Michigan View's Gary Wolfram Resurrects 18th Cent. Racial Bigotry in His Vision of Economic “Freedom” (ala Adam Smith)

Response to Gary Wolfram in "The wealth of our nation" in the DetNews/Mackinac Center driven Michigan View on Feb 2, 2012.

"(I)t may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an (sic) European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king."

-- Adam Smith Quote from Chapter I from the "Of the Division of Labor", Vol I of "INQUIRY into the NATURAL CAUSES of the WEALTH OF NATIONS" (1776)

According to Gary Wolfram:

"Smith recognized that people coming together to trade among themselves would result in an increase in living standards for all..."

(break)

"Smith's other published book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is less well known - but it was well read in his time and went through six editions. A powerful work, it lays out his observations of human behavior and an understanding of how and why certain customs lead to greater social harmony. For example, a society in which we can interact with one another peaceably to our own benefit requires a sense of propriety. Smith teaches that traditions are important - and (form) a foundation of conservative thought from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk.

But 'Wealth of Nations' is his most famous work."

Wolfram:

"'Wealth of Nations' is one of those great books that everyone has heard of but few have read. It was a delight to spend time at Hillsdale with people who had not only read Smith - but had studied him. American(s) would benefit if every Legislator read Smith." (emphasis added)

Wolfram:

"The book was an analysis of why parts of the world were mired in abject poverty while Britain enjoyed 'opulence.' Yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king,' notes Smith."

Prof. Gary uses this quote to make his point and doing so telegraphs a backhanded racist statement: Wolfram projects Adam Smith's reference to British "opulence"(which we all are viewing as Downington Abby in the fading, last days of global British Empire) and the ordinary worker in British society in Adam Smith's times.

Make mention then, as Prof. Gary does, concerning the accumulation of many an "African king." So doing Wolfram sites Smith as he brags a "frugal peasant" in Imperial Britain-with its military homogeny over vast sections of the globe-at that time) has a sizable "accommodation." In Smith's estimation, that pot of material things owned by the 18th century working Brit exceeds the wealth of "many an African King", who using the current words of Prof. Gary, lived in parts of the world "mired in poverty."

Wolfram's assertion: That "African King" (who is in Smith's representation the "absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages") was not as well-off as a British common laborer in Smith's time. 

This sociologically unbalanced comparison was set in a past century when such racially slanted speech was commonly accepted. However braggadocio or prejudiced, the writers in contemporary times of Adam Smith thought nothing of using an "African King" as model-a bold comparison/contrast to the degree of accumulation held by a man of "labour" in Britain-compare and contrasted with an "African King" at the time of Smith's 18th century....
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In the PICTURE above, just behind Gary Wolfram (holding book) is Lawrence W. (Larry) Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Freedom, former Pres (and still Pres. Emeritus) of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Harry C. Veryser, Jr. professor at Walsh College (past at Hillsdale & Northwood), former Judicial Commissioner (Engler), Board Member at the Acton Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.  From an event on October 13, 2009 at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies in a a panel of economics to debate the issue of government intervention during economic recessions.

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The point Prof. Gary attempts to make in his blog, "The Wealth of Our Nation" is a grand argument for his quaint economic theories. The airy prof utilizes Smith's dated, bigoted example to prove his point- mindless of the racist implications implicit in this select quote. The lines he chose to use. This bigotry only aggravates the imbalance and ignorance of Prof. Gary's proofs offered the reader in his essay's conclusion below.

Wolfram's bromide based on bias and bigotry:

"(T)he gap between the richest and poorest in the United States and other market capitalist states is NOT AS LARGE CLASS WARRIORS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE." (emphasis added)

Wolfram:

"I tell my students that the difference between their life style and that of Bill Gates is not that great. Like Gates, they live in a house with indoor plumbing and air conditioning (80 percent of all poor households in the US have air conditioning) though his may be bigger. Like Gates, they have a car (three-quarters of all Americas' poor have their own car) though his may be nicer. Like Gates, they can fly to California though he may have a private jet. Like Gates, they probably eat what he eats, and so on. Basically, they live a similar life.

"NOW COMPARE THEIR LIFE TO SOMEONE LIVING IN A REFUGEE CAMP IN SOMALIA."

"That is a stark contrast. In this time of Occupy Wall Street rage Smith's observation is worth repeating. Adam Smith told us that we need in order to achieve the wealth for all, including the "INDUSTRIOUS PEASANT."

"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: All the rest being brought about by THE NATURAL COURSE OF THINGS."

"Our federal government has grown far beyond this to the point where it regulates our daily life from how much water our toilet may flush to what kind of car we may drive. The massive health care and financial regulation bills of the Obama administration do not fit Adam Smith's prescription for an opulent society. Perhaps in 2012 we will return to the philosophy that brought us the wealth of our nation." (emphasis added)

Wolfram's Thrust: Why are American Blacks mired in poverty? Just read Wealth of Nations. In fact, he says "American(s) would benefit id every Legislator read Smith".


How instructive to compare Detroit's African-American community's economic status with the status of "Someone living in a refugee camp in Somalia." NO VALID COMPARISON!


Comparison relative to the ACTUAL IMPACT OF POVERTY and UNEMPLOYMENT in urban Detroit must be CONTRASTED with status of 1% LUXURIATING in the wealthy Oakland Co.suburbs; that's the REAL CONTRAST. 

Dissect that Prof Gary!


READER: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)
More responses and posts on Gary Wolfram on the Gazette.

Original.

Hard work will set you free! Or...

We can never have too many inspiring people like all of you. Multi-taskers at work on many projects in many places: home, family, office, church, neighborhood, school, clubs.

(Honors bestowed here today indicate) that you are intelligent or that you are hard-working; maybe that you are both.

What do intelligence and hard work have to do with this? Well, to tell the truth, I am not really sure about intelligence. All of those IQ studies we hear about seem to come to one conclusion: none of us really have much to do with our IQ. Even if we know what intelligence is, and even if we know how to measure it accurately, our intelligence is, according to these studies, not our own doing. Whose doing is it?

Here are eight possibilities:

• Our parents and their genes; and, above all, their refusal to let us watch TV for 10 hours a day; let's give that 20 points on the IQ scale.
• Our brothers and sisters, who argued with us about everything including the TV remote-another 20 points for winning the argument and 10 for crushing the remote.
• Our kindergarten teachers, who made us cooperate with kids we couldn't stand-40 points for learning to get along with others.
• Our high school chemistry teachers, who taught us the recipe for concocting that rotten egg smell (hydrogen sulfide). Ten points for nothing, really, unless you're a chemistry major.
• Then there's the daily two-hour commute or subway ride, which provides time for reading, thinking, i-Podding, and snoozing-20 points. But no text messaging or cell phones; that's minus 30 points and a ticket.
• The multi-vitamin you take every day, 10 points.
• - The fourth cup of coffee you have every morning that tightens your synapses for clearer thinking, 20 points.
• Watching The Daily Show with John Stewart to keep up with the news-30 points, or not watching The Daily Show-40 points.

When you add up the points, you see that all of us are like the kids in Lake Wobegon-a little above average, but not something we've achieved all by ourselves.

But there is one thing we do achieve by ourselves; there's one thing scientific reports can't take away from us: THAT'S HARD WORK-WORK THAT WE HAVE TO DO ON OUR OWN. AND IF YOUR LIFE IS ANYTHING LIKE MINE WAS WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE, THAT MEANS THERE'S A LOT OF HARD WORK, SOMETIMES MORE THAN WE CAN HANDLE. YET SOMEHOW, SOMEHOW IT GETS DONE.

Hard work-not just the idea-but actually doing it requires a form of moral excellence. WE PRACTICE THAT MORAL EXCELLENCE THROUGH VIRTUES THAT GUIDE US AND SUSTAIN US WHEN WE ARE CONSUMED BY HARD WORK-SO MUCH SO THAT WE CAN HARDLY THINK ABOUT WHAT WE'RE DOING, ONLY THAT WE HAVE THE STAMINA TO DO IT.

Three Virtues That Guide & Sustain 'Hard Work'

Virtue Number One: Patience, my American Heritage Dictionary defines it as: bearing or enduring difficulty with calmness; persevering; being constant; capable of calmly awaiting an outcome or result.

How are we patient? Just sitting requires patience and enduring the complexities of calculating a cost-benefit analysis for an economics class; or persevering through the difficulty of gathering our thoughts for a 10-page paper describing the impact of Trieste on the writings of James Joyce; or getting through, as I am trying to do, the 800 pages of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, and not just reading, but trying to really, really understand what he is talking about (and I'm not getting a grade at the end).

You are constant in showing up for classes, for turning work in on time, and working with other students on joint projects. That is hard work. We cannot do this (and everything else) without patience.

Virtue Number Two: Then, there is courage. Courage is a quality of mind and spirit that enables us to face vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence and resolution (American Heritage Dictionary). Courage is not simply a virtue for the battlefield or for undergoing surgery or for saving a child from a burning building. Courage underlies the everyday willingness to look at a to-do list with self-possession rather than panic, with confidence rather than doubt, with resolution rather than faint-heartedness. The word courage comes from the Latin word for heart. That gives a clue to how it works: courage is the virtue that allows us to throw ourselves with our whole heart into the tasks at hand. Courage helps us to fix on our goal and pursue it until we have achieved it.

Virtue Number Three: Finally, there is hope; it is a virtue with attitude, an attitude of confident expectation (American Heritage Dictionary), that we will achieve what we have patiently and courageously set out to do...we all join with you in hope, in confident expectation that with hard work, patience, and courage you will achieve what you have set out to do and that what you have set out to do is worthy of all your efforts.

Source: Thoughts by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, Co-Director, Fordham Center on Religion and Culture, excerpted from keynote remarks given at the Alpha Sigma Lambda Honor Society reception and induction ceremony at Fordham University.

Hard work is the key to success.
How much of the above laud and praise to 'hard work' really works? Is the fruit of 'hard work' available to the average school child born into the world of urban Detroit? A place where there are no 'real jobs', little opportunity, little or no optimism? How much of the above is available to a Latino youth hoeing a field of tomatoes-'hard work will set you free?' Or is successful outcome from a more direct route...that other route to fortune and success? Having a rich father and the momentum of class, social approval, a fraternity or sorority membership, a partnership in a hedge fund, a father who was an automotive giant or the founder of a MLM firm. Face up to it: these things will go much farther than "simple hard work."

Hard Work as a Means to an End?
It all comes down to access and politics. How does one gain access? How important is that access and the power of law contained in the momentum of politics and policy making?

"As long as the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting to gain access to the legislature as well as fighting within it."
-- Frederic Bastiat

Or as an anonymous blogger has stated:

"The virtue of hard work went out the door when the profits from increased productivity went to the stockholders before the workers. Thank you. Ronald Reagan and the Republican Revolution."

Original.

Survey Political Speeches in the First Half of the 20th Century for American Values

An early study, based on an investigation into political speeches, was published in 1961 by Edward Steele and Charles Redding that identified a set of archetypical American values.


Archetypical American Values Based on Political Speeches Prior to 1960:

Puritan and pioneer morality
The world is made up of people who are good and bad, foul and fair. You are either one of the good guys or you are one of the bad guys. If you are not with us, you are against us.

Value of the individual
The individual has rights above that of general society and government. Success occurs at the level of the individual. People should not have to fight for their rights. The government should protect the rights of the individual, not the other way around.

Achievement and success
Success is measured by the accumulation of power, status, wealth and property. What you already have is not as important as what you continue to accumulate. A retired wealthy person was successful, but is now less admirable.

Change and progress
Change is inevitable. Progress is good and leads to success. If you do not keep up, you will fall behind. Newer is always better. The next version will be better than the last.

Ethical equality
All people are equal, both spiritually and in the opportunities they deserve. This includes differences in race, gender, disability, age, sexual preference and so on.

Effort and optimism
Hard work and striving is the key to success. The great American Dream of fame and fortune comes to those who work hard and never give up.

Efficiency, practicality and pragmatism
Solution is more important than ideology. Utility is more important than show. A key question to any idea is 'Will it work?'


Original.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and No Jobs in Michissippi (Michigan)

"The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor and dependent." 

-- Daniel Webster, 1782-1852

If the greedy Corporatists won't take a hint from the protests sweeping state houses across the land, then take it from a Founding Thinker and Patriot, extreme inequality between the OnePercenters and the 99 Percenters is a foreboding omen of coming disaster.

Be Glad and Give Thanks for the Occupy Movement: Light is shining in the darkness, and exposing the Wall Street deeds, and the Corporatocracy (an unhealthy alignment between business and political power) of the Koch brothers-so corrupt and evil-via A.L.E.C.'s 'plug and play corporate state legislation". It's all coming into that laser light.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and No Jobs... this quote is from Pat Buchanan, Member the Conservative Caucus, during his campaign for the presidency:

"What is an economy for if not so that workers and their families can enjoy the good life their parents knew, so that incomes rise with every year of hard work, and so that Americans once again enjoy the highest standards of living in the world? Our American the most productive in the world; our technology is the finest. Yet, the real incomes of American workers have fallen 20 percent in twenty years. Why are our people not realizing the fruits of their labor?

We have a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference, a government that does not listen anymore to the forgotten men and women who work in the forges, factories, and plants and businesses of this country. We have instead, a government that is too busy taking the phone calls from lobbyists for foreign countries and the corporate contributors of the Fortune 500."

Source: Presidential announcement speech of Patrick J. Buchanan at the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences on March 20, 1995

One Buchanan supporter shares a vision: "Imagine a Ron Paul / Pat Buchanan ticket. I would cry with joy. But I can dream."


Original Part 1 and Part 2.

Michigan Republicans say Taxes are a Sin. But Taxing the Poor to Prop Up, Bail Out, Corporate Cronies Isn't?

Taking My Money for Taxes is a “SIN”: TeaPartisans must be squirming over Snyder’s Billion Dollar “SIN”; Taxing Working Folk to Prop Up, Bail Out, Corporate Cronies

HOW CAN MICHISSIPPI'S TEAPUBLICANS NOT SQUIRM & SUFFER HEARTBURN WHEN THEY CONDONE THE SAME KIND OF POLITICALLY MOTIVATED TAXING "SIN" THAT THE THEY ACCOST & ACCUSE THE DEMOCRATS OF DOING-COERCING HIGHER TAXES-TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE TAXPAYER?

When government removes money from consumers it is a taxing act that reduces money in the private economy, resources that would otherwise have been used to produce valuable private-sector demands for goods or services. Boss Rick Snyder and The Business Leaders for Michigan are instead forcing UNPRECEDENTED/HUGE NEW TAXES on working people and the poor; these new revenues are them used to produce governmental outputs which in the case of Snyder's slick re-distribution of Michiganders personal funds-via coerced taxation on previously tax-sheltered (from state personal income taxes) hard earned pensions (delayed compensation) and (carefully garnered and saved for senior years) annuity income- adds crassly and brazenly to the bottomlines of those who contributed directly and generously to the Nerd's 2008 campaign for governor. It's payback time!

What kind of specious "shared sacrifice" for business is this?

The private-sector outputs projected by the Snyder geeks may never be produced because resources available to the consumers are instead being used to produce a massive, billion dollar plus business welfare handout. One pension dollar has the ability to turn around to the tune of $6.49 in the state's marketplace. To intercept that taxpayers' personal income...to direct it onto business bottom lines by an overly generous partisan "gift" of a much lower business tax for a few, and no taxes at all for many second tier businesses is unjust and corrupting. Meanwhile, the large stockholder corporations, especially manufacturing concerns e.g. Auto Production, will take a new tax hit. How does that create more good pay jobs? Snyder's faulty scheme has the ability to take a big, big bite out of Michigan's necessary commercial cycles.

These soon-to-be-forgone customer/demand dollars being taken from the worker, the retiree, the poor, the schools and our children, especially those supported on welfare, is a political folly; a costly blow to the very corporate and business lobbyists who tell the public this upward redistribution they rammed through the TeaPublican Super-Majority Legislature, is the answer to Michigan's recovery. It's a lie.

Taking taxpayers hard earned wages and savings to outright "gift" those precious, limited dollars to Snyder's overpaid CEO cronies-how is that just and right?

WHEN THE TEAPUBLICAN'S NERDONOMICS PRODUCES INCOME RE-DISTRIBUTION WHICH IS UPWARD... IT ISN'T CONSIDERED A RE-DISTRIBUTION? IT'S NOT LABELED "A TAKING"?

Sez Who?

DELUSION & GREED ARE THE MOST PALTRY OF PUBLIC POLICY MOTIVATORS!
WHAT KIND OF FUNNY HERB IS IN THE TEAPARTISAN'S CUP OF TEA?

LOCOWEED DELUSION & GREED MAKE FOR DISASTROUS PUBLIC POLICY


Original.

Nerd Snyder: Nada Jobs (Governor Rick Snyder: No New Jobs for Michigan)

Michissippians are increasing feeling mounting pressures in their personal financial stress and nervousness about their futures; not only their own futures, but those of their children and grandchildren. They are frustrated and angry with Rick Snyder, who promised to be a quick and thorough solution to the state's economic downturn and its one state depression.

Snyder promised moderate and reasonable re-inventive, pro-active scenarios designed to cure our economic ills and now for one entire year, the one MAJOR area of greatest concern: JOBS, Snyder has been purposefully neglected. Meanwhile, anti-family, anti-worker, anti-public service mavens carve out entire sections of our economy for private gain.

WE GET IT NOW
Let things go south/go sour as far as possible, then come in with radical disaster capital style-solutions. We got the Wild West of American Legislative Exchange Council Corporate "put and take" legislation: Everything business wants, nothing for the 99 % who are essentially all of us.

2011 was the year of the TeaPublicans and Snyder played both ARSONISTS AND FIREMEN with the economy and the general welfare of our citizens. They ravished and defiled democratic principles.

NO JOBS and attendant UNSUSTAINABLE LEVELS OF UNEMPLOYMENT face the nervous populace and Nerd Snyder smirks at us; just wait he has a plan! We have been promised on jobs and an upsurge in manufacturing, yet the Nerd is NADA on progress in this area!

The TeaPublican SuperMajority in Lansing is on a vicious rampage; delivered in large part by outside forces: Dick Armey, Charles and David Koch (KOCH, DAVID (NY), donated $988,604 to MI GOP related PAC's) pushed the Americans for Prosperity, its efforts headed up by Ruppert's/ FOX's infamous Dick Morris. Capitalizing on angry people, who would come out to shout and banish side arms, gin up their neighbors at the breakfast bar or the local dive-they succeeded in pulling off a classic astroturf rebellion-the Michigan legislative elections of 2010. This was and is a one time event!

These TP/ non-participating Libertarian-leaning curmudgeons in biker garb and beer caps are a natural extension of ABATE and fans of the aging, amoral, obscene/punk/pundit /rocker, Ted Nugent. Their Bagger Themes: We Got Ours! We fight all taxes. Just leave us alone. Michissippi: A state inhabited by these types and some nearly three dozen radical, armed, extremist militia groups is headed in a hellacious and destructive direction.

Allowing TeaPartisans who pander and pony up to the Corporatocracy has not brought relief from unemployment nor has it resulted in new industry, manufacturing and or jobs. In fact, one of the corporations represented on the Board of Directors for Business Leaders for Michigan, American Axle, is pulling up, leaving a gapping hole in Michigan's manufacturing base and with the loss of 500 jobs (on Snyder's ticket) that's a move that has a multiplier of at least 6 additional jobs lost elsewhere in the economy. That's as many as 3,000 Michigan JOBS GONE!


Original.

Nerdonomics on Stifle: Rick Snyder's Michigan Dashboard Disaster

No new jobs, no new jobs action, more taxes for many, fewer discretionary dollars to spend in the Michissippian Economy.

Across the state a stark realization is dawning in these early days of 2012.

The Raw Truth:

"Many companies will see significantly lower tax bills or pay no business taxes at all in 2012, thanks to a switch from the Michigan Business Tax to a new 6 percent corporate income tax that kicks in Sunday and falls mostly on large corporations with shareholders. Businesses can expect to pay $1.1 billion less in taxes this year and $1.7 billion less in 2013, according to estimates. Two-thirds of companies will pay no state income tax at all."

Source: Kathy Barks Hoffman, Associated Press in "New state tax rules good for business: Some residents, though, will end up paying more this year".

So a raft of second tier businesses in Michigan will escape paying any business taxes (THAT'S ZERO BUSINESS TAX) in a continuing crucial season of low revenues and serious budget shortfalls for all Michigan units of government.

On the other hand the LARGE CORPORATIONS WILL PAY MORE. In other words the manufacturing sector, so vitally important to Michigan's future and long-term well-being will be paying more. What sense does that make? Ask the Nerd. Snyder's Relentless Corporatist Action has fissures and fault lines. This state is in for a crude and rude economic ride, inflicted by Snyder's muddle-minded self-delusion.


The Nerd's A Victim of His Own Unreality
Snyder's policies are NOT positive; they are stubbornly False-Positive Snyder style. Can we afford a neophyte governor who is in deep denial and suffers from self-delusion? Snyder's abysmal approval rating tell it all!

We think Not.

Michigan according to A.P.'s Hoffman:

"Residents born between Jan. 1, 1946, and Dec. 31, 1952, will have all retirement income liable to tax whether it's from a public or private pension, 401(k) or IRA. Exemptions can be claimed for up to $20,000 for a single filer and up to $40,000 for joint filers. Above those levels, retirement income will be taxed at the state income tax rate of 4.35 percent. When these residents turn 67, the $20,000/$40,000 exemption applies to all income, not just retirement income. The exemption is eliminated if a taxpayer claims a deduction for a military or railroad pension. This will affect about 230,000 returns."

"[Michigan] Residents born after 1952 will see all retirement income taxed as regular income until they turn 67, at which point they'll qualify for a senior income exemption of $20,000 for single filers and $40,000 for joint filers on all income. A taxpayer can forego the $20,000/$40,000 exemption and instead deduct 100 percent of Social Security income. A taxpayer claiming the $20,000/$40,000 exemption can't claim the deduction for Social Security or the standard personal exemption. This will affect about 150,000 returns."

En total this means 380,000 returns will be under the gun of Snyder's re-invention: The Nerd has hatched a scheme: UPWARD INCOME RE-DISTRIBUTION.

CATCH THIS: IT'S A Snyder Invention: RADICAL UPWARD RE-DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME-BILLIONS GIFTED TO SNYDER'S BUSINESS CRONIES.

What could be more insulting, unfair, or cripplingly regressive in Michigan's hour of need?

Those who follow these prognostications criticizing Nerdonomics will credit this blogger with accuracy on the issue of Snyder's corporate and Chamber of Commerce pandering. The results in a profound hit on Michigan's retail commerce and customer demand; at least $1.1 BILLION LOST, BILLIONS OF LOST PURCHSES IN 2012 AND $1.7 BILLION LESS CUSTOMER SPENDING ONGOING INTO 2013.

The more frequent confused and sad look on the Nerd's public face elicits neither sympathy or support. More loss of family spending power, more costs for such things as college tuition and services are bone grinding. And at the same time; the chocolate on the DeCon: Amid this historic one state depression Snyder and the heartless and stoneheaded rampage by the TeaPublican Know Nothings, comes down to this sad blow. Michigan deductions for community foundations, food banks and university services...Summarily eliminated. Insult added to injury!

Snyder's Re-Invention: Relentless Aggressive Political Stupidity: It's Michissippi Rising RAPS !


Original.

Prof. Gary Wolfram of the Michigan View Let’s His Little Light Shine On Greed

Response to Gary Wolfram in "The Gift of Liberty"  re-posted in the Michigan View on Christmas Day, first appeared on December 23, 2011.

Thank You, Thank You, Professor Gary - Just Don't tell Scrooge or Father Bob Sirico about the truism you just penned - this statement which you planted in your Greed-minded Christmas essay. And you think you have a right to expand insight on the Christian Christmas Message!

Wolfram writes:

"Christmas is a time to be grateful and to make every effort to help the family of mankind. This means private charity, giving of our own time, treasure, and talent to others. It does not mean asking our government to engage in what Frederic Bastiat called 'legalized plunder'...."

That is so revealing and true. "LEGALIZED PLUNDER" via bill writing and legislation in Lansing. Taking from some people to give to others - perfectly describes this TERRIBLE YEAR plundered by the Teapartisan "LEGISLATION OF THIEVES".

Whew, Prof. You surly hit the THE NAIL ON THE HEAD: 'LEGALIZED PLUNDER" that's a most accurate and also tradgic, so fitting, a descriptor; identifying the DESTRUCTIVE WORK of the  Class of 2011 Lansing Teapublicans - SO WILLFULLY BLIND, SO SELF-DELUDED, SO AGGRESSIVELY DESTRUCTIVE!

Prof. Gary must have hurriedly put on his hair shirt, inside out and backwards.

What a revelation: "LEGALIZED PLUNDER." What an apt term for the rapid disintegration of civic core values and precedents gutting established state laws and citizen privileges during this "blitz" of TeaPublican aggression. It is our common purpose and unity as citizens that has bound our great state into a unified society for all its history! It was that spirit, that willingness to be craftsmen and labors, working mothers, and sacrificial businesses that salvaged America from the Nazis.

Wofram:

"It's a time to recognize our good fortune in living in a system based on market capitalism and limited government. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out nine decades ago: this is the only system that can produce WEALTH FOR ALL."

How clever an academic device! Just put Ludwig in the manger at Bethlehem,encourage the idea that von Mises is to become the object of our Christmas adoration!

Freedom to Deny Freedom
When Rad Right advocates, Prof. Gary among them, cry for more "freedom." Think of what such "freedom" may actually involve: They want freedom to use government for their own ends unhindered and they want government out of their ideological projects.

Keep firmly in mind the fact that:

"[T]he individual freedoms destroyed by the increase in national authority have been in the main freedom to deny black Americans their elementary rights as citizens, the freedom to work little children in the mills...the starvation wages...the freedom to pollute the environment--all freedoms that, one supposes, a civilized society can really do without."
--Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in "The Cycles of American History"

Wolfram's "The Gift of Liberty" is right up there with Marvin Olasky's tortuous babble:

"Olasky's most famous book is The Tragedy of American Compassion, which in 1992 Newt Gingrich distributed to incoming Republican representatives of the104th Congress. The book, an overview of poverty-fighting in America from colonial times to the 1990s, argues that private individuals and organizations, particularly Christian churches, have a responsibility to care for the poor, and contends that challenging personal and spiritual help, common until the 1930s, was more effective than the government welfare programs of recent decades. Olasky argues that GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS ARE INEFFECTIVE because they are disconnected from the poor, while private charity has the power to change lives because it allows for a personal connection between giver and recipient."

"The book eventually helped to define "compassionate conservatism" in relation to welfare and social policy. In 1995, Olasky became an occasional advisor toTexas gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush. Bush made faith-based programs a major component of his 2000 presidential campaign, and Olasky's academic work helped form the basis for Bush's "compassionate conservatism."

Source: Marvin Olasky entry in Wikipedia

Being so Greedy to the core - how long before Prof. Gary swears off the church; accosting it for coercing its members-with the threat of eternal punishment-should they fail-to contribute their tithes and personal assets so the Chruch can provide for all the immense needs roiling up in Michigan due to the evacuation of disposable income via billions in CORPORATE AND BUSINESS WELFARE, economic activity/turnaround money needed to operate thriving businesses and good government here in Michigan.

Wolfram Echoes Ayn Rand's rants: The Virtue of Selfishness. Altruism /Generosity is a Randian "sin." Only pure self-interest is redemptive/commercially worthy of the "marketplace." Or as Milton Friedman so often proclaimed: "GREED IS GOOD."

Prof. Gary's "Freedoms": Wolfram's Freedoms to pursue things that are not in the best interest of mankind, they fester toward the death of community. Prof. Gary's ruminations are loosely akin to the elements in King Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the darkside of the Christmas story.

Prof. Gary: Turning out collegiate minds in whom the milk of human kindness is "freeze dried" holds no benefit for those who are in need or out of work. Such graduates have been trained to be unfit for community service. Wolfram's army of Hayekian Stormtroopers hold no promise for a better tomorrow. Just follow the carnage inflicted on mankind by just one of his most infamous protege the Bloody-handed mercenary, Erik Prince.

Original Response to Original essay by Gary Wolfram.

The Last ‘Normal’ Michigan Christmas Before Michissippi’s Inevitable Economic Collapse/Consumer Demand Implosion

Misanthropic Bean-Counter Herr Snyder & His Marauding Michissippian Münchausen Cronies - corporate shills and hatchet men - have done-this-state-in for a moldy bowl of Corporate welfare and unfair advantage ranging into the BILLIONS of taxpayer monies siphoned off to themselves.

The natural and moral birthright of hardworking men and women has been devoured by the A.L.E.C./Mackinac Center's HIGHROLLER HOGS; pursuing unjust profits and corrupt advantage. A pox on their achievements! Michigan holds the sad infamy of being "driven to the poor house" with its own GOP/TeaPublican Know Nothings having a heavy foot on the accelerator!

Many of us wondered why that humongous pink HOG was left to wallow at the Capitol Grounds for weeks last year. Now we know. It was a prophetic and chilling PR symbol that the HOGS with the BIG BUCKS had come to Lansing to devoir the assets and living-wage jobs of Michigan's Middle Class, and trample under cloven huff the poor, the veteran, and disadvantaged-whom they blame as "self-depriving" and "undeserving."

The BIG LIE as told by Nerd Rick Snyder is that he was compelled to re-invent our GREAT STATE.
The Nunce Snyder and henchmen were/and are not entitled to control of such an enormous task. This State is not the TeaPublicans to, reconnoiter, dismantle, and re-make. They have no authority to such power over our lives and quality of living; legislatively plundering our property rights and sacred freedoms in any manner that superbly pleases Herr Snyder and his ruthless handlers-a very cleverly, behind-the-scenes imperial cabal led by his very own transition team leader, Doug Rothwell, President & CEO, BUSINESS LEADERS FOR MICHIGAN.

Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel, le Comte de Tocqueville: The Warning & the Democratic Citizens' Pledge: 

"Never invest any number of my fellow creatures with UNLIMITED AUTHORITY"

"If it be admitted that a man, possessing ABSOLUTE POWER, may misuse that that power by wronging his adversaries, why should A MAJORITY not be liable to the same reproach?"

"Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that UNLIMITED AUTHORITY which I should refuse to any one of them." 

-- Sage advice from Alexis de Tocqueville

THE LAST WORD: Herr Snyder has become trapped in Machiavellianism: Politics that is amoral and that acts by any means, however unscrupulous. Such acts Snyder et. al. believes can justifiably be used in achieving political/corporate power/anti-majoritian power and in the enactment of unjust laws over and against their rivals, adversaries, and opponents to achieve Snyder and company's own goals and objectives.

Now, Christmas 2011 soon becomes a faint "Christmas Past" for Michissippi: A state enslaved to untoward TeaPublican power and rampant corporate/business GREED. God help us all!


Original.

The President Joins Teddy’s Spirited Charge Up Greed Mt.

President Obama has joined the charge up the slopes of massive greed and elitist's gated power mountain.

Review these his towering speech, presented-via Robert Reich - as follows:

"The President's speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas (12/8/11) - where Teddy Roosevelt gave his "New Nationalism" speech in 1910 - is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged that have gamed the system to their advantage."

(break)

"Some background: In 1909, Herbert Croly, a young political philosopher and journalist, argued in his best-selling The Promise of American Life that the large American corporation should be regulated by the nation and directed toward national goals. "THE CONSTRUCTIVE IDEA BEHIND A POLICY OF THE RECOGNITION OF THE SEMI-MONOPOLISTIC CORPORATION IS, OF COURSE, THE IDEA THAT THEY CAN BE CONVERTED INTO ECONOMIC AGENTS...FOR THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEREST," Croly wrote. Teddy Roosevelt's New Nationalism embraced Croly's idea"

President Obama in his Speech to the Nation:

"For...(The New Deal), Roosevelt was called a radical, a socialist, even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight hour work day and a minimum wage for women; insurance for the unemployed, the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.

"Today, over one hundred years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.

"Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where the workers were cheaper. Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. These changes didn't just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the internet. Today, even higher-skilled jobs like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China and India. And if you're someone whose job can be done cheaper by a computer or someone in another country, you don't have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages and benefits - especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union.

---

"Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there's been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes - especially for the wealthy - our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, they argue, that's the price of liberty."

---

"It's a simple theory - one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. HERE'S THE PROBLEM: IT DOESN'T WORK. IT'S NEVER WORKED. IT DIDN'T WORK WHEN IT WAS TRIED IN THE DECADE BEFORE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. IT'S NOT WHAT LED TO THE INCREDIBLE POST-WAR BOOM OF THE 50S AND 60S. AND IT DIDN'T WORK WHEN WE TRIED IT DURING THE LAST DECADE."

President Obama expands on this:

"...(T)his isn't just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. THIS IS A MAKE OR BREAK MOMENT FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS, AND ALL THOSE WHO ARE FIGHTING TO GET INTO THE MIDDLE CLASS. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement."

This speech will occupy the minds of those who were/are privileged to hear or read it for a long time.

It's time to occupy our own courage and meet eye to eye the hoary mass of obstructionism and fawning deference to the imperial 1%ers - whose days of plunder will include sunset- a massive revolt-the very kind that scares rad-right word-monger Frank Lunz ; who says he's "SCARED TO DEATH" of the power and ability of the 99%ers who literally occupy every part of America.

Our President expands:

"Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of COLLECTIVE AMNESIA. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules."

President Obama's memorable concluding summation:

"Well, I'm here to say they are wrong. I'm here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren't Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They're American values, and we have to reclaim them."

"In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here, to Osawatomie, and laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism.

'Our country,' he said, '...means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy...of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.'"
(random emphasis added)

Well said, and Timely.


Original.

Worldwide Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion

Wealth X has out a New Report: There are 185,795 Individuals Worldwide Worth at Least $30 Million

Sam Pizzigati from the Institute for Policy Studies in "The Global Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion" writes:

"For the first time, thanks to Wealth-X, we can compare the barely ultra with the comfortably ultra and those super ultras who can make the comfortables seem pinched.

"Our report maps exactly where the biggest money is located," Wealth-X CEO Mykolas Rambus boasted at a Geneva news conference last week, "and just how much there is."

"The Wealth-X research answers "how many" as well. The firm counts 185,795 individuals worldwide with at least $30 million net worth. These ultra high net-worth individuals - UHNWs (Ultra High Net-Worth) - hold $25 Trillion in combined wealth."

Tax the One Percenters? Yes or No ?

"If America's ultra [wealthy] averaged returns on those (vast assets they already hold) investments not that far above 5 percent over the next ten years, they could pay the wealth tax and still end the decade with higher personal net worths than when the decade began."

So Why Not ask the ultra rich to pay their fair share?


Original.

Attention Pseudo-Christian Capitalists

Forget God' s Rules for Wealth, Forfeit Your Wealth

Having received the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai; Moses said to the gathered people:

"Obey all the laws that I am teaching you, and you will live and occupy the land which the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. Do not add anything to what I command you, and do not take anything away. Obey the commands of the Lord your God that I have given you. You yourselves saw what the Lord did at Mount Peor. He destroyed everyone who worshiped Baal, there, but those of you who were faithful to the Lord your God are still alive today.

"I have taught you all the laws, as the Lord my God told me to do."

His Semitic predecessor was depicted as a man or a bull - the Wall Street Bull?) (Baal serves Mammon & Greedy Hording)

Remember Who Has Given You Ability to Produce Wealth

"You may say to yourself, 'MY POWER AND THE STRENGTH OF MY HANDS HAVE PRODUCED THIS WEALTH FOR ME.' But REMEMBER THE LORD YOUR GOD, FOR IT IS HE WHO GIVES YOU THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE WEALTH, and so confirms his covenant..."
-- Spake Moses - Deuteronomy 8:17-18

So spoke Christ Jesus:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can not serve both God and Mammon."
-- Matthew 6:19-21 and 24

God or Mammon America...What will your choice be ?

U.S. Federal Government Created the American Middle Class – In spite of What You May Have Been Told by Free Market Advocates

The American Federal Government Invented the Middle Class: TeaPublicans now in power in DC are determined to shoot it down.

For the American Dream - directly related to the rise of the Middle Class - to work, people have to believe that it is "possible" for them to reach a higher standard of living. If they don't believe the possibility or opportunity is there to rise in society, then the Dream is dead.

Occupy Wall Street is making all of us face serious questions about the future of the Middle Class and survival of "full faith and confidence" so necessary to the value of our monetary script and a thriving marketplace.

A full chance for individuals to work toward a higher level of wealth and successful achievement has been a perennial draw for immigrants striving to come to America.

"America has been peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to make more money more easily," Herbert Croly wrote.

American Economic Paradise

"It's no accident that the United States has always been an economic paradise for the middle class -- that class was invented and reinvented by the government. Now the government needs to reinvent it again -- before it's too late."

This a part of a commentary by Michael Lind, Whitehead Senior Fellow, in the Atlantic Monthly in "Are We Still a Middle-Class Nation?"

The Economy of America Has Taken Distinct Changes in its Unfolding Stages: Agricultural, Industrial, and Service

Back to Michael Lind:

"To most of us, the transition from farmer to industrial worker to service worker -- sometimes within three generations of one family -- appears in retrospect to have been inevitable, like some geological process. Indeed, MANY CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS SEEM TO BELIEVE THAT A MASS MIDDLE CLASS IS AN INEVITABLE BY-PRODUCT OF CAPITALISM. The truth is that each of AMERICA'S SUCCESSIVE MIDDLE CLASSES HAS BEEN ARTIFICIALLY CREATED BY GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED SOCIAL ENGINEERING -- a fact that is profoundly important for us to admit as we think about the future of middle-class America."

 The favorite mantra of so many advocates of individual freedom, the myth of the stand alone individual, and the anti-government and anti-tax rebels is based on a false premise: The Middle Class is the distinctive work of individuals who work hard, take risks, and are rugged entrepreneurs; best divorced from government intervention or help.

Lind lines it out historically:

"From 1800 to 1848 the U.S. government acquired more than two million square miles of territory, much of it arable, by purchase or negotiation (the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803; Florida from Spain in 1819; Oregon from Britain in 1846), by annexation (Texas, 1845), or by conquest (the Mexican Cession in 1848). Populists sought to ensure that this land went to small farmers rather than large landowners or speculators. THE DANGER OF EUROPEAN-STYLE FEUDALISM IN THE UNITED STATES WAS NEUTRALIZED BY THE LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785, WHICH GUARANTEED THAT THE FEDERAL DOMAIN WOULD BE BROKEN UP INTO "FEE SIMPLE" PROPERTIES, with no complex web of multiple ownership. And the Homestead Act of 1862 provided 160 acres of free public land to settlers who would live on it and improve it for at least five years. Meanwhile, the federal government subsidized continent-crossing railroads, and the Army Corps of Engineers built much of the country's rural infrastructure. This was social engineering on a colossal scale."

"The story was similar for the second American middle class, made up of prosperous urban industrial workers. FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO HERBERT HOOVER, AMERICAN POLITICS WAS DOMINATED BY A BARGAIN BETWEEN CAPITALISTS AND WORKERS; HIGH TARIFFS ON IMPORTS SERVED THE INTERESTS OF BOTH, BY PROTECTING GOODS FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION."

"In addition, the dominant industrial labor force successfully lobbied the government to protect it from competition with other groups. In the late nineteenth century Congress cut off "Oriental" immigration, and after World War I -- with the support of organized labor -- it cut large-scale European immigration. Before World War I informal discrimination prevented southern black Americans from moving to the Northeast and the Midwest to compete for industrial jobs. Finally, child-labor laws removed children from the work force, and "family wage" or "breadwinner" systems -- which paid married fathers more than unmarried, childless men -- encouraged married women to become homemakers. TODAY NOSTALGIC CONSERVATIVES ATTRIBUTE THE PROSPERITY OF THE 1920S TO FREE ENTERPRISE. IN REALITY THE MARKET WAS RIGGED."

To take a deeper look at the basis of the American middle class the writer Lind adds this explanation of the service sector's Middle Class's underlying mechanisms:

"Whereas the second American middle class was founded on high wages for workers in the industrial sector, the third American middle class was founded on the supplementation of wage income by government benefits that collectively constituted a "social wage."

"The social wage included not only private-sector benefits encouraged by the tax code, such as employer-provided health insurance, but also subsidies such as the home-mortgage-interest deduction and government entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare (which freed many middle-class families from the bankrupting burden of caring for elderly parents), the GI Bill for higher education, and student loans.

"As the Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has pointed out, when the hidden welfare state is counted along with the visible welfare state, the United States has a system of social provision as generous as those in Western Europe -- though in this country much of that system extends only to the middle class and the professional elite.

"The social-wage system had many flaws -- for example, it failed to provide health insurance for tens of millions of Americans. Nevertheless, the third American middle class, the product of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, was larger and more inclusive than the earlier two. From the 1930s to the 1970s income inequality in America shrank dramatically, producing what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have called the Great Compression."
(emphasis added)

Since the 1980's the Service Era Middle Class has been undergoing drastic cuts and a ballooning gap between the now famous 1%'ers and the 99%'ers (who control a vastly unequal portion of the nation's wealth) highlights the 1%'ers who have seen their financial status go from static to negative, from employment to unemployment, from solid home equity to undermined "under water" equity-based on a tsunami of foreclosures.

The vast part of this condition rests squarely on the failed policies of Republicans under George W. Bush and a runaway economic epic including fraud, deception, and theft by Wall Streeters who saw themselves as the "SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE ROOM." The 2008 market value plunge tallies at a staggering multi-trillion dollar loss, nearly equal to the accumulative income of the nation for one entire year!

The fact that many corporations, national and multinational, have billions in assets which are set outside the economy and banks have used only a small fraction of their government provided billions legislated to help homeowners sits idle, and big banks are severely restricting consumer credit, tells us that Occupy Wall Street is directly on target with its protesting.

We want our money back. We want felony convictions. We want a clear path to recovery.

Americans want the "do nothing," "NO" to everything, TeaPublicans out of the way of the American Dream's recovery and reinvention. Let the government continue to sponsor and provide for our Middle Class-the key to the American experience.

Original.