans would not reject such servitude.
America as with the rest of the world has always been manipulated and controlled by the rich and powerful. America is no different.
I for one wouldn’t want the mob controlling my life. The rich and powerful may be self serving, who isn’t but they need the mob to keep and generate their wealth and power. It’s a symbiotic relationship, natural behavior and when one tampers with the natural order of things it has always made conditions worse.
The Revolutionary is a chameleon who disguises himself as one of us until such time as he springs into action and attacks our way of life
Yamit What you think American lives are and what they actually are are two quite different things. America is a paradise only for the .01 percent rich and mostly Hades for everyone else. What you seeing the MSM about who the people are is not real, those are the “TV People” and the privileged example class”.
What do you thin? That the MSM deceit machinery was created just to lie about Islam. The machinery has been in place and has been being developed and refined for many decades. The greatest cunning – the pretense of freedom while instituting absolute fascism.
Things are always the same? No. In the ’60′s were the last vestiges of capitalism. Now all the capital is owned by the elite. Things have changed qualitatively and will accelerate in that change.
The sociological singularity approaches. Economic fascism is near absolute , upon achieving that will come political absolutism. The illusion will go on, whether the people exist or not or how they exist will become , is becoming irrelevant. The tipping point was already reached the cities have become maelstroms of misery.
The natural order of things has been technologically tampered with, it has been hammered into a continental Gulag. Your safe middle class is almost totally history – only a small portion will remain as an “example illusion” for the propaganda.
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Shy guy – you have no way of life you only have a way of lies, fascism and repression. So yes , I attack your way of oppression, murder and crimes against human beings.
Where is your freedom? Prosperity? Future?
You have been sold a lie, you no longer have either Democracy or Capitalism, You are ruled by fascists and you rise to their defense.
You condemn yourself and the innocent as well as you take down with you.
Only ashes will you see for your reward.
If I am wrong then either of you can explain you knowledge of the relationships of the power elite with the politicians of both political parties , the extent of their wealth and how they control the MSM.
Of course you know nothing. It is all darkness to you Not even curious? – not even a glimmer. And yet without knowing anything you have so many conclusions as if you actually knew something about who ruled you and how they do it.
If you don’t know those things you know nothing but the lies they feed you and those lies and obfuscations are meant to direct you to look everywhere but at the real processes and the real rulers of the society.
Biden-Obama… an unnatural relationship.
Max, did you read what I linked to or did you make all you presumptions based on the link’s title?
If you read it, can you limit your accusations against me in 100 words or – preferably – less? Get to the point.
Turning off the last light bulb:
The last light bulb factory in America just closed. A (white) unionized worker losing his job said, “Where can I ever find another job that pays me $30 an hour ($62,000 per year plus health care and other benefits)?
That says it all. He can’t, and he never will. A non-unionized worker in China will make that same light bulb for $3 an hour, with no benefits. And he will work harder and better, knowing if he is fired, then he and his family, who count on him for support, will starve.
So that’s the situation. America’s middle class (both blue and white collar) is dead. They will vote against the Democrats in November, but the Republicans can do as little as the Democrats to help.
After World War Two we could afford to pay the middle class unionized worker $30 per hour, because we were the only industrialized superpower left standing, and the rest of the world had no one else to buy from. Now, the rest of the world has caught up.
A decade ago, Alan Greenspan called the internet speculative bubble “irrational exuberance”. He was always prone to euphemism. But he has just actually called our current situation “catastrophic” if we continue unlimited borrowing and deficit spending, with no way to pay it back.
The real international conspiracy (it’s not the Zionists):
In country after country, the following picture is seen: the super-rich have come to own most everything, the middle class is disappearing, and the poor masses have to fight among themselves for the crumbs. This is happening equally in “capitalist” America, in “socialist” Europe, and in “communist” Russia and China.
In the good old days, the super-rich were composed of hereditary aristocrats. They were all insanely power-mad, and were never content to just be super-rich. In addition to their wealth, they also had to physically beat their rivals in war, and took great pleasure in impoverishing the masses. Eventually, the masses rebelled.
The current generation of super-rich is different. They really enjoy their wealth. They don’t want to lose it. They don’t want wars or revolutions. So they make sure the masses get enough to keep them sufficiently content that they lose the incentive to organize a mass rebellion.
This is the real end of history.
Wall Street and Big Business are controlling America. They’ve had the goodies for years and are determined not to relinguish them. Wall Street sits on billions of dollars while American workers lose their jobs, houses, savings, retirement funds. Schools and universities are hard pressed to maintain current academic programs. Students at UC in Berkeley hold demonstrations telling professors not to take pay raises so that some classes can be preserved so they can graduate. The stress below the upper top has grown year by year. When homeless, jobless Americans start camping out in the yards of the rich, maybe they’ll get the picture.
The US Chamber of Commerce has become a fascist organization devoted only to Big Business. Obama wants to rescind a temporary tax cut made by GWBush and expiring after ten years to those making over $250,000 a year, and these poor put-upon people say No not us–it’s not fair–we deserve the cut! George Bush set in motion most of the financial problems the US is having today. He started two wars on money that the US didn’t have and borrowed it from China and other countries. He asked for no sacrifices from Americans. Whereas former presidents would have raised taxes to fight the wars, George knew he wouldn’t get approval to do that. Invading Irag has been the biggest military blunder in the history of the US. When Bush, Cheney and the other Neocons lied their butts off (I include Tony Blair in this) about the evil Iraq could do to America and England, what are citizens supposed to believe? The US never had another president crooked enough to do this. Bush will publish his book justifying his decisions shortly before our fall election in the hopes that Republicans will reap benefits from it. Ha! I hope it will backfire, and Republicans suffer in the elections.
America is still dealing with the Bush largess ideas. Rake in the money and take no responsibility for anything. I’m all for government “interference” that will put this country back to what the Founding Fathers intended, which was government for the people by the people instead of government by and for the rich. I consider these Republicans and rich people traitors. We should tar and feather them and run them out of the country. What a TV spectacle that would make!
I made the point over and over again. How many times do you need it said?
That article is fascist propaganda to promote the Fascist Statism in our society in which we suffer endless misery oppression and death at the hands of our fascist elite.
The article attacks Neo-Leftism and in the process attacks any would be reformers as “leftists” and “commies”. And of course it totally ignores addressing the current state of fascism extant. It’s propaganda to make people afraid to change the system of oppression fascism in which they live.
The Neo-cons attack the Neo-Leftists and vice versa, They both predicated themselves on the existence of the current Fascist system and are in lock step with it.
America has had no “way of life” for decades. It has a way of death, oppression,lies and misery. I think the American elite admired the fascist control systems of the Japanese and the Germans and adopted them as they defeated them and transformed themselves into American Fascists and their country into Statist Fascism.
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So I think it is verified to me, seeing the willing support of the Judas Class for the Fascists. I understand how people have sold out and surrendered to the power of absolutism, sold themselves and condemned all others in the world.
Western peoples have adopted an ideology of fascism. It is cloaked in old words of democracy and capitalism that no longer have any meaning. The world wide struggle is just between two forms of fascism: Islamofascism versus Statist or Secular Fascism.
It’s ironic, that the American system and the Chinese Communist system are becoming identical. They both have a very small “middle class”that is frightened of poverty, thinks erroneously that there is not enough for all, satisfied with a few leftovers from the table and wiling to help oppress the rest of their country and humanity. . The class has no idea of the extent of oppression because they willfully blind themselves and they have no idea of the true state of wealth and human inheritance that is being withheld from them.
A million years of cultural and material evolution to turn humans into sled dogs!
When will everyone stop concentration on the trees. The Forest is aflame. Of course man needs to work for an income. The problem is some of us make trouble for society simply because they have not learned you cannot make interpersonal comparisons of utitlty. That has always been the case for all of history. We will never be rid of such meddlesome people.
To get back into focus, it is imperative that Sands of Empire,” by Robert Merry, must be read by every civilized American. Merry immediately comes to the basic concept that must be understood by the West. Where Obama asserts: “We are not at war with Islam, we are at war with terrorism.” Obama is perversely uninformed. It is simply the reverse and Merry has correctly summarized the issue. The enemy is Islam, it is not terror.
Merry sees it as the “clash of civilizations.” West v. Islam
The clash of civilizations presents this issue for the West: Dhimmitude, — submission — or Freedom. For civilized man there can only be one alternative. The dichotomy presents the alternatives to understand the following issues: (1) Islam’s sudden but not unexpected influence in global politics mainly because of oil, (2) why do some feel the need to begin holding interfaith dialogue initiatives as if the religions are somehow equivalent, (3) how are we to confront the widening impact of an alien jurisprudence called Sharia, 4) we are not compelled nor should we burden ourselves with the deterioration and persistence of the lack of human rights in Islamic societies, (5) a religious doctrine that compels jihad terrorism without which a “moderate” westernized Muslim is not to be called a Muslim (6) the absurd and hopeless patterns of Western appeasement will only inspire increased conflict and (7) the increasingly volatile relationship between migrant Muslim communities in the West and their host societies is a harbinger of things to come.
Muslim immigration to the West is not a random statistical event The living is easier, freer, better. Muslims have no interest in returning to their country of origin once they taste the banquet of life in the West. It is not expected that reformation of Islam will come soon enough to avoid the inescapable final conflict, but come it will.
Why does the West allow Islam the arrogance to persist in its meddlesome ways? It deserves the back of our hand. Islam is only an unnecessary retrogression by a primitive and savage culture that will accomplish nothing but interrupt the material and social progress the West that has conclusively designed as better life for the average man on the planet and the promise to progress in obtaining from life the best the life can offer.
Why do we endure an insult to our intelligence? The answer I fear is the due to the enlightened polity of mankind having come over time by the enlightenment of humanity to establish open and free democratic societies for the common man that has made itself open to attack by its very inherent legal constructions, it’s culture and acknowledged human values . Freedom employed by the enemy is Democracy’s Achilles heel. Democracy compels us to engage in dialogue with Muslims, in adhering to the avowedly politically correct ideal of “free speech” to hear Islamic doctrine, tenets and practices, including the very alarming and threatening political ideology of Islam, no matter how many deceptions of avowed “peace” Muslims practice where deception practiced on non-Muslims is openly welcomed by Muslims as a divinely permitted way of life. In this way, naive and uninformed but intellectual persons who are legally permitted to enjoy the freedom to think freely think that exceptionally unpleasant issues like religious terrorism — that is not an oxymoron — can be appropriately targeted and addressed for reformation, if at all, by rational arguments. Democratic dialogue, however, is not the rational method that can be adopted for successfully confronting those who are consumed with passionate intensity of their irrational beliefs. Dialogue must fail. It is an inherent contradiction impossible to be understood by our avowed enemy for “reasonableness” is not a virtue of their faith, only victory on their terms, no matter how bizarre or inhuman. Their God has so ordained.
The “clash of civilizations” can only be resolved by and only by the Sword. The conflict to resolve the two modes of civilization can result in only one victor. It ought to be obvious upon reflection by anyone informed which civilization will history show to have been vindicated and sustained. So why do we prolong and bear the unnecessary torment? Because we are a Western Democracy.
Islam will inevitably perforce in time undergo it’s reformation to a higher level of social and political enlightenment if for no other than the good of Islam, if it is to avoid obliteration. The dialect of history is inexorable in its evolution.. Every thesis produces it’s antithesis leading to a new synthesis. The ideal end of progress of mankind, an end which is monotonically measurable as an asymptotic variable to infinity but is never attainable but infinitely approachable for all of history’s civilizations in conflict to a final state of “perfection,” to a “Kingdom of God”. There is nothing unusual about this conflict. It is the failure to understand the “Ideal end of Progress” that induces Merry, having been too impressed with Oswald Spengler, to suggest the decline of the West is to be expected as but a normal cycle in the historical trends of the wax and wane of “Cycle of Civilizations.”
And so Merry comes to think the policies of the West is doomed. The failure to understand and appreciate the progress of mankind is Merry’s monumental error. I think Merry ought to have listened to Neitsche as well as Spengler. “Ich lehrer euch der Ubermench: Der mench ist etwas das uberwerden werden soll.— I teach you the Superman; man is something that will be surpassed by Man.”
Martin
mdk4130@aol.com
I am getting so exasperated at the commentators who are unable to get a good nights sleep because some people are rich and some are poor.
So what! Grow up!
“The rich ruleth over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Get it?
martin kessler:
Martin, we took your advise and fashioned a coalition of the most powerful coaltion available in the west and invaded the poorest most primitive Islamic Nation thinking it would be a pushover and now we are up to our necks in a vat of sh-t (debt) and can’t get out.
Kessler you have all the answers-PLEASE HELP.
Malcom:
If you expect I have the all answers. What was your question?
If you think we are “bogged down” in foreign military action because we have not the power to defeat any ememy should we chose to do so I think you would agree that surely cannot be the reason. We can get out whenever we want. There’s no mystery to that. The war in Afganistan and Iraq is trivial. Why get out? Why stay in? Is there an ememy that intends to harm American citizens? Are there some Arab states that welcome out military presense–and have for many years? Could that be the reason? Have you heard America may have an enemy that means our destruction? Do you know the majority of peoples of the world would gladly “come to America” if there was a chance to do so. Why don’t they?
I suggested you read “Sands of Empire”. Have you had the opportunity?
I should not be asking the questions Malcom.
A propaganda lie. Superclass fascist propaganda technique.
It is not “some people” it is .01 percent owning everything and having everything.
The people aren’t poor, thy are owned by the elite. Everything they have and every place they are in is owned by the rich and taken from them by the rich.
And when they are useless to the rich they cease to exist.
Grow up where? With what? With what future? How can slaves be “people“?
It’s more logical to annihilate the fascist state and replace it with Democracy and Capitalism.
A word to the wise, MK “Antoinette”.
They always sacrifice the dobermans first. Someone has to take the fall.
We are not in a clash of civilizations except as those civilizations are defined by Islam and Christianity. We are in a religious war between Islam and Christianity. This is how it’s been in it’s various forms since the 7th century. Both religions have been and continue to hold goals of world hegemony. Today Islam’s aggressiveness to their goals are multifaceted from terror to using immigration and a fruitful woman’s womb. Both have super-supremacist ideology and similar end goals. While the method and not the goals may change from time to time neither mega ideologies have abandoned the goals of world domination.
I would define civilization less by their art and wealth but by values. While Muslim countries have changed little since the 7th century the Christian world is always in a state of flux with since the beginning of the twentieth century rapid changes in values. The values of the west deemed once worth fighting and even dying for may no longer be the case. Western values elucidated by most as predominate values in the West (see Europe) are not uniform , consistent or even practiced by most if not all countries in the West. Many talk the the talk but don’t seem to walk the walk.
Knowing what we know to be true today, why should any citizen of the west war to make wall street financiers and speculators rich? Why should we care if BP, EXXON makes obscene profits? What difference is American and Western Aggression in Afghanistan different from Islamic militancy? and further Back Vietnam? Western Values?
The West promotes the Christian ethics through commerce backed up by vast militaries,and sometimes wars to expand commercial interests or to defend them. Western values?
One thing for sure the fight should not be ours. The Jews have no hegemonic ambitions and will be identified with either the winners or losers in the religious conflict. The Jews will be turned upon by both winners and losers. We should to the extent allowed us be neutral or if that’s impossible to not be in the vanguards of either group.
Jews are a Mediterranean people our religion is not Western oriented and a third of the worlds Jews today come from ME and N African countries. Israel is not located north of America and not next to Switzerland. We have our own Laws and traditions and certain common cultural
identities mostly through Judaism.
Judaism is not Democracy nor do we hold Jeffersonian concepts compatible with Judaism.
I suppose I’m replying to Yamit82
Dear Yamit.
I am a Jew. I hold to Jeffersonian concepts.
I am a Jew. I do not come from the ME or Africa.
I am a Jew. I am “Western” I am not Mediterranean. [ The only reason for quotation marks is I have no idea what you mean by "West" ]
I am a Jew. Am I any less a Jew to you that I am distant from Israel geographically? Does it matter where I live?
I am a Jew. I am not an Israeli. Does it matter?
I am a Jew. Are my Judaic cultural identities not Jewish?
I am a Jew. Unlike Peter Beinart and some Israeli intellectual elites and Jewish anti-Israelis I am not ready to give up on American Jews. Not yet. Not unless the Israelis give up on Judaism
Yamit, what are you trying to say?
By whose definition. Yours don’t count! If a person is to accept that he is Jewish then he must define this concept upon viable and authentic Jewish sources and render precise his own actions accordingly. Any other alternative to this is something other than Judaism. That is, a person may, given free-will, live according to what is right in his own eyes, however, he must be rationally forced to understand that it is of his own devise and should be so called as such.
antithetical to Judaism
Unless you are a convert of the son of a convert your DNA will say you are from a genetic line from the ME.
I consider the West that has been Christianized and the vast majority is still at least nominally Christian.
Of course it matters.
When the Jews were freed from Egyptian bondage did G-d say ok go live in Buffalo or Los Angeles? The land is even more central to Judaism than is the Torah as without the Land 2/3 of the Torah can’t be observed. Jews can’t as we see in your Jeffersonian paradise remain Jews and those that do water down Judaism to such a low point as to not be recognizable as Judaism. Judaism is not a religion as you imagine Christianity, Judaism is a national/religion that is land defined. A chosen people and a chosen land! You can define it any other way that pleases you but unless you can base your new Judaism on Jewish sources and precepts it ain’t Judaism and therefore it brings into question your own Jewishness.
The mitzvah is to live in the Land of Israel even under foreign rule but never willingly to surrender Jewish sovereignty once we have it. We do not have the luxury of chosing which mitzvot to observe. (some from column A and some from column B)
Probably not but it counts for little if they are. Nobody stays Jewish for long based on cultural traditions and norms. 75% intermarriage in America backs me up.
Let me put it this way: The most secular atheist living in Israel is more Jewish than the the most pious Jewish sage in Boro Park, who has chosen the Galut over the Land of Israel and thus creates a great Chilul Hashem. He has Chosen the Golden Calf over G-d.