Ah, the nobility! Demanding that those who already pay 71% of the tax burden for the 50% of the population who pay next to nothing need to “contribute back” — because what they have they have by way of privilege. And who grants that privilege? Why the government, naturally. And who are “the rich” to “contribute back” to? Why, the granter of the privilege, of course. Don’t be so daft!
To the left, all money belongs first to the government. They claim we “can’t afford” lower tax rates, because funding the government — no matter how big or bloated, no matter how wasteful or redundant, no matter how much its function these days is to molest the citizenry through regulation and law — is the first duty of the subject. And only the government can determine how much it needs.
What citizens are allowed to keep the government will decide — and if you are doing better than someone else, how much you already contribute doesn’t much matter: someone else doesn’t have as much as you, and the government, in its assigned role as the nation’s moral compass, stands ready to redistribute the wealth that is rightly theirs (they collected money and then doled it back out for the building of roads and bridges, after all! And it is only by privilege that you have been allowed to keep so much of it) to those who don’t have as much as their neighbors.
Because government is righteous and good and moral and kind, and private property is in essence theft from the commonweal. Privately held wealth is greed. And greed is a vice. It is borderline evil. Whereas publicly held wealth, collected by force and then doled out by politicians — Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen! — is charity. And charity — at least, that charity approved by the government and offered in exchange for votes and power — is a virtue. And what could be more virtuous than virtue?
But don’t call it Marxism. That’s terribly unhelpful, you see.
The last thing we want to do is anger the moderates and independents with such hurtful truths. Because moderates and independents who hear such truths will then rush to vote for Marxism. Obviously.
So. Shhhhhh.
(h/t JD)
The last thing we want to do is anger the moderates and independents with such hurtful truths.
This is the most depressing part of it. In part, because there’s a good deal of truth to it–the up-for-grabs mushy middle doesn’t care to be wakened from its torpor to face the hard reality.
But, worse yet, by lying to the mush, you ensure that you can’t do anything to address the problem. If you try, you’ll get on the bad side of the voters you lied to–who, despite their claims to sophistication (“all politicians lie”), only have a problem with lying when it leads to discomfort.
Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!
The key is being the one who decides. Every day I seem to have the same conversation with someone or other who knows what I, or anyone else, needs. Or don’t need. I must just be built differently, because I don’t get the urge to make those decisions for others.
Rafts of Republicans swallow that, not unlike their swallowing the myth that driving or operating a business is a privilege.
No fools, they are rights — they expressly are not and may not be prohibited.
Thinking you must seek approval simply because you’ve never challenged your own false assumption is mental cancer.
Try swapping our other rights into the formulation:
Who wants to chip in to support a government that “allows” them to remain alive and free(-ish)? Who’d applaud a President who campaigned on the idea that “At a certain point, maybe you’ve pursued enough happiness. I mean, who needs that much happiness?”
We’ve already conceded large parts of our right to pursue happiness, and our right to be free. And once the gee-whiz-isn’t-it-great socialized medicine kicks in, we’ll have given up our right to live, too.
This is the truth, and I will continue to preach it, and not give two shits whether it makes my comfortable white-collar contemporaries squirm. Ignorance may be bliss for some, but it comes at way too high a price for the rest of us.
If stealing 100% of someone’s labor is slavery, at what percentage is it not slavery?
Let us consult the mob for its answer. Why? Because of EQUALITY: In post-constitutional America all opinion is equal! TOLERANCE!
Driving isn’t a right, JHo. It is a privilege.
There are loads of po’ white folks in this country. Someone should let them in on this little tidbit about being privileged.
What is this “giving back” crap? I’ve been hearing it for years. Most colleges and universities require that their students perform community service hours in order to graduate. If it’s compulsory, that is hardly voluntary and thus, as JHo says, they are confiscating one’s labor without reimbursement.
You make my point, leigh. Please don’t.
Sorry. I need more coffee.
Mike Munger talks with Russ Roberts about Profits, Entrepreneurship and Storytelling. There’s a rough transcript too: scroll down.
In a nutshell, wealth creators already give back in vast, myriad, unaccounted for ways (intentionally ignored by these sorts of Socialists).
I, as one of “the People”, am sovereign. I need do nothing at your command.
David Nordmark, at Ricochet: You Didn’t Build That? He’s Said It Before
Nordmark: “Not a road or bridge in sight. This is how he thinks.“
Strangely enough, it’s a “privilege” that most successful people have to work their asses off and sacrifice for years and years in order to
achievehave handed to them by a generous government.It is the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. Here is Friedman at 94, talking with Russ Roberts. A quote from the conversation:
Milton Friedman: “And what’s happened is that the public attitude has changed tremendously. In 1945, 1950, at the end of the war, intellectual opinion was almost wholly collectivist. Everybody was a socialist. They may not have used the term but that’s what they were. However, practice was not socialist. Practice was free enterprise.
The role of government at that time was such smaller than it has since become and from 1945 on to 1980, what you had was galloping socialism. Government took over more and more control. Government spending went from about 20 percent of national income—government federal, state and local—to about 40 percent of national income until Reagan came along.
But Reagan was able to do what he did because in that 20-year period, intellectual opinion had changed. What had before been a hypothesis was now fact. You now could see what the government did and people didn’t particularly like what the government did. So public attitudes about government had changed very much over that period and I think maybe Capitalism and Freedom added a little of that but I think experience was much more responsible. “
J. D. Rockefeller, not a contributor. Neither are Edison, Ford, Getty, Carnegie, Morgan, Jobs, Gates, etc. etc. Just a bunch a rich capitalists expoiting the working man; never bit a damned bit of good for anybody but themselves.
Nelson and Jay Rockefeller, they were contributors, because they understood what a privilege it was to be born a Rockefeller.
Just like the whole
miserableenlighteneddegeneratecompassionate Kennedy clan.That probably goes for the Bushes too.
Never did….
Anyways, the point is meet the new aristocracy,
same as the old aristocracy.
It’s loathsome to be lectured to by a vulgarian the likes of this Congressman, a liar and a moron in point of fact, who fancies himself the very pinnacle of morality. Yet there he is, proud as can be to trumpet his endorsement of theft to the world, without the slightest concern he will be beaten silly by his fellow citizens, or better yet his constituents, for his calumnies against them.
Not getting stabbed, beaten, and robbed is a privilege.
“To be a millionaire in this country, it is the greatest country the world has known. It is a privilege. And I think most people get that. You work hard, you get ahead, make a living and you contribute back to this country and make it a better country,”
Spoken like a true crime syndicate boss.