Tax Mongering at its Pinnacle: Krugman invokes the Social Contract
Abstract: Paul Krugman sifts through ancient history with a sharp barb so he can compile a propaganda piece worth enough to keep this myopic flock in their soggy stables. For others, this is a sophomoric piece devoid of any substance and a grist-mill approach to political pandering. This is simply a tax-mongering screed devoid of substance and based solely on emotion and hatred.
How to best read my blogs:
[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]
Overview:
We can make some sure bets in many places around the world that certain events will unfold in a predictable manner and the surest bet can be safely wagered on what instant rubbish is currently published in the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]—aka [the near-bankrupt] New York Times. After reading some 100 or more of Paul Krugman’s political propaganda pieces, I would give 10:1 odds that I could predict several words in a future piece of less than four months, and maybe get 50:1 odds in my favor at guessing the content of any sentence in the op-eds they call opinions that contains five specific words of my choosing including or excluding proper nouns.
While compiling a rubbish heap of far leftist propaganda to squeeze into the limited brain cases of their victims[3], it is frequently good practice to invoke some eternal law of social justice or the equivalent to force the reader to believe that what springs forth after this citation must be pure truth and follows the tenets of this founding notion to the letter. There is much to be said about the political efficacy of a worthy or heart-stirring slogan. It must encompass all the necessary elements to fix up the present, future and past and roll then into one tight and juicy egg role for all to enjoy. Karl Marx had a grand opportunity to meld the romantic elements of J. J. Rousseau[4][5] with some vigilantly selected tidbits of history, glossed over, necessarily, and politically greased by forcing a strict theory upon the helpless little peasants of Russia, and thus by manufacturing a grand plan to eliminate not only inequities in their production of goods and services but [presumably in jest] government altogether. You can have a nice administration that way if you merely use lies and firing squads to glue together some of the more flaccid elements of a given society erected upon your particular political prejudices.[6] Krugman has amassed quite a legacy of pushing such points beyond their scope or feasibility.[7][8][9][10] Rousseau was a dirt bag and pervert and a skilled parasite, but he is none-the-less a useful idiot in the hands of skilled propagandists from the left. It doesn’t matter too much what he said—they can twist it around a bit and make it look egalitarian. Name-dropping like this [but J.J. R. is not mentioned in this article …needs a citation!] is adroitly employed so the reader can remember his dialectic and smile and this adds credence and elegance to the nonsense that follows.
Lies are an intrinsic attribute of ‘intellectuals’ as we read in Paul Johnson’s famous book Intellectuals.[11] Here, J. J. Rousseau’s convenient disposal of his children [from his half-wit housekeeper] in some grubby foundling hospital in Paris where the survival rate was near zero is one of the more interesting facts of his life. Perhaps we should get some hints on population control, but that essay is reserved for another time.
With this introduction in mind, let us peek at the next ditto from the Grunt and Grab Press:
The pitch:
“This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.” -- The Social Contract By PAUL KRUGMAN OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: September 22, 2011. [Emphasis is mine in all quotes. This link references quotes in this essay unless otherwise indicated.]
The first essential point here is to mock the opposition for even mentioning the liberal’s best social weapon: class warfare. Then comes the terror of too much spending by the Democrats in their accusations that Republicans refuse to service the long-term budget deficit. Of course, we can find no sane Democrat who would advise reducing spending, except on the hated military, on any program. They are all sacred. And, most importantly, he attacks the person with much power in the other aisle’s ranks, the Appropriations Committee chairman. Well, so much for getting the preliminaries out of the way. We now need to look for substance in what follows.
“Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.
So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?”-- The Social Contract
The drone over income is mind numbing here. Here, we use probably authentic numbers at the far extreme to generalize. This is equivalent to the liberals constantly inserting “ALL” in any accusation against descent people. It is all or nothing, thus, good or bad If you do not like somebody on the left [I have an extensive list] then you hate ALL poor people and ALL those who are trying to do good by redistributing the wealth for their personal power aggrandizements.
Okay, the basics are out of the way as this resembles a Sumo match where the opponents spend a half hour throwing sand down in disgust at each other in the wrestling ring.
More:
“To be fair, there is argument about the extent to which government policy was responsible for the spectacular disparity in income growth. What we know for sure, however, is that policy has consistently tilted to the advantage of the wealthy as opposed to the middle class.”-- The Social Contract
Tautological slogans strung into a little ditty. It is important to pretend to be ‘fair’ and to concede a few concessions in any proper propaganda piece so you can assume the Purple Robes of Objectivity. This is crap, or course, but the simple need for this prodding is obligatory to coax the readers to the conclusion that this essay is ‘fair’ and directed toward only the guilty on the opposition party.
“The budget office’s numbers show that the federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes, which itself runs counter to the rhetoric you hear from the usual suspects. But that burden has fallen much more, as a percentage of income, for the wealthy. Partly this reflects big cuts in top income tax rates, but, beyond that, there has been a major shift of taxation away from wealth and toward work: tax rates on corporate profits, capital gains and dividends have all fallen, while the payroll tax — the main tax paid by most workers — has gone up.”-- The Social Contract
This reproach is probably correct in its details [by somebody’s standards] and nobody contests that the rich are doing better than the poor in this country. But, the obvious is stated in Marxian terms: The ‘rich’ have the loot so let’s go grab some of that. Better, lets grab it ALL as we saw in the USSR.
Missing from this screed is the salient fact that ALL [I used that too!] of the tax revenue taken in by the government in a given year derives from salaries from employees of business, or corporate taxes or fees and the salaries of government employees are derived from either tax revenues or deficit spending.
But, a novel new tenet is thrown in to showcase a fallen comrade:
“Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer who is now running for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, recently made some eloquent remarks to this effect that are, rightly, getting a lot of attention. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the “social contract” that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.”-- The Social Contract
It is proper to invoke a maxim without reference or explanation in closing a screed. The “social contract” can imply dozens or thousands of different things, but this comment tends to suggest that the rich would not be rich if it were not for the helpful government. Thus, the government needs some of that loot back to spend on social programs and whatnot. See what Elizabeth says:[12]
“Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan has called the deficit an “existential threat” to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy — who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future — should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat. Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan has called the deficit an “existential threat” to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy — who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future — should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat.”-- The Social Contract
The conclusion is restated in the closing comment as expected. Notice that this is an echo of the opening statement over class warfare, a favorite slogan of the left from Rousseau to Lenin to Obama. It don’t get more circular than this.
“Well, that amounts to a demand that a small number of very lucky people be exempted from the social contract that applies to everyone else. And that, in case you’re wondering, is what real class warfare looks like.”-- The Social Contract
There is no sense attempting to refute the agonizing reality that the ONLY thing the left has to offer to us is higher taxes and a crushing debt to be born mostly by our offspring.
And, that is, clearly, all they have to offer.
rycK [a 5th generation Californian in exile]
Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com
[1] The Babbling Brooks of the
[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the
“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
[3] Millions have demonstrated thieir marginal intelligence, lack of analysis and the penchant for believing anything for a crust of bread or a good few jolts at the local pub.
[5] Social contract theory played an important historical role in the emergence of the idea that political authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. The starting point for most social contract theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any political order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience. From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate, in different ways, why a rational individual would voluntarily give up his or her natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political order. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
This phony mantra is bait to suggest that those in political power will automatically compensate or adjust the loses of the individual for the greater good. We have numerous examples of how this falls apart when in the hands of the left: North Korea, Cuba, USSR, Hungary, East Germany, Venezuela, Uganda, etc. It should be crystal clear that we cannot trust these progressive or near-Marxist parasites. They are the big spenders that have brought the West to bankruptcy and soon debt default.
[6] Edited briefly from Financial Armageddon in California. The State is Going Bankrupt and Civil Unrest Boils Over. http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2010/08/financial-armageddon-in-california.html
[7] Krugman Sanctions O’Bozo’s Several Years of Impending Deficit Red Ink. This is Textbook Economics we are Advised.
[8] Krugman Receives the Ultimate Insult: The Swede's Bozo Prize for Leftist Stooges.
[9] Krugman‘s Lame Duck Thinking about Lame Duck Thinking: Half-Circular Empty Logic
[10] Krugman Polishes the Statue of FDR and Gloats over his Successes. We need to Spend 50% More than you Think!
[12] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-comments-stir-class-warfare-debate/2011/09/23/gIQAWVY0qK_video.html
Elizabeth Warren is what many on the left want Obama to be
September 22, 2011 Doug Gibson
In my opinion, Warren is the politician that many on the left were hoping President Obama would be. With her rhetoric, she is a Paul Krugman-type Democrat, one who satisfies the need of many partisans to cast the opposing side — Republicans – as “villains.” Her campaign against Republican incumbent Sen. Scott Brown will be fascinating to watch. Expect it to garner the most attention nationally, except for the presidential race.”
Obama dumped her:
“On September 17, 2010, she was named a special adviser by President Obama to oversee the development of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The position included the responsibility of recommending a director for this new entity. She was not chosen for the post, with Obama instead nominating Richard Cordray, subject to Congressional approval.”-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Personal_life
A Methodist:
“ Elizabeth Warren, a Methodist Sunday school teacher, professor of law at Harvard Law School, congressional overseer for the TARP program, and the best-known advocate for the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (opposed unanimously by Senate Republican” --http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2010/03/methodists-elizabeth-warren-financial.html
