Man Self-immolates in National Mall

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The ramifications of right-liberal egalitarianism is what we have right now: Huge disparities in wealth that are impossible to oppose if we accept egalitarianism. What needs to be stressed is that the reason some are rich isn't hard work alone, but an accident of birth that gave the rich person special talents that they did nothing to earn or deserve. If we refuse to accept egalitarianism, noblesse oblige becomes a moral imperative. Or, as the Bible written in pre-egalitarian times puts it: Those to whom much is given, much is expected in return. Liberalism says we're responsible for the conditions of our birth by ignoring basic human differences.

then how do we get the nobles to oblige? carrot [give, and we'll deduct off your taxes], or stick [give, or we'll take it out via more taxes], or a combo of both?

My first recommendation would be to avoid succumbing to the temptation to punish the rich. We tend to oscillate today between favoring the rich, and occasionally trying to stick it to these people, when the truth is somewhere in the middle. The Republicans are right when they say that many of the wealthy got that way by providing things we all want, such as the Internet (it's hard to argue that the Internet was made possible by ditch diggers or welfare mothers). Capitalism has given us the highest standard of living in history, and that is something we should want to keep.

I'd say the biggest culprit, again, is the liberal emphasis on individuality. Liberal individuality started out innocently enough as asserting that the individual has certain rights against the growing power of the state, of which our Constitution is perhaps the finest manifestation. Now, liberal notions of individuality place the individual above literally everything else, including any duties to others or our society. By way of example, I would call your attention to Obama's remark to businessmen that they didn't do it all by themselves. Of course he was right, but the Republicans tore him up but good over that statement--it's right-liberal individuality, where we owe nothing to anybody.

I think the first step should be for society to recognize that we were NOT all created equal, and to make narcissistic egalitarianism as socially unacceptable as dumping massive quantities of pollutants into our waters or beating our wives.

Please consider: For the last forty years, ordinary Americans have been squeezed by massive offshoring which has sent every job possible overseas to where the labor is the cheapest. At the same time, the borders have been opened to countless millions of immigrants, both legal and illegal, to bid down wages on the jobs that are left. This is why the vast majority of jobs being created today can't support an individual, much less a family. This kind of thing needs to be made socially unacceptable.

Until not too many years ago, those born between 1954 and 1965 were considered baby boomers. Now they have been reclassified as something called Generation Jones. Why? Because this cohort is the first in US history not to do as well as their parents, and for the reasons described above. And things have only gotten harder and worse for each succeeding cohort. This isn't right; the kids today deserve the same opportunities to succeed that previous generation enjoyed.

how 'bout a national VAT with a progressive write-off for lower incomes? maybe combine that with a negative income tax?

I'm not sure how that write-off could be accomplished in a simple enough manner for average people to understand. It is also the case that consumption taxes, as you recognize, are terribly regressive. I don't have anything against regressive taxes as long as they are balanced out by progressive taxes.

Here is my suggestion: To help bring the jobs back that have been offshored, I would be in favor of non-punitive tariffs, and income taxes for corporations and those making enough enough not to pay Social Security taxes, which is any earnings over 107,000 dollars a year. Though I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Republicans to recognize it, having to pay both SS and income tax on the same earned dollar is the ultimate in double taxation, especially for younger people who aren't going to see a dime of SS when they retire. I would also make capital gains, or unearned income, subject to the same tax rates as earned income. The Republicans like to tell us that this money wouldn't be invested if we did such a thing. That's nonsense judging by our experience from the 1930's through the 1960's. I also have a hard time believing the rich will put their fortunes in their mattresses if they have to pay a fair rate of taxes on them.

One of my favorite lines from a politician comes from Andrew Jackson: It is not the purpose of government to enhance or mitigate the natural inequalities existing between men.

but it is a legitimate purpose of government [living up to its name] to protect the poor from the predations of the rich. the rich can defend themselves with no problem.

I agree. I think the problem the poor face is that the rich control both major parties. And being narcissists who care about nobody but themselves, they run the government in the interests of nobody but themselves. I think this is the reason so many people are so rebellious and restive. We need to bring the jobs back, make narcissistic behavior socially unacceptable, and make the tax system more fair.

Of course, there will still be a permanent underclass of people who just can't make it. But I see that as more so a cultural problem than one amenable to government solutions. Charles Murray recently wrote a fascinating book on just this topic that I can highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-Stat ... ing+ground

BTW, the narcissistic behavior of right-liberals explains the very existence of communism and socialism. Both are a direct reaction to the depredations of the rich against the rest of our society. This explains why things got so much worse after the fall of communism in the early nineties.

it seems he talks a lot about the upper class and the underclass but he entirely omits from any mention, the working class [AKA lower class], IOW the ethical and honorable people who DO their best to keep a roof over their head but are slowly drowning because the system is rigged against them. there is indeed a widening divergence between the cognitive elites [the MENSA crowd that live in beltown] and everybody else. the smarties among us seem to be feeling less and less brotherly love for anybody outside of their elect group. there needs to be a noblesse oblige in terms of smarter people acting helpfully towards cognitively struggling people, as well as in the financial sense.

Blabby, what this book discusses is a gradient: The further down the socioeconomic ladder one is, the more likely they are to engage in pathological behaviors, such as fathers refusing to care for their children, or refusing to get jobs, serious drug abuse and alcoholism, as well as involvement in other forms of crime. The wealthy and intelligent can thrive in an unstructured environment whereas the unintelligent need a structured environment to do well. I'm sure you saw this kind while in the military.

Otherwise I agree agree with you one hundred percent. We are indeed our brother's keeper. None of us would have anything without our society, and that especially applies to the rich. They need to behave accordingly.

Nothing's changed since 2nd century BCE Rome. Just ask the Gracchi how easy social reform is.

Goonsquad, if you are suggesting there is a natural tendency toward predatory behavior on the part of the most capable against everybody else, I will certainly agree with you. In fact, the point of morality is to curb these predatory instincts, or at least sublimate them, in favor of cooperative behavior. My point is that when this moral process becomes short-circuited, that the depredations become far worse since there is nothing to say it is wrong.

Yes. The Republic of Rome began its fall when the Patricians stopped acting like patrons and began acting like predators.

I agree. By the time of Caesar, most of the small freeholders had been taken over by the wealthy classes when the freeholders were fighting in Rome's innumerable wars. It's hard to think of anything shabbier.

Morality doesn't always stop predatory conduct, but at least it sets standards making it wrong. For example, when liberal humanitarians would chide fascist and communist leaders for their worst atrocities, the liberals were denounced for their "bourgeois sentimentality". When these people made their own moral standards, who could say that the murder of tens of millions of people was wrong?

Because of the decline in our educational system, most people do not appreciate how similar our system of government is to that of the Roman Republic.

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/law/polybius.html

They don't appreciate that, as a consequence of this similarity, our system is vulnerable to the same problems that brought down the Republic of Rome--namely, a breakdown of civic morality and bitter factional politics.

From the time of the Servian Constitution, the Roman social contract recognized that those who prospered the most in Roman society had the biggest obligation to serve and protect that society.

All that began to breakdown after the second punic war. Hannibal drove all the Italian freeholders off the land with his 17 year reign of terror. Then greedy, predatory land speculators bought up all the abandoned farms and combined them into vast, illegal (there were laws limiting land ownership), slave-worked plantations. Between the two, they managed to destroy the Italian middle class in a generation.

What happened to them is happening to us. As with Rome, our Republic won't survive without a middle class.

Ah, a classicist. I like.

On big difference I was reading about just this morning is one major difference with Rome: We have capitalism, as opposed to simple free markets, which has made possible the phenomenon of consumerism. And consumerism naturally has hedonism as its ethic. What do you think gave Rome its hedonist ethic?

Wages in the USA have been stagnant for the last 30 years (while productivity has steadily risen). With 30 year's worth of inflation that's a big pay cut. And, the income of the wealthy classes has exploded in that same time frame. The government is not why people have less money nowadays.


That's due to lobbying by the AMA (American Medical Association). If Exxon lobbies the government to pass a law that says that gas stations have to ration their gas to drive the price up, then the government's not to blame.


Agree that we need tarriffs and the like to undo these free-trade deals that only benefit trans-national corporations.