This article by E.J. Dionne is so full of incorrect assumptions it serves as a proverbial barrel for an economic falsity fish shooting contest. Which is to say, the article is as freakily incorrect as my use of that old saw.
Where to start?!?
The premise is the rich and powerful who, behind the scenes in the oh so genteel way of the rich, run the government, are not as good, and wise, and idealistic and loving and/or as practical as they used to be in the good old days, as they are now afflicted by greed and pursue only their unenlightened self interest rather than the well being of all. This is not only bad for all of us who are not part of the "ruling class", it is bad for that class itself since it will apparently not make as much money as it otherwise would have if there were more "equality."
An enlightened ruling class understands that it can get richer and its riches will be more secure if prosperity is broadly shared, if government is investing in productive projects that lift the whole society, and if social mobility allows some circulation of the elites. A ruling class closed to new talent doesn't remain a ruling class for long.
Granted that this is just an opinion piece and so of course it is not expected that there would be references or even an explanation of how one might go about justifying the author's supposed understanding of how the rich used to behave compared with how they behave now, but truly, how could one suppose to prove a statement like: "A ruling class closed to new talent doesn't remain a ruling class for long."
Is this an opinion formed after years of studying ruling classes of representative republics within which ruling classes lost their status/wealth after becoming "closed to new talent"? Nevermind - how would the author define "ruling class" and how would the author establish when that class is or became "closed"?
This is where the author's carts and horses get all jumbled - while there's little evidence that government "investing" (a code word describing politicians who take citizens' money by force and spend it in ways that politicians think will help them get re-elected) results in any net gain, when governments quit "investing" but instead focus on providing economic liberty with property rights, wealth improves and wealth mobility improves very rapidly. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and Japan are my examples of how a 'nation' gets more wealth and more equality. The common characteritics? Not democracy, not political freedom - rather, economic liberty and property rights.
In short, most of this opinion piece is paper thin and little more than a rant - and if you said "what were you expecting from Dionne, serious work?" I would have to say "no."
And it's certainly not here - "governments investing in investing in productive projects that lift the whole society" is the intellectual equivalent of saying "governments that incorporate unicorns in free mass transit programs". I'm sure there's a program somewhere that was in effect an investment, and not a net loss, and a few have not been massive net losses. But those types of government programs are as difficult to prove as are unicorns, and the author wisely avoids any specific examples of same, presumably because for the author, the existance of such projects are articles of faith and require no proof.
Here's another funny one:
But a funny thing happened to the American ruling class: It stopped being concerned with the health of society as a whole and became almost entirely obsessed with money.
Hooo doggy, now that's a kneeslapper. It is an absurd thing to say because it could not possibly be measured were it true or false. It's an opinion pulled out of thin air, certain to please those who want to sit in judgement of others who presumably have the power to do good. It is an opinion which allows those who hold it to enjoy a sense of self righteousness rather than actually doing anything that helps another human being. The argument, after all, that the author makes most often is that government should be responsible for helping people so that folks like us don't have to.
Frankly, since the rich can see as well as I can that the government of the US is totally out of control and will spend any amount of money over which it can gain control, the rich would be idiots to do anything other than tend to their own well being any way they can. Even were it a monolithic entity, a "ruling class" as the author describes them, they couldn't pay the bills the US government has promised - not a fragment of it. I would love to see the author or anyone cite the example of a nation that taxed itself into prosperity.
Here's one of the author's cart/horse issues, clarified:
Yet when it comes to governing, the ruling class now devotes itself in large part to utterly self-involved lobbying. Its main passion has been to slash taxation on the wealthy, particularly on the financial class that has gained the most over the last 20 years. By winning much lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends, it's done a heck of a job.
Self involved lobbying amounts to nothing but self defense with a government as over-reaching as ours is, but in any event, if they were lobbying for fiscal responsibility, the author would condemn them just as soundly because the ONLY way to get there is to reform the entitlement system, which would no doubt be criticized as "attacking the poor."
Nevermind the price the poor pay for inflation, which is the time honored way that governments extract themselves from their unkeepable financial promises.
Listen to David Cay Johnston, the author of "Free Lunch" and a columnist for Tax Notes. "The effective rate for the top 400 taxpayers has gone from 30 cents on the dollar in 1993 to 22 cents at the end of the Clinton years to 16.6 cents under Bush," he said in a telephone interview. "So their effective rate has gone down more than 40 percent."
He added: "The overarching drive right now is to push the burden of government, of taxes, down the income ladder."
And you wonder where the deficit came from.
If the ruling class were as worried about the deficit as it claims to be, it would accept that the wealthiest people in society have a duty to pony up more for the very government whose police power and military protect them, their property and their wealth.
In other words, no matter how much largesse the politicians serve up to their constituencies to further their political careers - and regardless of how absurdly ineffective those programs are, and no matter how unsustainable said programs are at any rate of taxation - the 'more fortunate' should step right up and happily pay the bill.
And there's no need to wonder where the deficit came from. The deficit came from decades of politicians who will find a way to spend as much money as they can take from the citizenry plus a healthy dose of money they will take from those not yet voting age and then go ahead a take some more from those not even born yet - but at least those politicians will be dead before those unborn children can be born and sue for taxation without representation.
I know that articles like the one in question are not written for a critical audience and that the author might be a fabulous human being. The exasperation results from the supreme lack of clarity which is presented as analysis but which is simply a sad justification for more government, and less liberty.
Where to start?!?
The premise is the rich and powerful who, behind the scenes in the oh so genteel way of the rich, run the government, are not as good, and wise, and idealistic and loving and/or as practical as they used to be in the good old days, as they are now afflicted by greed and pursue only their unenlightened self interest rather than the well being of all. This is not only bad for all of us who are not part of the "ruling class", it is bad for that class itself since it will apparently not make as much money as it otherwise would have if there were more "equality."
An enlightened ruling class understands that it can get richer and its riches will be more secure if prosperity is broadly shared, if government is investing in productive projects that lift the whole society, and if social mobility allows some circulation of the elites. A ruling class closed to new talent doesn't remain a ruling class for long.
Granted that this is just an opinion piece and so of course it is not expected that there would be references or even an explanation of how one might go about justifying the author's supposed understanding of how the rich used to behave compared with how they behave now, but truly, how could one suppose to prove a statement like: "A ruling class closed to new talent doesn't remain a ruling class for long."
Is this an opinion formed after years of studying ruling classes of representative republics within which ruling classes lost their status/wealth after becoming "closed to new talent"? Nevermind - how would the author define "ruling class" and how would the author establish when that class is or became "closed"?
This is where the author's carts and horses get all jumbled - while there's little evidence that government "investing" (a code word describing politicians who take citizens' money by force and spend it in ways that politicians think will help them get re-elected) results in any net gain, when governments quit "investing" but instead focus on providing economic liberty with property rights, wealth improves and wealth mobility improves very rapidly. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and Japan are my examples of how a 'nation' gets more wealth and more equality. The common characteritics? Not democracy, not political freedom - rather, economic liberty and property rights.
In short, most of this opinion piece is paper thin and little more than a rant - and if you said "what were you expecting from Dionne, serious work?" I would have to say "no."
And it's certainly not here - "governments investing in investing in productive projects that lift the whole society" is the intellectual equivalent of saying "governments that incorporate unicorns in free mass transit programs". I'm sure there's a program somewhere that was in effect an investment, and not a net loss, and a few have not been massive net losses. But those types of government programs are as difficult to prove as are unicorns, and the author wisely avoids any specific examples of same, presumably because for the author, the existance of such projects are articles of faith and require no proof.
Here's another funny one:
But a funny thing happened to the American ruling class: It stopped being concerned with the health of society as a whole and became almost entirely obsessed with money.
Hooo doggy, now that's a kneeslapper. It is an absurd thing to say because it could not possibly be measured were it true or false. It's an opinion pulled out of thin air, certain to please those who want to sit in judgement of others who presumably have the power to do good. It is an opinion which allows those who hold it to enjoy a sense of self righteousness rather than actually doing anything that helps another human being. The argument, after all, that the author makes most often is that government should be responsible for helping people so that folks like us don't have to.
Frankly, since the rich can see as well as I can that the government of the US is totally out of control and will spend any amount of money over which it can gain control, the rich would be idiots to do anything other than tend to their own well being any way they can. Even were it a monolithic entity, a "ruling class" as the author describes them, they couldn't pay the bills the US government has promised - not a fragment of it. I would love to see the author or anyone cite the example of a nation that taxed itself into prosperity.
Here's one of the author's cart/horse issues, clarified:
Yet when it comes to governing, the ruling class now devotes itself in large part to utterly self-involved lobbying. Its main passion has been to slash taxation on the wealthy, particularly on the financial class that has gained the most over the last 20 years. By winning much lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends, it's done a heck of a job.
Self involved lobbying amounts to nothing but self defense with a government as over-reaching as ours is, but in any event, if they were lobbying for fiscal responsibility, the author would condemn them just as soundly because the ONLY way to get there is to reform the entitlement system, which would no doubt be criticized as "attacking the poor."
Nevermind the price the poor pay for inflation, which is the time honored way that governments extract themselves from their unkeepable financial promises.
Listen to David Cay Johnston, the author of "Free Lunch" and a columnist for Tax Notes. "The effective rate for the top 400 taxpayers has gone from 30 cents on the dollar in 1993 to 22 cents at the end of the Clinton years to 16.6 cents under Bush," he said in a telephone interview. "So their effective rate has gone down more than 40 percent."
He added: "The overarching drive right now is to push the burden of government, of taxes, down the income ladder."
And you wonder where the deficit came from.
If the ruling class were as worried about the deficit as it claims to be, it would accept that the wealthiest people in society have a duty to pony up more for the very government whose police power and military protect them, their property and their wealth.
In other words, no matter how much largesse the politicians serve up to their constituencies to further their political careers - and regardless of how absurdly ineffective those programs are, and no matter how unsustainable said programs are at any rate of taxation - the 'more fortunate' should step right up and happily pay the bill.
And there's no need to wonder where the deficit came from. The deficit came from decades of politicians who will find a way to spend as much money as they can take from the citizenry plus a healthy dose of money they will take from those not yet voting age and then go ahead a take some more from those not even born yet - but at least those politicians will be dead before those unborn children can be born and sue for taxation without representation.
I know that articles like the one in question are not written for a critical audience and that the author might be a fabulous human being. The exasperation results from the supreme lack of clarity which is presented as analysis but which is simply a sad justification for more government, and less liberty.
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