Who Will Turn Out to Vote

The thing about this mid-term election is that everyone is selling the idea that it's the most important mid-term since whenever. And I suppose it is, in a way. That's because of the Trump phenomenon.

If the Republicans hold Congress it means that the voters were serious about "change" in 2016. If the Dems take the House, not so much. And if the Dems take the Senate then it was all a mistake, sorry fellahs.

And do you know? I have no idea what the voters want. OK, we know what racist sexist homophobes like me want. And we know what #TheResistance wants. But then there are ordinary Americans that are neither rich nor poor nor educated nor uneducated nor woke nor fast asleep. Yes, that kind of American.

We are talking about people that just want a decent job, the chance to make a family, raise some kids, buy a nice house: all that stuff. What do they want, politically? Well, we are about to find out.

But I would say this: the elites of America are peculiarly detached from the ordinary people. Here are a couple of illustrations of this.

First, the liberals. Their identity politics, their social agenda politics is just out of joint with ordinary Americans. Abortion? I'd say that for ordinary Americans the big thing is not controlling fertility, but just being able to afford kids and cars and houses. Diversity and inclusion? I doubt that ordinary Americans think too much about that except when it impacts them negatively. I think that playing the diversity game is mostly an educated-class thing: getting access to fancy colleges, getting into tech companies. Oh, and the question of getting into the gravy train of the local fire department. And when it comes to the feminist obsessions with #MeToo and safe spaces, and the non-binary gender game, I suspect that this is way out of range for average ordinary people. Yeah: when you are in the workplace as an ordinary person you are vulnerable to people with power. They might be aggressive males or rich-bitch women. But you don't think about playing politics about this, like the fancy-pants women at Google did last week. You just do what it takes to hang in there, knowing that people like you don't have an "in" and never will have.

But then the conservative elite. We think about our kids, their colleges, their advanced degrees and the ins and outs of selective colleges. But what about the ordinary folk? People that want an education that leads to a decent job: never mind all the fancy-pants stuff of a liberal education in the humanities, let along the utterly incomprehensible "studies" stuff. We conservative elites have not exactly betrayed the ordinary folk, but we have not thought seriously about their needs and how we might help them.

Here is how my mind works on this. I would like to help detach the ordinary people from the chains of the public school system, so they would have the power to choose an education for their children: E.g., charter schools and home-schooling. And I mean by "home-schooling" creating a culture where ordinary middle-class moms in a neighborhood get together to cooperate and curate their children's education. Then I want a radical turn to apprenticeships, where employers step up to the job of training the future workforce, rather than expecting government to do the job. Really, why would government have a better idea of what employers need than the employers themselves? And I would encourage kids to start transferring from school to apprenticeship in their early teens, for unless you are really going for an elite education what you want is to be directed to a skilled job, and it seems to me that employers would have the best idea about what skills are needed and what kind of kids they need.

The reason I go for apprenticeships is that it shares the cost of education and training between employer and future employee:  Both benefit, in my view. The employer gets to select and train the kind of employee he expects to need, and the employee accepts a reduced wage for the term of apprenticeship. I call that a deal that avoids the horror of student debt. In my view the student debt model is absurd because nobody knows before starting skills education what the payoff is going to be. Education financing is an equity play, not a debt play. In the apprenticeship model both parties share the risks.

The other big thing for ordinary people without well-heeled parents is housing. The fact is that government policy to assist with "affordable housing" by providing low-down-payment long-term mortgages has enriched existing home-owners and saddled new home-owners with brutally unjust burdens. My affordable housing policy would end low-down payment mortgages but assist people in saving for down payments. And it would end the long-term mortgage. Why? Because nobody can project interest rates 30 years into the future. But, in the financial system, someone has to take the burden of risk. A high down-payment policy and ten-year mortgages with refinancing to mark to the latest interest rates combined with an encouragement to save that down payment would put sensible protections and safety zones into the housing market and maybe reduce the number of price crashes and credit panics.

Of course, if I had my druthers I would replace the current government-centric SoSec/Medicare/Unemployment racket with a National Savings Plan where everyone gets to save 10-15 percent of wages presently taxed by payroll taxes into a life-long personal tax-protected plan. The idea would be for people to tap the plan for education, home-buying, business startup, kids education, old-age pension and end-of-life medical care. I mean, that's the point of money and credit and investment. You can use it for anything. But putting peoples' life savings away in government-run lock-boxes is straight up theft and injustice. Because government doesn't care about you, it only cares about your vote; it ain't gonna use your money to benefit you, but instead use the money to buy the support of the votes needed to win the next election.

But all that is just my blathering on about my idea for a fair and just society. Meanwhile we have a mid-term election coming up and folks are going to be voting to decide what they want from America.

I know what I want, but the voters may have a different idea.

Not Left vs.Right, But Skeptic vs. Fanatic

The Zman says, in "The Cancer of Fanaticism," that we should get off the conventional political axis of Left to Right, as in Commies and Nazis, and think instead of the continuum from absolute skepticism to absolute fanaticism.

For instance, he writes, his teachers taught him to think about good Germans, who might, but did not, stand against the evil of Hitler. Wrong question, because the Nazis and Commies all thought of themselves as the good guys:

These were not people who thought of themselves as evil or on the wrong side of history. To the contrary, they saw themselves as the champions of light, fighting the forces of darkness. As such, they were duty bound to use any means necessary to win. Maybe the people at the top were more cynical, as is usually the case, but the rank and file were the truest of true believers.

So, a "good German" would just be a different "champion of light," fighting a difference force of darkness. And how far would he have got battling the champions of light in the government?

A better scale, especially in the current age, is probably one that has the true believer at one end and the non-ideological skeptic at the other. 

The point is, though, that nobody can be a complete skeptic, because you have to believe in something, and nobody can be a complete true believer, because you have to deal, at some level, with reality.

But, in fact, there is no limit on the belief of the believer, because "the next step on the road to paradise and each step is more inviting than the next, at least to those built to seek it."

The only thing that stops the fanatics is a leash, to limit the ability "to seek the ultimate goal."

The cunning trick of Christianity was that the ultimate goal, "that grace was for the next life," put a leash on the fanatics. But with the left's "immanentizing of the eschaton," with the notion that real justice can be achieved in this life, that leash is gone.

Thus the "metastasizing cancer in the form of increasingly deranged true believers... Either the cancer is removed, or the host will die."

Of course, the whole point of limited government and due process is precisely to put the leash on the fanatics, in the era of sadder wiser people in the aftermath of the Reformation and its "religious wars." And the fact that the fanatics have no idea of this has at least this benefit, that the rest of us look upon the fanatics and their deeds and are scared straight that we need to stop these guys before they get to the social nuclear button.

By no idea I mean, e.g., the notions among Democrats that we need to abolish the Electoral College or the composition of the Senate to reflect population rather than states. These people have no clue. Sarah Hoyt points to the importance of "oral traditions" of experts that know all the things you need to know that are not in the books and not in the science: the kind of things you learn hanging out with the guys. Anyone that has been around the block a couple times knows that the details of the Founding and its constitutional framework are one of the wonders of the world, ancient or modern. And one of the things our constitutional framework does is, by secret hidden channels, put the brake on the fanatics.

But no lefty kid or budding "activist" has a clue about such things. How come, they whine, that you can win the presidency without a majority of the total vote? Well, because, honey, the founders figured that they needed to prevent the big states from eating the small states for breakfast.

Now my line is to agree with Nietzsche that we are Beyond Good and Evil, an era he presents, naughtily, as "the priests" teaching us to hate ourselves. His vision is the creative hero (who has to be hard) going on his quest  without fear in the land beyond Good and Evil.

But what Nietzsche does not quite get around to is that 97.2 percent of creative heroes fail. As in the business startup culture. That is why he must teach hardnesss.

And when you get beyond Nietzsche to Jung and Peterson, you are talking about the Sacrificial Hero acting on the boundary between Order and Chaos. The Sacrificial Hero does not get to impose his vision of the perfect world on the world. He only gets to point to it, after the completion of his Hero's Journey into the Underworld (of the unconscious).

Here is the problem with our lefty fanatics. They want to play all the parts: the Hero, the Priest, the Teacher, the Executioner. I think it was Bottom the Weaver that wanted to play all the parts.

What we need is a new social vision that separates the Good and Evil part -- which is the proper concern of the People of the Responsible Self -- from the Creation and Destruction part, which is the world of the People of the Creative Self.

Decide what you want to be: responsible or creative, and understand that once you have made the journey from the Land of Responsibility to the Land of Creativity then the question of Good and Evil and punishing the Evil-doers has become, for you, penny-ante stuff. You should leave that to the little people. For you must realize that the Creator, living life as an example to others on the border between Order and Chaos, is probably doomed to destruction. That is why the Jungians call him a Sacrificial Hero. And because you are hard you accept that daunting truth.

That is what our liberal fanatics do not understand. They think that the great "activist," battling for "justice" for the traditionally marginalized, gets to be enthroned and worshiped and venerated in this world, trailing clouds of glory.

No, lefties, that is not how the world works, and the world is waiting for you to grow up  and learn it.

Think "Basic White Bitch" Is New? Read Jane Austen

Apparently there is a new thing in liberal-land. "Basic White Bitch." Well, it's a bit complicated because while the Democrats are busy complaining about basic white bitches, well, the core Democratic constituency is educated white women who, Good Little Girls that they are, have learned their Gender Studies lessons well. That's why they have Jewish liberal women and East Asian liberal women at the New York Times to tell us all about it. You've got to be carefully taught, as they sang in South Pacific.

But really girls. This is nothing new. I was just running through the good bits in Pride and Prejudice the other night, and what is Miss Bingley but your basic white bitch. Rich bitch, I should say, but is there any other kind?

Then there is Mansfield Park. The whole point of the story is that My Girl Fanny Price is surrounded by basic white bitches. There are the Bertram sisters, Maria and Julia. Total bitches. Naturally, one comes to a Bad End and the other just gets the heck outta there. Then there is Mary Crawford, daughter of the "vicious" Admiral Crawford. A nasty piece of work. (By the way, at La Wik, they are struggling with the notion of whether they should approve or disapprove of Fanny Price. Because she is such a "prig"don'tcha know.

What about Sense and Sensibility? Well, obviously the Prime Suspect is Mrs. Ferrars. A nasty rich, basic white bitch it what I would call her for fouling up the innocent loves of the main characters. How dare she! There is also, of course, Miss Sophia Grey, who barely appears, but who marries Willloughby. And so forth.

Ah yes. Emma. Here, the basic white bitch is the heroine, so she is not a bad as the antagonists of the other novels. But that just means that Emma has to be fully and completely humiliated in order to appreciate the love of her knight in shining armor, Mr Knightley. So there is no need, in Emma, to distract the reader's attention with additional basic white bitches.

Finally, let us not forget Persuasion. Here, our matchless heroine is bothered by two basic white bitches. There is Anne's sister Elizabeth, an empty-headed young woman obsessed, like her father, with rank and physical appearance. And then there is the spoiled Mary Musgrove. The less said about her, the better.

All I am saying is that nothing has changed. There have always been well-to-do women in the Anglo-Saxon world that have traded on their wealth, their rank, and their status. And a real pain in the you what they are.

The only thing is that right now, because of the way that women of wealth and status now all get university educations, they are more insufferable than ever, because, in addition to the status of their Daddies they have swallowed the lies of the left to imagine themselves victims. Imagine! The richest, most privileged women in the world, and they think they are victims.

But then, Miss Bingley felt herself the victim of the scheming Elizabeth Bennet. Except, of course, that Lizzy spends most of Pride and Prejudice hating on Mr Darcy. It is only when she views for the first time the extensive grounds of Pemberley that she realizes what it would mean to be mistress of that magnificent domain.

Real Power: "You Are Not Allowed to Say That"

Down the centuries, we have tended  to think of power as the clunking fist of political and military power: Roman legions, the Royal Navy, US Carrier groups.

But is not the real power just simply to power to say: "you are not allowed to say that" and make it stick with the punishment of defenestration, either through a real window or the the metaphorical window of being defenestrated from your job?

I suppose it is obvious from my maxim, that politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion.

The notion that to utter a "racist" remark is evil obviously suggests a religion, from the left's religion of anti-racism. So nobody even thinks of uttering the "N-word" except for African Americans, who use the word just because they can. But woe-betide Megyn Kelly for suggesting that going black-face for Hallowe'en is harmless. Oh no it isn't, say the Social Media Commies, and they have the power to make it stick and get Kelly fired.

That, I suppose, is real power. Jolly good fun, and very intoxicating to boot. Unless you are Megyn Kelly.

Of course, this is nothing new. There was never a time when blasphemy, "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable," didn't get you in trouble.

Only difference is that today you can swear up and down about God and nobody will bother you. Back in the day, W.C. Fields used to say "Godfrey Daniels, Mother of Pearl." I can translate most of that, except for "pearl." What is that standing in for? That is the job of a comic, to almost say what the ruling class and "the priests" say you are not allowed to say.

So the fact that comics like Seinfeld say that they could never take their acts to college campi these days is telling us a lot about who is defining what you are not allowed to say.

So today the worst thing in the world is to say something "racist." Whatabout the idea of "the race" according to La Wik?

A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.

So if "race" is a "social construct," according to "modern scholarship," who cares? Well, everyone, at least for now. But why? Because of slavery? Because of western colonialism?

Because, sports fans, the only power in the world that really matters to people in love with power is the power to make people grovel at your feet for saying the wrong thing.

You can see that this power, of punishing "thought-crime," is much more convenient than, for instance, the power of punishing for the crime of a deed. You can see that in the Kavanaugh episode. There, at least, there was in the background the question of "did he do it?" But punishing people for saying something like:

But what is racist? You truly do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as like a character.

Hey, that is real, delicious power. And cheap too! All you need is lefty social media that permits your noble left-wing hate speech and that censors eevil far-right hate speech. No need to maintain a police force and its expensive pensions, or a military and its expensive gadgets. Just lubricate social media with a teensy bit of Soros money and you are ready to go!

The thing is that "racism" is clearly a movable feast. And, according to my doctrine of "fake tribalism" developed here and here, all concepts of political groupings, of clan, tribe, nation, religion, race, gender, etc. are purely made-up out of whole cloth by religious, cultural and political leaders in order to separate people into separate groups for the purpose of religious, cultural, and political warfare.

Never mind. Say the wrong thing on race, Megyn Kelly, and you get fired. Say the wrong thing on "women," Tim Hunt, and you get fired. Say the wrong thing on gays, Brendan Eich, and you get fired. As in racist, sexist, homophobe.

The joke is that, 50 years ago, all we heard from liberals was what a dreadful thing the Salem Witch Trials were. And lefty playwright Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to prove it. And the worst thing in the world was the witch hunts to winkle out Commie schoolteachers wherever they might be found and fire them! Yeah! That'll teach 'em.

But that was before liberals acquired the religious and cultural and political power to fire people that they disapproved of. So that is different.

So how do we get out of this trap? I am hoping for the moral and cultural equivalent of organized sports. Today we channel a lot of the male appetite for violence and military glory into organized sports where we can cheer on the home team in sports stadiums instead of raping and plundering folks on the battlefield. Surely there is a genius out there who can invent something to divert the social media mobs into safe channels where they can demolish people for liking the wrong dog or the wrong Christmas decoration.

Because in my view the benefit of rousing everyone into a howling mob to defend the tribe is probably past its sell-by date.

Social Media: Let's Call 'Em All Commies and Nazis

As I go about my life as a Grumpy Old Man, I like to grumble about Trash Nazis when I dither over which bin to use when throwing away trash at the coffee place.

And when some cyclist in invisible artistical black swishes by in the bike lane as I am trying to cross the street, I grumble about Bike Nazis.

Because of course the reason we have insanely complicated trash laws is the Nazi-style environmental groups that want to Save the World from plastic straws.

And the reason we have insane traffic congestion in downtown Seattle is that Nazi-style "urbanists" want to make the cities of the world safe for single progressive twentysomething cyclists dressed in non-reflective artistical black.

Of course these nasty power-mad progressives are not really Nazis. They are really Commies. But ever since Seinfeld invented "The Soup Nazi:"-- Well, whaddya gonna do but subscript all officious people with the all-purpose label -Nazi.

Course, the Seinfeld kids didn't invent the -Nazi modifier. That was Rush Limbaugh, who popularized the word "Feminazi" to describe people that I believe are now called "Basic White Bitch." Not that this is anything new. I was re-reading the good bits of Pride and Prejudice last night and I would say that Jane Austen invented the Basic White Bitch 200 years ago. Hello Miss Bingley! But of course, the correct term has to be "basic white RICH bitch." You can't be a real bitch unless you are rich.

I think it is a pity that we have to use -Nazi as a modifier. As in #MeToo Nazis and #BelieveAllWomen Nazis, and #AntiFa Nazis. Because they aren't really Nazis. They are lefties, and that makes them worse than Nazis. So I think we should append the word Commies as a pejorative modifier, any time we want to make the merely descriptive into a pejorative.

Thus Bike Commies, Trash Commies, Soup Commies, #MeToo Commies. Because just about any group that wants to use government power to impose their agenda to bend the arc of history towards a just world is on the left.

Notice the big difference between Nazis and Commies? The Nazi movement was birthed by a half-educated son of a customs official. The Communist movement was birthed and renewed by rich kids, and imposed from above right down to the present day.

So I think that the discerning pejorator should understand what he is dealing with when he wants to sneer at a political group. Is it made up of deplorables or rich kids? Tea Party? Nazis. AntiFa? Commies. #MeToo? Commies.

But I think that, to be on the safe side, we should pejoratize these Social Media mobs as both Nazis and Commies, keeping a careful watch to make sure that we are perfectly balanced in our use of pejoratives.

Thus we should be balanced about referring to Trash Nazis and Trash Commies. Or Bike Nazis and Bike Commies. Or #MeToo Nazis and #MeToo Commies.

Because, after all, the word "Nazi" will trigger one kind of person to frothing rage, the chap with straggly facial hair that is still a couple of years short of a beard, and that is fine for us shadowy string-pullers. But to cover the ground we should not hesitate to use the word "Commie" to take care of the Gen. Jack D. Rippers of the world, They need to be provoked into frothing hatred as well by us conspiracy mongers.

I just think that if the left is going to get its kicks by running around calling everyone racists, sexists, and homophobes, then the non-left needs to chime in with the name-calling.

Until the left cries Uncle.

Chantrill's Law of Incoming Rounds

Meet "Chantrill's Law of Incoming Rounds." The idea is simple. We humans are really sensitive when someone is attacking us. But when we are attacking someone else, hey, what's the fuss!

The way to understand this is by way of a military metaphor. Imagine you and your buddies are defending a fire-base on a hill-top in Vietnam. Nearby there's an enemy fire-base. You can imagine that when your mortar detachment fires off a mortar round at the other fire-base it is interesting to see where the round lands: the puff of smoke, the crump. Did it hit the target or not?

But things are very different when incoming rounds are hitting your own fire-base. Why, it's a matter of life and death! Incoming! Hit the deck! Then it's all about counterattack, killing every last one of them.

The same is true in politics. Political activists are warriors in the political wars; their job is to fire off squibs to hit the opposing campaign right in the solar-plexus, whether it is a negative ad or an October Surprise that digs up some embarrassing scandal from the past. Hey, they had it coming! But when the opposition starts firing on your side, why, that's an outrage! How dare they traffic in rumors and innuendo! Let's stick to the issues!

You can see this playing out in the current war between the Trumpists and the Resistance. For instance, whaddya think of this list of mortar rounds from the left, compiled at American Greatness?

• Public performances of plays that depict the execution of Trump-like figures.
• Publishing a Trump assassination fantasy in the New York Times.
• The constant, deliberate misrepresentation and denigration of mainstream conservative policy positions {by the MSM e.g., immigration].
• Barack Obama advises supporters to oppose opponents by saying if “they bring a knife, we bring a gun.”
• [V]irtue-signaling celebrities who make threats against the president’s family...
• Antifa’s (and associated groups’) violent responses to peaceful exercises of conservative speech in public spaces.
• Leftists running high-profile conservatives out of restaurants.
• Maxine Waters’ encouragements of those who would use violent methods to signify their opposition to the Trump Administration.
• Hillary Clinton’s call for a hiatus on civility until Democrats regain control of the government.
• The widespread, false, and cynical equivocation between conservative speech and hate speech.
• The would-be assassin who almost killed Rep. Scalise.
• Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder saying, “when [conservatives] go low, we kick them.”

If you are a conservative like me, this sort of thing makes you furious. You say to youself: yeah, imagine if some conservatives ran Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) out of a restaurant. Imagine the media outrage!

Against this, American Greatness's list of conservative originated outrages.

• The use of disparaging metaphors in reference to the media or political opponents on the Left—because the words the Right uses really do matter.
• The Deplorables—especially the ones who vote.
• The (comparatively small number of) conservative media outlets.
• The purportedly inherent association between right-wing politics and domestic terrorism.
• President Trump.

And, of course, whenever there is an act of violence, by anyone right or left, liberals blame it on eliminationist rhetoric, white-supremacists, far-right conspiracy theories, and Trump's rhetoric.

But of course. If you are a conservative, you are sick to death of liberals accusing you of being racists sexists, homophobes, and sick to death of the hypocrisy of calling riotous behavior "peaceful protest." Because it hits you where you live and you know that it is meant to hit you where you live and cow you into submission.

But, with the Trump era, suddenly our liberal friends are experiencing incoming rounds, and, in the words of Corporal Jones of the British sit-com Dad's Army, they "don't like it up 'em."

The fact is that people don't care about other people. We only care about ourselves and our kind, and we really care when someone is attacking us, rhetorically on social media, or with fake bombs, or real bullets. Of course we do. We are humans.

Free Trade vs. America First

What should we do about free trade vs. America First? The logic of free trade comes from the law of comparative advantage,  that everyone should concentrate on what they do best. The medical doctor may be best at every job in his medical office, but there are only 8 hours in the day. So it pays for him to hire less-able assistants who can do the grunt work for him at lower wages.

So we offshore all the low-skills jobs to East Asia and concentrate on the high-skills jobs like designing Apple computers.

But what about the low-skill people in the US? Do they just go to the wall? Or live a living hell on welfare? That's the question raised by Spencer Morrison at American Greatness. He chides Andy Kessler at The Wall Street Journal for a simplistic approach to economics: that we move up the value chain, concentrating on high margin activities while outsourcing the low margin work to Asia:

We’ll design (high margin), and they’ll manufacture (low margin). We think, they sweat. It’s the “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China” label.

Problem is: not everyone has the smarts and the skills to do high margin, thinking, creative work. So what happens to them? Do we "let them eat cake?"

Or, do we protect our industries from foreign competition, and guarantee that America remains the land of opportunity for all Americans? 

The truth is, in my view, that this isn't an either/or question. Sure, we don't want to abandon the low skill folks to unemployment, opioids, and existential despair. On the other hand, propping up industries and protecting them from foreign competition is not necessarily going to maintain America as the land of opportunity.

In reality, it's a messy business. In the United States, for about a century, we put the thumb on the scales to help the workers, by privileging labor unions. This was nice for workers in the unionized steel and auto industries, except that the above-market wages and salaries and general bloat made these industries vulnerable to foreign competition, and slow to update and improve their act. So what should the politicians do? Give industries an eternal subsidy? Give them a brief assistance so they can get more competitive?

This is not a new situation. The whole economic history of the last 200 hundred years has been about the decline, one after another, of one proud industries, beginning with farming. Well over half the population used to live on the land, farming. Today, in the United States, less than 3 percent of the work force works on farms. What happened? All sorts of things. Mostly, the children of farmers went to school and left the farm for the city.

But it wasn't always as easy as that. Sometimes the suffering farm workers rioted, as in 1830 and the Captain Swing riots in Britain in 1830. Or the populist revolt in the Great Plains states in the late 19th century. Or the Dust Bowl in the US in the 1930s.

Or railways. According to RailServe.com, railroad employment in the US was 1,500,000 in 1947. Today in the 2010s it is 235,000 employees. So was it just gradual attrition, or what?

In other words, on a decadal time-frame you will see huge changes in the employment of American workers. The question is not saving jobs or moving up the value chain. The question is how to get there, wherever "there" is, without major crisis and hardship. We cannot preserve the past and the incomes of the past. But we can certainly help people to transition from a declining industry to a growing industry.

Problem is that once people get to be established, they don't want to change. They hate the idea of losing wages and status, and usually look to government to help them when they get in a jam. And indeed, it is the job of government to protect people from existential peril. But obviously we cannot maintain everyone in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

On the other hand, every soldier needs to keep his powder dry; every bourgeois needs to to save against a rainy day, every family should prepare against disaster.

So you tell me what government should do to keep America healthy, wealthy, and wise in the coming years.