Primary indoctrination

 Candace Owens’ blog opens with this slogan: 

If there is one message I want to communicate, it’s simply - Be Free.

Believe it.  Feel it!  Live it!  

Use the link below to The Daily Caller to view the video of the interview with Candace Owens.  

From Sunday Morning Futures 10/10/21 via The Daily Caller:

‘Pull Your Children Out’: Candace Owens Says Public Schools Are Brainwashing Children To Embrace ‘Marxist Principles’

The time is now, remove your children from these indoctrination camps, they’re not learning to be smart,  they’re not focused on hard academics, they are being brainwashed and and systematically controlled and what they want to produce, by the way, are failures,” Owens continued. 

“Because it guarantees that they’ll have children that will grow up to be adults that are dependent on the government — and a totalitarian government that’s focused on Marxist principles and needs the people who are dependent on them.”

The conservative author claimed that because “children are the future,” governments want to control what those children are taught and what they believe.

“You deny them access to your children and they can’t guarantee that they’re going to be able to exist and sustain itself,” she said.

Owens urged parents to “pay attention” to world events and noted how France has just banned homeschooling in September — although the policy may not be as draconian as first envisioned.

Owens said France “did it under the guise of ‘well, at home there’s radical threats, there’s homegrown terrorism, we’re dealing with all this Islamic terrorism, one way we can prevent this is that we can guarantee that nobody’s allowed to homeschool.'”

The conservative activist suggested the same policy is coming to America.

“So let me tell you, if that’s them catching a sneeze, America’s about to catch a cold; if France caught a sneeze, we’re going to catch a cold,” she said, claiming that banning homeschooling in the United States would be one way to “go against these Trump supporters, these conservatives.”

Distribute $ from a shrinking pot, or enlarge the pot?

 We can’t tax our way to prosperity for all.  Misery maybe, but not wealth.  The choice seems so simple.  And when you factor in which option allows for maximum personal liberty, it’s a no-brainer - encourage investment in economic growth and go easy on taxes.  As the authors of the essay below call it, this is an inconvenient truth.  

From the Wall Street Journal by way of the Hoover Institute - Excerpts from an essay on Hauser’s Law.  

Hauser’s Law

by W. Kurt Hauser, David Ranson

Sunday, October 12, 2008

W. Kurt Hauser is a San Francisco investment economist who published fresh and eye-opening data about the federal tax system fifteen years ago. His findings imply that there are draconian constraints on the ability of higher taxes to generate fresh revenues. I think his discovery deserves to be called Hauser’s law, because it is as central to the economics of taxation as Boyle’s law is to the physics of gases. Yet economists and policy makers are barely aware of it.

Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution than physics. Unfortunately, it is often poisoned by political wishful thinking, just as medieval science was poisoned by religious doctrine. Taxation is an important example.

Hauser uncovered the means to answer these questions definitively. In a Wall Street Journal article in 1993, he stated that “no matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5 percent of GDP.” What a pity that his discovery has not been more widely disseminated.

The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates during this period but that tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax-rate increase would reduce GDP, in which case Hauser’s law says it would also lower tax revenue. That is a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice. It would surely be unpopular today with those presidential candidates who plan to raise tax rates on the rich—if they knew about it.

The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates during this period but that tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax-rate increase would reduce GDP, in which case Hauser’s law says it would also lower tax revenue. That is a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice. It would surely be unpopular today with those [presidential] candidates who plan to raise tax rates on the rich—if they knew about it.

Putting it a different way, capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax intolerant.

The economics of taxation will be moribund until economists accept and explain Hauser’s law. They will have to face up to it, reconcile it with other facts, and incorporate it within the body of accepted knowledge. And if this requires overturning reigning doctrine, then so be it.

Presidential candidates, instead of disputing how much more tax to impose on whom, would be better advised to come up with plans for increasing GDP and ridding the tax system of its wearying complexity. That would be a formula for success.

This essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 20, 2008.

History repeating itself —

...because we can’t seem to learn from our grandparents’ past.  

My father introduced me to Frederick Hayek decades ago when he gave me his copy of the book, The Road to Serfdom.  I never gave it back.  This book should be part of everyone’s education.  Written in 1944, it portends what we are seeing today in America - from suppression of speech unpopular with the ruling class to the current craze for equity and social justice.  Why is it that as historic horrors fade into history their dismal track record and the pain they cause to the human soul is forgotten so that the unthinkable (socialism) becomes thinkable?  

With all we know about the terrible results of socialist movements, why do some Americans still want to be controlled by bureaucrats and lose their freedoms to think and act in their own best interests?  Even those ignorant of history or conditions in other countries should understand the brilliance of a free markets, individual choice and dispersed power.  My biggest fear isn’t losing material possessions - I have lived on a shoestring most of my life - but losing what freedoms we still have in America today and that once lost, it will be impossible to get them back. 

Many of Hayek’s writings are available for download.  

The Road to Serfdom 

Articles by Hayek 

Read a short bio of Frederick A. Hayek on the Econlib  website.
“In 1944 Hayek also attacked socialism from a very different angle. From his vantage point in Austria, Hayek had observed Germany very closely in the 1920s and early 1930s. After he moved to Britain, he noticed that many British socialists were advocating some of the same policies for government control of people’s lives that he had seen advocated in Germany in the 1920s. He had also seen that the Nazis really were National Socialists; that is, they were nationalists and socialists. So Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to warn his fellow British citizens of the dangers of socialism. His basic argument was that government control of our economic lives amounts to totalitarianism. “Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest,” he wrote, “it is the control of the means for all our ends.”

Quotes to pique your interest in Hayek’s writings:  (Remember that “The Road to Serfdom” was written in 1944 as a warning about Nazi Germany!) 

On the Cancel Culture and Media Censorship

“Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions--all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.” ― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

On the contested vote for “Social Infrastructure “ 

“It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”  ― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

On the Sorrow of Utopia

I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”  ― F.A. Hayek

The Entity That Pays The Piper..

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”  ― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

On Planners and Planning

“The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”  ― Friedrich A. Hayek

On Getting a High Quality Education 

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn't be socialists.”  ― Friedrich Hayek

Equality vs Equity

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time” 
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution Of Liberty

How to Enforce Redistribution of Wealth

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”  ― Friedrich von Hayek

What, Me Work?

 Wall Street Journal 

Notable & Quotable: Susan Collins on Work

‘We will not build a more prosperous, just, and equitable society characterized by opportunity, dignity, and meaning just by issuing government checks.

Oct. 1, 2021

From remarks by Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) delivered in the Senate Sept 28:

There were many temporary programs that were instituted to help as our economy shut down and people were laid off. I, along with three of my colleagues, authored one of them: the Paycheck Protection Program. . . . That program was successful—and temporary.

But that is not what this Administration is proposing. Rather, it is creating entitlement programs untethered to work that would fundamentally change incentives for our families, our communities, our society, and our economy, depriving people of their dignity and eroding their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Absent a pandemic or other crisis, Washington should not simply write monthly checks, creating dependency among those who could have a better life. The federal government’s obligation is not fulfilled by simply sending a check, washing its hands of any responsibility to actually help people achieve self-sufficiency.

It appears that this Administration is moving toward the left’s proposal for a guaranteed minimum income regardless of one’s ability to work. Never forget that the first version of the Green New Deal included a guaranteed income for those “unable or unwilling to work.” Mr. President, we must not go down that path.

We will not build a more prosperous, just, and equitable society characterized by opportunity, dignity, and meaning just by issuing government checks. The time-tested way to achieve those goals for American families is by supporting and rewarding work. It is by recognizing the dignity of work. And that is the tradition that we must continue to embrace.

The American Spirit revealed

The deciding factor for our decision to purchase the home we live in was the neighborhood.  It was an established neighborhood with wide streets, well-maintained homes with well-kept Perhaps some urban planner or cynic would interpret the scene as vapid or plastic - a cliche image of suburban bliss.  But those who know how suburbia works know that neighborhoods can be like small towns where people know one another, share the same values and look out for each other.  It felt like home.  

I haven’t lived in a lot of places, but I recognize the genuine American spirit of friendliness in rural Maine neighborliness described in the podcast interview with Gigi Georges, author of Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America.  Though there are clues, the soul of a place and its people is unseen.  Suburban neighborhoods have souls worth fighting for.  

Click HERE to listen to the podcast from The Federalist Radio Hour.

Discovering the ‘Unseen’ Story of Rural Maine

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 By The Federalist Staff

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Gigi Georges joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss her book “Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America.”

“So much of the reporting has been done in a parachuted way and too often I believe with a narrow and somewhat biased lens that I did not expect to see quite that interconnectedness that I saw in so many aspects of life there, in nearly every aspect of life there,” Georges said. “And what I came away with perhaps that biggest ‘aha’ was … I was far more isolated in this tremendous city filled with people than any of these residents in Downeast, Washington County. As geographically isolated as they are, they are anything but isolated in the sense of community and the sense of being there for one another.”

Amazing warning from the Left

I have never been a Naomi Wolf fan, but after hearing her speak on what is happening to our American (and Western) freedoms, I know we share a deep love of liberty and the desire to fight to save it. Wolf has been branded a enemy of the establishment left but is still speaking out in traditional right or neutral media  formats.  Watch her interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox Nation for a clear-eyed view of history in the making. Trigger warning - it is disturbing to hear how far we have come down this road to serfdom. 

From  The Defender

March 5, 2021

Naomi Wolf: We’ve Reached ‘Step Ten’ of the 10 Steps to Fascism

In her 2008 book, “End of America,” Naomi Wolf outlined the 10 steps those in power use to close down democracies. Sadly, she writes today, as governments use the pandemic to justify the suppression of civil rights, America is now in the throes of “Step Ten.”

Naomi Wolf: 10 steps to fascism

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

By Naomi Wolf

In 2008, I wrote a book, “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.” In it I warned, based on my study of closing democracies in 20th century history, that America needed to beware of an all-too-possible slide into totalitarianism.

I warned that would-be tyrants, whether they are on the left or the right, always use a map to close down democracies, and that they always take the same ten steps.

Whether they “Invoke an External and Internal Threat” or “Develop a Paramilitary Force” or “Restrict the Press” or the final step, “Subvert the Rule of Law, these steps are always recognizable — and they always work to crush democracies and establish tyrannies. At the time that I wrote the book, the “global threat” of terrorism was the specter that powers invoked in order to attack our freedoms.

The book was widely read and discussed, both at the time of its publication and over the last 12 years. Periodically over the last decade, people would ask me when and if we had reached “Step Ten.”

We — my brave publisher, Chelsea Green, and I — are releasing videos of me reading the first and last chapters (see videos below) of “The End of America” now, in 2021, for free. And I am calling the sequel to this book, which I am now writing, “Step Ten” — because as of March of last year, we have indeed, I am so sad to say, arrived at and begun to inhabit “Step Ten” of the 10 steps to fascism.

Though in 2008, I did not explicitly foresee that a medical pandemic would be the vehicle for moving the entire globe into “Step Ten,” I have at various points warned of the dangers of medical crises as vehicles that tyranny can exploit to justify suppressions of civil rights.

Today, a much-hyped medical crisis has taken on the role of being used as a pretext to strip us all of core freedoms, that fears of terrorism did not, despite 20 years of effort, ultimately achieve.

In 2015, I was widely mocked in mainstream news outlets for warning about the hysteria that accompanied Ebola reporting, and I cautioned then that infectious diseases could be used as a justification for ushering in the suppression of liberties, always under the guise of emergency measures.

In 2020, I showed in my book, “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” how infectious disease epidemics, such as cholera and typhus, had been exploited in the 19th century by the British state in order to crush freedoms and invade people’s privacy. I wrote about how the first anti-vaccination movements arose among British parents in the Victorian period.

That book was initially cancelled, and its message of warning continues to be assailed. But that book, too, was prescient: In early March of 2020, of course, a global pandemic was announced — COVID-19.

In the immediate wake of the announcement and narrativization of that pandemic, most of the elements of a locked-in, 360-degree totalitarianism have been put into place in most of the countries of the West, including in what had been robust democracies. It all happened very quickly and comprehensively.

In the U.S. we now have:

1. Emergency measures in many states, which suspend due process of law. This is the hallmark of a police state. COVID-19 is invoked as the reason for the introduction of emergency law — but there is no endpoint for lifting these emergency laws.
2. The closures of schools, which break the social contract with the next generation.
3. Bills being passed for “vaccine passports,” which bypass the Fourth Amendmentto the Constitution by allowing the government and Big Tech companies to intrude on medical privacy, and to create a comprehensive digital surveillance state. (Indeed, the fact that tech stocks rose by 27% each quarter of the pandemic shows one driver of this war against the human: Every minute human beings spend in a classroom, at the pub or restaurant or in a church or synagogue, is time that tech companies lose money by being unable to harvest that data. COVID-19 policies driven by “COVID-19 Response” — actually, by Big Tech companies — ensure that humans are not allowed to connect except via digital platforms. The reason is profit as well as social control).
4. Forced closures of businesses. By intervening directly in the economy and allowing certain businesses to flourish (Amazon, Walmart, Target) at the expense of small businesses, Main Street shops, restaurants and sole proprietor businesses in general, the State has merged government and corporations in a way that is characteristic of Italian fascism and modern Chinese communism.
5. Restrictions on assembly. Some states such as California are fining people for seeing their friends in their homes, and making it unlawful for kids to have playdates with their friends. Massachusetts restricted gatherings of more than 10 people at a time, forcing synagogues and churches to stay closed, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling against states forcing churches to close. Parks and playgrounds and beaches have been closed. In countries such as Britain, people are fined for leaving their homes for more than an hour’s exercise a day.
6. Forced face coverings. In Massachusetts, people are fined if they are not wearing masks outdoors — even children as young as 5 are forced to do so by law. Again, this mandate has not been undergirded by peer-reviewed studies showing medical necessity. And there is no endpoint proffered for these extraordinary violations of personal freedom.
7. Suppression of free speech. Big Tech companies are censoring critics of COVID-19 policy and vaccine policy, as well as censoring views that are on the right hand of the political spectrum. Incitement, a word that has a long history in the 20th century for closing down free speech, has been weaponized by the left to shut down First Amendment freedoms of expression. In other forms of censorship and management of speech and public debate, tycoons such as Bill Gates have been funding major news outlets, with millions of dollars directed to “COVID-19 education.” As a result, dissenting voices are marginalized and shamed, or even threatened with legal action or job losses.
8. Science being hijacked in the interests of “biofascism.” By heavily funding scientific commentators such as Dr. Fauci in the United States, Imperial College and SAGE in the U.K. and Dr. Christian Drosten in Germany, a dominant set of policies and pronouncements about COVID-19 that benefit a small group of bad actors — notably tech and pharmaceutical interests, acting in concert with governments — have built an army of secured, credentialled supporters. But when other scientists or institutions seek debate or transparency, they are threatened with job loss or are reputationally attacked, as in the case of Dr. Simon Goddeke of the Netherlands, who was told to keep quiet by his university when he challenge the flawed COVID-19 PCR test protocols.
9. Data being hijacked to serve the interests of this biofascism. This manipulation of truth, which I foreshadowed in “The End of America,” is typical of the Soviet censors. COVID-19 platforms such as the COVID Tracking Project and Johns Hopkins University, funded by technocrats such as Michael Bloomberg, serve unverifiable COVID-19 data that directly affect the stock markets. Again, while this un-American merger of corporate interests and public policy is reminiscent of Italian fascism, the twist provided by digital data presentation and its relationship to the stock market is very much of the 21st century.
10. Attacks on religious minorities. The orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn and Christian churches in California have been singled out for punishment if they do not follow COVID-19 rules — a targeting of religion that is characteristic of communist policies on the left, especially in China.
11. Policies that weaken bonds between human beings and weaken the family being introduced and policed. This is the most serious development of all.

The new biofascism, very much driven by Big Tech leaders, is a war against human beings and the qualities that make us human.

Masks break human beings’ ability to bond face to face and enjoy human contact, smiles and jokes. Masks turn down the effectiveness of human “technology,” essentially, by making it hard for us to “read” each other and to pick up social cues.

Forbidding assembly keeps us from forming human alliances against these monstrous interests. Forbidding human assembly also prevents new cultures, new heroes and new business models from arising. We are all stuck with the Rolodex and the ideas we had in March of 2019.

Forcing kids to distance at school and wear masks ensures a generation of Americans who don’t know how to form human alliances, and who don’t trust their own human instincts. Those are counterrevolutionary training techniques.

Driving all learning onto (already prepared) distance-learning platforms ensures that kids do not know how to behave in human space, space not mediated by technology.

Many COVID-19 policies seem designed to ensure that humans will have no “analog” space or “analog” culture left — no way to feel comfortable simply gathering in a room, touching one another as friends or allies, or joining together.

Lastly, driving all human interaction onto Zoom (which is a window for the Communist China Party, as China owns the platform) is not only a way to harvest all of our tech, business secrets and IP, it is a way to ensure that intimacy and connection in the future will be done online and that human face-to-face contact will be killed off.

Why is this? Why develop policies that punish, encumber and restrict human contact in analog (un-surveilled, unmediated) spaces?

Because human contact is the great revolutionary force when it comes to human freedom and resistance to this form of comprehensive biofascism — the biofascism represented by the New Normal — the medico-fascist “Step Ten.”

Now let me recap from the year 2008, and read you my intro to “The End of America”, as well as the warning at the close of that book. Its message has never, sadly, been more timely. This time, the threats to freedom that were then justified by terrorism, have re-clothed themselves in the trappings of a medical pandemic.

But this time we do not just face a war on freedom. This time we face a war on human beings, and on all that makes us human.

Watch Naomi Wolf read the introduction to “The End of America” and two other videos on the Defender website or YouTube. 

Climate Crisis is a lack of clear thinking

Notable & Quotable: No Climate Crisis

‘A poll in 2019 revealed that 68% of Americans would not pay $10 more per month on their electricity bill to combat climate change.’

Wall Street Journal, Sept. 26, 2021

From the Sept. 23 edition of Christian Whiton’s Super Macro newsletter:

The fake science pushed on the public by the government and media has worked somewhat. A Pew poll last year indicated 62% of adults think climate change is affecting their local community. Gallup, exhibiting the trademark arrogance and refusal to countenance disagreement that mark the climate debate, said that 64% of adults “acknowledge the scientific consensus” that human activities cause climate change. On the other hand, a poll in 2019 revealed that 68% of Americans would not pay $10 more per month on their electricity bill to combat climate change. The same poll showed that if you lower that amount to $1, then 57% of the public would pony up. We see that the American public as usual knows better than the elites. The climate is changing as it always has and carbon emissions are something we should probably curb gradually through nuclear power, natural gas, and renewables, but there is no “crisis.” Certainly raising the cost of energy, which would stunt human progress generally, is not the right answer.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

 Famous words from Ronald Reagan.  "Help" from the government can, and often is, destructive.  Government entitlements create perverse incentives that change human behavior to the detriment of individuals, families and society.  All the while, those who invented the war on inequality, poverty, whatever, feel righteous and pure, rarely understanding their involvement in the expansion of the problems they sought to solve.  Willful blindness keeps the ideologies from ever admitting their culpability in the destruction of the lives of others.  

The trouble is that the connection between government aid and antisocial behavior, failed families and poverty are not well understood or talked about or taught to the next generation of policy-makers.  Nothing will change until the public understands how human nature is being manipulated and lives ruined - with both good and bad intentions.  If it is your life going down the toilet, it doesn't matter if the one helping you meant you no harm.  

Wall Street Journal, Opinion

The Destructive Legacy of the Great Society

Government subsidies for antisocial behavior stalled decades worth of black progress.

By Jason L. Riley,  Sept. 21, 2021

Excerpts: 

Liberals view a larger welfare state as an unalloyed good, but what’s the track record? Entitlement programs were dramatically expanded in the 1960s in the service of a war on poverty, yet poverty fell at a slower rate after the Great Society initiatives were implemented, and overall dependency on the government for food, shelter and other basic necessities increased. According to Howard Husock, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of a coming book on housing policy, “The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It,” the median time a family spends in New York City public housing today is 19 years. And 10% of public housing residents in the city have been there for more than 40 years. Housing intended to help families through a rough patch has become a multigenerational trap for some.

Between 1940 and 1960 the percentage of black families living in poverty declined by 40 points as blacks increased their years of education and migrated from poorer rural areas to more prosperous urban environs in the South and North. No welfare program has ever come close to replicating that rate of black advancement, which predates affirmative action programs that often receive credit for creating the black middle class. Moreover, what we experienced in the wake of the Great Society interventions was slower progress or outright retrogression. Black labor-force participation rates fell, black unemployment rates rose, and the black nuclear family disintegrated. In 1960 fewer than 25% of black children were being raised by a single mother; within four decades, it was more than half.

The welfare state is often discussed in relation to its effect on racial and ethnic minorities, yet crime, single parenting and drug abuse also increased among poor whites in the aftermath of the Great Society. When the government indulges and subsidizes counterproductive behavior, we tend to get more of it. Aside from how all this indiscriminate government benevolence has affected individuals, there’s also the matter of its long-term effect on America’s standard of living. By undermining the development of human capital and allowing—even encouraging—larger and larger swaths of the less-productive population to live off their more-productive brethren, we risk exacerbating income inequality and nurturing class resentments.

Hard-left ideologues who want to turn the U.S. into Western Europe, and politicians eager to hand out goodies in exchange for votes, don’t much care about these trade-offs. But they’re relevant for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between social progress and government “help.”

Shrinking Income Inequality

 I don't know if the data in this commentary is still true as entitlements and taxes are changing.  Perhaps the inequality gap is bigger or smaller than this article suggests, but the premise remains - it is not the amount of "income" that defines one's wealth but how much remains after taxes are paid and benefits are received - what do people have left to spend?   

Wall Street Journal, Opinion

Incredible Shrinking Income Inequality

Its rise is an illusion created by the Census Bureau’s failure to account for taxes and welfare.

By Phil Gramm and John Early

March 23, 2021

"While the disparity in earned income has become more pronounced in the past 50 years, the actual inflation-adjusted income received by the bottom quintile, counting the value of all transfer payments received net of taxes paid, has risen by 300%. The top quintile has seen its after-tax income rise by only 213%. As government transfer payments to low-income households exploded, their labor-force participation collapsed and the percentage of income in the bottom quintile coming from government payments rose above 90%.

In 2017, federal, state and local governments redistributed $2.8 trillion, or 22% of the nation’s earned household income. More than two-thirds of those transfer payments went to households in the bottom two income quintiles. Remarkably the Census Bureau chooses to count only $900 billion of that $2.8 trillion as income for the recipients. Excluded from the measurement of household income is some $1.9 trillion of government transfers. These include the earned-income tax credit, whose beneficiaries get a check from the Treasury; food stamps, which let beneficiaries buy food with government issued debit cards; and numerous other programs in which government pays for the benefits directly.

Give me Liberty

 

After perusing some of my favorite quotes from a wise, long-dead white man, I am certain that we are on a path set for us not by our current political leaders, but by our collective, fallible human nature.  Otherwise, how could Alexis de Tocqueville know almost 200 years ago how American liberty would be struggling in 2021?  We seem to be heading toward this perilous fate at an ever more rapid pace.  Will Americans wake up to the continuing loss of their individual liberty in time to revive it?  Or will we see some form of authoritarian bureaucracy (soft or hard tyranny) controlling our lives?    

Use the link below to read "Democracy in America" Volumes 1 and 2 in PDF format from Penn State.  

Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville  (1835)

On Human Nature or Why Education in the Tenets of Liberty is Essential

“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.” 
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Volume 2

On Individual "Rights" 

“It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”    ― Alexis de Tocqueville

On Equality

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” 
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy vs Socialism

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”     ― Alexis de Tocqueville

It's All OK - Until They Come For My Rights

“It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.” 
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Maintaining Political Power

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” 
― Alexis de Tocqueville