"We don't need an outsourcing pioneer in the Oval Office. We need a President who
will fight for American jobs and fight for American manufacturing." Barack Obama (22 June 2012).
In practical terms, this pretty rhetoric boils down to something like the following.
We don't need a robust economy. We need a fragile protectionist racket.
We don't need goods and services. We need more busywork: more people
manning institutions "too big to fail" (too big to fail without dragging
us all down, especially now that the government has decided to "save" them with the taxpayers' money: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Titanic has struck an iceberg, but don't worry, the crew will chain you to the mast shortly and everything will be fine. Meanwhile, please enjoy the game of musical chairs that we have arranged to while away the time this election year.").
We don't need a viable currency. We need everyone to earn lots of worthless money. (Thanks, Lords Greenspan and Bernanke!)
We don't need individual citizens to think seriously about what is
going on in the world (let alone turn such thoughts into actions). We the peons of the United States of America should leave the thinking to enlightened philosopher-kings (like Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney, who are both oligarchs fighting to maintain the ascendancy of the established, cancerous bureaucracy that is our federal government).
Why do so many of us take this kind of piffle seriously?
I think that people rarely put two and two together (especially in the United States where as a collective whole our capabilities to do math are appalling)when looking at laws and consequences. It's hard to sort out the truth when minimum wage laws actually make it so more people get zero jobs and rent control laws actually give landowners reason to not rent/poorly maintain facilities and may in fact cause homelessness. Add the mentality of the Gadianton robbers to the mix (maybe we should could turn the Book of Mormon into a personality test) and no wonder the economy is so stagnant.
ReplyDeleteI guess rhetoric is often more important than any other aspect of reality. People need rhetoric. Unfortunately, it can be poisonous. Caveat auditor ne servus oratori fiat.
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