Why Class Warfare Doesn't Work in America

Why Class Warfare Doesn't Work in America

     In his re-election campaign Obama  shifted from a broad general appeal to class warfare, hoping to gain traction by proposing to cure the nation's woes by taxing 'millionaires and billionaires', apparently without sensing any obligation to show how that course would accelerate economic growth, improve the unenmployment situation or enhance the general prosperity.  In fact it would not, and beyond the radical left, including the mainstream media, Hollywoood, Academia, the generality of jealous malcontents and the permanent leftist political class the class appeal is a lost cause in anything like the long run even though Obama won the election largely because Romney was simply not an effective candidate and Obama had the media solidly behind him.  But this shift leftward is almost certainly a temporary, if very unwelcome abberation.  There are two primary reasons for this.
     First, Americans actually understand that you cannot tax the rich out of our troubles and into solutions because there simply are not enough rich people with enough money to do that.  The voters are not as naive as the left thinks they are  If American history and culture were different from what it is, there might be some possibility that a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul strategy could actually work as it only apppears to be working now temporarily, by postponing the day of reckoning. Most Americans know that business, and therefore growth, are discouraged by excesses of taxation and regulation and they are generally convinced that such excesses exist now.
     Second and more fundamental is the fact that class envy is foreign to the thinking of most Americans due to the significant degree of class mobility in this country.  There are fixed class distinctions in most of the rest of the world, more in some regions than others, but just about everywhere except for Canada, Australia and a few other countries most of which  have English-speaking populations.  Many Americans, if not most, have relatives on the low end of the socio-economic scale and others on the high end.  That's America, Abe Lincoln growing up in poor backwoods circumstances with one year of formal education only to become a brilliantly self-educated lawyer and president of the United States.  Whatever your circumstances you may realistically hope to improve them if that is your ambition.  And --- America is so bountiful and free that many folks are satisfied where they are.  Money isn't everything.  Regardless of that, with conditions like we have in America people are not so anxious to destroy a class to which they themselves may aspire to become members, and various friends and relatives are now, even though they themselves are not members now.  They see how it happens, as people in most of the world do not, which makes them susceptible to class-warfare arguments. Ask Oprah Winfrey, who came from as far down on the social register as you can get --- poor, abused, unhappy childhood --- and became the famous billionaire we all know.  It is just a fact; Americans are not class-identified to anything like the degree that most populations are.  
     
  

Chop Shop Yatkeman's Sister

Platform in the Clouds

Staying Slim and Trim

Haikou, Hainan Province, China

Haikou, Hainan Province, China

Jesus and the Woman at Jacob's Well

 

      Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman, recorded at John 4, is interesting for a number of reasons and is one among several instances in which He shows His disapproval of racial, religious and gender discrimination. The Samaritan woman is the first person to whom Jesus expressly reveals who He is. He comes close to revealing his status as the Son of God to Nicodemus in John 3, but he refers to Himself in the third person.  He does not expressly say to Nicodemus, as He does to the Samaritan woman, "I am he, the one who is speaking with you."  This is also the longest conversation that Jesus is recorded to have had with any individual in the New Testament. Jesus and his disciples did not have to go through Samaria, Jews normally bypassed that region because the Samaritans had their own religious outlook and did not practice Judeaeism.  In other words He intended to go there. He was not just passing through.  And we encounter Him talking to a woman, for one thing, and a Samaritan, for another. A Jewish man would never drink water proffered to him by a Samaritan because they were considered by the Jews of that time to be unclean. The woman was at the well at noon time. Most people gathered water in the morning or evening, when it is not as hot. This woman went at noon in order to avoid people, perhaps from shame. The fact that she had had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband, indicates a shameful personal history.  So Jesus is revealing His divine sonship to a woman, a foreigner, a half-Jew, a sinner, and to her people who are outside the pale of Judaism. It shows the breadth and scope of His kindness and tolerance as distinguished from the narrowness and intolerance of the times.
     There are a number of instances in which the same principle is shown --- the story of the Good Samaritan, His willingness to go to the home of a Roman Centurion to heal the man's servant, His encounter with the gentile woman, a Scyrophonecian gentile, whose daughter was desperately ill and whom Jesus healed --- these among others.  And all of this when tolerance was not generally the order of the day.

FREDDIE PLATO

They Call the Wind Mariah

Finding the Perfect Sea Shell

Siberia is the ancestral home of many Chinese residents. This friend of Freddie is a beautiful example.

Wake Up, Richard, and Get A Job!

Brenda Lee Craig --- Freddie's Karate Instructor and Richard's Girlfriend

The Gap Between the Rich and the Poor

     There always will be a gap between rich and poor, in this and every other society; capitalist, socialist, feudal or otherwise.  And yes, there are "poor" people in the United States but compared to poor people elsewhere they do pretty well on the whole, with their cars, refrigerators and central heat and air.  When the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin was visiting the United States he asked to be shown where the poor people lived and his hosts took him to what they considered a poor neighborhood in Harlem.  He looked around, saw cars, saw well-dressed people and asked "but where do the poor people live"?
     Wealth is not money.  It is things money buys.  Viewed that way, there is a lot less difference between the average American and Bill Gates or Warren Buffet than you may think.  Suppose that you have a net worth of one million dollars ($1,000,000) and that Gates and Buffet are each worth fifty billion dollars ($50,000,000,000).  That means that on paper they are each worth fifty thousand times what you are. but they cannot use fifty thousand as much as the average American even though they can buy a lot more if they want to.  Beyond a certain point, if they have common sense, they won't want to.
     The average person eats three meals a day.  So do Gates and Buffet who, if they eat much more than that will be too fat to function.  The average American can afford just about any food that they can, including the most exquisite cuisine; not as often but pretty much of the same quality.  The same is true with travel to exotic places.  They can go to Hawaii and come back to Seattle and Omaha every day.  I  can go there at least once a year and that is enough for my satisfaction.  When a nation is prosperous its people are. The impulse to steal a rich person's paper wealth through regulation and taxation is simply the product of class warfare fueled by jealousy, rage  and shattered self esteem.   
     There is a way that a society can be wealthy without producing anything. It can have vast natural resources which can be sold without processing.  But then the mass of the population will still be in poverty because the rulers will enjoy their riches and have no incentive to benefit anyone else.  Otherwise only free market capitalism encourages investment, invention and innovation, so that the nation's factories hum, its railroads streak down its tracks and its silver jets through the skies, its docks are loaded with exports, its hotels and restaurants hum with activity and its schools are filled with tomorrow's leaders, well trained and educated, its people  employed and its unemployment lines  nearly non-existent.  Trying to create wealth by extracting money from those who have worked for it and earned it is wasted effort, a gigantic fraud on gullible voters because it destroys the delicate mechanisms by which mass wealth is created and distributed.  "A rising tide lifts all boats". That is not "trickle down economics" as claimed by the left.  It is truth.  The attempt to redistribute wealth is immoral, but It is also counter-productive because if it is successful it drains capital out of society, produces nothing, and destroys the moral fiber of a nation.  We should, and do, provide for those who cannot help themselves.  We are a compassionate people but, as Franklin Roosevelt said "welfare is narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit".  Freedom is the answer.  Socialism and liberalism is a fraud.

 

                                                                                               

                                                                                               

                                                                                               

                                                                                                      

Response to an e-mail from a friend on the absence of critical thinking

      John, I agree with your comments regarding James Carville's frustration over the gullibility of contemporary Americans, and his own Democratic Party as exemplary.   I have been distressed, almost depressed, by the absence of critical thinking which seem to have been gaining momentum even in the last ten years or so.  It is nothing new, but the extent of it has been increasing and you are absolutely right in suggesting that it affects both parties.  Most disturbing is the way it is sweeping the intellectual circles, liberal and conservative.  People seem cheerfully ready to accept anything from 'their side' of the fence.  Just say something as if you sound like you know what you are talking about and they will believe it and repeat it.  I do believe that the Democrats are multiple times worse than the Republicans but it is bad over all.  Liberals will say the same thing on the same day with the same words as if they were saying something original.  Ditto many conservatives.  Then they will act as if they should be taken seriously even when it is obvious that they do not know what they are talking about.

     I admire Charles Krauthammer as a responsible conservative intellectual, but even he concerns me lately  because of some of the absolutely untrue things he will say about Social Security.  I refer to physical, provable facts which even I can establish as such in less than half an hour. 

     This is all confused by the fact that sometimes a statement will be partly true, or arguably true, but the reasoning is wrong.  The best example which comes to mind has to do with Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia (or maybe premier --- they keep changing titles around).  You will hear people say "that no-good so-and-so, he's a dictator, a tyrant, and someone should remove  him".  Then to support the position that Putin is a tyrant they will disgorge a torrent of absolute balderdash to support that conclusion.  Or worse, they will just say "I just know it is true".  They usually don't have a clue what they are talking about.  Where did they get their wonderful analysis?  Simply from the mainstream media, TV gurus and daytime talk radio among other sources. They will repeat what they hear word for word.  And they act as if they deserve to be taken seriously.    If people do not start asking "Is this true"? the country will drown in ignorant and incompetent voters.