Income Inequality - but what about our personal choices, Mr. Obama? - Granite Grok

Income Inequality – but what about our personal choices, Mr. Obama?

President Obama has decided, along with most of the Democrats / Progressives / Socialist, that he must bring the Marxist philosophy of Class Warfare to play – but call it Income Inequality.  After all, who is against inequality of any type?  Who is not for the traditional notion of equality?  Well, those that are out to redefine, to ‘fundamentally transform’ America – Obama, for starters.  The traditional American value of equality of opportunity and equality before the Law is in direct opposition the Marxist demand that we all are the same, MUST be the same, and that equality must be defined as equality of outcome.  Typical socialism – typical outlook driven by Envy.  Throw in a dash of racism (e.g., the Eric Holder’s DOJ weapon of choice of “disparate outcomes” using statistics to “prove” racism by those that must be punished).

From Cafe Hayek, a scenario that blows apart the implicit idea that Obama is trying to push – that we are all exactly the same except for our incomes and that ONLY incomes matter.  Obama wants us to concentrate only on the money – and not some of the other choices that we all make for our individual “pursuit of happiness”.  There is no mention of “tradeoffs” that we make because money is only important to Obama’s planned transformation – and that individual choices are of no concern or part of his “greater common good”?

  • Do you [proponents of ‘redistribution’] not worry that creating government power today to take from Smith and give to Jones — simply because Smith has more material wealth than Jones — might eventually be abused so that tomorrow, government takes from Jones and gives to Smith simply because Smith is more politically influential than Jones?
  • Suppose that Jones chooses a career as a poet. Jones treasures the time he spends walking in the woods and strolling city streets in leisurely reflection; his reflections lead him to write poetry critical of capitalist materialism. Working as a poet, Jones earns $20,000 annually. Smith chooses a career as an emergency-room physician. She works an average of 60 hours weekly and seldom takes a vacation. Her annual salary is $400,000. Is this “distribution” of income unfair? Is Smith responsible for Jones’ relatively low salary? Does Smith owe Jones money? If so, how much? And what is the formula you use to determine Smith’s debt to Jones?

  • While Dr. Smith earns more money than does poet Jones, poet Jones earns more leisure than does Dr. Smith. Do you believe leisure has value to those who possess it? If so, are you disturbed by the inequality of leisure that separates leisure-rich Jones from leisure-poor Smith? Do you advocate policies to “redistribute” leisure from Jones to Smith — say, by forcing Jones to wash Smith’s dinner dishes or to chauffeur Smith to and from work? If not, why not?

So, in an ostensibly Free Society, even if one accepts the nasty idea that Government can and should effect wealth transfers from the Haves to the Have-nots (which I don’t – my Libertarian leanings say that what I earn should be mine and that others should not, a priori, have a claim on it before I even earn it), how can President Obama and his sorry sycophants of Socialists even begin to, to co-opt their word du jour “equitable”, equitably begin to resolve their Marxist claim of “income inequality” given the above scenario?  I’ve made such determinations – I turned my back on lucrative consulting gigs that took me away from home serially a week at a shot to work from home full time.  I traded off the high pay for the time with my family and re-establish frayed relationships with TMES, the Eldest, and the Youngest.  They always understood “head-wise” why I traveled and understand “heart-wise” why I gave up high level career opportunities for lesser ones.  I answered that question “am I living to work or working to live?

But that doesn’t enter into Socialist / Progressive calculus – they only look at the Collective and not at the Individual.  All needs are the same – for a socialist state cannot cope with all of the infinity of choices that citizens can make for themselves.  Thus, it must constrain those choices as it KNOWS it cannot effectively manage them all. Yet, even with a severely constrained choice system like Obamacare, we see that it fails at a much more limited system than total economic personal choices.

Thus, to “fix” income inequality, be assured that even more economic freedom and choice will disappear from our lives – and that of our kids.  Absolute adherence to the “never expanding economic pie” can only mean that incomes will be politicized and fights will be over ever decreasing slices of it.  And economic power will wither by dint of the increasing political power wielded by those that can “grant” those slices to each and every political group and lobby.  Make no mistake – the Democrats with their identity group politics are well suited and positioned to grab those slices – far better than we that believed that individual efforts, motivation, talents, and skills made up for success.

The other thing that Obama will not mention (although alluded to in the first bullet item) is that of “POWER inequality” – which is a valued by-product of the inexorable Democrat movement to coerce, condense, and centralize political power to as few loci as possible.  In a true limited Constitutional Republic as was defined by our Founders, that political power was to remain as local and decentralized as possible.  Instead, Democrats and their importation of the foreign political philosophy of Progressivism wish to withdraw that power from the people (even as they work hard to keep the illusion that power does belong to the people) and give it to themselves.  Why leave it at the town level when Regional emphasis (think the NH Regional Planning Commissions aiding in Sustainable Communities Initiative by HUD, DOT, and EPA) is more concentrated?  Why leave things at the County levels when power can go to the State capitals?  And why bother with Federalism when all decrees and diktats can be issued from the bowels of Washington DC?

And that is where the real play is happening – “income inequality” is just the smoke and mirrors for the masses.  Instead, it is all about the political power, removing it from the people, and finishing the assembling of the Progressive Administrative State.  We’ve already seen how Congress has been moved from a policy creation body to one merely of oversight in many cases – it is now the Federal Bureaucracy that is, more and more and to the Democrats delight, that is beginning to hold that power.

And now you know why the TEA Party has been demonized the way it has been for simply asking for Constitutional values and governance being returned to the fore – we have become the speed bump to Statists everywhere (both Democrats and Republicans).  We simply want people to have the power – not the Statists and Big Government folks.

 

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