Liberals blindly worship their "scientific" doctrines concocted out of thin air by the high priests of socialism 200 years ago. Living in a utopian world, they simply ignore real-life experience.
The latest data from the IRS and other economic and statistical arms of the Federal government paint a picture that is the opposite of liberals' theoretical expectations.
President John F. Kennedy's most effective single policy initiative was his round of massive income-tax cuts in the early 1960s. Criticized by social-justice liberals for not raising taxes and doling out more welfare-state benefits, Kennedy famously retorted that a rising tide lifts all boats; everyone benefits when the level of economic activity rises and more jobs become available.
Kennedy's tax cuts started a huge and long-lived uptrend in the nation's economy. Twenty years later, tax cuts by President Ronald Reagan did the same thing, just as have the tax cuts initiated by the George W. Bush administration.
Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore wrote in his May 4, 2006, op-ed article that the Bush "tax cuts for the rich" not only have put the economy into high gear, but they have counter intuitively increased the tax burden on the wealthy and decreased the burden on the lowest income percentiles.
Between 2002 and 2004, tax payments by those with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) of more than $200,000 a year, which is roughly 3% of taxpayers, increased by 19.4% — more than double the 9.3% increase for all other taxpayers.
Between 2001 and 2004 (the most recent data), the percentage of federal income taxes paid by those with $200,000 incomes and above has risen to 46.6% from 40.5%. In other words, out of every 100 Americans, the wealthiest three are now paying close to the same amount in taxes as the other 97 combined."
….The main factor at play here is the robust economic expansion, which has led to real income gains for most tax filers. Higher incomes mean higher tax payments. Between 2001 and 2004, the percentage of Americans with an income of more than $200,000 rose from 12.0% to 14.2%. The percentage of Americans earning more than $50,000 a year rose from 40.8% to 44.2% — and that's just in two years.
…. And we now have the evidence to confirm that the latest round of tax cuts worked — five million new jobs, a 25% increase in business spending, 4% real economic growth for three years and a $4 trillion gain in net wealth. So now the very class-warfare groups who, three years ago, swore that the tax cuts would tank the economy rather than revive it, pretend that this robust expansion would have happened without the investment tax cuts.
Liberals' ability to ignore repeated factual confutation and continue in their fatuity is, to borrow H. L. Mencken's comment about Puritanism, a form of neurosis. It borders on the heretical religiosity that led followers of cults like Jim Jones's Peoples Temple to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
The most fundamental dogma in the catechism of the socialist religion is the blind faith that human nature and human society can be perfected by the simple, materialistic mechanism of redistributing income as equally as possible. If everybody has an equal income, so the theory goes, all envy, greed, and aggression will vanish. We will then be able to enter the earthly paradise of Marxian Leninism in which the apparatus of government will slowly wither away, and all peoples will live in perfect harmony with plentiful supplies of all truly needed food, clothing, housing, medical care, education and jobs (assigned, of course, by the state planners).
This accounts for the never-ceasing yowling and mewling by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Democratic Party leaders about "tax cuts for the rich" and the income gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in our society.
In the interests of factuality, let's remind ourselves that the dogma of human perfection via redistribution of income is a purely theoretical concept dreamed up by Jean Jacques Rousseau in the mid 1700s. Even he admitted that he had no proof, that no precedent for it existed in history. Nonetheless, his "reason" told him that it must have been true. Liberals, who never lose an opportunity to sneer at Christians and religious Jews as ignorant troublemakers, have no problem with believing with all their hearts in Rousseau's pie-in-the-sky heaven-on-earth.
What makes liberals' blind faith all the more untenable is that large numbers of political leaders around the world have given socialistic egalitarianism a try, and all have failed. Not only has there been no progress in social harmony, but economic performance, supposedly the materialistic strong suit of liberalism, has declined or lagged behind non-socialistic nations in all cases.
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal turned an ordinary economic recession into an unprecedented ten years of misery in which unemployment never fell below 14%. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society entitlements wrecked the economy with the highest levels of inflation ever experienced here and surges in unemployment, crime, drug use, illegitimacy, single-parent families, and long-term welfare dependency, together with collapse of the educational system.
France, the "rationalistic" home of socialism, has run through many more than a dozen different constitutions, at least five republics, restorations of monarchy, and several imperial interludes. Today France is the sick man of Europe, its government brought to its knees by unemployable students at the Sorbonne rioting in the streets. The nation that was the most powerful force on the Continent in the Christian era of its history is now being slowly strangled by its social-justice commitments to welfare-state benefits entitlements that its economy increasingly cannot support.
All this is the direct product of blasphemous groveling to the heretical idolatry of anti-Christian materialism.
The high number of different regimes France went through (at least 16 since 1789) is quite irrelevant. It has nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with wars and political unrest. The idea of redistribution of income was completely ignored by french governments until the 20th century (and even then, it wasn't really applied until the second half of the century).
The demonstrations (not riots) in Paris are long over. The students did not demonstrate because they couldn't find employment but in order to force the government to withdraw a bill (that would have made it much easier for employers to fire young employees).
I also fail to see what christianity has to do with the subject.
Mr. Brewton, are you truly contending that what took place when the market crashed in '29 was "an ordinary economic recession" and that the "unprecedented ten years of misery" were the result of the New Deal three years later?
And was the Great Society proposal of the 60s was the cause of increased crime, drug use, illegitimacy, and the problems that came about in education?
I don't understand.
With regard to Mr. Baudry's assertion that, in effect, socialism had no role in what transpired in France after the Revolution, I refer him to Alexis de Tocquevilles' "The Old Regime and the French Revolution," written in the 1850s, based upon Tocqueville's prodigious research of the official archives. The recent attitudes and actions of French students and labor unions were described with exacting foresight by Tocqueville as already characterizing the new, post-Revolution France.
To say that the disintegration of French society after the Revolution was simply the product of wars and political unrest is the equivalent of asserting that the catastrophes of the Soviet Union and the Comintern had nothing to do with socialism; that they were merely the product of military opposition by Western nations and internal opposition to the Bolsheviks.
With regard to Mr. Killman's comment, the answers to his questions are Yes and Yes. If his questions are more than rhetorical, I refer him, re the Depression, to Murray Rothbard ("America's Great Depression"), Benjamin M. Anderson ("Economics and the Public Welfare"), and Jim Powell ("FDR'sFolly"), among a host of similar studies.
With regard to President Johnson's Great Society, I refer him to the extensive analysis, based entirely on the Federal government's own statistics, in Charles Murray's "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980."
The Depression started as a boom to produce food and machinery for export to Europe, particularly Germany, for rebuilding after World War I. Excessive expansion of the money supply by the Fed to accommodate and encourage this, as well as to support England's return to Sterling convertibility, created almost exactly what occurred here in the 1990s dot.com boom, when anybody with a company name and an idea could get billions in funding from venture capitalists, because the economy was awash in excess liquidity.
Rather than letting matters take their course, as President Bush did after 2000, President Roosevelt pushed to keep wages high and introduced an avalanche of interventionist agencies, regulations, and damnation of capitalism, while raising tax rates from the 20 percent range to more than 80 percent.
President Bush's tax cuts and allowing the market to act freely and liquidate ill-advised investments produced a remarkably vigorous economic rebound. President Roosevelt's continual tinkering, the "ideas" that enthrall liberals, kept business forever apprehensive of hiring new workers or investing in new production capacity, because nobody knew what might be coming next.
A simple search on 'french revolution' and 'socialism' will cause to appear various links explaining the relationship between these two things. For example on http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/SOCIALISM.html
you will find:
Origins of Socialism
French Revolution – theory and organization necessary for change
Industrial Revolution:
-the oppression of the working class
-a new possibility – that poverty might be abolished
-Creation of class consciousness
Judeo-Christian ideas of Justice
and on:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm
Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production. But, in its theoretical form, modern Socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the 18th century. Like every new theory, modern Socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in material economic facts.
Romain, the demonstrations in France aren't to protect young workers, but substandard employees. No one is looking for the opportunity to fire good workers, but it is a lousy system that demands so little in the way of expectations for workers. This is bourn out by the exceedingly high unemployment rate in France. After all, what employers wants to be forced to keep an employee for their entire career on the basis of a few job interviews. Perhaps to be consistent, they should outlaw divorce. Once you make the decision, it ought to be for life.
Dan,
At the time of the depression, there was no tax burden. People in an economic upswing were living beyond their means. The "Great Society" started us along the course of overtaxation, allowing unmotivated people to live off others based on a misplaced sense of compassion. It also created the scenario whereby government runs all aspects of our lives. Short of people continuing to live beyond their means, claiming bankruptsy (where taxpayers pick up the tab), overtaxation pushes up the cost of living and merchandise for all and people keep to essentials. Businesses stop hiring as no one is buying, jobs are lost, the employed are only buying essentials, and the base of those living off taxpayers expands, and the liberal cycle of life goes on.
Tom
Social unrest (mostly due to extreme poverty) caused several regime changes in France, but certainly not all – or even most – of them.
Napoleon became emperor because of his popularity (due to his military victories) and thanks to a coup. The monarchy was reinstated when he was crushed by the rest of Europe. In 1830, the king was overthrown because he had tried to dismiss a newly elected parliament. In 1851, Napoleon III became emperor thanks to a coup. The Second Empire disappeared after the Germans won the 1870 war. The Third Republic disappeared after the defeat of 1940. The Vichy Regime disappeared after France was liberated. The Fourth Republic disappeared because of the war in Algeria.
Tom : yes, no employer really wants to fire good workers. But an employer might decide to get rid of one of his workers because he's complaining about working conditions, because she's pregnant, because he's a member of a labor union, because he got ill or even for personal reasons. Employees AND employers tend to abuse the system for their personal gain. I certainly don't believe the french system to be very good. But CEO earning five hundred times as much as an average worker, even though many of them are not exactly doing a very good job, does not make me believe pure capitalism is the answer to all existing problems.
Well, as a poor starving college kid, I'm all for CEOs making 500 times what their workers make. The important thing is that the worker is experiencing a real benefit from his labor. The Kennedy quote Brewton refered to hits the nail right on the head. Could things be better? Of course. They could always be better. However, given the standard of living we experience here in the States in general, I'm not overly concerned that everything be equitable. Someday, liberals will have to admit that life is pretty good here, despite the "obscene profits" made by those "evil corporations." Romain, I'm not implying that you think that way. I'm just not that concerned with financial equality.
Romain,
Certainly employers can fire you for unprincipled or self-serving reasons. They can do that in North America. I myself was fired from a job because nepotism took over and I ended up being the only one with the proper credentials and acted as the squeaky wheel. I could have fought it, but it was the best thing for me.
It is a major leap to suggest the French system doesn't exacerbate the problem. There is no way it doesn't impede the number of people hired both for fear of getting a bad egg, but also because of the cost of uncommitted and self-serving workers. It i the liberal mindset that leads us to believe employers – bad, employees – good. Being a good worker, I will choose to move on to a better job, or pursue my own entrepreneurial objectives.
Tom
Romain and others like him are automatically suspicious of capitalism because of the inherent freedom regarding its processes. Leftist fear choice. Capitalism is simply defined as the private financial transactions of consenting parties where things of value are exchanged.
There is no bogeyman here. A CEO earning a big salary is no threat to anyone except the shareholdser so the company, who consented to the transaction and expect to benefit by the arrangement. These legal, private transactions are no one else's business, Romain.
Actually, capitalism as a system has not been tried in decades. Romain criticizes something that is not in operation. His entire worldview is based on a mirage conjured by leftists to scare people into more government control. At best we have a mixed economy; at worst, fledgling socialism.
Any failures manifest in this system are because of socialism, not capitalism. Evidence? The war on poverty. The poverty rate hovers at 12% despite trillions of dollars transfered from workers to non-workers. Or how about government housing? If that is a rousing success then we truly have different world views. How about Social Security? Where else can a person "contribute" 15% of of every dollar they earn for 45 years for a 2% yield and a $1500 per month retirement check?
If Romain can point to one successful government economic program (success being defined as accomplishing the goal for which it was created so that there is no longer a need for the program), I'll convert and pin a red star to my lapel for life.
Mr. Brewton,
Splendid essay and comment # 3.
Would suggest to readers another book to read: Fire in the Minds of Men by James Billington, 677 pages, Transaction Publishers, still in print.
Dan
The effort to privatize Social Security proved to me that the liberals have won the day in America. They have managed to convince the American people out of fear and ignorance that a retirement system with the below characterisitcs is worth protecting.
1. Is stolen from annually to pay for other government progams
2. Has little to no payout when it is not used (Death Benefit to Survivors)
3. Is by all admission, destined to run out of money in the next 40 years
4. Has a negative return on investment
If a private company boasted such a retirement plan, the government would shut them down.
How low have Americans fallen when we would rather guarantee failure in the future, than strive for success today?
Excellent article. With regard to the religion of Communism, it is helpful to see the legacy of Marxism in the romanticism of Rousseau and Hegel. The West suffered mightily when material science seemed to eclipsed faith. At that point there was a resurgence of a new variety of faith, faith in the Spirit of matter itself. Suddenly God/Spirit was seen working out the universe in the conflicts between bugs, people and chemicals. God/Spirit found himself via bloody revolutions. War became no more than Nature's new godly way. So the deaths of millions upon millions of people that arose from the Marxist materialist god, was acceptable. The god of Marx is dialectical materialism demonstrated by historical determinism. Interestingly, this same romantic god is the essence of fascism as well. In both Marxism and fascism human freedom must be rejected and understood as determined by the hand of a Nature god: Hegelian Spirit.
The liberals are vain.
And so many frogs are so vain and so full of envy.
Honker: Do you not realize why Social Security may run out in 40 years? Reagan, and Bush Sr. borrowed it all to pay for tax cuts to the rich. Also, why isn't anyone mentioning the fact that the largest increases in our National Debt. over the last 50 years have come during the terms of Reagan, GHW Bush, and GW Bush?
Capitalism, while necessary for a country to develop and blossom, soon becomes the disease. It only leads to an ever increasing chasm between the Rich and the poor/middle class. There has got to be a better way.
I certainly would never claim to have all the answers but we need to stop ourselves and our elected officials from partaking in this partisan,elementary schoolyard shoving match and work together to solve the real problems of this country.
Lyonbrave, you are so naive, and so misguided by today's leftist rhetoric that your eyes must be atrophying. The reason Social Security is going broke is because the democrat-controlled Congresses of the last
forty years borrowed from the kitty with IOU's for paybacks. None, not one dollar, of the till was used to cover the tax cuts you are complaining about. Howsomever, your idol, William Jefferson Clinton, borrowed liberally (pun intended) from it to "balance" his budget in the '90's. I'm not saying he's responsible for Social Security's demise, only that it was considered (by Democrats, mostly) to be an open bank, a tappable resource that refilled itself because of the ever-flowing revenue it received.
Is capatalism holy? No: I too have a problem with the over-sized CEO salaries. But, I don't think that's a problem with capatalism as it is a problem with the way salaries are tied to stocks and the idea of a "golden parachute". Should capatalism be allowed to run rampant? The needed intervention of labor unions and children employment laws are fine examples of a resounding "No". But, should we turn the most powerful economy in history – an economy where people can run their own businesses and where everybody has an equal chance, if they are willing to work for it, of becoming rich – turn it all over to an economy that has historically NEVER suceeded?
Hell no.
Want to see a real social democracy in action, take a look at Norway. Virtually the same GDP as us, but a higher average standard of living, universal health care and free education to all levels. Go on, admit that you are just a little bit jealous.
Social democracy works, you've just got to know where to look. No conservative economist will ever draw your attention to the exceptional living conditions in a country like Norway.
I could go on, but I am not here to do your research for you.
Sorry, I meant to say per capita income not GDP.
Either way, check it all out for yourselves.
Interesting reading, but really a tired topic. Capitalism and Communism are both ponzi schemes. For true free enterprise and democracy to coexist, it is necessary to encourage and advantage a broad, stable, well educated middle. Anything else is just sloganeering to advantage some elite.
Mr Johnson, why just the middle, why not the whole, as in Norway's case?