Myth of Economic Inequality

“Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity.”

--- Marshall McLuhan

Economic inequality is a myth. It’s a chimera, a fantasy, a sour whine served with stale crackers and rotten cheese to hungry juveniles. Economic inequality is a tool of the inept and the incompetent trying, in vain, to compete against their betters. Yes, their betters. People who develop their skills, abilities, interests and temperaments are better people than those who depend on THE STATE to make their lives successful. We are born with equal rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nature and the natural rights we enjoy because of nature cannot guarantee our success or happiness. Only we, as individuals, can do that. We are not all born with the same means to perfect those rights. Economic inequality is an excuse to debase one’s self and rescue pity from a lack of meaning. The myth of economic inequality is twice cursed; it curses those who fantasize it, and those who feel guilty because of it.

Economic inequality is the lie that equality can coexist with freedom. While there is individual freedom there will always be inequality. Feelings of inequality are the slow suicide of soul. They are the predictable product of our contemporary cultural Marxism that rejoices in a president that gives a ‘free’ cell phone to ‘the poor’. Free because someone else paid for it.

Thesis Syllogism:

No nation that protects the free exercise of individual natural rights is a nation exempt from inevitable economic, social, and political inequalities.

Some nations, such as the United States, are nations that protect individual natural rights.

Therefore, some nations, such as the United States are not nations exempt from inevitable economic, social, and political inequalities.

The truth of this valid syllogism and these accusations can plainly be demonstrated by any school child from the former planet Pluto. We are speaking here of political, social and economic ‘inequality’ all the rage these days in the marketplace of electoral clamor, mask, and image. This brand of inequality is the bastard child of a more pernicious and even more subtle mental poison; the concept of ‘unfair’. To drill down precisely, not everything that is ‘unequal’ is also ‘unfair’. We are lied to when told that wealth must be redistributed by THE STATE because wealth is ‘unfair’ to the ‘poor’.

Here’s why it’s a damnable lie. We are not born equal in skills, abilities, interests, and temperaments. Just like you, I suck at a lot of things and I’m also good at a lot of things. Is it ‘unfair’ that I suck at a lot of things that you are better at them than me? Should THE STATE intervene and somehow ‘redistribute’ skills, abilities, interests and temperaments from you to compensate me for sucking at those things. Apparently our cultural Marxists think that’s precisely what THE STATE (our government…us) should do. Pied Piper of this gang of economic infants is Senator Bernie Sanders. Here’s what he wrote recently in the New York Times in a commentary.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, it was possible to graduate from high school and move right into a decent-paying job with good benefits. Strong unions offered apprenticeships and a large manufacturing sector provided opportunities for those without an advanced degree. A couple with a sole breadwinner could buy a home, raise a family and send their kids to college. That was the American dream, possibility”

Nonsense, balderdash, tummy-rot, eyewash, horseshit. Of course it’s a possibility, Bernie. You would better serve your constituents if you told them to get off their asses and compete. Oh, they lack the skills, abilities, interest and temperament to compete and succeed? Too bad! Apparently you don’t understand the distinction between the logically possible and the empirically probable, Bernie. It’s logically possible for your disciples to attain all the things from the cultural Marxist vision of the American Dream from the ‘50s and 60’, but if your skills, abilities, interests, and temperaments are not completive then it’s not empirically probable that you will be a happy little Marxist in a Capitalist economy.

Take Tiger Woods for example. Like the rest of us, Tiger popped out of a womb he did not choose. In his case, that was some thirty-nine years ago. Did Tiger choose December 30, 1975, as his day to enter this cacophony of inequality? Did he choose his parents, Earl Woods and Kultida Wood? Did he even choose his name, Eldrick Trent Woods? Did he choose to be born in Cypress, California? Did he choose his cultural ethnicity? Did he choose his natural proclivity to swing a golf club and hit a tiny white rock sending it in the proper direction and the proper range and angle? Did he choose to stutter as a boy? Obviously not!

Now, let’s look at some of the things Tiger did choose. He chose to follow the athletic nurturing of his Father, Earl. He chose to perfect his golf swing starting at the age of 2. He chose to stop stuttering on the advice of his Mother, Kultida. He chose to compete. He chose to win. Defeat was never an option. He chose to be the best professional golfer on the planet. And what do you know? His natural skills, abilities, interests, and temperament made his success empirically probable and then finally real. He accomplished this without THE STATE intervening to ‘level the playing field’ by taking from others to give to him. The logically possible Eldrick Trent Woods became the empirically actual Tiger Woods, not through a cultural Marxist fantasy, but through determination and perseverance.

But the Bernie Sanders whiners retort; well we’re all not Tiger Woods. Exactly! Thanks for clinching my argument for me. We all do not have the grit to make the best of our gifts as we possibly can. Many of us are the guy that Will Rogers referred to when he observed; “When you give something to a guy that never asked you for it, he’s grateful. It’s that guy who asks that you can’t ever satisfy.”

Would that Bernie’s Battalions could equivocate the 'leg-up' social programs of the FDR era with the 'hand-out' welfare programs of LBJ and every President thereafter including all the Republicans. But I object to that equivocation. The ‘selfie-generation', (actually 50 years of a failed 'war on poverty' declared by LBJ), has 'benefited' if you call becoming wards of the state a benefit. Johnson's war on poverty was declared over 50 years ago in government social/economic policy to end poverty. Since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all military wars in U.S. history since the American Revolution. That is also an indisputable statistical fact. But stats can be used to fry hot dogs to make space ships fueled by root-beer floats.

The heart of the problem is the political, economic and social justice fallacies that propelled the stats in the policy in the first place. From FDR to JFK social welfare thinking and policy were aimed at getting people off the public tit. Thereafter, social policy and thinking aimed at getting and keeping them on the tit because cultural Marxism convinced many pseudos- intellectuals and their politician ‘masks’ that we, the people, are ENTITLED to take from others that which we did not earn, and that which they do not wish to give. This is why the post-JFK generation(s) feel ENTITLED to what others have earned. This is what I mean by cultural Marxism that can never satisfy the ‘takers’ because it will eventually run out of ‘givers’. And that is tit for tat.