Posted on 05/26/2014 2:59:24 PM PDT by Kaslin
Earnest Progressives urging their liberal champion Elizabeth Warren to run for president pose a critical riddle for Americans: Can the Left promise Americans prosperity and opportunity when Leftists dislike the people, forces, and dynamics that generate real growth? Do liberals even like prosperity?
The American Left disapproves almost everything about people who create wealth in a free market: They distrust the profit motive; they disdain consumerism; they question entrepreneurs’ moral claim to the fruits of their own labors; and they fail to grasp the seamless bond connecting “business” and “people,” believing instead, that business is some dangerous separate thing that can be demonized, harassed, and shackled in the name of making things better for people.
Barack Obama tried to blunt this criticism in the second presidential debate, asserting: “I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known,”
Observing the administration’s treatment of business and the economy, it’s tempting to dismiss the claim as a whopper on the scale of “You can keep your doctor.” But the truth is actually worse. Obama probably does believe free enterprise builds prosperity best of all; but, that’s just not very important to him. He cares more about concepts like fairness, equality, social justice, and government control of the economy than about growth and opportunity.
A booming economy, soaring markets, robust growth and investment, all actually produce things the Left dislikes: Personal fortunes, growing inequality; higher consumer expectations, more building and expansion. A vibrant economy of producers and consumers becomes a society inclined to let freedom hum along without government needing to run the show—that’s anathema to the Left.
One of the most beguiling expressions of this view helped Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren become a darling of the left. Warren set liberal hearts aflutter with her redistributor’s manifesto:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Liberals swooned, but if you rinse off the sugary rhetoric, the salvo is incoherent. First, the business owner paid all the same taxes for all the same public purposes as everyone else. Rather than incurring a debt for future success, he likely paid more than other taxpayers for the services all enjoy. Second, the community didn’t pay taxes for roads, schools, and police in order to benefit the business owner, but rather, for the benefit of all. Third, the same infrastructure is available to all. Our society has roads, schools, laws, and enforcement. If those resources explain the businessman’s success, don’t they also rebuke the rest of us because we didn’t build a factory?
In a free society, people have a natural right to pursue their happiness, make their living, and maybe start a business. Or work for a business owner. That is a different concept from having a collective lien on the success of those with the vision, risk, drive, and luck to make something happen, just because they happen to enjoy the same services we do.
Finally, after attributing business success to the infrastructure and taxes supplied by the rest of us, Warren somehow backflips into arguing reparations are owed not for reinvestment in the infrastructure, or rebates to the sponsoring taxpayers, rather, it’s owed forward to the “next kid who comes along.” The argument is nothing but little word flowers amounting to demanding the wealthy give over more of what they have for government to distribute in ways people like Warren judge good.
A less remarked but in some ways more remarkable expression of the Left’s philosophy of greed as social justice issued from candidate Obama to Charlie Gibson of ABC News. Gibson cited fiscal experience to challenge Obama on his support for a large increase in capital gains taxes, pointing out that when Reagan cut cap gains rates, revenues actually rose, and when Clinton increased rates, government receipts fell. Why, then, would candidate Obama want to increase rates if it meant the government would collect less tax revenue? “For purposes of fairness,” the candidate explained.
He plainly said he would sacrifice public revenues and services in order to bite rich ankles harder. There’s no doubt Obama’s vision informs his foreign views as well as domestic. The wealthy are an affront to poorer Americans. America is an affront to poorer nations. No, he and his ilk do not care about prosperity for those they judge already unjustly fat and comfortable.
That’s the American Left. In the Warren/Obama playbook, a controlled economy is better than a growing economy. A pie sliced by government is better than growing pie for all. A tax rate that hits the rich harder is better than a rate that actually generates more revenue for public services.
For our economy really to flourish, government would have to unshackle it. But, that play is not in the Leftist book.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.And by some bizarre reasoning, they also think that abolishing the family, abolishing rights of inheritance, abolishing religion, and generally abolishing everything that normal society has been built on, they can achieve their illusion.
If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production; then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Sounds like a marxist to me. These goose steppers are full of Sh*t! They rake in millions and they say they want everyone to be equal. Just look at the Klintons and all the money they are making while preaching to the low brows.
Except their own, of course.
Regarding the title of the article, the left does not hate prosperity. The left hates when somebody else prospers and they don't. Sadly, the left is slow to learn that it's better to learn how to fish instead of "making a living" by accepting fish from others.
“Sounds like a marxist to me.”
And hence our problem. The left have insulatd themselves from being called Marxists. It is McCarthyism.
We need to get over it and call them what they are. And when called out on it, we should say, “damn right” and then ridicule them for it.
The true believers in progressivism/liberalism are insane. They cannot operate from a position of rationality. They live in a world ruled by cognitive dissonance and are incapable of recognizing this. They are driven by emotion and use that emotion as a hammer to beat others psyches into submission. Until these people decide they’ve had enough it will not stop.
Socialists prosper when the state has America by the ankles shaking the earnings out of its pockets.
As long as the LIVs keep electing village idiots like Obama and Warren the economy can’t recover.
The lying sacks of crap on the left keep claiming we are IN recovery. It’s hilarious how they change the numbers when they’re in power to favor themselves and when republicans are in control they fake the numbers the other way to trash them.
Nailed it. If Tolik were still around he’d be sending out a ping.
The leftists love THEIR prosperity.
“And by some bizarre reasoning,...”
It’s not really bizarre reasoning. They just use collectivism and the abolishment of all you mentioned to keep everyone else from competing with them.
She is clueless about how an individual actually becomes rich. First, he has to figure out and come up with a new or better product, a new or better means of production, or correctly anticipate changes in demand. This will lead to higher revenues and/or lower costs, which lead to higher profits and higher than average rates of profit. Then, he has to make the choice of consuming less and saving and reinvesting more of the profits. Then, he has to keep repeating the above over and over again for a long period of time.These are individual virtues that do not depend on others.
It’s bizarre insofar as embracing the unnatural and thinking it’s going to work.
Example: Al Gore just bought a 9 million dollar California mansion. But that doesn't stop him from hating YOUR prosperity.
Is that the same Al Gore who a few years back made a whopping $500 annual donation to charity?
You have to remember that collectivism is a means to an end. If you look at the ancient world the 1 percenters had it made compared to the other 99%. Today’s 1 percenters wax nostaglic for those good old days and are doing everything they can to re-impose it!
And the same Al Gore who was worth $2 million on 2000. So how’d he get to buy a $9 million dollar mansion now? Not by creative economic activity, that’s for sure.
It’s a given.
The Left is not political. Politics is the Trojan Horse of the Left, like Religion is the Trojan Horse of Islam.
Both are about tyrannical power - only.
Leftist want to run the tyranny.
Liberals want to be favored pets of the Leftists.
And RINOs...
...are the Leftists with the job of neutralizing any organized resistance to the Left.
Does anyone see anything remotely resembling political opinions here? Constitutional issues, maybe? No?
Because their are none. And that’s why liberals get so pissed off if you want to talk issues. The only “issue” to a liberal is obedience. Not not “get” this, to them, is to literally be stupid. That’s why they hat conservatives - from the liberal point of view, conservatives are stupid because they don’t get that it’s about obedience, and dangerous because they stand in the way of the tyranny of those whose boots the liberals lick.
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