House of Eratosthenes

As I have written before, although the left seems obsessed by the existence of inequality, the most interesting analyses of the phenomenon are on the right. For the most part, all the left does is deplore.

There are other interesting things in the more recent column, such as examples to be offered to support the conclusion. But I’m interested in the “how” and “why,” so I click on the earlier article and find:

If I were to reduce to a bumper sticker the way the left thinks about the world these days, it would read:

Inequality happens

If I were to reduce to a bumper sticker the way the right thinks about the same subject, it would read:

Inequality happens for a reason

This is not a small distinction. For President Obama, inequality is the public policy issue du jour. And like lemmings, left wing editorial writers and bloggers can think of nothing else to write about. But here is something that may surprise you. The most interesting analyses of the problem are on the right, not the left. For the most part, all the left does is deplore. They seem to have no interest in understanding why we have a problem. (I have a theory on that below.)

Below, we find:

…[F]or know-nothings on the left there has always been the belief that the reason there is poverty is because there is wealth. That the high income earned by some is the cause of the low income earned by others. I’ve never seen Krugman say that. He’s too good of an economist to go that far.

But his columns give aid and comfort to people who harbor those beliefs. A Krugman column the other day entitled “The Undeserving Rich” had not one word to say about how a single billionaire had undeserved income. It made not a single connection between one person’s wealth and another person’s poverty. But it would be easy for an uncareful reader (especially a non-economist) to finish the column with the impression that there is a connection.

If your goal is class warfare — to inflame the passions of those who have less by making them angry at those who have more — writing about the behavioral causes of poverty does not advance your cause.

Who wants class warfare?

Obviously, democrats want it; the motivation for people to vote for them is dissipated, if feelings of jealousy are not dominant. But I’ve had my own theory that arouses more conflict than even that. Think about how much a newspaper costs in a city with crime, blight, corruption, dysfunction, employment problems, poverty, an education crisis, etc. Now think about how much a newspaper costs in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry USA.

We want news — need news — when there is a feeling that things are out of control, and we have to watch our backs. If everything is humming along, and the protection is good enough with Barney Fife roaming the quiet streets with his one bullet, well…newspapers are for auto trading and not much else. So say whatever else you want about this thing called “journalism,” but they have a vested interest.

Part of what’s gotten all screwy over the past couple generations is that they have consciously woken up to this. And so they have an unholy alliance with democrats now: They’ve figured out how to program us, and the programming now has to be all about this concern over “inequality.” And yet those who make the most noise about it, refuse to discuss cause and effect, in fact silence and shame others when they ask too many “HowCumThatIz” types of questions.

But we don’t need to be worried about inequality. What we need to worry about is lost and wasted human potential, which is a slightly but meaningfully different thing.

To be fair, I think the left thinks inequality happens for a reason, too. That reason is: The Koch Brothers.

That’s one of the things I still find most baffling about Our Betters, the Liberals. I’ve been “politically aware” (to use one of their wonderfully Stalinist phrases) for a couple decades now, and I still can’t figure out how a movement that purports to “empower people” can have so few individuals. Everyone on the left is “Climate Activist #5” or “Gay Chicana Teen #17,” and they only get transitive verbs when they’re “doing” something so vague it’s meaningless — “raising awareness,” for instance.

Meanwhile the Koch Brothers, like “conservatives” generally, have unlimited freedom for action. Indeed, they have super powers — I live in a state that hasn’t had oil, or even the basic components of oil, since the Jurassic, but somehow the Koch Brothers have bought and paid for a candidate in a state race here. Because evil, I guess, but think about that for a sec — this is considered a winning argument. The Dems really believe that the Kochs have the power, money, and interest to mess in obscure races in flyover country. 50 years of feminist agitation across the whole country hasn’t even netted the gals a 25 cent pay raise, but these two yokels can swing elections from five thousand miles away.

Weird, no? “Keep ‘raising awareness’ — it’s utterly ineffective!” seems to be their motto. If the GOP would just embrace this — “yeah, our party has Sith Lords” — they’d win every race by a landslide.
- Severian | 10/06/2014 @ 07:23
Strange, I also live in a state where the evil Koch Brothers have bought and paid for a politician here. As a matter of fact, although the bought and paid Rep is a left-wing nutjob RINO, the ONLY mud the Democrats can sling is by screeching “Koch sucker!” and hoping it sticks. Republicans can say PLENTY about the RINOs opposition, namely one of the worst Senators our leftist state has ever produced.

If the Dems were in a position to provide thoughtful, reasoned debate, they might point out the challenger is akin to one of their own. THAT would be far more damaging than the anti-Koch ads, but would then also conflict with their narrative, mainly that a terrible leftist candidate that obeys the party without question is superior to a Doctor who is a leftist candidate but is running on an opposition platform and may not vote lockstep with the Democrat party. Oh, and it gives them another excuse to say “Koch Brothers” in a commercial…
- P_Ang | 10/06/2014 @ 13:09

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Inequality ExplainedSunday, October 5th, 2014

Inequality Explained
Sunday, October 5th, 2014