Thursday, October 14, 2010
Jonathan Chait makes an excellent point:One that I've advocated, but he's a better writer: (emp add) This week, Republican House Whip Eric Cantor appeared on the Daily Show. An interesting and (relatively) honest moment occured ...
CANTOR: {I don't want] the government sitting here saying, ‘This person here’s too successful, this one’s not, I’m gonna take from this one and give to that one.’ That’s the principle. It’s earned success.
That is indeed the heart of what Republicans believe. They believe that all success is earned success. They do not believe that luck or life circumstance play an important part in economic success. They believe that wealth and poverty are essentially moral categories, interchangeable with "hard work" and "sloth." They decry government, but they don't really oppose government per se. They oppose those government functions that transfer resources from the rich to the non-rich. ... If you listen to Sean Hannity or read Andrew Sullivan, they frequently invoke the word "success" when defending conservative policies. That word, "success", has largely positive connotations, but it's not always so. A successful doctor may be very rich, but also a poor doctor (in terms of patient treatment).
posted by Quiddity at 10/14/2010 03:01:00 PM
7 comments
They believe that wealth and poverty are essentially moral categories, interchangeable with "hard work" and "sloth."
Uh-huh. That explains why I now work two jobs, 16 hours a day, 6 days a week--and I'm making what I made 30 years ago. Clearly, it is my own sloth that has kept me from becoming rich beyond my dreams of avarice.
And, to be sure, I really am a slacker. After all, there are six and sometimes 7 hours every day when I sleep.
Would be more sympathetic to that arguement if those that build wealth through work and ingenuity (i.e. Steven Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc)are the only ones rewarded. Unfortunately, in the current crazy quilt world of US finance, the failures are also rewarded. The fuck-ups walk away with hugh cash payouts after they outsource tons of jobs and run great companies into the ground (i.e Carly Fiorino, etc). Or the leverage buy-out weasels that take successful companies, hock them to the stratosphere, walk away with a profit and leave the now enemic shells to limp along pay back the loans.
We need clarification of terms with more precision and make it clear that everyone knows what is good and what is evil. Entrepeur is not synonomous with capitalist. Profiteer is not synonomous with businessman. And greed is NOT good.
The best clarification of this issue is in terms of economic rent.
Unfortunately, most people (left, right, or center) don't understand the notion of economic rent and why "profits" "earned" which are actually rents collected are indeed never earned.
Understanding rents is a real winner for liberals and leftists, because it shows that, far from transferring wealth from the rich to the poor, the government actually does the opposite, by enforcing the right of rent-collecting thugs to their ill-gotten gains. (Most but not all rents go to the wealthy.) Unfortunately, the left is hobbled by its intellectual heritage of Marxism, as Marx deliberatedly confused the distinction between true capitalists (who actually earn their returns) and landowners (who never earn their returns as owners of land).
The left is not hobbled by Marx, but by a lack of Marx. He didn't just predict the worker's paradise (oops!). He pointed out that capitalism leads to booms and busts and monopolization and starvation wages. That should be the argument for regulation and liberalism.
True capitalists are skimmers. They buy and sell and make a profit without adding value.
They made be clever and hard working, but they are clever and hard working at skimming.
Maybe we don't need to eat them and take their limos, but we should limit the rewards for that sort of behavior.
Wealth is power and with power comes responsibility. Spiderman's Uncle Ben explained it years ago in the comic books and the movies. Too bad the Republicans never learned the lesson
clark wrote, The left is not hobbled by Marx, but by a lack of Marx. ... True capitalists are skimmers. They buy and sell and make a profit without adding value.
Awesome. You proceed to go right ahead and prove my point.
A "skimmer" is by definition someone who collects economic rent.
capitalists are marxists. they live by this motto "privatize the profits, socialize the losses."
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