One of my maxims is that politics and government reduce, in the end, to nothing more than the good old Viking model of predatory warfare followed by the distribution of loot and plunder.
So when the Biden administration announced its agenda of boosting the economy, fighting climate change, and fighting systemic racism, the only question that remained was who would get the loot and plunder.
All you need to do is look at my "Where the Biden Budget Bites" from a couple days ago.
Health Care gets a $300 billion a year boost.
Education: Our teachers get a permanent boost in education spending, doubling federal education spending.
Welfare: After the $1.7 trillion budget buster this year, welfare will settle down to about double the pre-Biden outlays.
Transportation spending will double by FY26 from the current $100 billion a year to $200 billion.
What is interesting is what is left out. Where does all the heroic green energy come in? Obviously it's not really in the budget, except for a few trains in the transportation budget. So that will have to come in subsidies and tax manipulations. I wonder what that will do to the economy.
Whatabout systemic racism? We can see this emerging in reports about grants for black farmers and reparations for blacks who have been left behind in the real-estate boom of the last generation.
But I can't help thinking of the larger issue. If you look at the long term record on government spending in the US, you see that over the last century, starting in the early years of the 20th century -- and especially after wars -- government spending has cinched up. But, if you look at the chart it seems that it has gone about as far as it can go -- once the COVID orgy is over.
What does it mean? It means that loot and plunder has gone about as far as it can go. Now, looking at the Biden budget, I'd say that the rulers are trying another post-war spending lurch. Will it work?
Honestly, we don't know.
The point is that, if you unpack the Biden agenda, climate change means loot and plunder for the educated elite and politically connected corporations. Systemic racism means loot and plunder for blacks.
OK, I get that. The Democratic Party is an over-under coalition of the educated / evolved and the helpless victims.
But what the Bidenoids are telling us is that they can't think beyond the age-old formula of war followed by the shareout of loot and plunder.
And the great middle of ordinary Americans are left out in the cold. Of course, we already have ours, in Social Security and Medicare and "free" K-12 education.
But you know what we want, we middlers? We want economic growth and tax cuts. I'd say that if Biden doesn't deliver that he will lose lots of middling sorts of votes.
See, my big picture notion is that war plus loot and plunder has passed it sell-by date.
The Soviet Union looted eastern Germany to the bare walls after 1945. So? How did that work out for the Russian people?
The Democrats shoveled out subsidies for housing and higher education. So? How's that working out for young families and students burdened with a lifetime of debt? How's that working out for minorities left way behind as the educated elite has feasted on the subsidies and the grants?
I think that the wave of the future is for humans to get beyond the Viking culture of raiding and looting and plundering.
But, who will be the one to lead the people into a new economic paradigm, into a new politics, and a new culture that is not based on war and plunder.
And I don't just mean military war. I mean the fake war of climate change. I mean the fake war of fighting systemic racism. Because the whole point of these fake wars is the aftermath, the feasting on booty.
And I think that the age of loot and plunder is over. Because loot and plunder does not pay.
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