If you tell a lie over and over, eventually people will start regarding it as the truth. Barack Obama has made an entire political career out of that very concept, and it rings as true (irony) today as it did the day he was elected president.
To wit: a contributor named Danielle Allen wrote, in an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, this curious statement:
"... the fact is that steep increases in income inequality and mass incarceration ... mean that the prospects of young African American men are worse now than they were then."
When you say "The fact is ...", it is usually a good idea if what you write thereafter is, in fact, factually accurate. She doesn't ascribe any source to the causal link between "income inequality" and the depressed prospects of young black men, nor can she.
I have wondered where the term "income inequality" came from and why it has replaced "poverty" as the characteristic term for the source of the indigent. It was on reading this particular article that the answer came to me:
"Income inequality" is a great way to shift the blame from those who are poor for whatever reason, and place it on the doorstep of the successful, as if it is because of the successful that the poor are indeed poor.
If you define poverty as a cause-and-effect condition that is caused by, and exacerbated by, the fact that there are successful people, you have shifted the blame totally away from the personal responsibility of, say, the 60% of residents of the rioting Baltimore community who never bothered to finish high school.
But wealth and success do not constitute a zero-sum game. The poor are not poor because the wealthy are wealthy. The Obama administration prints money at record levels; there's plenty of it out there. The speakers at the riots complain of no jobs to earn any of that record volume of money, but who is going to hire someone without either a high school education or the modicum of discipline needed to finish earning it?
I've already written about this: Business creates jobs. Successful people create businesses -- they take the financial risk and generate need for their products and services. When they succeed, jobs follow.
Yet, the Danielle Allens of the world, and the Washington Posts of the world and, for that matter, the Hillary Clintons and Bernie Sanders-types of the world continue to complain about "income inequality" as the cause of poverty (rather than the natural consequence of a free economy and an individually recoverable situation). They, at the same time:
(1) Forgive the poor for any actions taken or not taken by them, to take part in the economy
(2) Devalue jobs, as being a birthright (q.v. AFSCME) rather than an earned opportunity to add value
(3) Foment class warfare
How silly. And it's all because of a narrative that uses a particular choice of words.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."
Income inequality = warmed over Marxism. The whole rationalization for socialism and communism was the 'need' for income re-distribution.
ReplyDeleteI have lived long enough to see the garbage that was finally discredited in the late '80s resurrected, and no commentators bother to point out the genealogy of this odious concept.
"Warmed-over Marxism is precisely the way I have looked at it. In an earlier piece, I challenged any liberal who will, to explain when -- for whatever "remedy" for unequal incomes they favored -- to determine when it would be done and things were ok. If the answer was "When everyone earns the same" then, fine, that is Marxism. If the answer is something else, then fine -- defend why you think that's fair and how we stop the controls that get us there.
DeleteThe answer will be neither, because NO liberal will ever answer the question. OK, found it -- check out:
http://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2014/11/equal-but-separate.html
The rush to relinquish freedom in exchange for a 'fairer' system - administered by an ever expanding and intrusive government - is a fool's game. It is instructive that the top 50 members of the politburo in China are collectively worth a reported 80+ $billion. Mao's granddaughter is nearly a billionaire herself. China and Russia and their communism have devolved from ideological fervor to internecine violence (decades ago) to simply a dictatorship with a crony spoils system. Precisely what the old monarchies were for centuries. The Clintons are certainly in that camp, although not clever enough by a wide enough margin to cover their tracks. Some far future historians will hopefully reach the conclusions that most libertarians already have - that governments with too much power are corrupt and ultimately destructive. It seems that the founding fathers understood that, Adam Smith certainly did, but there are too many ivy league graduates who can't seem to see that. Pity.
ReplyDeleteIt is a mistake to apply a middle class value, education = work = financial sucess, to an inner city environment. Liberal thinkers are posing education as the answer to the inner city's problems. Look at the realities. You can't convince a 10 year old in the inner city that study, school and hard work pay off when the reality is they can made substantially more running drugs and money between the client on the street cornner and his drug boss. Either really fight the war on drugs or take the profit out of it by legalizing it. Unfortunately, we can not longer aford half measures.
ReplyDeleteWow, Anon ... it might take a whole weekend to write the essay that your comment drives. I have to think about all that. My knee-jerk reaction is that legalizing drugs is just going to push the people who are now pushers into some other activity that doesn't require a high school education, but that thinking might be above my pay grade.
DeletePlus -- it isn't wrong to say that education is the answer, but the liberals will just throw taxpayers' money at it -- even though the Baltimore schools are plenty good at spending -- because FTM rules, and the teacher unions will stop any effort to improve the quality of classroom teaching.
I give you the case study of Donna Marrow. Back when Massachusetts was determined to reduce the welfare roles, Donna, then in her twenties, was selected to be trained in electronics. She received an associates degree from NECCO and was hired by Western Electric at a pay grade 4 levels above entry level. After several months of getting to know her she confided that this life sucks. Having to get up in the morning and come to work was a drag. She'd rather sit home, smoke pot, play with her kids and let the state support her. She was also supported by her fork truck driving significant other who knew to split when the social worker showed up. It all sounds like a cliche; I know, but it happened. She stopped showing up for work and was fired for absenteeism. Tell me this. What did education do for her? What did educating her do for our society? She made a social compact. Society gives and she receives!
DeleteLest you think this is a racial thing, its not. Donna Marrow is white.
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