It has that feel to it: reality unhinged like a sixties flower child preaching morality to (instead of a gender-specific pronoun) peers. Perhaps it is not mere coincidence that a younger generation is attempting to elbow aside the old leadership who learned their morality in the “do your own thing” sixties, not realizing how ridiculous such precocious efforts come across to folks engaged in day-to-day survival.
Proposed confiscatory tax rates on big money echoes Kennedy’s New Frontier and its bastard offspring, The Great Society, which, we were told, would eliminate poverty. Nearly sixty years later, the cost of government per capita, indexed for inflation, has tripled and fatherless inner-city families are unable to cope with gangs and drugs.
History Learned and Not Repeated
There are three kinds of jobs: (1) the kind that add value like an auto assembly-line worker or a carpenter, (2) essential support jobs like an auto mechanic or a doctor and, (3) non-essential jobs that subtract value like a government bureaucrat who writes rules beneficial only to a lobbyist.
Creation of the first kind requires money, lots of it, to provide the training and tools to do something that creates value. It’s called capital which is derived from savings accrued through the efforts of all employees. Profits and earnings diminished by government taxes and regulations lead to diminished job creation.
In “Econ-Math 101,” I wrote, “People who can’t find jobs don’t pay taxes. As there are fewer taxes from those who do have jobs, there eventually won’t be enough money to pay for all the food stamps needed to feed the citizenry and confiscatory tax rates only make the situation worse.”
While the burgeoning radical left (heretofore socialism) has many fathers, the drivers of this movement have one goal: the acquisition of political power. Personal freedoms guaranteed by democracy hold very little attraction for them and they guide what Stalin and Lenin once called useful idiots to a mythical nirvana.
We Have Met the Idiots and It Is Me
We always imagined that any threat to our sovereignty would emanate from some foreign location which would be deterred by our bracketing oceans. Little attention has been paid to the virus spreading within and it’s impossible to distinguish between the perp and the victim. For example, when someone advocates Medicare for all, do they really believe it’s financially feasible or is it a con in pursuit of political power? Is it ignorance or the cynical wielding of power?
Does someone advocating defense against climate change really believe it or are they simply diminishing personal wealth to make population control easier. The more people who must depend on government for survival, the more powerful the government becomes.
George Orwell’s novel “1984“ employs war as a means of wealth destruction to keep the population under control. Doing away with fossil fuels and nuclear power is a more efficient means to accomplish the same thing. At the heart of Oceania’s government is an inner circle of powerful people who determine the way things are.
The New “Inner Circle”
Coincidental (or not) with the Obama years was the acquisition of unimaginable wealth by a few individuals around a place called Silicon Valley. They own a new means of mass communication which makes newsprint out of date and survivors compliant with their expressed views. Is this the beginning of a real inner circle?
The original sixties flower children were simply enjoying the in-your-face style of living against the stodgy class; you know, the ones who survived the Great Depression and fought World War II. Many evolved into the educators/indoctrinators of the next generation who are now coming of age in our political class.
They say history repeats itself. What direction will it take? If we don’t learn from our mistakes, it could be toward a really scary future.
