Republicans should start accepting the hard truths we face and work with us to do the right thing for the middle class instead of protecting millionaires and big corporations at all costs,- Harry Reid, June 28, 2011 (emphasis mine)
Old Rub of the Brush has been hustling this lie for years, as has Schumer, Ladies Disdain I & II, a dozen more, and of course, Hisself.
But the truth is, they have almost as many millionaires as we do, only…
….theirs are different. Very different.
And theirs are growing at a dangerous rate.
You see, our millionaires are Builders and Producers …
…while their millionaires are all Takers.
Ours leave something back to grow still more, while Takers leave nothing but empty pockets.
Our millionaires produce almost ALL the wealth in America, while their millionaires produce only more Takers, and certainly no “new” wealth.
On tally, their millionaires deplete wealth, which is at the heart of the economic crisis in America. They’re already taking it faster than it can be replenished already, but still want to take even more, witness Reid and Obama’s demand for a tax hike as a settlement for a debt ceiling increases.
It doesn’t add up, does it?
Obviously, Takers’ millionaires must have come by their wealth in an entirely different way to see the world so differently. They haven’t a clue as to how money is created, only how it is taken.
America’s strength and vitality has always been based on the fact that our millionaires create wealth not only for themselves, but in this undertaking (Adam Smith)Â create new money and new wealth for thousands more people.
It’s a fishes and loaves thing, really. (The Gospels didn’t lie.)
So This is About Madness then; not Politics, not Math
As we can all see very clearly now, in Greece, California, and the political minds of the Democrat Left, 2 + 2 = 4 no longer computes. This is because people can’t do simple math once they’ve gone mad. That’s a law. Consequently, we will see the game of chicken, which Minnesota started only last week, accelerate in cities, counties and states as simple math catches up to madness.
We need to hold firm, for the Takers will wither first. (But it won’t be pretty.)
Still, Harry Reid wasn’t being disingenuous when he said what he said. He was deadly serious. Anyone with any sense will turn around when the highway sign clearly reads “Bridge is Out 10 Miles Ahead”. But like a drunken fool, Reid wants us to put the pedal to the metal. There are reasons for this, some of which will become apparent here.
In our politics right now, what’s important isn’t the math of the truth anymore, but the knowing and acting on it, for being right won’t matter much if we’re still being marched off into tyranny.
I’m convinced it won’t do any good to try and take the truth of the math and convince Takers about anything.
We can hold up a slate in one hand with 2 +2 scrawled on it and ask, “Do you understand this?” When they nod, then hold up the budget in the other then ask , “Then why can’t you understand this?” When they start to argue, simply interrupt to say, “We didn’t come here to debate with you. We came here to tell you this is why we are going to hog-tie you and take you to the vet. You’re mad.”
We have to take the truth of this math and beat them over the head with it.
Politics-as-usual is over.
Millionaires in General
Some of you may not know the difference between a Builder-Producer and a Taker. Just don’t confuse it with “private sector and public sector”, for there are a lot of private sector people among the Takers (mostly millionaires, see below) and there are scads of people in the private sector who do not build or produce anything, but who are important to a social economy, and rightly earn handsomely for it.
At the top of the heap are Builders and Producers (and Movers), the Big Three, for they cause everything else to occur, as will see. But much of America’s wealth is coming from other areas, all of whom, sit on their shoulders. The service sector has been on the ascendency for many years.
And most service providers do not produce, but by keeping a product in working repair, for instance, they are very much like producers. Even some lawyers are, or at least many of the services they provide help keep our lives in working order as well.
Doctors? By keeping young people healthy they help keep both the society and economy healthy. And by keeping old people alive, they keep our being civilized alive; so in my view, yes, they too are key to a productive free society.
Then there are retailers, the people who make that final sale (the last in a progression of sales before a product actually ends up in the hands of an end user). Marx hated retailers almost as much as he did capitalists (Builders-Producers), mainly because they bought an item for $1 and resold it for $2 “without adding any value”. Marx was wrong on both accounts, mainly because risk is probably the greatest value added to any product, but he also decided to describe retailers as having hooked noses and dark Shylock features, a picture which Europe and the American Left cling to even today.
In truth ALL commerce, everything you can own in modern society came through a retailer…even when you got it from your wife’s cousin Darryl at wholesale, or down at the thrift store. Still, we teach our children that this is the lowest form of wage-earning, while in fact, there is no low form of honestly earning any wage. It wouldn’t hurt every child in America to know what it feels like to provide a necessary service (with a smile) and still be reviled for it.
And bankers, they actually charge a fair middleman’s fee for keeping another’s money “working” (a Las Vegas term) which he does not otherwise need for producing goods or services. Banks are keystones in the money creation process, facilitators, for they take money that people used to put in a sock and hide under the bed and instead make it “work.”
But Congress has really bollixed up this simple concept of banking, and is one of the reasons why we are in the mess we are in, for when a bank is forced (by government) to loan other peoples’ money that has been entrusted to it, to people who cannot reasonably be expected to pay it back, (thus violating their fiduciary duty) that money is no longer “working.” In fact, it has been taken.
So, enter the Gamers with sub-prime mortgages, etc.
Gamers
Gaming is not really new, having been around as long as government has had its hand in the marketplace. The Brooklyn Bridge was first sold before it was ever completed. Cops called it bunco then.
Gamers are of the private sector but are still Takers. This is where the really big millionaire lawyers are found. John Edwards was a Taker. Stan Chesley was a Taker. Because of government there are entire financial markets today that produce nothing, while making millions for its managers. Hedge funds come to mind. But before them were junk bonds. Making money without creating new money (by their works) is how ye shall know them. (Matt 7:16)
The Gamers’ modern playing field was created by the state. Before, it was the back alley. Gamers, like Tolkein’s Uruks, are born of a brew concocted by a malevolent hand. Smart and clever, they are always able to find a way to profit from every new twist government can force on business and banking…the sub-prime market but one. What is consistent is that their wealth comes from niches, loop-holes and oversights (unintentional of otherwise) created by Congress and regulatory agencies.
Today Gamers also proliferate throughout corporate America, especially in finance departments, which is why that has been the fast-track to top management since the 1980s. Manufacturing companies don’t want manufacturers to run their companies anymore. Hell, you can train monkeys to do that. They want money manipulators.
This is also why Big Business is now so vulnerable to the allure of Takers in government. To a great degree many are on the same page.
And everywhere, they create no new money. George Soros is reputed never to have created a single new dollar in his life. But he is master of gaming on a global scale. On a smaller scale so were Skilling and Fastow at Enron, on an even lower scale, Bernie Madoff. At the bottom of that heap is also Leo De Voe, bunco artist, who tried to rip off an old folks home in Ocala, and is probably doing more time than Skilling, Fastow or Madoff.
And Chris Dodd and Barney Frank remain un-indicted.
While they claim no political allegiance, Gamers align themselves generally with the teat that suckles them.
Our Millionaires, Builders and Producers
There are all kinds of millionaires, as I just outlined above. And I didn’t even mention sports and entertainment celebrities, who are at the high end of personal service earners, above even lawyers. Undertakers can even be millionaires. A farmer with 200 acres of fine corn-producing farmland has $1m+ in land alone. He’s a millionaire too, even during a drought when he can’t afford anything but beans and taters to feed his family.
But as I said, all these other millionaires arise from three major groups, who started it all, the three most essential elements of commerce.
All economic society depends on these three sectors, even Microsoft. If it weren’t for the Big Three, doctors would still be treating patients in exchange for a basket of vegetables, and doing surgery for a quarter-side of beef…and misdiagnosing cases at a 30% clip, instead of less then 1%. Half the drugs and treatments we’ve discovered the past 50 years would never have been discovered had it not been for America’s Big Three sectors…for the entire medical and drug industry exists from “created new money” of this original wealth. There’s a pecking order, and Builders and Producers set the table for modern medicine, hell, Hollywood, Reese’s Pieces, the Lakers, all of them.
Karl Marx understood this, only he made a religion out of hating the men who provided these key services to society, while Ayn Rand built a religion out of nearly deifying them.
Bob, Inc
Everything you buy is the handiwork of all three of these people. The kid who buys a $16 T-shirt that reads: 
at the We Be Commie Co-Op in Eugene never stops to consider the processes or people who made this t-shirt possible. All of them were greedy (self-interested) Producers and Movers; from the guys who planted, picked, then baled the cotton, then sold it to the people who spun it into yarn, who sold it to Bob’s Textiles, Inc (the star of our show), who knit, dyed, cut and sewed it, then sold at wholesale to people who then screened this stupid logo onto it, who then sold it to the Co-Op. And don’t forget the Movers who first drilled that oil, so that others could ship those goods in each of their shapes from one plant to the other.
There were hundreds and hundreds of people involved in the manufacturer and transport of that single t-shirt. And each transfer was a taxable event, where the various governments took taxes from every employee, many of whom only loaned it to Washington interest free for 12 months before getting it sent back to them, then a final extraction of 35%-40% of the profit from the corporation, then 5%-8% in sales taxes, and app 45 cents/gallon in gasoline taxes for moving them.
The Takers got a bundle from that one t-shirt, in other words, only that money never worked another day in its life.
Their Millionaires, Takers and Taking
Maybe Harry Reid needs to update his script. “Millionaires,” he said. But anyone who can earn $150K a year for around fifteen years, unless a real drunk, can retire a millionaire…
…which brings us to the skyrocketing government payroll, where millionaires are being spit out like rabbits. Yep, millionaires…people far more wealthy than that Iowa farmer.
This is where the Taker millionaires get scary.
Of course we know that most Congressmen who can hang on for 10 years can retire as millionaires if you consider the full package. (It’s that “full package” that is taking Greece to the brink…but is also what Scott Walker just marched Wisconsin away from.)
Since Obama took office, over 1 million private sector jobs have been lost, and 450,000 government jobs have been created. Since 1997, in all GS ranks, GS-1 thru GS-13, employment has remained a relatively flat. But in the GS-14, GS-15 and non-competitive “appointed” federal jobs those numbers have risen by a margin as high as 700% since 1997. This is where government millionaires come from.
There have always been patronage jobs in government, but since Clinton, those jobs come with a slot on a staff chart, so even after the crook that hired them leaves office, the slot stays on the chart. Those are all Takers slots, and for being little square blocks on a big sheet of paper, they sure are fecund beasts. They keep spitting out little Takers.
It seems Taking is catching. As you know one small town in Alabama, the first in a trend of more to come, has filed for bankruptcy, stopped paying pensions, amidst taking some city leaders into millionaire status doing jobs that at one time were worth about $35K a year. This too is a trend. Virtually every school district in America is now reviewing contracts principals are getting, since so many will retire millionaires.
Harry Reid needs a rewrite, or maybe, like Obama, is using code-speak, since in truth, a millionaire today can be anybody. At $150-$250K a year you’re a millionaire-in-being…and you’re a greedy sumbitch if you’re one side of the fence, keeping Harry and Barack from hiring even more of their own millionaires on their side of the fence, using a math that can’t work.
The Money Creation Process
None of those producers, except maybe the long-haired, maggot-infested clerk at the Co-Op, who sold the t-shirt to the LHMI eco-terrorist, ever expressed a single political preference in all these dealings.
Each simply took his/her profit…and made that money work. Most made a house payment, car payment, bought stuff, (involving even more taxes), BUT most also tried to save a little for a rainy day or a college fund by putting some away in a bank or investment instrument. Bob would re-invest most (up to 90%) of his profits so that his money would be still be “working” until he needed it.
It’s been all Bob’s “working” money that creates new money and new wealth in America, for from it comes new homes (for qualified buyers, once upon a time) who (used to believe) their investment in their home would appreciate every year, and to new small businesses, from Peggy’s Kut n’ Kurl out in the county, saving all the ladies thereabouts a 45-mile round trip to town at $3.65/gallon, or a new pizzeria in a strip mall, to a knitting room addition at Bob’s factory, where 15 new jobs will be added.
Almost all this has come to a screeching halt.
The Taking Process
Now consider that 35% Bob and every other working “millionaire” must pay to the government. To be sure, government does have necessary services, but quite frankly those services could get by with closer to 18% of our money. The rest is going, directly or indirectly, to the millionaire creation process of Takers.
But the madness I spoke of earlier, and you can see it wherever you find Takers, isn’t so much the money itself…as having control of all the money. Most of that money is found in two places; the Big Corporations and all the small business Bob’s in America who are profiting from $250K to $2million. They number in the tens of thousands, and as we already know, already pay from 40%-60% of all taxes in America…cheap bastards.
You see, Bob built his own company from scratch and is not likely to pass it on to his kids. And large corporations in Big Three production are almost impossible to build from scratch these days. All the minerals are accounted for, and it’s hard to start a car company in your garage. Gates was able to build his software company there, as have a few others, but the jury is still out as to whether they they are mostly Builders or Takers. I’m not sure how much “new money” Google creates. So, for the most part, the big producers, builders and shippers are second-third generation.
So, all the real dreaming in America has moved down to where Bob is; being their own boss, making their own mistakes, but getting out of bed everyday just blowing snot bubbles with excitement about going out and beating the world with a better product at a better price.
Ayn Rand’s deified builders are now down where Bob lives now, and I’m not sure she would ever have liked Bob. Many of her followers sure don’t.
Big Business, the Object of the Takers’ Affection, not Derision
The really good companies go public, which is how you get really big, and Gamers are involved in every step of the process. They are managed by a team of experts who have no connections whatsoever to the original blood, sweat and tears founders. Hired guns. Many are ethical and try to keep to the original plan. Theoretically these companies, if well managed, can go on forever…at least GM thought it could…but there is little of the original fire-in-the-belly that built the company, and most often it shows in their R&D (new products), which are driven by corporate bureaucrats (takers), not dreams. They are open to competition from below. Again, consider GM, and think of Bob.
In Big Business today, if you are a modern CEO, there is much to be said for selling the company’s soul in exchange for government protection and privileges. These are the “big corporations” about which Harry Reid spoke, and in his hateful comments there is a lie, for while he and the rest of the Takers surely want to be able to raise taxes from 35% to say 45% (actually more), they want to be able to do it in such a way as to make those companies gladly give in to them in exchange for most-favored-corporation status.
Then those CEO’s will know their individual compensation packages will not be subject to public harangue, their corporate jets will not be on the no-fly list, and busloads of SEIU protesters will not show up on their front lawn. This was the classical fascist shakedown of the 30s.
Reeling these corporations in, then, not punishing them, is the long view of the Takers in Washington. I think that’s how they hooked Gates.
Finally, Old money and Class, completing the Taker Paradigm
A lot of Republicans, just like Democrats, inherit their millions. How they invest their money is what distinguishes the conservative from the liberal, and they fall pretty much in line between Producer and Takers.
Liberals tend to dissipate their wealth, but in the last decade or so they have done this by “investing” in leftwing causes which has brought American civilization and exceptionalism to the brink. They think these have been wise “investments,” and from a purely strategic perspective, I’d have to say, yes, they are kicking some serious constitutional – and liberty-loving butt with their investments.
And no similar group of conservative wealth have seemed willing to come fill the breach on our side, so conservatives seem to be a little too-conservative with their working. Maybe they don’t recognize the “investment” value of defeating the Left. (A long time complaint of mine.)
So part of the madness we see, then, isn’t just power or money, but a deep, visceral hatred for one thing:
Bob.
To many Takers, it”s all about Bob, not GE.
Sadly, I doubt Ayn Rand would have liked Bob for Libertarians generally don’t nor do country club RINO’s. Takers despise the notion, started with Marx, that such plebeians should be able to knock down a million plus every year, yet donate so much to churches, charities and summer cheer-leading camps, and not one damned penny to NPR. Rubes (Bob) don’t deserve it, and just by being Bob, and out-shining them in every possible, known human virtue, Bob deserve to lose everything they can take from him.
This is a key element of the madness…for it can be found in every moocher and looter across America.
And for old money, the worst of fears is that Bob may show up at their country club in mismatched plaid shirt and trousers.
Killer Math
I’ll close with how I began. I’m not an economist, so immediately get knocked from those who at least pretend to know more than I do. But this is not about what works on a chalkboard, but rather what is easy for the most untrained eye to see. The Homer Simpsons of the world.
All our lives we’ve seen masterful engineering feats fall flat on their face; bridges, aircraft, buildings. And most were design flaws, not pilot error. After a lot of public failures people simply quit believing the pilot-error ruse. We have warned all of you, climate science most recently, that your entire field of endeavor has put its neck on the block when you try to push an idea with a major design flaw, then continue to push it once being proven false.
There is no longer any academic argument, or interest, in Keynesian economics, for even the simplest of minds now can hold up a slate with 2 + 2 =4Â scrawled on it, and then look at your failures and know that your design won’t work.
And your insistence on pushing it is beginning to piss people off.
I recommend a gracious, and quiet retreat, for more and more people are going to the barn for rope.
On Reid’s other point, I’ll postpone it for now. But I’d like to know, really know, 1) just what kind of person John Kerry, or Reid, or Obama think are “middle class,” and 2) if they are not among them; i.e., just what the hell class they think they are. I want to hear Obama say he’s “upper,” which would only be true if it referred to a red pill he took this morning.
There you have it.
