Inequality – A Screed

As “inequality” has become the premier buzzword among the progressive cognoscenti, I have proposed the obvious solution: That the government should take money from everyone who has more than median wealth and give it to those who have less – and do the same for income as well. Then garbagemen will have the same assets and income as CEOs, rock stars, and senators. What’s not to like? This is, after all, the goal of Elizabeth Warren and the Occupy movement she (claims she) engendered: A state where no one ever has to do anything he doesn’t want to do and never has to go without anything he wants.

But those who protest inequality also protest that this is not at all what they mean: The problem is not that inequality exists, but that there is “too much” of it. Yet it seems obvious to me that if inequality is the problem, then equality is the solution and, contrariwise, if equality is not the solution, then inequality cannot be the problem.

So what is the problem? Everyone outside the Obama administration can see that the American middle class is dying, that poverty is rising, and the rich – especially those with close political and/or family ties to the Obama administration – are getting richer. The Democrats’ answer is to demonize the Koch brothers and to ignore George Soros, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Immelts, Robert Rubin, &c., &c., &c. The odd fact is that the richer one is, the more likely one is to be a Democrat.

(To prevent criticism, I should say that I’m not accusing Obama of not caring about poor people. Far from it! It’s because he loves them so much that he’s made so many more of them.)

But the Democrats are the party of the little guy ... does this mean that rich folks (other than the Kochs, of course) are finally seeing the error of their ways?

Well, no.

When one is at or near the top of the heap, one’s first priority is to ensure that one and one’s family stay at the top. There are two ways to do this: to make even more money and acquire even more power or to use one’s existing power and influence to ensure that no upstart is able to challenge one’s position.

The first method is hard work and is subject to the risk that some poorer person could outhink and outwork the existing elite. The second method is foolproof – and given that the children of the wealthy tend to be fools (have I mentioned the Kennedys already?), that’s obviously the best choice.

What we are seeing is the death of capitalism and the birth of a patronage-based society. Every successful large business has many government contracts, from defense contractors to school textbook publishers. These businesses are motivated to ensure that they keep their contracts; if this means lobbying Congress to restrict competition, then they will do that. If it means hiring the dimwitted scion of a political family (say, Chelsea Clinton), then they will do that. The Federal government is now so huge that no new fortune can be made except with its explicit permission.

Nanotechnology? Better get the EPA and FDA on your side. Information technology? Better work with the NSA. Automotive technology? Back to the EPA, but also the Deparment of Transportation. Financial innovations? Better buy yourself some SEC commissioners.

But it takes large amounts of money to hire the lobbyists, ex-politicians, ex-regulators, lawyers, and other flacks you need successfully to bend the government to your will. Only the largest and wealthiest can compete in that arena.

If anyone tried today to build computers in their garage, the EPA would be on them immediately to require that they first build a multi-million dollar plant with all the safety features the most paranoid fantasist can dream up. (Cost-benefit analysis routinely goes out the window when one is working “for the children.”) Messrs Hewlett, Packard, Jobs, Wozniak, and Dell could not have survived such an inquisition.

If anyone has a truly new and transformative idea – the kind that makes jobs for some people, destroys jobs for others, and causes general prosperity to increase – then those with interests already vested in the status quo will turn to the government to squelch the parvenus. See what’s happening with Uber, Airbnb, and food trucks.

Other strategies that would help keep the elite in their rightful place would be to, say, restrict education to the elites, or artificially depress the wages of the poor so they cannot hope to acquire capital. One could do this by, for instance, encouraging the development of an organization of teachers so devoted to milking local governments for wages, benefits, and pensions that they have no time to concern themselves with the education of children – something like the NEA and AFT. Or one could open America’s borders so that there will be an endless stream of workers eager to make even a few bucks an hour – something like “comprehensive immigration reform.”

The middle class is dying at the hands of government and its cronies. Only when the government is too small to affect the economy will the middle class have a hope of recovering. And only the Tea Partiers have any hope of accomplishing this – all the proposals by Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives have the ineluctable effect of further cementing the position of the current power elite.

How to fix the problem of income inequality

What if the Republican party in the House took income inequality seriously? (Don't laugh.)

Why, they would pass the Harrison Bergeron Equality Act of 2014, giving the government unlimited power to ensure that every citizen of the United States have exactly the same income and exactly the same wealth as every other.

There. Problem solved. And how could anyone object to something so manifestly fair and just? It would fly through the Democratic Senate and surely be signed by President Obama – even though every Senator and the President would personally lose lots of money under the law, because they’re just that dedicated to the American dream of equality. Aren’t they?

Bloomberg, Obama, Health, and Capriciousness

Now, I am not a lawyer, but …

The most recent exception Obama has announced to his eponymous law is a bit troubling. While it is certainly true that the executive branch has the discretion to decide whether or not to enforce a particular law against a particular person, it is also true that laws should be written so that ordinary citizens can easily understand their import.

In the case of the ACA, so many loopholes and exceptions have been created and granted that no reasonable person can have any assurance that any part of the law will be effectual either now or in the future – and every assurance that the law will be unevenly enforced, depending on the whims and velleities of the administration.

This reminds me of the decision of Milton Tingling in striking down Nanny Bloomberg’s soda ban: one of the reasons he found the law invalid was that it was “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences.” (PDF) Does that not describe Obamacare as well?

I should think, therefore, that an enterprising lawyer could argue that the entire law should be struck down as unconstitutionally vague.

Any lawyers out there?

How Obama should explain Obamacare

There’s a obvious way to explain the fact that Obamacare has led to the cancellation of millions of health insurance policies, so I thought I’d give our President a helpful tip. Here’s what he should say:

I understand that many of you have had your policies cancelled, are upset that new policies under the ACA will cost you more than you were previously pay, and cannot afford the increased premiums.

Let me be clear: No one feels your pain more deeply than I.

However, you are, perhaps, missing some of the benefits of the ACA. Sure, it probably will be more expensive than your present plan, but you’ll get a lot more for your money. Besides, the biggest health problem facing America is obesity; so, if you just cut down on the amount of food you buy, not only will you be able to afford your new health care, but you’ll eat less and thus be at far less risk for obesity-related diseases.

This will, in the final analysis, save both you and your country a great deal of money. You should thank me.

Why don't we just skip all the fighting and declare defeat now?

Let me see if I can get the logic straight here:

1. “In part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin” … the international community will pressure Syria to give up chemical weapons.
2. Because the “credible threat of U.S. military action” was so important in achieving this (potential) diplomatic breakthrough, “I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path.”
3. Therefore, while we needed the threat of force to get on the “diplomatic path,” that threat is not necessary in order to assure that we keep moving down that path. But Assad will understand that the U.S. can renew that threat at any moment – and Congress will surely go along.
4. Or, more likely, Obama cannot convince even the members of his own party in the Senate to authorize a military strike, so he's avoiding a catastrophic political/foreign policy defeat. Gosh, it's a good thing Putin and Assad are too dim to figure this out!

Wow -- a cogent criticism

So – a commenter mentioned that it would be worthwhile to mention where in Religio Medici my little quotation comes from: It's Section XXIV of Part I. Widely available on line; I like Bartleby.

Sir Thomas Browne and demosclerosis

The august Instapundit links today to Mickey Kaus’s discussion of Walter Russell Mead, which leads to links to discussions of demosclerosis, a term invented by Jonathan Rauch in Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government (1994).

Basically, the idea is that the government is too big and does too much, so too many people are invested in and lobby for particular government programs, causing the true commonweal to be ignored.

But this is not a new problem. It happens in all large systems. For instance, in his Religio Medici (1643), Sir Thomas Browne wrote

Tis not a melancholy Utinam of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general Synod; not to unite the incompatible difference of Religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it as it lay at first, in a few and solid Authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of Rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of Scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of Typographers.

As a quondam typographer, I’ve long liked this sentiment. I have, more than once, added to the “swarms and millions of Rhapsodies” – books which, I can only hope, were never read and, if read, not remembered.

Of course, now there is hardly any typography left … and don't get me started on copy-editing and proofreading.

To return to my point: Let us reduce, not learning, but the Federal law “as it lay at first,” stripping from it that legislation which serves “only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements” of lawyers, judges, politicians, and pundits.