Posted on 12/17/2002 12:02:32 AM PST by JohnHuang2
There's a dark little corner of the Internet where a gruesome assortment of leftists and socialists gather to post what passes for their "thoughts" on political issues. The site is called DemocraticUnderground.com, and it's certainly worth a quick stop the next time you go cruising. Several of my listeners keep a constant watch on this site and alert me to particularly interesting discussion threads.
I catch a lot of flak for my constant references to the Democratic Party as the Democratic Socialist Party. Maybe I can quell some of the dissension by telling you some of the postings I have read on Democratic Underground recently.
Last Thursday, a comment appeared with the title, "It's official, I'm a socialist at heart." This writer had visited a neighborhood of "multi-million dollars homes" that for the most part have only "two people (rich, old white couples) living in them." She wrote, "I really cannot stand rich, selfish people. I do believe in redistribution of wealth. Rich people do not get that way by themselves, they do it on the backs of others." Other Democratic Underground members chimed in with their responses. Among them:
That, my friends, is scary stuff, but it's nothing I haven't heard in 33 years of hosting talk-radio shows. There is burning envy – an envy that borders on outright hatred of the rich in this country. This envy is intense enough to consume the hearts and minds of many who call themselves "Democrats."
Where does this hatred come from? Why is it so important to so many people to believe that the evil rich got their money through anything but hard work?
To understand this, you need to imagine yourself struggling to make ends meet. You're renting an apartment and driving every day to a dead-end job that 's going nowhere. You work your 40-hour week, and have nothing to show for it but rent receipts and credit card bills. You hear about all of these people getting sick on cruise ships, and grouse that you don't have enough money to even get on the ship, let alone throw up on the poop deck.
So, just why aren't you rich? Why don't you have a fancy car? Why aren't you tossing your lunch on Caribbean cruises? Why do you make rent payments instead of mortgage payments?
The last thing you want to do is to admit that this all may be your fault. Your poverty couldn't possibly have anything to do with your decision to forego college for that great job at the mall. You're also convinced that your decision to hang out with your friends at night instead of getting some more education at the local community college was the right one. Hey! You work hard and deserve your fun, right?
And just why should you have to work more than 40 hours a week? That's what you're supposed to work, right? Forty hours, no more. After all, you're not a slave, are you? What about your huge car payments? Sure, you could be putting that money into an investment account, but you need that fancy car, right? And the rims? Hey! A guy's gotta be cool, you know what I'm saying?
So ? those rich people? Did they get that way doing the things you won't do? Working the 60-hour week, continuing with their education, buying cheap cars with ordinary wheels and investing the rest? Do they have the nice homes and the fancy cars because they make good choices and aren't afraid of taking a risk now and then?
No way! If a person could really get rich that way you would have done it already, right? No, that's now how they got their money. These people are rich because they exploited people. They got their money by climbing on the backs of working people like you! They were lucky! They inherited it! They didn't earn it. If it could be earned, you would have done it, right?
You have to protect yourself here, don't you? If you accept that the vast majority of those you call "rich" got there through hard work, then don't you have to ask yourself why you're not one of them? It's just so much easier to cast them as callous, selfish monsters and evil exploiters of the working class while preserving the mantle of goodness and righteousness for yourself. Hey, you may be poor, but at least you're a nice person, right?
How many people do you know who have gone to graduate school and received an advanced degree or two, worked 60-80 hours a week and are poor?
Personally? Dozens, unfortunately.
I wouldn't know. Besides, you're plastering "envy" on every statement you don't like, the same way multiculturalists call anyone disagreeing with them a "racist." You need to read and think more carefully.
Ooh, you called me the "s" word! I should have stayed up round the clock last night, to respond to a small group of agitated, illiterate drunks? If I thought you had any sense, I'd tell you to show where I defended socialism. But then, if you had any sense, you'd be embarrassed by your posts.
True. My trust fund cousin once decided to go on a round-the-world sailboat trip. (I'm a landlubber and was never on his boat, so I couldn't give you the particulars, as to how he was supposed to pull it off.) Halfway through, he'd blown all his money, and wired my grandmother, may she rest in peace, for money. She told me, she responded to "go to hell." She was actually a generous person, but she knew that the n'er-do-well cousin always badmouthed her behind her back.
BTW, many "rich" persons spend their life in philanthropic pursuits. Other hard working but financially poor persons beat their wife. I don't judge a person by the size of their bank account.
Capitalism isn't fond of inherited privilege, but it does thrive on capital accrued over time. The poor person who spends 3 hours washing clothes in a bucket with a wash board is tremendously liberated when a washing machine at a laundromat can get the same job done in 30 minutes for $1.00. When that person can afford a washing machine at home, the 30 minutes guarding the commercial washing machine and traveling is available for other activities.
Our society flourishes with capitalism. Even the poorest among us can afford factory made clothes instead of having to raise sheep, spin thread, weave cloth and sew a garment. We don't have to plow fields, sow, harvest and grind wheat to make a loaf of bread. There are people willing to work as farmers, bakers, garment makers and washing machine manufacturers because there is a market for those goods. Each practitioner has the freedom to produce something very efficiently so that we can all afford to buy it. Each practitioner is freed from the need to be a jack of all trades because others can supply his/her needs.
Capitalism makes each of us more efficient. We save time and money. If we carefully save the money from that efficiency, we have the means of purchasing items to become more efficient in the future e.g. the clothes washing example.
The counter example in socialism is the inability to own private property and accrue capital to improve one's condition over time. The authoritarian state owns everything. The "people" have only what the state returns to them from the confiscated fruits of their labor. There is no incentive to improve. The "people" perform the minimum necessary labor to sustain life.
Who says? What law of physics or the universe specifies only a limited number? Where does this zero-sum, crypto Marxist notion come from? And please inform us what that number is, plus or minus 10%.
What a maroon.
They chose teaching college. What they didn't know, when they spent all those years earning degrees that are useless for anything else, is that most college instructors are condemned to slave away as untenured adjuncts working at piece rates with no benefits, job security, or chance at ever getting full-time pay. Meanwhile, academia is full of minority political officers who earn anywhere from $80,000-150,000 plus benefits, merely for harassing the working folks.
(When I went to grad school, my excuse for not knowing how the system worked, was that I'd just come from spending five years abroad. It was also a long time ago, and our system of higher education was not quite as transparently corrupt as it now is.)
Just as people who get degrees and advanced degrees in history, or english, or african-american studies and what not. They knew in the beginning that those degrees would not lead to lucrative careers.
As was said in the beginning, people make decisions and those decisions lead to their financial situation.
My wife works as a police/fire/911/emergency services dispatcher today. She's also a notary public and is responsible for acquiring and administering all the grants that keep the department financially solvent. She's also a certified EMT. She is currently training a new dispatcher in radio and CAD skills. All that responsibility is compensated at the princely rate of $11 per hour in our little town. The San Diego Sheriff's Office paid her $22/hr to keep 30 deputies busy, attend to the emergency communications van, train new dispatchers in phone and radio skills and handle admin/911 phone calls as necessary.
We don't need the extra income she makes at her dispatcher's job. She enjoys the job. I consider it a fallback source of income and benefits for her in case I have an unsuccessful re-run with cancer.
About $20,000 before taxes -- in a good year.
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