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.
Read it again. I think you will find it hard to point to any sort of "veil," thin or otherwise -- Sowell is one of the straightest talkers around. He attacks not "the rich" in general, but rich people who use socialist rhetoric to turn government force to their own private ends. Such people have fairly earned his scorn. And I really don't understand where you get "greedy" corporations out of the article. The only mentions of businesses are sympathetic.
"Open Space" is a misnomer. What it is is "Closed Space". Not only is the abuse of eminent domain a problem, for we are creating monstrousities of encumbered titles that will in time adversly impact all the law of title.
Making money is not evil, it's Capitalism and most of us subscribe to that...
Making money and then pronouncing yourself to be in favor of every ecology/liberal/moonbat gimmick available to protect your newly purchased position is hypocrisy.
Shutting the homeless out of Bel Air while denouncing any other town that tries to keep their parks clean is Limousine Liberalism at its worst - and all too popular among both the new and the old rich.
(If you want it, and you can afford it; buy it - don't ask me to spend tax dollars to provide it to you)
I am in favor of putting taxpayer(since we have it) funded art in the low income projects.
You obviously are in for a treat. You actually have not read enough Thomas Sowell to know when you are reading wisdom. Run, do not walk, to your library and find one of his books. Or search for his name in google and find his columns on the Internet.Professor Sowell has no interest in "veiled" attacks or insinuations; he is no sophist (wise guy) but a sincere philosopher (that means, "lover of wisdom"). Sowell would never argue that something is true because he says so. But if he says something, you can figure that you can take it to the bank.
G'Day, Brother shaggs
<< ,,, are his articles subject to copyright? >>
Normal stuff, I believe -- 'May be used for the purpose of discussion and for "educational" purposes.' (My opinion - no basis in Law, that I know of. JR, for sure, knows)
But the self-styled plutocrats at Tauranga, Mount Manganui, (sp?) Queenstown, Huka Lodge, wherever, every one of whom uses every totalitarian means imaginable to protect his (dirt-cheap) "First Bought" (21st-century "First Fleet squatocracy"-equivalent) absolute "Rights" to the "pristine" (until he got there, anyway) nature of the bit of, now "sacred" (to the official state green-on-the-outside red-on-the-inside religion the post-Frankfurt School bastards've snuck in on the once-Judeo-Christian Western World) dirt from which he wants the gummint to forever exclude all others.
Very Stalinistic and forever shuts out the proletariat to the benefit of the commissars and the cashed-up cronies. (AKA the bishops - whose land, like that of the similarly forever enslaved to her church Mouldies [ [Copyright shaggs]) is now worth 100s of times more than it was before Pope He-Lin Chow Chebai and her cardinals, (AKA "the gummint") acted to make it sacred)
Asinine and Insane bloody 'Mouldy-ism' gone mad! -- For the seriously socialistic Kiwifruit Cavalier, Gulfstream Gorgeous, Riesling Rich and Learjet luxurious.
LU ALL, shagg family! Blessings - Brian (&P)
(Geez - I reckon I could make a darned good living in NZ politics. So easy to be passionate, eh??)
<< You obviously are in for a treat. You actually have not read enough Thomas Sowell to know when you are reading wisdom. Run, do not walk, to your library and find one of his books. Or search for his name in google and find his columns on the Internet.
Professor Sowell has no interest in "veiled" attacks or insinuations; he is no sophist (wise guy) but a sincere philosopher (that means, "lover of wisdom"). Sowell would never argue that something is true because he says so. But if he says something, you can figure that you can take it to the bank. >>
Hear! Hear!
Absolutely. My library include his every word and for the reasons you have mentioned and the many others that mark him as a Great American Man, Doctor Sowell is really close to being my (other) favorite American.
Please heed his advice, L98, you'll be in for a treat!
,,, Brian, that's a very round about way of saying Sam Neil.
bttt
"Please heed his advice, L98, you'll be in for a treat!"
Will do, guys. Thanks.
Good.One excellent suggestion if you go to the library is Basic Economics.
Read the reviews in the link, and understand what we are talking about!
<< One excellent suggestion if you go to the library is Basic Economics. >>
On my desk and touching my hand as I type is my latest copy of 'Basic Economics, A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded Edition,' it having just arrived from Amazon to replace the fiftieth Basic Economics - or so - I gave away!
Too bad you aren't nearby, L98 - (And that I'm 9,000 miles away from home) - or I'd mail it to you.
"One excellent suggestion if you go to the library is Basic Economics."
I'll buy it. Thanks again for the tip. I appreciate Freepers like ya'll who share knowledge.
Boy, this article is surely bound to become "heresy" in this country!
,,, I have a client who owns a management consultancy business. One time I mentioned the abysmal state of taxation here and she said "oh, you can always afford a little more." Shortly after that I tested her assessment by raising her charges. Her reaction was louder than mine - in reasonably good spirits though - but she's paying for comment, whether she realises it or not. Since then charges have gone up again because of valid operational costs, namely transport fuel and insurances. We've passed these costs on to all our clients - who can all "afford a little more".
This is a nation of intellectuals. Mass literacy feeds into pop-level acceptance of bizarre - often left-leaning - theories. I wonder if this is because we lack sufficient numbers of irreverance attitudes that Catholic Irish immigrants always bring? (No, the Protestants don't count)
Socialism is always for the rich. It is the ultimate elitist scam. Keep the masses locked in a defined econimc box, so those in power and those with wealth outside of income (as Sowell points out) can continue to accumulate more wealth and power, uninterrupted and protected by laws and taxes.
Thanks for posting the article...I love Tom Sowell!
,,, don't let a burgeoning cafe culture mislead you. This country [NZL] is stacked to the sky with pretenders and takers.
ping
This is a country where the so-called "conservative" part implements such nonsense:
http://www.kaikoura.govt.nz/
"KAIKOURA - A GREEN GLOBE 21 CERTIFIED COMMUNITY
The Kaikoura District Council is proud to be the first local authority in the world, and the second community in the world, to achieve Green Globe 21 certification in recognition of our commitment to protecting our environment and working towards sustainability for our residents and visitors, and for the generations to come."
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