Posted by
skep41 on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 2:13:19 PM
Some
historical crisis have had their balladeers. Woody Guthrie for the
Depression. Marat for the French Revolution. Eisenstein for the
Russian. But the minstrel of this final collapse of the West is a
faceless analyst buried in a London newspaper article about the
increase in the top income tax rate in Britain from 45% to 61%. He
blythely made the following statement:
"Those in this income
bracket tend to plan their tax affairs more thoroughly, so they will be
exploring ways to legitimately mitigate these higher charges."
The
swansong of economic collapse. Atlas is shrugging all over the place.
Social Democracy has gone into Chapter 11. The people responsible for
the reorganization have no reverence for or allegiance to free
enterprise or even freedom itself. But the problem is that free
enterprise is entirely responsible for the current standard of living
and that free enterprise can't exist without effective political
freedom.
Will the crop of geniuses that are now firmly in charge
be able to turn to the powerful interest groups who created this mess
and say no to them? Will they tell AARP that the state is broke and
that the Social Security recipients are faced with a default? Will they
stand firm and tell the Public Employee Unions that the money has run
out? Will they tell huge corporations that the days of protection and
subsidies are over? Will they tell the ecologists that a prosperous
economy is built on cheap energy and that nuclear and coal are back on
the table? Will they end all government involvement in subsidizing
college students and tell professors that tenure doesn't protect them
from layoffs? Will they abandon the bankrupt Medicare-Medicaid system?
The crowd of parasites is endless and in one way or another includes us
all. Will the Current Leaders turn to each and every one of these angry
and deserving entitlistas and loudly and firmly yell, "Enough!"
They'll
be forced to do just that by the time this is done...and more. The
Welfare State is collapsing. It was always unsustainable. There were
people in the nineteen thirties who looked at the beginning of the
trend and were able to see its end. Others took a lesson from the
collapse of the Second World-- the crumbling of the Communist East.
People might think that China is somehow immune to this current chaos,
by the way, but that is not true. Giant top-down statist systems are
all in equal trouble. Economic planning is the problem, but is
universally seen by the Ivy League educated elites in business and
government and certainly by the bloodthirsty commies in Beijing as the
solution. Wealth is seen as a function of agreements and subparagraphs,
adjustments in interest rates and careful planning. Risk, initiative,
creativity and enterprise are scorned, even in the private sector. If
you can't calculate something using statistical analysis it is anarchic
and unsupportable. But risk, initiative, creativity and enterprise are
just the factors that create wealth. 61% tax rates and economic
planning boards that are packed with fanatical anti-business
ecologically obsessed ex-academics are the stuff of poverty.
'Our
New Happy Life' said Orwell and he had it right, right down to
interactive TV. The adjustment to grinding poverty will no doubt be
accompanied by a wave of social unrest that will neccesitate some
'temporary emergency measures' that will include your TV watching you
back. Most people wont care. Legal drugs and free video games will keep
most people happy. The few 'conservative' malcontents can be easily
ignored as the Flat-Earthers are today. The only opposition groups will
be rival political gangs with the bureaucracies conducting purges
against each other in an all-out war for power.
Happily, I'm
old. I've lived a hand-to-mouth existence in the film industry so even
though there were some very fat years there were plenty of lean ones to
teach me some humility and toughen me up a bit. I need very little. The
world can go to hell in a handbasket and I'll try to accept my own part
of the general misfortune with as much grace and courage as I can
muster. If you read back posts on my blog you will know that I have
been expecting this for a couple of years, although the reality is
daunting and frightening. Bring on the Change, Barry.