Lower Class Lives on Gubmint Checks

I suppose that I knew this all along, but it's still shocking. According Richard Shinder, commenting on a piece by Phil Gramm and John Early in the Wall Street Journal, the point isn't that inequality isn't as bad as our liberal friends like to lecture us. Hey, if you don't take gubmint payments into account, of course inequality looks bad. But he takes Gramm and Early to task for this:

Left largely unremarked upon in their essay are the costs and consequences of both current and prospective redistributive policies, other than observing a collapsing labor-force participation rate among lower-income households and that the percentage of income attributable to government payments among the bottom quintile of U.S. households now exceeds 90 percent.

Yikes.

Of course, that chimes in with Charles Murray in Coming Apart. In the bottom 35 percent of Americans, the men don't work much and the women don't marry much. 

As I was returning home from coffee this morning I passed by a house still with its Biden/Harris yard-sign displayed. Only this sign had stuff like Truth Peace Kindness on it.

I thought to myself: you liberal gentry living in swank houses one block from Green Lake in Seattle have No Idea.

The fact that the bottom 20 percent of Americans get 90 percent of their income from gubmint is Your Fault, liberals. Oh, it's happened for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of the gubmint programs that you have passed over the years. Because You Cared.

The situation, I suggest, is the same as the end of the feudal age when, according to Marx,

A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James Steuart well says, “everywhere uselessly filled house and castle.” ...

And the reason, I found out, was because the nationalization of armies by the absolute monarchs meant that the feudal lords didn't need to keep extra hands around in case they needed to go to war on the lord next door.

Look, nothing to see here. All ruling classes use their feudal retainers to support their power plays. If the lower quintile is useful as a vote bank, or useful as street fighters or as the army's cannon fodder, then the ruling class will support the lower class. If the world changes, well then those chappies are going to be "eating the paint off the walls" as they said in Russia right after the end of the Soviet Union.

That's why I say: don't be a Little Darling of the ruling class. Right now they say they looove you. And so they do. But next week? Reasons of state will govern, and if reasons of state say that the old white working class ain't what it used to be, then it's Coi-t'ns (That's "curtains" in standard English) to the white working class. As Bugs Bunny used to say.

Right now, I read, the Biden administration is pushing its big $2 trillion infrastructure bill to Congress -- to "rebuild infrastructure and reshape the economy." Except that half of it seems to be simple redistributive payments, that's not actually going to build anything. Well, of course, because the Democrats are an over-under coalition, with Jobs for Gentry and Checks for the "oppressed peoples." And "reshape the economy?" Oy, I don't like the sound of that. I'll bet it really means "wreck the economy." As in Oops...

That is the game that the left has been playing for the last century, to use the poor as a political weapon, and buy their loyalty with loot and plunder from taxing the productive sector.

And lots of nice liberal ladies are persuaded that this loot and plunder operation is the very essence of justice and peace and kindness. And they will continue to believe what they have been carefully taught right up until the moment that the poor are reduced to eating the paint off the walls.

I tell you what I think Our Great Challenge for the next 20 years will be.

No, it will not be Climate Change. It will not be Systemic Racism. It will simply be getting the bottom 20 percent back into the workaday economy, back to work, back to marriage and children and trying to rise out of the lower class into the competent middle class.

And that ain't simple.

How Does a Politician Do "Commoner Politics?"

One thing that has struck me since January 20, 2021, is that the Biden agenda has nothing for the Common Man -- or Woman.

Fighting climate change? Jobs for Gentry. Screw the middle class. Nothing for the lower class,

Fighting systemic racism? Jobs for Gentry. Screw the white middle class. Reparations for the lower class, but don't hold your breath.

Unlimited immigration? Nannies for the upper class; cheap labor for Big Business. Lower wages for the middle class, and no jobs at all for the lower class.

OK, great. The Democrats don't give a damn about Commoners, the folks that obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules.

That's because progressive politics, ever since Marx, is all about using the Subordinates as the clients -- Little Darlings -- of the Gentry educated class.

And since politics is division, and requires an enemy -- well, the Commoner middle class is it. It's a bit weird, because to make it work you have to sell the idea that the ordinary middle class is a powerful force of white supremacists and systemic patriarchs that are "white oppressing" the world.

If only! As I like to say, the fact is that the ordinary middle class is not that interested in power. 

So what do we do about it?

To misquote Marx, " It is high time that Communists Commoners should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism White Oppressors with a manifesto of the party any future Commoner party itself.

 Now, I think that Donald Trump made a decent start on this. But, if anything, the guy was too positive. When you are talking about Making America Great, that identification with the nation state is good, and we need more of it.

But hey, politics is division, it is about putting your opponents on the back foot. Naming and Shaming. And all that.

So I think that it is time to take the offensive on the Green New Deal. If I were a politician I would be talking about how there is nothing for ordinary people in it. The Green New Deal is all about jobs and power and prestige for the educated ruling class, the folks that will be making all the decisions and the regulations. It will be cool for the special interests and the renewable energy contractors that make tons of money out of the renewable energy projects, the high-speed rail projects, the greening of the nation's housing stock. But for ordinary people it will mean nothing but higher energy prices, more oppressive regulation, and probably a future of poverty.

Really, the Green New Deal is like World War II. We spent a ton of money; we drafted all the young men; we created a lot of work for chaps like Henry Kaiser to build Liberty ships, all very important, assuming that the Nazis were the worst thing in the world. But the average person just had to suck it in and go with the program, or else.

Let's agree with the need for World War II. Anyway, it ended after four short years. But the Green New Deal is going to go on for decades. The question is: how long are you willing to wait for a resumption of normal life?

Actually, the experts have pronounced on this, in particular with Edward C. Banfield's The Unheavenly City, which did not go down well with liberals. His idea was that the poor are "present oriented." Their only concern is with the next meal or the next rent check. The higher up in class you go, the more "future oriented" you become.

So, for the middle class,

[he or she] plans to get ahead and does what is necessary to improve his lot in life and to ensure his children achieve more than he did.

But the upper class lives in a different world.

The upper class individual occupies the farthest end of the future-oriented spectrum; he conducts himself and his affairs with an eye toward his heirs and family name. 

So you can see that the Green New Deal is purely an upper-class endeavor. It is all about saving the world for our grandchildren.

Jolly nice, but meanwhile the lower class has to find that rent check, and the middle class has to save the down payment on that dream house in the suburbs. 

Notice that Donald Trump's line of Making America Great Again fits exactly into the world of the ordinary middle class. The middle class chappie or chappette wants a world in which it is possible "to improve his lot in life" and create a better life for her children.

Now I think the beautiful thing is the your average New York Times reader and NPR listener has No Idea about this.

Our liberal friends all agree that we have to save the planet. Why not? Especially as liberals will be the ones to get all the Green New Deal administrative and policy jobs.

Our liberal friends all agree that limiting immigration is the cruelest thing in the world. Of course they do. It's not their jobs that will be affected. Not until they lose their administrative position, because systemic racism, and it's time to Learn to Code and compete in the job market with a million South Asians.

Our liberal friends all agree that "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" and "whiteness" are the worst things in the world. Actually, this is where they really ought to get a clue. Don't they realize that the only privilege in America is "liberal privilege," and that if we start on a full-scale War on Whiteness then white liberal jobs in government and academia will be, if not the first, then the second to go? No, they don't. But they will, sooner than they think.

Like I said. All this stuff is low-hanging fruit. Donald Trump picked the lowest-hanging fruit, but there is lots more fruit in easy reach for any damn politician with a half a brain.

So get going, guys and gals!

What Do You Do About Christopher Lasch

In a piece at American Greatness Roger Kimball ponders the case of Christopher Lasch, a writer/intellectual that started out as a full-on lefty but ended up not quite so left.

I myself have a copy of Lasch's Revolt of the Elites, but I can't remember what it was all about.

But Lasch hated capitalism. Back in the Sixties

he informed us that we now faced “an unprecedented crisis” wrought by capitalism, “giant corporations,” and other familiar villains... He concluded that “It is clearer than ever that radicalism”—which he went on to identify with socialism—“is the only long-term hope for America.”

But in his last book,  The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, 

Lasch mounted an attack on the “ideology” of progress, which he saw as a natural coefficient of the free market (a phrase I shall henceforth prefer to “capitalism” since “capitalism” is a negative epithet baked in the oven of Marxist imprecation).  

“How does it happen,” he asked in his preface, “that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once and for all?”  

I can help wondering, after reading all this, that "what is his problem?"

The first problem is to stigmatize the culture of the market -- free or otherwise -- as "capitalism." That tends to characterize capitalism as a cultural or political movement, which it is not. If there is an "-ism" to capitalism it is the realization, after the fact, that something just changed. That was what classical economics was all about, a first effort of trying to figure out what was going on in the economic sphere.

The second problem, in my opinion, is to imagine -- as intellectuals tend to do -- that anyone can grab control of the process of capitalism, politically or culturally. Really, we don't have a clue what is going on.

When you develop an ideology of "progress" or develop an opposition to "progress" you are taking a huge leap into the unknown. You are imagining that you can even come to fully understand the ways of human life and culture.

Why did "capitalism" arise in the late medieval era? And why since 1800 have we experienced what Deirdre McCloskey calls a "Great Enrichment?" Why did feudalism die out? And why did lefty totalitarianism, with its attempt to command economy, politics and religion, all in one, emerge in the 19th century?

Really we don't have a clue. But we can all have a grand old time speculating about it.

Why, for instance, did slavery become a scandal in the 18th century? And why are almost all educated people working in semi-serfdom as salaried employees for Big Business, Big Government, Big Education, Big Activism?

Why are we seeing a cultural meltdown on race right now? Why are people panicking over a teensy weensy increase in global temperature?

Yup. It's a mystery. So more research is needed.

Actually, I do understand somewhat the rage against capitalism. It comes out in Marxist Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origin of Capitalism: a longer view. Her big thing is the "market imperative," that for people living under capitalism you have to conform to the dictates of the market -- i.e., its prices -- whether you like it or not.

But what Wood never really faces is: compared to what? Because the alternatives are all subordination to the "imperative" of some sort of landowner or ruler or priest. At least in the market economy there is a a certain freedom to use your talent to make a living, never mind who your parents are. And if you are a despised minority, well, maybe your income will be a bit lower than it should be. But then, you can always find a job by lowering your salary demands. Because the evil capitalist boss is always going to be tempted to make money on you rather than keep the proles down.

I suppose that is the biggest problem humans face: the problem of not being in control of your fate. There must be a better world where everything will turn out for the best.

Hope and Change, as a famous political philosopher once said.

The Filibuster is Racism, Etc.

What a surprise! Our liberal friends are now saying that the Senate filibuster -- which basically says that you can't pass anything in the Senate unless you have a supermajority -- is racist. Because Jim Crow.

Only, for President Biden, Jim Crow isn't enough. He's now amping up to "Jim Eagle." 'Cos eagles are bigger and scarier, I suppose.

I know, it is really annoying, when you have won with presidency with the help of half a billion from the Zuck and "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election." Or, as it says in the Time <title> tag: "The Secret Bipartisan Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election."

Really annoying when you only have a 50-50 Senate and lost 13 seats in the House to yield a 222-213 majority. Because you have vital and important legislative measures like imposing federal rules on all elections. And pitching the US into a multi-trillion dollar program to save the planet from climate change.

There oughta be a law!

OK, now let's go to a bit of science. The best science on legislative voting that I know is The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. They go through a book full of various legislative combinations and dual-chamber and single-chamber legislatures. And what they eventually come up with is that the only just voting system is "unanimous consent." In other words, forget majority voting. Forget supermajority deals like the filibuster. The only just form of voting is for all the legislators to agree.

Why? Because if you have unanimous consent then the proposers of the legislation have to buy off the folks opposing it.  (And why are the opposers opposing? Because the legislation is going to cost them money. Duh!) In other words, if you want to pass legislation to force the country in some direction or other you have to make the losers whole. Or at least compensate them enough to vote with you.

If you want to get into my extended analysis follow the link to "Fifty Years of 'The Calculus of Consent'" that I wrote in 2012. There are various disquisitions on "logrolling" and "side payments."

No doubt this is what inspired me to invent my maxim: "There is no such thing as justice, only injustice."

See, there are two dominant views of politics. Our liberal friends think of politics as "doing good" in the world -- at least when they do it. Guys like me think that politics is civil war by other means.

In other words, I believe that politics is the way we avoid civil war by listening to the grievances and the complaints of the folks out of power. Of course, the chaps on the other side are contemptible and not really worth listening to. But, the point is to do enough to stop them from  giving up on politics and forming a head of rebellion and starting to run up a butcher's bill.

To understand that, in my view, is the beginning of wisdom. You really don't want civil war.

That is the point of the Moynihan law that you don't want to pass major legislation short of a 70-30 vote in the Senate -- in other words, major legislation needs overwhelming support if it is to endure.

An obvious example of what not to do is Obamacare, that passed by a whisker, and remains contentious to this day.

The filibuster is a similar concept to Moynihan's law. It says that if you want to pass something in Congress you'd better get 60 percent in the Senate. Otherwise, to coin a phrase, you got trouble, right here in River City.

Of course, the filibuster is associated in the minds of all good people sporting Black Lives Matter signs in their yards with the Southern Democrats in the time of Jim Crow. It grew up in the aftermath of the Civil War after the South had been devastated by the "bummers" of Gen. Sherman's army in its March Through Georgia and other Southern states, and after the disputed presidential election of 1876 and its "back room" deal to award the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1876 the Democrats had won control of the Senate and Congress.

Yes, you are asking. How come the Democrats had come to win Congress back? Because of the Crash of 1973 and Long Depression consequent upon the US gubmint deflation to get the US back on the Gold Standard. Experts now agree that deflations are not a good idea.

Of course, I always find an excuse not to accept the conventional wisdom. And my take is that probably the filibuster kept the South in the Union for the century in which the South had to deal with the humiliation of losing the Civil War and being stripped of its wealth and its political domination.

In other words, the South was consigned in the century after 1865 to the humiliation of what we would now call "deplorable-dom." But at least they could stop the really bad stuff (for them) in Congress with the filibuster. And, I dare say, the filibuster helped the Republicans to cool the jets of their over-enthusiastic partisans who doubtless thought that the the rubble in the South should be made to bounce for the next thousand years.

Today we have a slightly different problem. We have a ruling class that has ruled for a hundred years and is presently outraged that the "natives are getting restless." How Dare They, to coin a phrase.

So our ruling class is coming up with various dodges to keep their slipping grip on the reins of power. H.R.1 to federalize election rules is one such dodge. Abolishing the filibuster is another.

But I tell my liberal friends that when you are reduced to "dodges" to stay in power then the clock is running on your glorious era of power. Maybe instead of beating up deplorables and canceling heretics it is time to starting thinking about the unthinkable: "where did we go wrong?"

Hey liberals, let me count the ways.

And there is another thing. If you are going to commit the United States to a multi-trillion dollar program to save the planet in a war on climate change you'd better have overwhelming support from the people -- as in supermajorities in the United States Senate. Because in a war two things will happen. First, with your taxation and inflation you will destroy the wealth of ordinary people and put it in the hands of "war profiteers." Second, you will sacrifice the lives of a goodly part of a whole generation of youth on the battlefield. You better have a good reason for that, Senator.

Otherwise, I suspect, the people will show you the exit.

Excess Deaths Going Negative

Over at Powerline John Hinderaker observes that the death rate in the US and UK seems to be going negative. In other words that the "excess deaths" among oldsters like me during the COVID crisis of the last year were merely bringing normal deaths among oldsters forward a few months.

And for this we wrecked the economy and shut up the kidz?

OK, let's go with Ike, and make the problem bigger.

Speaking as a 74-year-old with two kids and six grandchildren, I say that once you have got grandchildren well on their way to adulthood, then you -- that is, "me" -- are surplus population. One fine day, you are going to die. Not because of a disease, but because ageing is part of Nature's program. There is a reason why old people have dry skin and dicky hearts. It is because Nature is planning to kill you off. Nothing personal, you understand.

But we in the West have erected the most obscene gubmint programs to throw money at the elderly. Social Security: hey, if you didn't save your nickels and your kids don't give a damn about you, well, good luck, chum. Medicare: why are we spending a fortune on old people in their last six months of life? 

Really, it is remarkable that the kidz haven't risen up in rebellion against us blood-sucking oldsters.

And, no doubt, when the kidz do rise up in rebellion they will attack the wrong fortress. Idiots.

But I get it. The only warrant for government power is to fight existential peril. And then reward the supporters after the fight with loot and plunder. In the good old days it was to the victor the spoils.

But today it doesn't make any sense to loot. Why loot Amazon? Because after you have looted it the looters don't have Amazon to serve them any more. And the same goes for all capitalistic enterprises.

Sure, you can prune and tap the capitalistic enterprises like they were maple trees and you want to tap the maple syrup. But it doesn't pay to kill the tree.

But the whole point of politics is to find something to fight. And right now we can see the end-point of this age-old instinct. The Biden Boys want to fight climate change with a multi-trillion dollar war -- just like FDR in WWII! Loot and plunder for all the producers of green boondoggles. And they want to fight systemic racism. Loot and plunder for all the "oppressed peoples."

Only the Green New Deal will be a net loss for ordinary people and for "oppressed peoples." And "systemic racism" logically leads to a war of all against all.

Something's got to give. And it will. The only question is the size of the butcher's bill before something "gives."

Meanwhile, we are going to find out that in 2021 the death rate is a lot lower than 2020, as the old geezers like me that might have died this year in 2021 actually died back in 2020.

What we need is a new moral calculus that makes it a moral horror to throw money at old geezers like me. And instead guts gubmint programs by 50 percent so that the young'uns have a chance.

As in, getting an education -- or more to the point, training -- without becoming a debt slave. As in, buying a house that's priced something short of astronomical. As in, keeping your wages out of the hands of politicians so you can save to start a business, to buy a house, to save for a rainy day, to help your kids get a good start in life.

But I don't expect this to happen soon. Not until our present rulers are sent packing.

And even then...

Meanwhile the funeral directors are not going to have a very good year. Sorry chaps.

The Day the Universe Changes. On Race.

I see that, in my "pejoratives" topic, that the first time I hoped, foolishly, for an end to the race grift was back in 2010: "The Year of the Race Card."

I wrote that the only way Democrats get elected is by scaring Blacks and Jews to death.

Back in 2019 I asked "Which is Worse: Trump's Insults of the Racist Canard?" Yeah, I know. I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'.

Then, back in June 2020 I published my alliterative "Codex of Preferred Progressive Pejoratives," helpfully pointing out the target of each progressive pejorative and the toxicity level of each pejorative.

Did you know that the dictionary definition of "pejorative" -- from my Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary that I bought used many moons ago -- is "tending to make worse?" It comes from the Latin, pejorare, darling: "to make worse."

And boy, oh boy, do our liberal friends make things worse with their race politics.

I am preparing for the Day the Universe Changes. It will be the kind of day when some liberal plays the race card on TV and their interlocutor will reply. "Oh great, the race card. Got any other cards up your sleeve?"

And when they say, channeling Greta, "How dare you!" the racist monster replies: "Read your Hegel, darling. He says that there is no difference between racism and anti-racism. The thing is equal to its opposite."

Back at the end of 2019 I wrote a set of pieces, starting with "Of Course I'm a Racist. How About You." I descanted upon the theme that everybody likes their kind best.

Doesn't everyone prefer their own kind best? For instance, your liberal anti-racist may sneer and be ashamed of his rich-kid whiteness. But that's because his whiteness is not his identity. For a lefty xir leftiness is xir identity. Call him a lefty and he feels the compliment.

And, the key thing, from my intensive research into "fake tribalism," is that people form into tribes when rallied by their leaders to confront an existential threat to their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. To coin a phrase.

A while back I tried to come up with a few clever retorts against the Racist Canard.

How's your Two Minute Hate going today, precious?

Look, diversity/ inclusion is racism, straight up. 

Where's the toxic masculinity if colleges are 60 percent female? 

What white supremacy? There is nothing more shameful and low-rent today that being a white male in a MAGA hat.

But in the end, I recommended the simple retort: "Of course, and how about you?"

Of course, the thing is that on The Day the Universe Changes on race, we won't do the liberal thing and lock every last progressive that played the race card up in Cancel Hell.

We won't because we don't believe in witch hunts and cancel cultures and naming and shaming and all the rest of the lefty rubbish.

Because, in the famous phrase of our First Black President, Barack Obama, That's Not Who We Are.

Oh You Brits: How Could You!

In this Cancel Culture age it is rare to see a good old-fashioned insult piece. But UnHerd.com is up to the challenge with "Why we French love to hate the English" by Frenchie Anne-Elisabeth Moutet. 

Now, for the first time in my life, I understand why the French talk about "perfidious Albion." Read this catalog of English crimes:

It starts with use of unregulated longbows at Agincourt.

I agree! There oughta be a law! Then there is

burning Joan of Arc at the stake.

OK, so that was nasty. We moderns would never do that to Greta Thunberg. But here is something I didn't know:

Pitt’s flooding fake assignats to devalue French paper money during the Revolution (typical of the perfidiousness of Albion in all things financial[).]

I had thought all the French financial messes down the ages were all home grown. And this:

“Les Anglais conspired to break the Peace of Amiens in 1803, led the entire continent into war, and managed to pin it all on Napoleon!” one friend raged.

Wow! I had no idea!

Had enough?

And on to St. Helena, to Kitchener’s stand-off against Marchand at Fashoda in the Sudan in 1898, and of course to the sinking of a good chunk of the French Navy at Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July 1940 by the Royal Navy, rather than risking it fighting on for Vichy.

Well. Now I understand the French. They gotta right to be outraged.

And that is nothing compared to the insult to Queen Isabella, daughter of the king of France, wife of England's Edward II. Insulted by Edward's gay relationships she was forced to go home to Daddy in Paris, shack up with Roger Mortimer, and return to Britland at the head of an army and depose her husband.

Hey, you Rosbifs, don't even think about shaming our fine French princesses!

Only now, of course, the French don't have any princesses any more. What a shame!

Seriously though, I think that the good old male tradition of the insult, best practiced after a few at the local pub or tavern, is a vital part of human evolution. To be able to give and take a good honest insult is part of what it takes to be a man.

It is gratifying to see a rough, tough Frenchwoman showing that she can give it out like the best. My view is that if women really want to participate in the Public Square they need to understand and master the art of the insult -- instead of being perpetually insulted in the popular refrain of "I can't believe she said that."

And don't get me started on "safetyism."