There is something, evidently, in the human mind, even when carefully honed at Oxford or the Sorbonne, that hesitates to believe in capitalism: in the enriching mysteries of inequality, the inexhaustible mines of the division of labor, the multiplying miracles of market economics, the compounding gains from trade and property.  It is far easier to see the masters of the works as evil, to hunt them as witches, favored by occult powers of Faustian links.

The fantasies take a lurid turn in the minds of the mobs.  A French sociologist tells of the furies called forth in the 1960s by a group of Jewish dressmakers who opened shops in a small town in Provence. How could their prices be so low for fashions so elegant, for styles of Parisian design and grace? It must be conspiracy.  They were selling drugs, it was muttered at first; then darker rumors arose.  Two young women left for Paris. They were victims of the white slave trade, it was said, and the dressmakers were its front! A mob gathered and stormed and burned the shops to the ground. Amid the smoldering ashes, the proprietors presumably reflected on the strange profits of efficient enterprise.

In American cities this mode of thought appears in  milder form in the inevitable rumors surrounding any prosperous Italian businessman (“he is in league with the Mafia”) A convict once told me, with complete assurance, that everyone in prison knew for a fact that John D Rockefeller had acquired his money as a member of a gang of Jesse James, for which Standard Oil served as a convenient cover. The ideal that all wealth is acquired through stealing is popular in prisons and at Harvard.

Edward Banfield, in his book The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, maintains that this attitude is a crucial characteristic of an undeveloping economy.  In the small town in Italy that he studied in an effort to understand the sources of poverty, every businessman was assumed to be cheating his employees, every priest to be filching from the plate, every politician and policeman to be on the take. ..

In the past this strange struggle has often enlisted the services of  lumpen  intellectuals, contriving gothic rationales for racism and pillage: inventing tables of cabalistic Jewish financiers, conspiracies of Asian shopkeepers, peculiar collaborations of usurious moneylenders. In more recent times the fashion has tuned decisively against ethnic prejudice, which remains socially acceptable chiefly among the poor.  But hatred of producers of wealth still flourishes and has become, in fact, the racism of the intelligentsia.

From the new edition of Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder.  Originally published in 1980 the new version is updated with 40,000 words and views on the current scene

HKO

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”- Confucius

A nation or culture that demonizes wealth production will, not surprisingly, produce little wealth.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/confucius136380.html

“They’ll condemn the pope for the silliness of organized religion, but then later they tell us we should understand those who—in the name of religion—want to kill us. They’ll order us to “question authority,” then they’ll parrot the latest left-wing attack blog funded by George Soros. That’s the funny thing about tolerance: it’s actually an avenue for bad behavior, instead of respect for the good stuff. It’s why, in the name of tolerance, there are so many mass murderers in the world running countries. We have now made it a rule to respect those who refuse to respect us.”

Excerpt From: Gutfeld, Greg. “The Joy of Hate.” Crown Forum, 2012-11-13. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-joy-of-hate/id530947831?mt=11

From Daniel Greenfield in the Sultan Knish, The Dreaded Drone, 3/11/13

Excerpt:

We aren’t dealing with fascism, we’re dealing with bureaucratic collectivism. Rather than a militarized society, what we have is a socialized society. The people who run it don’t care much for the military. They prefer nudges and regulations. They wipe out entire industries with the stroke of a pen leaving few other options.

The enemy isn’t a United States Air Force Staff Sergeant downing a Mountain Dew and then looking for a Toyota pickup truck filled with armed men and a goat in Waziristan. It’s the people behind the government counter that you have to deal with on a daily basis and your neighbor who has all their numbers and loves informing on people who aren’t behaving themselves the way that the TV says they should.

The enemy is in the non-profit think-tanks that come up with the latest ‘nudge’ to socialize people and the latest billionaire who gets bored and wants to treat an entire city like his employees. It’s the news anchors whose big ambition is to read things in a serious voice from the teleprompter and all the people who automatically repeat back what they hear on the news.

The enemy is every bright-eyed boy and girl who leave college determined to make the world a better place by eliminating all the things and people they have been told are bad. The enemy is the entire system of education and entertainment that shaped them into human drones on a mission of progress.

HKO

How many of us are truly worried about being struck down in a Starbucks by a domestic drone?  Rand Paul’s drone rant may have made for interesting political theater and he may have made a very legitimate legal point.

But I wonder if drones are not some creepy new technology that  is easy to rant about while the larger problem, a steady drain of our freedom from well intentioned moral supremacists, is always justified, often from both sides of the aisle, by bypartisanship and compromise and the seemingly small impact  each step will make.  Yet the eventual outcome is a nation of human drones.

“Every snowflake pleads innocent but it is still an avalanche.”

“How funny is it that gay activists stay away from black churches; it’s the same hypocrisy you see with the animal rights group PETA. They’ll throw paint on a white guy wearing ostrich boots, but they’d never do that to a Native American strangling a bald eagle to make a feather headdress.”

Excerpt From: Gutfeld, Greg. “The Joy of Hate.” Crown Forum, 2012-11-13. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-joy-of-hate/id530947831?mt=11

Ralph Reiland writes A Key Economic Lesson in American Spectator, 1/2/13

Excerpts:

 In 2012, “the federal government will spend more than $668 billion on at least 126 different programs to fight poverty,” in addition to “welfare spending by state and local governments which adds $284 billion to that figure,” writes Tanner.

On a per capita basis, this roughly $1 trillion a year in welfare spending “amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three,” explains Tanner.

In contrast, the Census Bureau reports that the median household income in the United States dropped to $50,054 in 2011, the latest figure available, down 8 percent from 2007, the year before the recession began.

“Welfare spending increased significantly under President George W. Bush and has exploded under President Barack Obama,” states Tanner. “In fact, since President Obama took office, federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year. Despite this government largess, more than 46 million Americans continue to live in poverty.”

Bottom line, “the poverty rate is perilously close to where we began more than 40 years ago,” after $15 trillion in spending, Tanner reports. “Clearly, we are doing something wrong.”

HKO

Poverty persists because we pay people to be poor.  This is both simple and profound.  Once people get paid to not work the benefits they lose by working amounts to an enormous marginal tax rate.  This is a far greater outrage than the measly few percentage tax points Congress and their media lapdogs have been choking on.

Poverty persists because we have created a poverty industry where six figure staffers increase their value by creating more dependents.  Instead of correcting failures we create institutions to perpetualize them.

Poverty persists because we have created a behavior modification program where everyone is a victim and every benefit is deserved.  Victim hood has replaced responsibility and ‘deserved’ has replaced ‘earned’.