Monday, October 03, 2011

Neofeudal Trickle Down Economics Defined - Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it. " -- John Dalberg-Acton

This Koch brothers revelation is a prime example of what we cited just a few posts ago in The Economic Realities Created By Pigmen….   We have incarcerated countless people for crimes that are often petty and economically-motivated while elites rob our society blind; often under the guise of the rule of law and escape any punishment. 

There is some substantial position to be made that taxing the extremely  wealthy at a very high rate serves a purpose of maintaining society and democracy.   That it helps achieve the desired effect of community and shared freedom that are both written into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

At the time of our country’s founding, economics was local.  No ability to distort the rule of law or the economy on a national level existed because we had yet to see the aberrant market conditions created by enormous economic entities and the aberrant wealth they created.   To live in a democracy does not guarantee anyone the right to dominate and eventually subvert economic opportunity for countless American citizens.  It guarantees one the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness under a rule of law. 

Now, we can easily institute and enforce rules that keep a very small number of people from walking off with society’s money while the rest of us are left to fight over the scraps (trickle down economics) but if we aren’t going to stringently enforce those economic rules, or even if we are, there are a few reasons why might wish to consider returning to a very high tax structure for the uber wealthy:

  1. Most uber wealthy made their money off the backs of the working poor or by using unsavory means of defeating competition and working markets.
  2. The human condition is very unstable and substantial wealth has an ability to corrupt the soul in all but the most centered minds.   A very wealthy and corrupted soul creates substantial issues for our society.
  3. It keeps those who have achieved substantial economic success, often through dubious means, from setting too much of the social and democratic agenda in the press.
  4. It keeps aberrant power from using that massive wealth from buying our government, destroying our economy and defrauding our democracy.
  5. There was an implied social contract when we went from an agrarian economy to one where people gave up their economic freedoms to work on behalf of capitalism that there would be a sharing of the  economic gains.  In other words, there was an awareness of an economic codependency that was necessary to move beyond an economically self-determined agrarian society to one of shared success.
  6. It is a form of mandatory compliance to those whose egos have forsaken the implied social contract between capitalism and democracy cited above.
  7. It contributes to aberrant conditions in our economy that defeats economic competition and competition for American labor and therefore stunts employment opportunity and wages. 
  8. The concept that rich people create jobs is preposterous.  Trickle down or neofeudal economics is why we are in this situation.  Rich people do not create jobs.   Rich people, if left to their own vices, create serfdom.  A free society where those with valid economic ideas, creativity or a strong work ethic willing to take measured risk are given access to the capital necessary to succeed is what has always driven job creation.  Trickle down economics subverts that dynamic; it contrarily relies on a very small handful of control-driven egos (who lack creativity and flexible, adaptable minds) for our economic and social success.

For anyone who has even a modicum of understanding of the human condition, it’s no coincidence our economy has historically done much better in periods of very high taxation for the most wealthy of our citizens.  Taxing the wealthy is amusingly called wealth transfer by those being taxed.  I guess they forgot to tell you how they got their wealth in the first place.  John Dalberg-Action reminds us in the quote above. 

It’s nonsensical to hear the elites cry that the poor are waging class warfare against them.  Yeah, it’s always the poor who enjoy a good beat down of the elites throughout history.  (Although karma has often become a bitch for elites with their jackboot on the neck of impoverished people.) We are simply witnessing the age-old struggle of a relatively small number of elites with the most uncentered control-driven minds attempting to subvert the rule of law, democracy and economic freedoms for everyone in society.  The United States economy and society is the ultimate expression of neofeudalism.   But, that is the very basis of Reaganomics. 

The rules to the economic game required this is where we would end up.   We don’t need any more talking by shills for the status quo or Barack Obama or Rick Perry or any other politician.  We need a new economic model and we need leadership to institute it.

Title link here. 

posted by TimingLogic at 10:34 AM