Dr. Hussein Birdbrain has provided the link to Daniel Gross' piece over at Slate, "War on the Rich?" The basic meme here is that there's in fact no such thing as a war on wealth - it's a GOP sham.
To make that case, of course, leftists have to demonize conservative and "John Galters" as "stupid," or worse. Check out Jesse Taylor, for example:
I one day hope to earn enough money to consider acting like an irrational asshole and having it become national news ...What's interesting about this is not just Mr. Taylor's profane excoriation of market conservatives who might not want the state taking MORE of their money (on principle that they would rather reduce their own productivity than feed the freedom-crushing the beast of the state), but also that as evidenced by his link to Wikipedia, I'm betting Mr. Taylor's never read the book.
Steve Benen has a wrapup of why this is economically stupid, but what I wanted to talk about is this bizarre idea that going John Galt is in any way intelligent or feasible. John Galt is an expression of narcissistic self-destruction, the central character in a novel that expresses undeveloped adolescent frustration with being so fucking great that the world can’t even handle your greatness. Going John Galt requires you to be simultaneously so successful that it matters whether or not you do it, and so dumb that you’d consider making yourself worse off than you’d ever be under the terrible plan you’re avoiding. You imagine these lawyers, dentists and others, incapable of doing basic math yet possessed of sets of specialized skills, shuddering in the face of adversity as simple as having to mail in a rebate form while simultaneously rubbing their fingers over their tax returns, their top 2% Adjusted Gross Income proof positive that they’re smarter and of more use to society than the mechanic they screamed at because sparkplugs are fucking made up bullshit and everyone knows it.
Of course, Matthew Yglesias hasn't read it, but that didn't stop him from attacking the "nightmare scenarios" of the revolt of the "titans of high finance."
The non-book reading collectivists are like that though: Kick, cuss, and then confiscate, and then let the commissariats sort out the rest
Man it's going to be a long four years...
Hat Tip: Common Sense Political Thought.
3 comments:
The mere existence of the Democrat Party is proof positive that he who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul come election day.
One of the saddest events in the history of this nation was the day the 16th Amendment was added to the Constitution of the United States.
On that day, this country made the fateful decision that government, along with people who do not produce or contribute to the economy in any way, had more of a right to the money earned by the productive than did they.
Five hundred years from now, when historians are poking around looking for the singular event that resulted in the greatest experiment is self government eventually going TU, they will point to that amendment as one of the main reasons for our demise.
-Dave
That sounds like an "assumption," Dave.
Dr. Hussein's had a problem with that!
I actually have read the book (regrettably), but it's an odd thing about writing on the internet: sometimes people haven't encountered the same things you have, so it helps to provide "hyperlinks" (as the kids call them) so that others have some point of reference.
Unless we're to assume that every time someone links to a reference about a book or movie, they haven't seen it, in which case I think the entire experiential knowledge of popular culture is about to collapse in on itself.
Again, idiot book for idiot people. Have fun with it. And I used profanity, which must take away from my point! That argument never gets insanely stupid and pointless.
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