Who is the middle class in America today?

I would almost rather hear another commercial for an ED or RA drug than hear another politician telling me how this or that will help or hurt the "middle class".  Why is it that the benefits or harm going to accrue to the middle class don't ring true to me, when, after all, I always considered myself to be pure unadulterated middle class.

My folks and their folks were from small towns on the Great Plains. My family bought their first house when I was about five, and we had a TV and second car by the time I was ten.  My mom was the housekeeper, I attended public school, belonged to Cub and Boy Scouts, and we always traveled back to the farm in South Dakota on holidays. My dad traveled long and hard selling foodstuffs across a couple of states, often for most of the week.

The AHA moment crystallized for me this morning, I'm more than a little slow.  The reason current political arguments for or about the middle class don't ring true for me is that I AM A REMNANT of what was the "middle class" in America for about 200 years.  The "middle class" politicians talk about today are the people who depend on the intervention, support, coercion, or employment by government to sustain their livelihoods.  I belong to the remnant class.

The REMNANT CLASS is herewith defined:  Those descendants of the farmers, shopkeepers, small business owners and employees who built this country and who are still not dependent on government, unions, or major corporations for the livelihood of themselves or their immediate family. 

I'm afraid there ain't many of us left.

At age 56, I feel like a dinosaur and a relic, living on the fringe of the redefinition of the American Dream. I'm mostly independent but not wealthy, and my libertarian political views are pure anathema to a few of my friends, some of my family, and a lot of my acquaintances.  The plain truth is while 100 years ago most people in America were in my shoes, each decade for last 10 we have become more and more dependent upon government.

Take the names of five couples or ten people you know and run their life situations through these questions to determine their independence from government.  Do they or their immediate families:

• Work for a national or multinational corporation with over 1000 employees?
• Receive a farm subsidy or price support?
• Belong to a union, receive a union pension, or work for a union in a state with compulsory or coercive union laws?
• Receive social security, medicare, or medicaid and depend on it for primary health and welfare?
• Receive unemployment compensation?
• Work for a unit of federal, state, or local government?
• Live in government subsidized housing or receive food stamps?
• Receive subsidized education benefits or government grants?
• Work for a company that provides a substantial portion of it's goods or services to government?
• Work in a heavily regulated industry?

The "middle class" most politicians work so hard to protect today belong to the above groups, who recycle the power and money granted  them through the mill of big government, lobbyists, unions, and NGO's constantly churning out ever more dependence on the protection, special status, tax favor, subsidization, and regulation that only government with it's coercive power can effect. 

We are fast approaching another election when the voters must decide if the current path of policy in this country is helpful or harmful to our future.  Those who enjoyed the luxury of voting single issue politics in the past need to embrace a larger concept this time around.  That concept is personal liberty and it is diametrically opposed to crony capitalism, big government, and forced union membership.

American capitalism, personal liberty and economic freedom will all its faults, has spread justice and wealth across the globe. 

The world cannot afford a Remnant America.

  

  

The problem with Majority Opinion

" The conception that Government should be guided by majority opinion

 makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government."

  F.A. Hayek

Why is it that no matter how hard we try to correct our economy, it seems beyond hope.  Many Americans are filled with a sense of hopelessness,  they have been conditioned and educated to believe that our big benevolent institutions of government know what is wrong, and possess the tools to correct what is wrong. After all, since the 1930's we have been hard fixed on a course of imposing corrective measures on our economy and society through the implementation of scores of remedial laws and corresponding rules and regulation.

It is no coincidence that these seemingly hopeless times correspond with about half of our voting populace being dependent upon their relationship with government for their livelihood.

Whether you are a corn farmer, employee of a major bank, Detroit autoworker, engineer for GE, work for a NGO, retired and on Social Security and Medicare, receiving government assistance, or employed by a national, state, or local unit of government, you are dependent upon government and consequently vote to further your benefit.

This phenomena of majority government dependence exactly coincides with the crisis of governance we are currently experiencing.  To repeat Hayek:

 " The conception that Government should be guided by majority opinion

 makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government."

The seeds for this fundamental change in the makeup of our society were sown in the 1930's, watered and fertilized by zealous protectors of "social justice" over the course of 80 years, and have now sprouted.  It has taken so long for this transition that generational memories have been lost.  When my parents were born very few adult Americans relied on the benevolence of government for their livelihoods, they were independent of government.  

It is often said we are at a great tipping point.  If the American experiment with Individual Liberty in the form of a Democratic Republic is to continue its reign as the Worlds most desirable form of government,  the interest of the majority must be unbound from the government.

Steve

Social Engineering

Name nearly any major issue we face today, whether it be joblessness, state deficits, federal deficits, unfunded liabilities, social unrest, the mortgage crisis, health care costs, or the unsustainability of Medicare or Social Security, and the answers to solve these problems will rest on the principles of Individual Liberty. The solutions may not come about as fast as some people will desire, but they will be forged in the time tested crucible of experience.

We have seen in each of these issues, that the answers provided by principles that rest on a concept of "social justice" will so increase the bureaucracy devoted to defining the problem, devising a solution, and managing the outcome, that the bureaucracy itself will become an impediment to a truly "just" solution. Impediments to genuine solutions will exist because infinite rules and controls will be introduced to correct or prevent the occurrence of events seen as unfavorable to the "defined" solution.

Time after bloody time, we painfully relearn the lesson that no matter how smart the technocrats/politicians/leaders we place in charge are, men are simply incapable of taking into account the myriad unintended consequences of their actions.  Sometimes we come close and prevent major damage.  Most of the time we wreak havoc on the economy and our culture by chipping away at Liberty.

Here is the typical sequence of events as illustrated by the housing debacle:

We decide as a society that it is a good idea if most of the population owns a home, we have seen through innumerable studies that homeowners are far more likely to raise law-abiding children, cost society less, and contribute more to their communities.

Lawmakers then propose and pass legislation reducing the cost of home ownership.

Bureaucrats then determine the implementation of the law via the guarantee of loans, the reduction of equity required,  reduction of banking reserve requirements for those willing to make the new loans, and not least the coercion of private banking enterprises through the granting of privilege to expand their operations.

The huge new amount of debt instruments introduced into the economy find most buyers willing to take only the best and consequently, in order to sell the higher risk mortgages, financiers bundle batches into combined classes of risk.

The sheer volume of these new debt instruments becomes so large that the degree of separation between ultimate lender and borrower becomes infinite and the huge volumes necessitate international trade and whole new classes of financial instruments are created to enable the market to absorb the volume.

When the whole program crashes, Americans are aghast.  How could this happen?  Where were the regulators?

If have followed the underlying logic so far, you can apply similar reasoning and eventual outcomes to virtually every major social program.  To reiterate:  Society defines a goal,  legislators enable the goal,  bureaucrats interpret the legislation and enforce its implementation.  The major problem then occurs when the coercive power of government is used in the absence of that power being specifically granted by the society that defined the original goal.  In other words the politicians hand off the rule making responsibility to the executive branch.


Ultimately your Individual Liberty was reduced because your elected officials and their appointed technicians
obligated you for the failure of their policy implementation.


Who could argue that greater home ownership was not an admirable objective?

Greater home ownership was and is desirable.  The important point is we must let the general increase in wealth generated by policies which encourage free enterprise, individual liberty, and rule of law drive our social aims.

Steve

Steve Jobs R.I.P.

How many Wall Street Protestors are sporting IPHONES?

Everyone who today laments the passing of this billionaire genus entrepreneur, take pause and pray that his passing does not coincidentally mark the end of the society that enabled his contributions to the world. We are fast laying down rules and requirements that stifle innovation of any kind.

I'm not kidding. Ask yourself how many Jobs today are hindered by the the forces of coercion from bringing to the marketplace stunning new ways of thinking, doing and acting. If you answer "probably not many", you are correct.  The point is that the fragile unknowable resource that is human innovation is easily squelched by a well meaning society intent on correcting some perceived injustice.

The crucial point is that is doesn't take a lot of Steve Jobs to immeasurably improve the world.

Another crucial point is that we cannot know who, when, where or in what field of endeavor innovation will spring forth. It is not a plannable, controllable, governable event. It cannot be "stimulated" by government.  Pure brilliant innovation can best be be fostered and stimulated by the protection of.......you guessed it,  INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.  So stop blaming the rich, stop protesting social injustice, stop bestowing privilege on classes of people and corporations through laws that only protect or privilege some of us. Law must apply equally to all. 

Start protesting the loss of Individual Liberty,  start protesting unequal application of Law, start protesting social engineering,  start protesting laws that enable labor unions to force people to join them in order to be able to work.

If you loved and admired what Steve Jobs brought to the world, you must protect our country's ability to nurture success.  

Lessons in the Inevitable

It is a sad and ironical note that just as the last members of the generation that prevailed in World War II are passing, America is being lead by "good intention" down the same road that well meaning Germans and Italians trod prior to that war.

It shouldn't really be a surprise, the same miscalculation by a well meaning populace was made in the run up to WWI.

They both began with subtle creeping restrictions on Individual Liberty and the fostering of an attitude of contempt for capitalism.

Typically these developments and corresponding arguments were couched in terms which were deliberately redefined in order to engender hope,  Liberty became "freedom from need", "freedom from want", "freedom from oppression", "freedom from sickness" and so on.

Central economic planning, (a necessary precursor to central political planning) became the paradigm, along with systematic dismissal of belief in the free market system by the educated elite, especially the economists.  It became to be accepted that specialists and uniquely intelligent leaders could better determine the use of a nations resources than the obscure and often unintelligible forces of the market.

It paid well for big capitalists to support the concept,  monopolies and oligopolies were strengthened.  It also paid well for organized labor too be in support of restrictive and protective policies,  they could command higher wages.  The intelligentsia were in higher demand due a to greater need to rationalize, organize, and deploy resources.  Scientists and engineers became the chief implementers of policy.

Full employment was touted as the mission. Since it is, from a practical standpoint,  impossible for men to be smart enough to plan the deployment of labor and resources in order to bring about full employment, the only means left to fulfill the promise is an emergency.  That eventuality, in most cases, will be war.

Different sparks precipitated the two wars, yet the hard cold rarely stated reality is that these wars were fought over the basic differences in principle between Individual Liberty and Collectivism.

The disturbing fundamental is that the slow inexorable creep of collectivism eventually undermined the virtues of Liberty until a new social order was suddenly, though inevitably, accepted and embraced by the majority, who could then effectively silence the minority.

By the time this had happened there was no turning back.

Let there be no mistake in your mind, the seemingly small acceptable sacrifices in Individual Liberty that we are making for the "Greater Good" are cumulatively corrosive.  The restrictions on Liberty being promulgated at an ever increasing pace against States, Business Enterprises, Farmers, Local Government, and Individuals will conclude as all collectivist experiments have, and that is in explosive tumult.

Steve

Keynesian Stimulation

It seems as if no amount of Keynesian stimulus can revive our economic crisis.

Try as we might, corporate bailouts, loans to foreign banks, surreal Federal Reserve interest rates, cash for clunkers, huge injections of cash into state governments, loans and grants to favored green energy initiatives, extensions of unemployment insurance, boosts to welfare programs, and tax cuts or extensions have all failed to yank our economy out of it's doldrums.

Democrats want more spending, Republicans want fewer taxes.  Same old story.

What if we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the current malaise?  What if in our adherence to paradigm we have missed an essential element?  Could it be that our "Western Society" has evolved so far from the basic concept of Liberty, that most of us don't really understand what the macro impact of societal "improvements" ultimately mean to the welfare of civilization?

I think we are being dragged kicking and screaming to a startling revelation.

 Here it is, I'm going to say it:   Liberty is on Strike.

 The slow inexorable creep of collectivism as a bulwark against capitalism,  has paralyzed   the creativity and innovation of individuals on a large scale.  Sure the major corporations have been immensely profitable,  they sleep with the authorities, and man the writing desks of legislation.  We have reached a stage where arbitrary use of authority has stifled the innovation of not only individuals, but of small companies, small institutions, and even state and local governments. In the main we do not recognize we have lost Liberty because it has happened at a turtles pace.

What was your reaction to the news "Armed Federal Agents Storm Gibson Guitars"?

Did you think or say "well, Gibson must have done something wrong."  Most likely that was your response.
We are deeply ingrained with the belief that our government at a fundamental level is just.  In fact we continue to grant the government more and more discretionary power to bureaucratically correct "injustice".

This power grant carries a license to exercise coercion.  The arbitrary use of which rains tears upon the bright light of Lady Liberty's torch.


Steve

Liberty in History

Liberty didn't begin with the signing of the Declaration, nor did it begin with the drafting and ratification of the Constitution.

Liberty's written roots begin with the basic individualism tenets sown by Christians, Greeks, and Romans from Erasmus and Montaigne, Cicero and Tacitus, to Pericles and Thucydides, classic later expansions and refinements of import were undertaken by Cobden and Bright, Adam Smith and Hume, Locke and Milton.  Perhaps the heights of illustration and illumination took place in the writings of Tocqueville and Lord Acton followed by von Mises and Hayek.

The chief point is that a lot of civilizations have obtained some level of Individual Freedom only to lose it over time through reckless legislative fiddling with it's underlying principles.  In most cases the primary motive was to correct some perceived social injustice, in all cases the result was some form of socialism and consequent loss of the spontaneous developments needed to sustain long term societal success.

Successful societies can live with a prescribed level of coercion by government, understood and agreed to at the outset.  Successful societies cannot thrive with arbitrary coercion, it will eventually erode the very foundation that enabled success.....Individual Liberty.

Defining Terminlogy

The American Heritage Dictionary

Republican Party n.   One of the two primary political parties of the United States, organized in 1854 to oppose slavery.

Democratic Party n.  One of the two major political parties in the United States, owing it's origin to a split in the Democratic Republican Party under Andrew Jackson in 1828.

Democratic Republican Party n. A political party in the United States that was opposed to the Federalist Party and was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792 and dissolved in 1828.

Federalist Party n. A U.S. political party founded in 1787 to advocate the establishment of a strong federal government and the adoption by the states of the Constitution.  The party gained prominence in the 1790's under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton.

Tory n. 3. often tory, A supporter of traditional political and social institutions against the forces of democratization or reform; a political conservative.

Whig n. 1. a member of an 18th and 19th century British political party that was opposed to the Tories. 2. A supporter of the war against England during the American Revolution. 3. A 19th century American political party formed to oppose the Democratic Party and favoring high tariffs and a loose interpretation of the Constitution.

Liberalism n. 2.a. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of human beings and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

Socialism n. 1.a. A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community.  2. The building of the base material for communism under the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist-Leninist theory.

Communism n. 2. a. A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.

Conservatism n. 1. The inclination, especially in politics to maintain the traditional or existing order. 2. A political philosophy or attitude expressing respect for traditional institutions, distrust of governmental activism, and distrust of sudden change in the established order.

As you read through these definitions you could probably identify your own beliefs in several, which often contained contrary bits of data,  and you may have also been able to conclusively decide certain beliefs did not fit your own whatsoever.  Hence the problem today.  We have no clear current definition for the belief set by which most Americans can identify, leading to almost 40% who maintain they are "independent" and only 20% within each major party who identify themselves as being at the outlying edges of left or right.

Americans of most stripes can embrace the term "liberty", and I believe it is only through understanding the definition of the term which entails it's historical reference, economic consequence, and political relevance can we reach agreement on what it truly means to be an American.

Special Interests

The greatest threat faced by our Republic is the three way cabal of special interests, politicians and courts.  These are the enemies of individual liberty.

If you think that one or the other of the major parties is less guilty, you haven't done your homework.

Here are the top 10 special interest expenditures since 1989:

ActBlue $55,059,076,  American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees $45,792,853  AT&T Inc $41,660,104, National Assn of Realtors $40,020,510, Service Employees International Union $37,130,289, National Education Assn $36,433,425, American Assn for Justice $34,094,421, Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $33,824,355,  Laborers Union $31,415,067, American Federation of Teachers $31,342,403.

Of this roughly $350 million dollars 85% was given to Democrats.  What about ATT or the Realtors?  They split their donations right down the middle giving equal amounts to both parties.  What about those evil fat cats on Wall Street?

Goldman Sachs gave 60% of their $21 million to Democrats.  Well how about Microsoft and General Electric? evenly split.

Look it up on opensecrets.org

The point of this exercise is to disabuse the notion that Big Corporations give to Republicans.  They give to the politicians that will see things their way,  same as the unions do.  

So now we have the big companies + organized labor + politicians operating in concert against who?

Against competition, that's who.  If you pass a law that satisfies big corps and labor, you can bet they have stifled competition for jobs and innovation AND the politicians have corralled funding for their next run.The result is less freedom and higher cost to the American public.

Think not Democrat or Republican.  Think Progressivism or Liberty.  Progressives are found in both parties.

Liberty lost before

To fully understand, appreciate, and make choices in our current political climate you must educate yourself primarily about two conflicting schools of thought in the field of Socio-economics.  Here are a few suggestions.

Classic Liberal - Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Milton Freidman

Progressive - John Maynard Keynes is probably sufficient.

We are at a tipping point in the American experiment with Liberty.  Your choices in the next round of elections could very well determine the fate of our nation.

Our ability to lead the world in innovation, ecology, art, liberty, justice, and standard of living hangs in the balance by the thread of economic growth.  Everybody knows it, everybody says it.  

The key question you must answer:  Do I believe that a well meaning group of highly educated professional politicians can effectively allocate the resources of a nation to achieve greater prosperity for all?  Or do I believe that the job of government is to protect us from physical harm, administer justice without regard to race, creed, religion or economic status, foster an environment conducive to business and industry,  and keep our nation competitive on a global scale?

With the single exception of the US,  all of the once great nations in the western world over the last 400 years slowly and inexorably made the wrong choice.  England, France, Germany, Spain, Russia all chose a path that weakened their economies, compromised individual liberty, and cost them first place. 

Study Up!

"To grant no more freedom........"

"To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use."  F.A. Hayek