Posted by
The Dave Perkins Brothers on Thursday, December 21, 2006 9:59:10 AM
And I don't mean Groucho.....
Here's
a story from the Christian Science Monitor that seems normal to liberals but to me rings all sorts of alarm bells--
The gist?
Japan may be moving toward a society of 'economic winners and losers'. (cue dark ominous minor-key orchestral stab).
The evidence for this looming horror?
Incomes are less equal than they used to be.The fallout from this dreadful weapon of mass economic destruction known as a
competitive economy?
Apparently some Japanese people are worried about personal financial difficulty in later years.A Japanese woman who is (
grip the arms of your chairs, ladies and gentlemen, you won't believe the occupation of the person they quote) a COLLEGE PROFESSOR, is quoted thusly--
Aya Ezawa, a professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, says she has already seen evidence of this. "In some localities, there are families which have been reliant on public assistance for several generations"...
Better be careful, Japan. Sounds like you're in danger of becoming too much like, um.... AMERICA.
But seriously folks... if the Japanese are, as this article seems to imply, concerned about equality more than about prosperity, then they are destined to have neither. Remember Orwell's comment on Soviet communism, tucked away in "Animal Farm" but stinging nonetheless--
"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."This is the inevitable result of any political movement which claims to want economic equality as the outcome of its policies. The movement gets votes from the numerous poor, gains political power, and promptly puts its own leadership in a position to become wealthy through influence-peddling. Remember, every Soviet general and Politburo member had a beach house at the Black Sea and had paid mistresses and limos with chauffeurs and Swiss bank accounts and-- well, you get my drift. Money and power go to the people in charge, and it doesn't matter what their slogan was or who voted for them. Even in America.
Jesus said "the poor you shall always have with you".... and indeed there has never been a victory in the war on poverty, not here in the states or anywhere else. Today in these United States the percentage of people who are below the poverty line is more or less exactly what it was forty years ago when LBJ's war on poverty was in its infancy.
Five trillion dollars have been transferred from those who produced it to those who did nothing for it, and in all that time not a DENT was made in the poverty problem.
The best solution is the one that is in the most harmony with human nature. And human nature is competitive and out for personal gain.
So give me a society with economic winners and losers. Because the activity which determines who wins is activity that will create a job, for me and for millions. It will also increase tax revenues to any government, and this makes taking care of those who
actually can't care for themselves (a small fraction of the deadbeats and freeloaders who are currently on welfare in this country) economically easier for the taxpayer for two reasons:
Government can actually afford it; and
The number of people who can't find a job is smaller, because there are more jobs.
It has to be noted that the article mentions one difficulty that the Japanese will probably not overcome, and that's their birth rate. Any society needs a rate of 2.1 children per household to maintain its numbers generationally.
The current Japanese rate is 1.25 children per household.
If fewer workers drive the economy in the next generation, then pension funds are depleted and retirements are threatened.
And if the government has to pick up the slack, then there is a real danger that the Japanese people will finally be EQUAL in economic terms-
equally destitute.