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The Working Class and the Government Class
Sultan Knish ^ | Dec 01, 2012 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 12/02/2012 4:29:55 AM PST by expat1000

Forget all the talk about whether we will or won't go over the fiscal cliff. We ourselves are the fiscal cliff and have been for some time now. The real fiscal cliff is not the point at which we run out of money, our credit rating sinks lower than Enron and or everyone is fighting over jars of cat food at Wal-Mart. The real fiscal cliff is when even the dumbest person in the country is no longer able to deny what the packs of robbers and thieves he appointed to steal for him have perpetrated for their own benefit in his name. And that fiscal cliff may never come.

Soviet leaders used to promise their people that one day they would live under true Communism. Under our hybrid system, many Americans already live under Communism. And the rest of the country pays for it. As the number of people living under Communism grows and the number of people subsidizing Communism shrinks, the fiscal cliffs begin coming in faster than Wile E. Coyote on jet-powered rocket skates.

Our class warfare is not determined by paycheck size. The United States has only two classes. The working class and the government class.

The working class extends through the lower class, the middle class and the upper class, and everyone of every income level who derives their income from gainful employment. The government class similarly extends from the poor to the middle class to the rich, and consists of those whose chief source of income is the government; whether it's welfare checks, government jobs or crony capitalism.

Not everyone in the working class is a saint and not everyone in the government class is a parasite. There are plenty of corporations who care only about short term profit and create social problems that the rest of the country has to live with. Immigration is a classic example. And there are also plenty of government employees who perform vital and even heroic functions. Your local firefighter and member of the armed services are obvious examples.

The government class is dependent on the working class, deriving its income from their income. The government class turns from the symbiotic to the parasitic to the extent that its demands on the working class become unsustainable and exploitative, that its functions grow bloated, its spending programs reek of corruption and its government contracts emerge out of backdoor deals with friendly politicians.

The government class can never be productive, because it is not a creative force, it only provides secondary non-innovative services to the working class, but it is legitimate to the extent that it performs vital functions on behalf of the working class with their consent and in an economically sustainable fashion. When it violates these principles, then it becomes a parasite sucking the life out of the working class.

It is not just the government employee who is a member of the government class. The welfare class is a subgroup of the government class. And the welfare class is not only parasitic, it is the axis around which an entire parasitic constellation of the government class revolves around.

The classic welfare family has become the income generating center of the government class. They are the "wealth creators" for an entire infrastructure of social services built around them from the government officials who process their aid forms to the social workers who provide them with benefit counseling to the employees of those clinics who provide them with health care, and the extra teachers hired to help raise standards at their perpetually failing schools, the drug counselors who help them get clean and the police officers who break up their fights.

All or almost all of these people are members of unions. Those unions have their own employees. Those union employees have their own politicians. The politicians provide grants to the community social welfare infrastructure and generous benefits for union contracts. All this money and influence spins around the welfare family, but they only benefit from a minute fraction of it.

Around their dungheap, fly community groups and a horde of other private non-profits, "advocating" for them while operating on government grants. The buildings they live in are affordable housing projects built for them by the government, and cleaned, managed and repaired for them by government employees.

When they go to the supermarket, they buy food with money from the government. When they go to the pharmacy, they get free medication from the government. The web of clinics, supermarkets and pharmacies are not part of the working class, they are subsidized by government money and prosper by feeding off that government class.

The seven members of the classic welfare family, Grandma, Ma and her five kids, are the axis around which thousands of government professionals revolve. Their dysfunctional state keeps an entire state of government employees, employed. And it is in the interest of those government employees to seek out and create such dysfunctional families by championing social policies that break up families and keep them down, under the pretense of helping them because those families are the cash cows of the government class.

Communism, at least conceptually, argued for shifting power from those who perform intellectual labor to those who perform manual labor. Modern liberalism exists only to shift wealth from workers to non-workers, taking from the working class on behalf of the non-working class and pocketing the money for the employees of the government class.

In a hybrid economy, the differences between the government class and the working class aren’t always as obvious. There are any number of businesses, large and small, that are members of the government class, and derive the bulk of their income from the government.

The fundamental difference between the government class business and the working class business is that the government class business is an instrument of government policy. While its owner may derive value from it, the government class business only exists because it fulfills an objective of government policy. And that makes the government class business indistinguishable from the policy it represents.

As the government class expands, the number of individuals and businesses in the government class grows because joining the government class, whether as a welfare recipient, government employee or crony capitalist company is a better strategy than staying in the working class. Planned economies are easier to profit from in the short term, whether it's by getting free stuff, early retirement or contracts on generous terms, because their centralization makes them predictable and influence-able. The only problem is that they have no future.

American society has been reshaped to seek short cuts, whether it's through lottery tickets, credit cards or corporate mergers, at the expense of long-term profits through hard work. Corporations don't look past the next quarter and many people don't look past the next interest payment. And joining the government class is the ultimate shortcut. It wrecks families, trashes the economy and robs the country of its future, while providing limited short-term benefits to members of the government class.

Cities and towns are going bankrupt because government class unions asked for and got financially unsustainable benefit packages. Those small implosions are a metaphor for the tremendous harm that the government class is inflicting on the working class, and also, in the long term, on itself. In the long run, parasitism is not sustainable. In the short term, there's a great party. In the long term, the parasite dies.

The major development of the last decade has been the government's class disinterest in the economic sustainability of its demands. Call it the Californization of America under a government class that is both determined and doomed.

Obama has emerged as the champion of the government class, his complete disregard for the fiscal consequences of his actions, allows him to act as the champion of a predatory government class that lies and bludgeons its way through all obstacles like a horde of Black Friday shoppers, grabbing everything in sight, without caring about what will happen tomorrow.

Some might call this a cunning strategy, but it's not as if the government class has anywhere to advance to. Pulling the same trick in 1932 might have led to government control of industry and agriculture, but in 2012, this is a country that lives off service industries, not manufacturing. Going Full Communist is not an option, because there is hardly any manufacturing sector left and national agriculture is already so government controlled that there might as well be actual Commissars in charge of it.

Trying to nationalize chain stores, dot coms and the rest of the modern economy is not only hopeless, but it won't produce any income worth mentioning from an economy that is based more on marketing and price cutting, than on production. There are already plenty of government class businesses turning out government subsidized windmills and solar panels. There's no point to nationalizing them because they already serve as instruments of government policy, their owners are politically connected and they are already failing nearly as fast as they would if the government were running them.

The government class needs the working class. But it is acting as if it doesn't. Like a dumb predator, it keeps eating and eating on instinct, swallowing up its ideological enemies in the hopes of gaining a total control that it would not know what to do with.

The parasite has gotten so big that it believes that it is the host and that the host is the parasite. It is completely sincere about its attacks on the host and that makes it even more dangerous. Under the influence of its own propaganda, the government class has come to think of itself as productive and creative, and of the working class as a parasitic blot, holding on to the money that rightfully belongs to the government class. But just as parasites cannot survive without hosts, governments cannot survive without people to do the actual work.

The government class has shown that it is unwilling and unable to make the responsible decisions that need to be made. It is being led by liars and fools who see it as a lever for upending and taking over a working class society, and replacing it with a parasite's paradise of academics making laws, unions setting their own terms and a government that is always expanding and never contracting.

A host and a parasite of equal size cannot both survive for long. Either both the host and the parasite will die. Or the parasite will die and the host will live. Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics
KEYWORDS: danielgreenfield; governmentclass

1 posted on 12/02/2012 4:29:58 AM PST by expat1000
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To: arasina; daisy mae for the usa; AdvisorB; wizardoz; free-in-nyc; Vendome; Louis Foxwell; ...


Sultan Knish/Daniel Greenfield Ping List (notification of new articles). FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off.
2 posted on 12/02/2012 4:30:43 AM PST by expat1000
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To: expat1000

“A host and a parasite of equal size cannot both survive for long. Either both the host and the parasite will die. Or the parasite will die and the host will live.”

The paraState will kill the American private sector and then move on to other countries and kill there. It will be a world war fought unlike any other.

The American rich are not obama’s 1% - his eye is on the world’s 1%. There are many hosts remaining for the paraState to harvest, funded by petrodollars.


3 posted on 12/02/2012 4:41:39 AM PST by gotribe
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To: expat1000; dinodino
here's another one of those basic class warfare articles that argues from marxist principles ~ to ~ pursue class warfare ~

This sort of thing probably shouldn't be in any sort of discussion of Conservative principles and solutions ~ we are not served well by adoption of marxist cnt and nonsense.

4 posted on 12/02/2012 5:08:52 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: expat1000
The real fiscal cliff is when even the dumbest person in the country is no longer able to deny what the packs of robbers and thieves he appointed to steal for him have perpetrated for their own benefit...

EXCELLENT
5 posted on 12/02/2012 5:11:44 AM PST by silverleaf (Age Takes a Toll: Please Have Exact Change)
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To: expat1000

Another great piece the “Sultan”. Please add me to the list.

The real question is this: How will we excise the parasite from the host? I fear it will not be without bloodshed.

I am terrified as to what my sons will grow up to experience. They are only 8 and 10 and I see nothing in today’s society that says they will NOT be seen as targets for the rest of their lives.


6 posted on 12/02/2012 5:14:49 AM PST by raybbr (People who still support Obama are either a Marxist or a moron.)
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To: raybbr
Site an example where the host successfully excised the parasite.

For the life of me, I can't think of one.

Let's see...Rome, no...France, no..Spain, no..Argentina, no..Russia, no..

7 posted on 12/02/2012 5:28:07 AM PST by Aevery_Freeman (The trouble with the "masses" is that they never achieve the "m")
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To: Aevery_Freeman

Possibly the American Revolution. Although the parasite we now have is far worse than King George.


8 posted on 12/02/2012 5:40:01 AM PST by MulberryDraw (That which cannot be paid, won't be paid.)
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To: MulberryDraw
Point taken.

However, I always considered England more as a predator than a parasite.

I remain less than optimistic about our future. Damn slave traders.

9 posted on 12/02/2012 5:45:42 AM PST by Aevery_Freeman (The trouble with the "masses" is that they never achieve the "m")
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To: raybbr
Would it necessarily have to be done with bloodshed? What about some form of Going Galt? Could we starve off the parasite by cutting off its food supply.... stop feeding it, so-to-speak. The trick would be to figure out a way to do that and the hardest part would be to trust that there are still enough producers with the courage and will power to do without most things we have come to enjoy having.
10 posted on 12/02/2012 5:45:52 AM PST by Apple Pan Dowdy (... as American as Apple Pie mmm mmm mmm)
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To: expat1000
Call it the Californization of America under a government class that is both determined and doomed.

The logical conclusion of the path of California and eventually America is an an intolerable thought. So the "government" class chooses denial instead. A fiscal collapse must happen, IMO, before the majority grows up and makes the tough adult decisions.

Like an addict or alcoholic that must exhaust all efforts avoiding the negatives of his behavior on his way to the bottom, the reality of fiscal unsustainability must be visited before the obvious and the reasonable solutions are embraced.

11 posted on 12/02/2012 6:00:51 AM PST by VRW Conspirator (We were the tea party before there was a tea party. - Jim Robinson)
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To: Apple Pan Dowdy
Would it necessarily have to be done with bloodshed? What about some form of Going Galt? Could we starve off the parasite by cutting off its food supply.... stop feeding it, so-to-speak.

How many parasites die quietly when the food supply is cut off?

We are in a world of crap in the future. Going Galt will only create a desperate hunger in the parasite. They will not go quietly in that good night.

With Obama at the controls look for him to feed and nurture the parasite. It's what gives him power and a sense of pride.

I used to laugh at this picture of Michele superimposed onto the the Star Trek creature. Now I'm not so sure...

Or maybe it's more like the creature that fed on hate and fighting in the Star Trek episode Day of the Dove where: "Both humans and Klingons have been lured to a planet by a formless entity that feeds on hatred and has set about to fashion them into a permanent food supply for itself."

12 posted on 12/02/2012 6:04:24 AM PST by raybbr (People who still support Obama are either a Marxist or a moron.)
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To: gotribe
“A host and a parasite of equal size cannot both survive for long; either both the host and the parasite will die, or the parasite will die and the host will live.”

The whole of the piece in a single sentence.

13 posted on 12/02/2012 7:14:18 AM PST by Excellence (9/11 was an act of faith.)
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To: Excellence

I liked that line the best, too. However, the Sultan leaves us without knowing how to survive the parasites. As stated in other comments, no other major civilization was able to do it. I think that the Sultan didn’t go far enough by not calling this out for what it has been all along: overt and complicit treason by the marxists who have ruled the unions and the local govts. of many cities and towns, and now finally, the federal govt. This is all about bringing down America and the Lefties are making hay while they do just that.

Going Galt is one tool that could work for some. I am thinking about giving that a go myself.


14 posted on 12/02/2012 10:12:02 AM PST by Sioux-san
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To: Sioux-san
Those who can will move away from parasitic states, leaving them to die. Perhaps in the ashes the population left behind can rebuild. California is a case in point. It is by all accounts the poorest, least well-run state, and is in a death spiral. Those who can are leaving. The state will go bankrupt, and has done so in the past after a rainstorm wiped out Sacramento and the central valley. Such a storm is now, perhaps, hitting the north end of California again. Sometimes single events can be the catalyst for change.
15 posted on 12/02/2012 10:30:41 AM PST by Excellence (9/11 was an act of faith.)
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