Via Anarcho-Capitalists' Forum: Obama, Let Them Eat Food Stamps

Wendy McElroy writes: Early immigrants fled Europe to America because the New World offered a glistening promise: the classless society. It was not a society without rich and poor because freedom always produces an inequality of results. It was a society in which people were equal under fair laws and they could move fluidly from one class to another. The North American dream said people could rise by merit and hard work into economic independence and become the rulers of their own lives.

My ancestors are among the 50% of Irish immigrants who did not die in journeying to the 19th century's brave new world. Immigrants knew the risk and accepted it because they hungered for their children to stand on both feet as the equal of any man. For most of my life, I did. Or it was close enough.

The immigrant dream ends

The Obama administration is busy completing what has been a slow erosion of the classless society in America. History is prelude. It tells us that, when the classless society is dead, it is replaced by class warfare. To a massive extent, the replacement is already in play.

Some aspects of the increasing class warfare are quintessentially American and contemporary: minorities v. whites, women v. men, gays v. the non-approving. But the two oldest forms still lead the way and they fuel all the other warfares: the rich v. the poor, the legally privileged v. the productive.

[Note: the rich are often called the 1%. The definition of rich and who belongs in the 1% is fluid but it commonly refers to millionaires and households whose annual income exceeds $250,000. The 1% allegedly owns the political structure and so oppresses the 99% through wielding undue influence.]

Resentment of what is called “the 1%” has grown into a blind anger directed at anyone who is rich. No distinction is being made between two fundamentally different categories of 1%ers: those who acquired wealth through economic excellence (free market competition); and, those who acquired wealth through state privilege. It is a key distinction in at least three ways.

The productive rich:

• validate the American dream and so give hope to everyone;

• take nothing from people except in a free exchange for value;

• enrich the general economy by producing genuine wealth.

The state-fed rich:

• invalidate the American dream by disabling merit in advancement;

• steal through taxes and policies barring competition and opportunities;

• drain the general economy by living off wealth produced by others.

In other words, not all 1%ers are equal. In fact, the productive v. the state-fed constitute two distinct and antagonistic subclasses within the more general class of “rich”.

More: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article44553.html

Via Anarcho-Capitalists' Forum: Obama, Let Them Eat Food Stamps

Via Anarcho-Capitalists' Forum: Obama, Let Them Eat Food Stamps

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