Obama's Drive for "Equality"

The American Spectator ^ | October 17, 2008 | William Tucker

[St. Louis Conservative]

Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize this week and that tells you all you have to know about how politicized the award has become. American writers no longer win prizes for literature because they are "no longer mainstream," but Paul Krugman -- well, he hates the Bush Administration! He's one of us.

There's more to Krugman's fame, though, than just pandering to European aristocrats. In one of the shallowest intellectual gambits of recent decades, Krugman has been the point man for the bizarre thesis that America has become the "land of inequality." For the last five years Krugman has used his New York Times column to trumpet the theory that nearly all the wealth creation since the Reagan Era has accrued to approximately 13,000 families at the top while the rest of America wallows in squalor. Here's the way he puts it on his website:

Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We're no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.… [T]he winners' circle is actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile… have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970s. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent... has risen by a factor of 5.

Krugman's thesis -- "Income inequality in America is now the greatest since the 1920s" -- has become an article of faith in liberal politics, endlessly reiterated in New York Times editorials and among Democratic politicians.

[Slapshot68]

“Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize this week and that tells you all you have to know about how politicized the award has become.”

Gore won.
Arafat won.

Any previous legitimate winners might as well throw theirs in the trash now.

[TBP]

“Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.” — Richard Berkeley Cotten.

[TBP]

“Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.” — Richard Berkeley Cotten.

[Sacajaweau]

From "55 Men-The Story of the Constitution" based on the notes of James Madison by Fred Rodell, 1906.

The Powers and duties of the Senate:

In all civilized countries, the people fall into different classes having a real or supposed difference of interests. There will be creditors and debtors, farmers, merchants and manufaqcturers. There will be particularly the distinction of rich and poor.

"An increase in population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labour under all hardships of life and secretly sigh for A MORE EQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF ITS BLESSINGS. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the laws of equal, the power will soon slide into the hands of the former".

As soon as the poor could outvote the rich, they would make plans for a more equal distribution of wealth.

And the Senaste, to makle sure it would vote down these "symptoms of a levelling spirit", must be a highly respectable body.

A long term for Senators would help Madision concluded, - help to protect the rich against the "injustice" of popular laws, of a sort we know all too sadly from "our own experience".

Obama's plan is NOT what our government intended.

[MathDoc]

Even households at the 95th percentile… have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970s. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent... has risen by a factor of 5.

As one who is nowhere near the top .01% or even the top 5%, I'm cheering those who are in that group. For the most part it is people in that small group who have created the wealth that all of us enjoy. Why would I be jealous that incomes for the top 5% have risen by a whole one percent per year, when I'm one of the many happily paying for what they produce and feeling like I got a good deal on the exchange? Why would I mind if free Americans have chosen to exchange their cash for the value generated by the top 0.01% to such a degree that the top one in ten thousand now makes five times as much as 30 years ago? I am not harmed by the good fortune of others. I would be harmed by the theft of their wealth, whether by thugs with guns robbing them in the night, or by thugs taking over the White House and passing legislation to take from "the rich" (those who produce) to give to "the poor" (those who don't produce but do vote for redistribution).

[TBP]

Equality of rights is one thing — we’re all for that. Jefferson described it as “equal opportunity to achieve inequality.” But the kind of levelling that BO proposes is contrary to the Constitution.

Ironically, the economic system that has proven most effective in distributing things more equally is the free market. Yet that is what the “equalizers” reject most adamantly.

And it’s a matter of consciousness also. A prosperous cosciousness is necessary. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2106816/posts

[rmlew]

I’m surprised that there are so few comments. I guess the piece is too long and not “cool” enough.

[rmlew]

I should have looked before I posted.
SLC, if you want an article seen, use keywords. I added some: economy; incomedistribution; krugman; obama; paulkrugman; soaktherich; wealth;