Posted on 10/03/2006 8:27:43 AM PDT by Gordongekko909
Although socialism has long claimed to be for the poor, it has probably done more damage, on net balance, to the poor than to the rich. After all, the rich have enough money to leave the country if they think the socialists are going to do them any serious harm.
Some of our own rich have already had their money leave the country, to be sheltered from the higher taxes that limousine liberals say we should all pay. Meanwhile, the liberal media give them kudos for their selfless advocacy of higher taxes on higher income people, forgetting that these are not taxes on wealth.
Most of the people in the upper income brackets are not rich and do not have wealth sheltered offshore. They are typically working people who have finally reached their peak earning years after many years of far more modest incomes -- and now see much of what they have worked for siphoned off by politicians, to the accompaniment of lofty rhetoric.
The rich have learned to adapt socialist policies to their own benefit. For example, the city of Riviera Beach, Florida, is planning to demolish a working class neighborhood under its power of eminent domain, in order to prepare the way for a marina for yachts, luxury condominiums and an upscale shopping district.
What will the city of Riviera Beach get out of all this? More taxes from higher-income people, enabling local politicians to spend more money on programs to attract votes.
Meanwhile the rich get rid of lower-income folks without having to pay them the value of their homes and businesses that will be demolished. As in so many other cases, eminent domain is socialism for the rich.
Theoretically, those whose homes and businesses are demolished will get the "just compensation" to which the Constitution says they are entitled.
In reality, just announcing plans to demolish the homes in an area will immediately demolish part of their market value. Even if homeowners are compensated for whatever value remains when their homes are actually demolished -- which can be years later -- they have still been had.
For businesses, compensating them for the value of their physical assets -- which may or may not include ownership of the place where their businesses are located -- does nothing to compensate them for the often much larger value of the clientele they have built up over the years but who are now scattered to the winds by neighborhood demolition.
This game doesn't work the same way in rich neighborhoods. Not only can the rich hire big-bucks lawyers to fight city hall, why would city hall want to get rid of upscale taxpayers, who are often also big donors to political campaigns?
A very different form of socialism for the rich protects their communities from even the dangers of a free market. A whole array of laws and policies prevents outsiders from buying up property near them, even when these outsiders are ready to pay prices determined by supply and demand, rather than by eminent domain.
For example, the "open space" laws that have spread across the country to protect upscale communities represent one of the biggest collectivizations of land since the days of Josef Stalin.
Upscale residents say that they have a right to protect "our community." But not even the rich own the whole community.
They own what they paid for -- their own individual property. But they get the government to collectivize the often vastly larger surrounding property, in order to keep the unwashed masses from settling near them and spoiling their views.
Moreover, they wrap themselves in the mantle of idealism while doing this and denounce the "selfishness" of those who would stoop to building homes or apartments to house others, just to make money.
"Developer" is a cuss word to those who wax indignant in their righteous zeal to keep other people out. Why can't these money-grubbing developers just inherit money, like so many of the upscale idealists?
Meanwhile, back in the working class neighborhood in Riviera Beach, it is being defended legally by the Institute for Justice, one of the few "public interest" organizations that deserve the name.
Socialism = Slavery by Givernment..
"thank goodness for Thomas Sowell. He always explains things "so well.""
I second that. I am grateful Mr. Sowell writes columns & books; it's good stuff I wish I'd learned back in school.
Dr. Sowell stretching the definition of socialism ping.
Have they ever taught this stuff "back in school"? I don't think so. Environmentalism and sex ed for all!
OH, be that way! I already let you have the last word, didn't I :-).
Thanks, another excellent piece by Dr. Sowell.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
We would do well to remember this.
Covert socialism, like overt socialism, elevates an elite governing class. The people who govern will always be elite, and will attend to their own interests to some extent, but any kind of socialism raises the ante by making the government so all-powerful. When the situation is absurd like this, broken, I ask myself:
1. Have principles of the U.S. Constitution been compromised?
2. Can consent of the governed fix the problem by un-electing bums?
Longer than that, I'd say. Look at the Roosevelts. Not Marxists in any consistent sense, but "tending toward" in many ways.
I think a certain sort of people just want to be the boss of others, in every way.
The Fla folks who are dealing with eminent domain taking their homes in order to turn them over to the rich--ought to pay attn to the Greenville, SC case where the owner of some riverfront successfully sued (on contingency) for the value of his property. Only these Fla folks have some strength in numbers...the Greenville guy was alone.
This is, of course, entirely contrary to socialism in theory. There redistribution works entirely in the favor of the oppressed. This theory bears roughly the same relation to the real world as do the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
The techniques of promoting socialism are, underneath, simply the encouragement of envy and a moral suasion justifying open theft, the proposition of an ideal public justice as a masquerade for private enrichment. Of course they may be employed by a privileged class - they always are.
I think this is particularly true of the "got rich quick" crowd, particularly any association with entertainment--those who haven't accumulated wealth over time lose the appreciation for its value. Also, when you're very rich there comes with it diminishing returns...what do you buy when you've already bought it all? You've got your mansion, your plane, your squad of flunkies...
It comes down to the will to dominate. I've been around a few of these "got rich quick" types, and they start wanting to tell people what to think, what to do, how to live their lives. In many ways, they are the "theocrats" they claim to have such fear of...only these "theocrats" worship the power of money.
Right--- in fact, he's defending the "rich" from the "super rich" left--- socialists who would raise taxes on them while using every resource available to get out of it themselves.
Remember the sanctimonious pose Warren Buffett, Bill Gates Sr. and those other clowns adopted when they came out for the estate tax? That's the kind of thing Sowell is talking about. He's not attacking the rich, he's attacking the false notion that by robbing Peter to pay Paul, you're achieving a net good.
Businesses have been after government subsidies ever since there were corporations and governments. How do you think the railroad barons, for one example, became so rich ? They were given the land for free by the government. The catch ? They put up with regulations by their "masters" the government in exchange for the loot.
Ayn Rand had it nailed.
,,, are his articles subject to copyright?
Thanks, Gordongekko909, for this excellent Sowell article.
As much as I loved this article, I wish Dr. Sowell had brought up public funding of the arts. To me, this has always been a particularly irksome form of socialism for the rich. I think it's safe to say that in most communities, it is overwhelmingly the rich who visit the museums and opera houses. Yet in many of these same communities, everyone must subsidize these places through taxes, under the justification that it is somehow enhancing the "prestige" of the city.
I don't think Dr. Sowell is trying to demonize the rich as a whole, just those who would abuse government power to serve their own interests. That IS evil.
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