Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:
• Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."
No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.
• Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.
While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.
• Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.
• A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.
• There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.
• Marybeth Hicks is the author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom." Find her on the Web at www.marybethhicks.com.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
VDH - Who's a Fat Cat
Who Are These Fat-Cat Few at the Top?
By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at "the few at the top," who do all sorts of bad things. A few months ago, we began hearing of the "1 percent" who are responsible for the current economic mess. "They" apparently make all their money at the expense of the other 99 percent. Are they the same as last year's villains, who had not paid "their fair share" in making over $200,000 in annual income?
Do they include the greedy doctors, who, the president once asserted, recklessly lop off limbs and yank tonsils for profits? Is my urologist a dreaded one-percenter? He found out what was causing my kidney stones but probably makes good money. Was a nearby farmer one, too? I bet he makes over $200,000 but, like many other growers in this area, has found a way to produce beef and cotton more cheaply and efficiently than farmers in almost any other part of the world, thereby enriching his county, state and nation.
I am writing this essay on a MacBook Pro laptop. So I wonder, was the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs a suspect billionaire? Should I be mad or grateful that he made billions by permanently replacing my old scissors, paste, and bottle of liquid paper of the 1970s?
Did Johnny Depp really have to earn $50 million last year alone -- or Leonardo DiCaprio $77 million? Couldn't they have settled for $2 million in salary in 2010, and thereby passed on a little bit of the savings to their ticket-buying fans? What kind of system would allow Oprah Winfrey or the late Michael Jackson each to accumulate nearly $1 billion? Is left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore -- reportedly worth $50 million -- a one-percenter? Why does such an enemy of capitalism need so much capitalist largesse?
Do this administration and its supporters really wish to separate millions of diverse Americans by a moral divide of the "few at the top"? Are liberals like Sens. John Kerry or Dianne Feinstein -- among the richest in the U.S. Senate -- in that elite group?
How about Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, together worth over $100 billion? They are certainly philanthropists. But their charities are predicated on two assumptions: They both apparently trust the private sector more than government to administer their vast estates, and neither sees much of a problem in avoiding billions in inheritance taxes that would one day be due to a now-broke federal treasury.
Is George Soros a "corporate jet owner"? He nearly broke the Bank of England by shorting the British pound and was convicted in France of insider training. Rather than comply with new federal financial-disclosure regulations, he told some of his outside investors just to keep their money. Is Obama's former director of the budget, Peter Orszag, a "fat-cat banker"? He left the administration to enter the "revolving door" of Wall Street, where he is now a rich banker for Citigroup.
So do we really want to go down this them/us road? Using a new financial redline crudely to divide us is a tricky business. Those most likely to fly corporate jets are precisely the elite who show up at the president's mega-fundraisers and play golf with him on the world's most exclusive courses -- or visit Martha's Vineyard and Vail, where the first family sometimes vacations. They don't all wear pinstripes and Guccis, but can hang out at Occupy Wall Street rallies as actors, rappers and filmmakers in jeans and baseball caps.
In a larger sense, we should remember a few things about the new orchestrated envy of, and animosity toward, the better-off. Most Americans each day depend on our medical care, our retirement packages, our food, our gas and our computers from exactly these "few at the top" who seem to enrich rather than prey on society.
The BMWs or Porsches of the one-percenters aren't that much faster, quieter or safer than our Chevys and Hondas. Damning the wealthy nonstop is often an embarrassing symptom of one's own longing, even obsession, for the perks and attention that wealth brings. And if we really want more tax revenue, there is far more to be had from the nearly 50 percent of American households that pay no federal income tax than from the one percent that now pays 37 percent of all the collected revenue.
In short, a confident, successful society neither idolizes nor demonizes its rich, but instead believes that wealth can be created rather than taken from others. And it simply judges the better-off by the content of their characters, not the size of their wallets.
By Victor Davis Hanson
 | |
| | |
First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at "the few at the top," who do all sorts of bad things. A few months ago, we began hearing of the "1 percent" who are responsible for the current economic mess. "They" apparently make all their money at the expense of the other 99 percent. Are they the same as last year's villains, who had not paid "their fair share" in making over $200,000 in annual income?
Do they include the greedy doctors, who, the president once asserted, recklessly lop off limbs and yank tonsils for profits? Is my urologist a dreaded one-percenter? He found out what was causing my kidney stones but probably makes good money. Was a nearby farmer one, too? I bet he makes over $200,000 but, like many other growers in this area, has found a way to produce beef and cotton more cheaply and efficiently than farmers in almost any other part of the world, thereby enriching his county, state and nation.
I am writing this essay on a MacBook Pro laptop. So I wonder, was the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs a suspect billionaire? Should I be mad or grateful that he made billions by permanently replacing my old scissors, paste, and bottle of liquid paper of the 1970s?
Did Johnny Depp really have to earn $50 million last year alone -- or Leonardo DiCaprio $77 million? Couldn't they have settled for $2 million in salary in 2010, and thereby passed on a little bit of the savings to their ticket-buying fans? What kind of system would allow Oprah Winfrey or the late Michael Jackson each to accumulate nearly $1 billion? Is left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore -- reportedly worth $50 million -- a one-percenter? Why does such an enemy of capitalism need so much capitalist largesse?
Do this administration and its supporters really wish to separate millions of diverse Americans by a moral divide of the "few at the top"? Are liberals like Sens. John Kerry or Dianne Feinstein -- among the richest in the U.S. Senate -- in that elite group?
How about Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, together worth over $100 billion? They are certainly philanthropists. But their charities are predicated on two assumptions: They both apparently trust the private sector more than government to administer their vast estates, and neither sees much of a problem in avoiding billions in inheritance taxes that would one day be due to a now-broke federal treasury.
Is George Soros a "corporate jet owner"? He nearly broke the Bank of England by shorting the British pound and was convicted in France of insider training. Rather than comply with new federal financial-disclosure regulations, he told some of his outside investors just to keep their money. Is Obama's former director of the budget, Peter Orszag, a "fat-cat banker"? He left the administration to enter the "revolving door" of Wall Street, where he is now a rich banker for Citigroup.
So do we really want to go down this them/us road? Using a new financial redline crudely to divide us is a tricky business. Those most likely to fly corporate jets are precisely the elite who show up at the president's mega-fundraisers and play golf with him on the world's most exclusive courses -- or visit Martha's Vineyard and Vail, where the first family sometimes vacations. They don't all wear pinstripes and Guccis, but can hang out at Occupy Wall Street rallies as actors, rappers and filmmakers in jeans and baseball caps.
In a larger sense, we should remember a few things about the new orchestrated envy of, and animosity toward, the better-off. Most Americans each day depend on our medical care, our retirement packages, our food, our gas and our computers from exactly these "few at the top" who seem to enrich rather than prey on society.
The BMWs or Porsches of the one-percenters aren't that much faster, quieter or safer than our Chevys and Hondas. Damning the wealthy nonstop is often an embarrassing symptom of one's own longing, even obsession, for the perks and attention that wealth brings. And if we really want more tax revenue, there is far more to be had from the nearly 50 percent of American households that pay no federal income tax than from the one percent that now pays 37 percent of all the collected revenue.
In short, a confident, successful society neither idolizes nor demonizes its rich, but instead believes that wealth can be created rather than taken from others. And it simply judges the better-off by the content of their characters, not the size of their wallets.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
2nd Great Compression
We are living through the Second Great Compression. The first was in the 1950s, when income inequality in America declined thanks to the postwar boom, stable families, a lack of cheap immigrant labor, and a "big unit" economy of relatively few major corporate players insulated from global competition (which was largely nonexistent at the time). Here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, another compression is taking place. Millions of people are rising from poverty. A huge middle class is coming into being.
The problem? The compression I am talking about is not American. It is not national. It is global.
The economic liberalization of China, India, southeast Asia, and Latin America; the creation of a globalized marketplace for products, capital, and labor; the emergence of disruptive technologies in electronics and telecommunications—all of these phenomena have led to more wealth for more people than ever before in human history. But most of them aren't Americans. In the United States, globalization has given us cheap goods and cheap labor and fantastic personal devices. But it has also given us a service economy, a decade of wage stagnation, and rising income inequality.
Now, I am not an economic leveler. I think government exists to secure natural rights rather than to redistribute material goods. But that is a minority opinion. Most Americans expect the government to furnish them with a well-paying job with benefits, with health care, with an adequate retirement. The many would like to redistribute the wealth of the few, or the rich.
The second great compression has produced a political reaction in the Democratic party, in Occupy Wall Street, even in the "egalitarian right" and those elements of the Tea Party and Ron Paul Revolution which crusade against corporate welfare and undeserving bankers. The tradeoff they face is this: more domestic income equality, or more globalization? Choose wisely. You can have one only by sacrificing the other.
See you next week. And don't forget you can write me at editor@weeklystandard.com.
--Matthew Continetti
The problem? The compression I am talking about is not American. It is not national. It is global.
The economic liberalization of China, India, southeast Asia, and Latin America; the creation of a globalized marketplace for products, capital, and labor; the emergence of disruptive technologies in electronics and telecommunications—all of these phenomena have led to more wealth for more people than ever before in human history. But most of them aren't Americans. In the United States, globalization has given us cheap goods and cheap labor and fantastic personal devices. But it has also given us a service economy, a decade of wage stagnation, and rising income inequality.
Now, I am not an economic leveler. I think government exists to secure natural rights rather than to redistribute material goods. But that is a minority opinion. Most Americans expect the government to furnish them with a well-paying job with benefits, with health care, with an adequate retirement. The many would like to redistribute the wealth of the few, or the rich.
The second great compression has produced a political reaction in the Democratic party, in Occupy Wall Street, even in the "egalitarian right" and those elements of the Tea Party and Ron Paul Revolution which crusade against corporate welfare and undeserving bankers. The tradeoff they face is this: more domestic income equality, or more globalization? Choose wisely. You can have one only by sacrificing the other.
See you next week. And don't forget you can write me at editor@weeklystandard.com.
--Matthew Continetti
Saturday, October 29, 2011
TS - Random Thoughts 10-30-2011
Random Thoughts
By Thomas Sowell 10/18/2011
Like so many people, in so many countries, who started out to "spread the wealth," Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty.
Have you ever heard anyone as incoherent as the people staging protests across the country? Taxpayers ought to be protesting against having their money spent to educate people who end up unable to say anything beyond repeating political catch phrases.
What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.
I hate getting bills that show a zero balance. If I don't owe anything, why bother me with a bill? There is too much junk mail already.
Radical feminists seem to assume that men are hostile to women. But what would they say to the fact that most of the women on the Titanic were saved, and most of the men perished -- due to rules written by men and enforced by men on the sinking ship?
If he were debating Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich could chew him up and spit him out.
Whether the particular issue is housing, medical care or anything in between, the agenda of the left is to take the decision out of the hands of those directly involved and transfer that decision to third parties, who pay no price for making decisions that turn out to be counterproductive.
It is truly the era of the New Math when a couple making $125,000 a year each are taxed at rates that are said to apply to "millionaires and billionaires."
On many issues, the strongest argument of the left is that there is no argument. This has been the left's party line on the issue of man-made global warming and the calamities they claim will follow. But there are many scientists -- some with Nobel Prizes -- who have repudiated the global warming hysteria.
With professional athletes earning megabucks incomes, it is a farce to punish their violations of rules with fines. When Serena Williams was fined $2,000 for misconduct during a tennis match, that was like fining you or me a nickel or a dime. Suspensions are something that even the highest-paid athletes can feel.
Most of us may lament the fact that so many more people are today dependent on food stamps and other government subsidies. But dependency usually translates into votes for whoever is handing out the benefits, so an economic disaster can be a political bonanza, as it was for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Don't count Obama out in 2012.
Politicians can solve almost any problem -- usually by creating a bigger problem.
But, so long as the voters are aware of the problem that the politicians have solved, and unaware of the bigger problems they have created, political "solutions" are a political success.
Do people who advocate special government programs for blacks realize that the federal government has had special programs for American Indians, including affirmative action, since the early 19th century -- and that American Indians remain one of the few groups worse off than blacks?
I hope the people who are challenging Obamacare in the Supreme Court point out that the equal application of the laws, mandated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, is violated when the president can arbitrarily grant hundreds of waivers to the Obamacare law to his political favorites, while everyone else has to follow its costly provisions.
People who live within their means are increasingly being forced to pay for people who didn't live within their means -- whether individual home buyers here or whole nations in Europe.
Regardless of how the current Republican presidential nomination process ends, I hope that they will never again have these televised "debates" among a crowd of candidates, which just turn into a circular firing squad -- damaging whoever ends up with the nomination, and leaving the voters knowing only who is quickest with glib answers.
Have you noticed that we no longer seem to be hearing the old familiar argument that illegal aliens are just taking jobs that Americans won't do?
TS - Equality of "In Vouge"
The Media and 'Bullying'
By Thomas Sowell
10/25/2011
Holmes said: "I cannot but ask myself why this so much greater interest in red than black."
To put it bluntly, it was a question of whose ox was gored. That is, what groups were in vogue at the moment among the intelligentsia. Blacks clearly were not.
The current media and political crusade against "bullying" in schools seems likewise to be based on what groups are in vogue at the moment. For years, there have been local newspaper stories about black kids in schools in New York and Philadelphia beating up Asian classmates, some beaten so badly as to require medical treatment.
But the national media hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. Asian Americans are not in vogue today, just as blacks were not in vogue in the 1920s.
Meanwhile, the media are focused on bullying directed against youngsters who are homosexual. Gays are in vogue.
Most of the stories about the bullying of gays in schools are about words directed against them, not about their suffering the violence that has long been directed against Asian youngsters or about the failure of the authorities to do anything serious to stop black kids from beating up Asian kids.
Where youngsters are victims of violence, whether for being gay or whatever, that is where the authorities need to step in. No decent person wants to see kids hounded, whether by words or deeds, and whether the kids are gay, Asian or whatever.
But there is still a difference between words and deeds -- and it is a difference we do not need to let ourselves be stampeded into ignoring. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of speech -- and, like any other freedom, it can be abused.
If we are going to take away every Constitutional right that has been abused by somebody, we are going to end up with no Constitutional rights.
Already, on too many college campuses, there are vaguely worded speech codes that can punish students for words that may hurt somebody's feelings -- but only the feelings of groups that are in vogue.
Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police -- as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion.
Is this what we want in our public schools?
The school authorities can ignore the beating up of Asian kids but homosexual organizations have enough political clout that they cannot be ignored. Moreover, there are enough avowed homosexuals among journalists that they have their own National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association -- so continuing media publicity will ensure that the authorities will have to "do something."
But political pressures to "do something" have been behind many counterproductive and even dangerous policies.
A grand jury report about bullying in the schools of San Mateo County, California, brought all sorts of expressions of concern from school authorities -- but no definition of "bullying" nor any specifics about just what they plan to do about it.
Meanwhile, a law has been passed in California that mandates teaching about the achievements of gays in the public schools. Whether this will do anything to stop either verbal or physical abuse of gay kids is very doubtful.
But it will advance the agenda of homosexual organizations and can turn homosexuality into yet another of the subjects on which words on only one side are permitted. Our schools are already too lacking in the basics of education to squander even more time on propaganda for politically correct causes that are in vogue. We do not need to create special privileges in the name of equal rights.
Friday, October 28, 2011
VDH - RAGE
How Conservatives Must Address the Issue of Income Inequality
Posted By Ron Radosh On October 28, 2011 @ 3:02 am In Uncategorized | 13 Comments
Two nights ago when I turned on CNN at my hotel in Prague, I caught a good deal of Piers Morgan’s interview [1] with Michael Moore, played in a town hall format with a studio audience.
Watching Moore at work can be a frightening experience, as the radical demagogue provides simplistic answers to the growing issue of job loss for the middle class, tanking assets, and growing economic inequality. If you are Moore, it’s all caused by the greed of bankers and capitalists — unlike the days he calls the “golden era” of capitalism, when industry gave people good jobs, and corporate CEOs invested in their businesses and gave back some of the profit they made to people instead of keeping it all for themselves.
Moore knows little. He even argued that things are worse today than during the Great Depression, when he claimed automobile workers could get good jobs at high pay. Moore was obviously confused between the experience of the war years and the post-war age and that of the Depression, when the UAW barely managed to get union recognition after volatile strikes.
But as audience members who looked like regular folks, not like OWS protesters, told their heartbreaking stories of college graduates who couldn’t get jobs, job loss, worthless houses, and the personal crises resulting from these situations, one could see how Moore’s call for a new social movement for redistribution of wealth could gain supporters. Especially given no alternatives forthcoming from others, especially from serious conservatives.
USA Today provides [2] the details about what reporters Marsha Beliso and Paul Overberg call “The Fading Middle Class.” Using Reno, Nevada, as an example, they write:
Reno, which has among the highest rates of unemployment and foreclosures in the United States [3], is a stark example: the share of income in the metro area that was collected by the middle class fell from 49.8% in 2006 to 45.8% in 2010, the year after the 18-month recession ended.College students are also feeling the pinch. The Wall Street Journal reports [4] that “college grads aren’t feeling any better about the U.S. economy or American politics than the rest of the country. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 80% of white men with four-year college degrees and no graduate education said the country is on the wrong track, compared with 74% of all those polled. These college grads are just as pessimistic about the next year as everyone else: 33% expect the economy to get worse, while only 17% expect it to get better. The article goes on to note that: “On average, wages for workers with four-year college degrees fell by 8.6% adjusted for inflation between 2000 and 2010, according to government data. For them, it has been a lost decade.”
A USA TODAY analysis of Census data found the Reno area was among 150 nationwide where the share of income going to the middle class — generally made up of households that make $20,700 to $99,900 a year — shrank from 2006 to 2010. Metro areas where the middle class’ share of income dropped outnumbered those where it grew by more than 2-to-1.
…
Analysts call it the middle-class squeeze.
They write: “The unemployment rate for recent college grads is 10.7%. More than 14% of Americans between 25 and 34 (5.9 million in all) are living with their parents, up significantly from before the recession. Nearly a quarter of them have bachelor’s degrees. Having a college degree no longer guarantees a rising wage or a shot at the American dream.”
These statistics indicate why demagogues like Moore can make arguments that resonate, and why the OWS movement may be gaining support. What, then, can conservatives say to address the issue? An excellent start is made in The Claremont Review of Books, [5] by R. Shep Melnick.
Melnick writes “the problem of growing inequality is undeniable and alarming.” He notes, reviewing a book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, that “economic inequality in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent decades. On this there can be little disagreement. They show that since 1979 only those at the top have seen their income rise significantly: since 1979, 36% of all after-tax gains went to the most affluent 1% of the population; over 20% of those gains went to the top thousandth (0.1%) of the income distribution. Economic inequality in the U.S. is now greater than at any time since the beginning of the Great Depression.”
While Richard Epstein makes a convincing case [6] for the benefits of income inequality (you don’t make the poor rich by making the rich poorer), it is Paul Ryan who best articulates [7] the distinction between the traditional American belief in a society based on the equality of opportunity and the possibility of upward mobility and a society based on the equality of outcomes: “More bureaucratic, less hopeful, and less free.” (From an October 26 speech he gave at the Heritage Foundation.)
The problem today is a lack of confidence that opportunities still exist, and will be there in the future. The next election will be fought over these competing visions. Ryan points out that Obama “is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.” As a result of this dishonest argument, Obama’s popularity is slowly rising. Meanwhile, the Republican nominees are fighting each other and leaving a void that Obama can fill. Republicans, following Ryan’s example, have to start addressing the serious problems Americans are facing. They must emphasize, as Ryan does, what has made us exceptional in the past, and then present a clear picture of how to get back on the path to prosperity.
As Ryan says: “We know all too well that too many Americans are hurting today.” It is in these periods, when times are tough, “when the pie is shrinking, when businesses are closing, and when workers are losing their jobs,” that the American idea is tested. To deal with these problems, President Obama engages in disingenuous arguments based on the concept of class warfare and the emphasis on egging on those in trouble to try and deal with their problems by squeezing the rich. As Ryan points out:
Nearly three years into his presidency, look at where we are now:The essence of the president’s approach, Ryan argues, is that “instead of working together where we agree, the president has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past. He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.”
- Petty and trivial? Just last week, the president told a crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of “dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health insurance.” Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?
- Chronic avoidance of tough decisions? The president still has not put forward a credible plan to tackle the threat of ever-rising spending and debt, and it’s been over 900 days since his party passed a budget in the Senate.
- A preference for scoring cheap political points instead of consensus-building? This is the same president who is currently campaigning against a do-nothing Congress, when in fact, the House of Representatives has passed over a dozen bills to help get the economy moving and deal with the debt, only to see the president’s party kill those bills in the do-nothing Senate.
Ryan, better than any other Republican, articulates what every candidate should emphasize: the way to prosperity and to create opportunity for all is to promote economic growth combined with fiscal restraint in a manner that benefits all Americans, including those hurting today. But instead of doing this, what the president is doing in his lurch to the far left is to argue on behalf of the failed social-democratic and socialist policies of many of the European states, today verging on collapse.
All of this means the 2012 election is the Republicans’ chance to win. But unless all the candidates do what Paul Ryan has managed to explain in one speech, we may see the class warfare approach of Michael Moore and President Obama gaining support. Ryan concludes:
Given that the president’s policies have moved us closer to the European model, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that his class-based rhetoric has followed suit.Ryan points out that we must stand against “corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.” Put in this way, we have a winning argument that appeals to those who are suffering with the promise of restoring equality of opportunity, rather than mandating equality of results, which will make us all much poorer.
We shouldn’t be surprised … but we have every right to be disappointed. Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy, and resentment.
What Congressman Ryan had managed is to vividly point to the difference in approach between socialists and liberals, and conservatives. He has done so in a way that prevents our opponents from demonizing us as enemies of the poor and the middle class.
Ryan for vice president, anyone?
Article printed from Ron Radosh: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh
paul Ryan
How Conservatives Must Address the Issue of Income Inequality
Posted By Ron Radosh On October 28, 2011 @ 3:02 am In Uncategorized | 13 Comments
Two nights ago when I turned on CNN at my hotel in Prague, I caught a good deal of Piers Morgan’s interview [1] with Michael Moore, played in a town hall format with a studio audience.
Watching Moore at work can be a frightening experience, as the radical demagogue provides simplistic answers to the growing issue of job loss for the middle class, tanking assets, and growing economic inequality. If you are Moore, it’s all caused by the greed of bankers and capitalists — unlike the days he calls the “golden era” of capitalism, when industry gave people good jobs, and corporate CEOs invested in their businesses and gave back some of the profit they made to people instead of keeping it all for themselves.
Moore knows little. He even argued that things are worse today than during the Great Depression, when he claimed automobile workers could get good jobs at high pay. Moore was obviously confused between the experience of the war years and the post-war age and that of the Depression, when the UAW barely managed to get union recognition after volatile strikes.
But as audience members who looked like regular folks, not like OWS protesters, told their heartbreaking stories of college graduates who couldn’t get jobs, job loss, worthless houses, and the personal crises resulting from these situations, one could see how Moore’s call for a new social movement for redistribution of wealth could gain supporters. Especially given no alternatives forthcoming from others, especially from serious conservatives.
USA Today provides [2] the details about what reporters Marsha Beliso and Paul Overberg call “The Fading Middle Class.” Using Reno, Nevada, as an example, they write:
Reno, which has among the highest rates of unemployment and foreclosures in the United States [3], is a stark example: the share of income in the metro area that was collected by the middle class fell from 49.8% in 2006 to 45.8% in 2010, the year after the 18-month recession ended.College students are also feeling the pinch. The Wall Street Journal reports [4] that “college grads aren’t feeling any better about the U.S. economy or American politics than the rest of the country. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 80% of white men with four-year college degrees and no graduate education said the country is on the wrong track, compared with 74% of all those polled. These college grads are just as pessimistic about the next year as everyone else: 33% expect the economy to get worse, while only 17% expect it to get better. The article goes on to note that: “On average, wages for workers with four-year college degrees fell by 8.6% adjusted for inflation between 2000 and 2010, according to government data. For them, it has been a lost decade.”
A USA TODAY analysis of Census data found the Reno area was among 150 nationwide where the share of income going to the middle class — generally made up of households that make $20,700 to $99,900 a year — shrank from 2006 to 2010. Metro areas where the middle class’ share of income dropped outnumbered those where it grew by more than 2-to-1.
…
Analysts call it the middle-class squeeze.
They write: “The unemployment rate for recent college grads is 10.7%. More than 14% of Americans between 25 and 34 (5.9 million in all) are living with their parents, up significantly from before the recession. Nearly a quarter of them have bachelor’s degrees. Having a college degree no longer guarantees a rising wage or a shot at the American dream.”
These statistics indicate why demagogues like Moore can make arguments that resonate, and why the OWS movement may be gaining support. What, then, can conservatives say to address the issue? An excellent start is made in The Claremont Review of Books, [5] by R. Shep Melnick.
Melnick writes “the problem of growing inequality is undeniable and alarming.” He notes, reviewing a book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, that “economic inequality in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent decades. On this there can be little disagreement. They show that since 1979 only those at the top have seen their income rise significantly: since 1979, 36% of all after-tax gains went to the most affluent 1% of the population; over 20% of those gains went to the top thousandth (0.1%) of the income distribution. Economic inequality in the U.S. is now greater than at any time since the beginning of the Great Depression.”
While Richard Epstein makes a convincing case [6] for the benefits of income inequality (you don’t make the poor rich by making the rich poorer), it is Paul Ryan who best articulates [7] the distinction between the traditional American belief in a society based on the equality of opportunity and the possibility of upward mobility and a society based on the equality of outcomes: “More bureaucratic, less hopeful, and less free.” (From an October 26 speech he gave at the Heritage Foundation.)
The problem today is a lack of confidence that opportunities still exist, and will be there in the future. The next election will be fought over these competing visions. Ryan points out that Obama “is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.” As a result of this dishonest argument, Obama’s popularity is slowly rising. Meanwhile, the Republican nominees are fighting each other and leaving a void that Obama can fill. Republicans, following Ryan’s example, have to start addressing the serious problems Americans are facing. They must emphasize, as Ryan does, what has made us exceptional in the past, and then present a clear picture of how to get back on the path to prosperity.
As Ryan says: “We know all too well that too many Americans are hurting today.” It is in these periods, when times are tough, “when the pie is shrinking, when businesses are closing, and when workers are losing their jobs,” that the American idea is tested. To deal with these problems, President Obama engages in disingenuous arguments based on the concept of class warfare and the emphasis on egging on those in trouble to try and deal with their problems by squeezing the rich. As Ryan points out:
Nearly three years into his presidency, look at where we are now:The essence of the president’s approach, Ryan argues, is that “instead of working together where we agree, the president has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past. He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.”
- Petty and trivial? Just last week, the president told a crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of “dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health insurance.” Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?
- Chronic avoidance of tough decisions? The president still has not put forward a credible plan to tackle the threat of ever-rising spending and debt, and it’s been over 900 days since his party passed a budget in the Senate.
- A preference for scoring cheap political points instead of consensus-building? This is the same president who is currently campaigning against a do-nothing Congress, when in fact, the House of Representatives has passed over a dozen bills to help get the economy moving and deal with the debt, only to see the president’s party kill those bills in the do-nothing Senate.
Ryan, better than any other Republican, articulates what every candidate should emphasize: the way to prosperity and to create opportunity for all is to promote economic growth combined with fiscal restraint in a manner that benefits all Americans, including those hurting today. But instead of doing this, what the president is doing in his lurch to the far left is to argue on behalf of the failed social-democratic and socialist policies of many of the European states, today verging on collapse.
All of this means the 2012 election is the Republicans’ chance to win. But unless all the candidates do what Paul Ryan has managed to explain in one speech, we may see the class warfare approach of Michael Moore and President Obama gaining support. Ryan concludes:
Given that the president’s policies have moved us closer to the European model, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that his class-based rhetoric has followed suit.Ryan points out that we must stand against “corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.” Put in this way, we have a winning argument that appeals to those who are suffering with the promise of restoring equality of opportunity, rather than mandating equality of results, which will make us all much poorer.
We shouldn’t be surprised … but we have every right to be disappointed. Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy, and resentment.
What Congressman Ryan had managed is to vividly point to the difference in approach between socialists and liberals, and conservatives. He has done so in a way that prevents our opponents from demonizing us as enemies of the poor and the middle class.
Ryan for vice president, anyone?
Article printed from Ron Radosh: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh
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