Tag: class

Categories
Common Sense ideological culture

Today’s Class Conflict

Today’s government workers receive not only better medical benefits and retirement packages than private employees, but significantly higher base salaries, too — as well as easier working conditions and greater job security.

I’ve talked a lot about how this has contributed to the current out-​of-​control spending at federal, state, and even local government levels.

But one thing I haven’t done is mention how old hat this is. Karl Marx would have raised an eyebrow in recognition of this trend, and then stifled himself. For this kind of thing was predicted by the thinkers he got his exploitation and class theories from.

Only those thinkers did not identify “capitalists” as the exploiters. They saw unlimited government as the exploiter — with net tax consumers as the class (or classes) that government exploitation sets up.

The ideas of the French Industrialist School are not well known, today. They should be. Kids should learn in school about the ideas of historian Augustin Thierry and economists Charles Comte, Charles Dunoyer, and other followers of the great J.B. Say and Thomas Jefferson’s friend and favorite economist, Destutt de Tracy.

Real class tension, today, exists not so much between “rich” and “poor” (that’s socialist diversion) but between government employees — who make up a quickly growing sector of today’s otherwise moribund labor force — and the taxpayers who fund their salaries and benefits.

We need another revolutionary shift — but not of a Marxist variety. We can do better. Less violent, more sensible. Can’t we?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling local leaders

Tea Party Principles – Populist?

When friends of mine started up the “tea party” protests last year, I wondered: Could large numbers of American take the common-​sense, freedom point of view and really run with it? 

I had hopes.

But for Democrat congressional leaders, and some in the media, there was mostly fear and loathing — along with red-​herring charges of racism against Tea Partyers. 

Now, David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, focuses on something a bit different. Noticing that 41 percent of Americans have a favorable attitude towards the Tea Party movement — far higher levels of support than for either major party — Brooks interprets that tendency in terms of what we oppose: “The concentrated power of the educated class.”

Brooks insists that “Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.” And he’s not cheering.

Michael Barone, in The Washington Examiner, clarifies this new class divide, writing, “The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance.”

There is an ancient truth: Being smart doesn’t make you wise. In fact, flaunting your schooling and lording over others with your cleverness makes you a de facto fool. 

And wrapping up fantasies and hopes in stylish, we’re-smarter-than-you packaging doesn’t make them any more intellectually defensible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.