Welfare Bums

A conservative is a person who is against welfare...for everyone else.  His own kind, he loves, and will not part with it.  And no welfare is more loved by conservatives than Social Security.  It's what let's him not have to take care of his aged parents, and what lets him have a retirement income not dependent on any foresight or saving on his part.

But wait!  I hear the cries of a thousand conservatives right now!  "Social security isn't welfare, I pay for that with my taxes!"

If you think they're not on welfare, you're probably white.

Well, for one, and has been shown in previous articles, unless a person is making at least $150,000 per year, their tax liability is generally LESS than the amount of taxes invested in each citizen of the United States, so that they are already on "welfare" to that extent.

But for two, there is no way in which one may regard the income received from Social Security at 62 as "getting your taxes back".  Here's why:

I'm 48 years old.  According to the actuarial tables published by the Social Security Administration, I'm going to live to 79.  Actually, till I'm 79 years and 5 months.  Okay, actually, I went ahead and calculated the exact time of my death, and if they are correct, and it's going to be on March 27, 2048 4:48 pm!

But I turn 62 on November 10, 2030.  Which means I'll have 17 years 4 months to collect the $660 per month they say I am currently eligible for, assuming no enormous increase in my income.  17 years and 4 months is 208 months, and that times $660 is $137,280.  But it's just my taxes back, right?   

Nope.

Paid by me:  $20,943

Paid by my employers:  $21,172

That's the total.  While it may be charitably assumed that more will be put in between now at the age of 48 and then at the age of 62, I can assure you that even in the fantastically best of circumstances, the next 14 years will not see me pay in more than I did in the past 32 years.  It would work out to about $18,425 more, if you're curious, and that's including employer contributions.  

Thus of the $137,280 I am expected to get, $76,740 will be welfare.  That is the amount above and beyond the $60,540 I'll have - if all goes well - put in by the time I'm 62.  

Now, not everyone is me, some earn a lot more.  But they then also get back more.  No matter how you slice it, what you put in is one amount, and what you get back is another amount, and the two are NOT the same.

"But...but...muh interest!", I hear some saying.  Uh huh.  But there is no "interest" as "your" money paid in was never put in any savings account.  It was paid in to the government, then your elected representatives spent it as soon as it came in.  

They'll be paying you not from a savings account marked "Your Name" but by taxing the next generation of workers.  Their taxes, when you're 62, will then go to you - just as your taxes, now, are going, in part, to the current generation of welfare bums - er, "social security recipients".  

"But...but...it's not my fault the thieves in Congress stole it!", I hear the same voice saying.  Uh huh.  I wonder who's fault it is then in a nation in which 98% of the citizens routinely vote for the two main parties that ALWAYS spend the Social Security money that comes in.  I also wonder then why that conservative doesn't view the other folks on welfare the same way.

Usually a person on food stamps has done some previous work.  So he or she has paid some taxes. Why doesn't the conservative speak of how it's "their money", and if they notice that there is more in food stamps flowing out to the individual than they paid in taxes say, "It's the interest" of that person's contribution?

Usually a woman on welfare for her dependent children has done work and paid taxes, too.  But even if she has not, the father sure has, and so has her whole extended family.  Weren't their taxes then simply being paid back out to her?  And if she brought in more in welfare for her seven children then you believe her, the father and the family paid in then why would you not just chalk that up to "interest"?

See, there is no "interest" on any of these, as none of those taxes are ever saved.  And, sorry to say, Social Security is no different.  So the point is that you do not get to look at Social Security and say, "Well, see now, there was supposed to be interest!" but then look at everyone else's benefits and say, "Now I don't see how there was supposed to be any interest on that!"

It's been known that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme from - oh, yeah, since it was created.  If you didn't get the memo, if you're the last person not to know that, then that's on you.  Everyone else - for decades - has known it.

There.  Is.  No.  Interest.  

"When we lay off our maid and she applies for food stamps,
that's 'welfare'.  When we expect a 250% return on a savings
that we never saved, that's 'interest'."

Nor is there interest on the taxes everyone else pays for everything else.  It goes in.  Various aid programs are paid out.  That's it.  You cannot condemn everyone else for holding out their hands to get some of their taxes back - and even to grab more taxes back then they paid in - while you then see your parents living off the EXACT same trick, and even while YOU plan on pulling that EXACT same trick!

"But...but...muh interest!  For realz!", I'm still hearing conservatives screech like a goth stoner hearing that he has to do community service work to keep his food stamps.  

Let's look at that "interest".  My life time contribution is expected to be $29,943 total, or the same as me saving $650 per year for 46 years.  No, I did not count the employer's contribution, because in the event that he was not being made to pay the slightly above "matching" amount, what makes you think he would?  Is it more likely he'd give it to me as an hourly raise, or give it out as a quarterly dividend to the shareholders?

But fine, we'll do the $60,540 amount, too, or the same as if "I" had invested on my own $1,316 per year for 46 years.  

First, reality - just my contribution.  It comes to $67,139.50, or half of what I'll be receiving.

Second, the conservatives unicorn and rainbow-land estimate where corporations pass the savings on to the working man and the working man responsibly saves that for his future.  That comes to $135,931.

"Ah ha!", I now hear conservatives chuckling in relief.  "See?  That's pretty much what he said earlier he'd be getting back, so the system is just giving him back what he put in plus that interest!"

Wrong.

For one, as I said, no corporation is going to "match" your contribution just on it's own.  Certainly none ever did before they were made to by the government.

Secondly, could you tell me please which bank is giving 3% interest on savings accounts?  Because that's what I used - the government's made up calculation of a hypothetical 3% interest rate that does not exist.  The actual average savings account interest over time is .06% which is a bit shy of 3%.  If we count being only 1/2 of 1/3 as "a bit shy".

Using that actual figure, and still assuming your employer really loves you, it comes out to $62,750. And you're back on welfare.  Double that, and you're still on welfare.  Cut it however you like, but only in the fairy land of chocolate rivers and 3% interest rates for half a century and no inflation and employers paying you double out of love do you even come close to that which some foolishly claim as their "right".

A "right" to get what they put in doubled each month.  A "right" to have OTHER PEOPLE - their employers - made to do that for them at gun point.  A "right" to have a pretended interest SIX times greater than reality.  A "right" to elect people who will take what they "put in" and spend it on stuff they tacitly agreed to like roads and military and courts and rocket ships and such.  A "right" to have then TWICE as much as they "put in" (and then had promptly spent) handed back to them after they quit working, as we really don't live in a utopia of high interest on savings.  

And a "right" to have that pure self-serving fantasy paid for by OTHER PEOPLE as it turned out that I was right - as I and others before have been right for the past 75 plus years.  That there is no savings. That there is no interest.  There is only you with no retirement savings holding out your hand for welfare.

You are taxed when you work and your elected representatives spend it at once.  And when you get Social Security later, it is no more or less welfare than any food stamps or subsidized rent.  Either it is all welfare - a gift from the government that you did not earn - or it is all owed, just for you being a part of the nation.

Folks like me advocate that it is owed for being a part of the collective nation state called "The United States".  Conservatives argue that it's only owed if some can kid themselves that they've "paid in". (Because as we've just seen, most are not really "paying in" in any kind of meaningful way.)

Conservatives who then have heard the phrase "Don't judge a sinner for sinning differently than you." should now learn the phrase, "Don't judge a welfare bum for taking different welfare than you."

A Treatise on Basic Income

Picture a baby born in a field, for whatever reason you care to imagine.  Having been born there, on that patch of grass, she is instantly branded a trespasser.  You see, that field is private property.

She could be liable for punishment, but no one cares to expend any effort on her behalf, so she is simply left there to die.  Within a few days, she does.  The property owner then claims the remains for partial compensation for his time and trouble.

This, my friends, is what I think every time I hear someone say, "The world doesn't owe you anything!" or see one of those posts of a blank piece of paper with the title, "List of Everything the World Owes You!"

Because that's what that phrase literally means.

Child on Left: "We get a bowl of gruel per day."
Child on Right:  "And we're grateful."

Oh, true, that's not how it's meant.  It's meant to teach children to be self-reliant, productive, hard workers, and to not go about begging and whining for alms.  It's meant to get them to participate in the great economic game that's been going on for centuries now.

But it does get took too far.  It gets used, by some, to excuse a multiplicity of abuses that while not quite as egregious as letting a newborn girl die alone in a field before rendering her body for the chemicals, comes a bit too close to that at times.

First off, let's clear up the obvious.  The "world" is not a person, nor has it even sentience, let alone sapience.  So "it" cannot owe you a thing, for good or bad.  It just is.  The "world" here is being used as a synonym for "humanity" as in "all of".  The saying might well be rephrased to "No one owes you a thing" and it sometimes is re-phrased that way.

Second, let's get parents out of the way.  Everyone on all 1,000 sides of this, gets that parents do, in fact, owe their kids some minimal amount of care.  It might be debated "how much" and for "how long" and the answers might range from "food, clothing and shelter till 12" to "a million dollars to be a hotel magnate at 24" but "something" is owed for "awhile".

The parents tried to have a kid though, or at least engaged in activity that could reasonably have been foreseen to lead to one.  What of everyone else who did not get even that modest amount of fun out of this nine months prior to the birth?

This is where the liberals are likely to say, "food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare till he's 18", or to hear some, till he dies of old age.  So there's that.  And this is also where conservatives are likely to say, "I only owe leaving him alone".  So there's that.

And while this might surprise some of my conservative friends, I agree - you personally only owe "leaving him alone".  But are you intending on leaving him alone is the question.

You see, there's a lot of assumptions about our current culture, our current way of life, that is took for granted.  I don't blame people for taking it for granted, because it's the culture that "won" over all the other tens of thousands of cultures, and now exists - in various forms to various degrees - over the entire planet.

And has for almost 500 years.

What am I referring to?

Private property.  By which I do not mean "personal property", even communist societies let the individual have "personal property" of food and clothes and such.  "Private property" refers to ownership of stuff not simply for personal use.  Notably land, but also companies and corporations and machinery and ships and such.

Private property - and the concept of "corporations" - make up the system that is generally called "capitalism", even though capitalism in a pure form does not, and has not, ever existed.

So what does that have to do with whether we can - after the parents raise the kid till 12 or 18 or 21 - "leave him alone" to fend for himself?

Well, in a state of nature, that guy would have been exploring about as a child, finding fruit trees, roots, berries, small game, maybe even big game.  He'd know where to get his food, and how to get it, and by adulthood, even if as young as 12, he'd be pretty competent to feed himself off of that, and clothe himself, too.  You could safely leave him alone, and he'd do just fine.

But such children are not allowed to roam about learning how to hunt and gather nowadays.  They quickly find out that their parent's property is not so vast, and that others do not wish their gardens raided or house pets hunted.  Nor does the city they are in care for them to hunt the birds that may be available, or the squirrels.

Not only do they not then get to learn those life giving skills, they will NOT be allowed to use them - if they some how acquire them - when they reach any age of adulthood.  They will not be allowed to hunt and gather, but instead will be expected - by conservatives most of all - to comply with what the majority of people in our culture think is a good way of doing things.

Now, if one is leaving a man alone, one may well make a case that you "owe him nothing".  But when you are actively thwarting him from feeding and clothing himself in the most natural way possible? Ahh, then yes, you do owe him something.

You are expecting that new adult human to play by rules that you so take for granted that you hardly grasped that they are "rules".  Rules that are one way, a way you're familiar with, but could as easily been other ways, that others around the globe are familiar with.  If I want a man to play any game I enjoy or find desirable, then I must consider what is in it for him, and offer him inducement.

Historically, the "inducement" we principally offer is "fear" as in "do it our way according to our rules or we will hurt you until you do".  Thus the child in school who wants to sneak out to play with his dog gets paddled or confined to a spot, and the adult who doesn't recognize private property gets arrested and confined for trespassing and/or theft.

But one of the Founding Fathers of America, Thomas Paine, realized that it would be fairer to offer a positive for people to comply with those rules, not just negative punishment.  He actually recognized it then as not a "gift", but a payment owed.  Owed by who?

Owed by all those who were accepting of, and benefiting of, the current order of things.  You see, a person who is freshly an adult did not agree to the Earth being divided up in such a way that he has nothing, and not even a place to hunt or gather in peace.  That's an arrangement that is no doubt satisfactory to those who already have land, but not so much to those who do not.

And of those who would say that they worked for their bit of land or property, well, I am glad that they overcame the inherent disadvantage they were at during the start, and I'm glad that they agreed explicitly or at least implicitly with the rules of the game that they've apparently scored some points in. But surely they can understand that not everyone is so willing to forgo their share as they were, and nor do I think they'd decline their share were it offered now.

Some still will resist, and really think that their "earning" of the land is in some way making the whole system appropriate.  It does not.  Tracing back the titles of land, it all goes back to the original "owners" who owned it by "right" of their sword.  Later it was inherited by their children, who the landless had to call "Lord" and "Lady".  Only more recently has that been swapped about for any who cared to play the game that - rather than be agreed to by all - was set up centuries ago by a few, and chiefly insisted upon by those who have benefited by it since.

No 18 year old has ever been asked to sign consent to the lands of Earth being divvied up as we see them divided today.  None are currently being asked to agree.  That 18 year old is thus the infant in the field, and unless he does as he is told by those who came before him, he may starve.  That you don't see any starving is simply that faced with that "choice", obviously everyone "chooses" to play the game.

But such coercion takes away the consensual nature of that "choice", and means that any who wish to now remind the world that a Basic Income is owed as a duty, not charity, gets to.  Or conversely, if no Basic Income is desired to be paid, then one forgoes the right to complain about folks running over farms and factory lands to hunt, fish, pick fruit and dig for roots!

Besides being owed for the land and resources withheld from him, there is the matter of the common inheritance from his ancestors that is currently being withheld from him.  As Edward Bellamy pointed out in "Looking Backwards", most of the productive value of your labor does not come from you, but from all the processes, technologies and machinery that you've inherited from those who came before you.

Consider your standard of living.  On average a two bedroom house, a car, televisions and computers and such.  Your standard of living is incomparably greater than a person of your equivalent social station 100 years ago, let alone 1,000 years ago!

Is this because you are 1,000 times the superior of a man from the year 1017?  Is it because you work 100 times harder than a man from 1917?  Or is it that mankind as a whole has grown and progressed, learning more things, specializing in more things, cooperating in more things, and accumulating more wealth and knowledge each year, each generation, each century, so that your own labor - no greater or lesser than that of your ancestors, is magnified by the accumulation of the entirety of humanity?

I think we know - as Bellamy pointed out - that only 10% of what you have is the result of your own labor, the rest, the 90%, is a gift from all the billions who have worked and strove and studied and learned and such before you, and have left you all that as an inheritance that you did not earn, and hardly even recognize as a gift, let alone as a gift to be grateful for.

When you then see a man - or woman - who is disabled, or even simply claiming a disability whether you perceive it or not, whether they are faking it or not, who are you to deny them their portion of the wealth that we are all common heirs of?  Is your brother denied a share of your father's inheritance because he failed to meet your standards?  Is your sister to be left without any thing of her mother's as you do not believe that she is "really" ill?

Such an inheritance was theirs whether they met your standards or not, whether they worked or not. As an anarchist, I would advise a different and more peaceable way of apportioning their share to them, but you, with your belief in the morality of a government have left such to a government.  You cannot then complain and try to withhold from your fellow man that which is theirs by right.

And you cannot, as Bellamy pointed out, add "insult to the theft" by telling them that the "table scraps" you dole out to them grudgingly are an imposition.  The disabled are not imposing upon you by receiving such scraps, rather they are being insulted and robbed by those who were blessed with a health that they were simply given, and had no part in earning.

Nor is the possibility of some of them "faking it" any concern.  For one, the presumption of guilt before any trial is remarkably evil, and generally supposed to be against Anglo-American common law.  For two, if some were faking, would that not mean that their disability was just different than they claimed? That rather than they truly suffering from this or that ailment, that they instead suffered a condition that made them shy away from what you think of as productive work?

But for three, what if they were to be just purely lazy?  Would that be any different from those who have never served in the armed forces of their nation?

What's that, you ask?  What's that got to do with anything?

Ahh, but military service, or lack of it, has everything to do with this supposed "welfare".  As Bellamy pointed out, only a very few are called to defend a nation with their strength, and those who can't - or won't - are not deprived of their citizenship for not doing so.  Maybe they couldn't fight.  Maybe they found it immoral.  Maybe they were too busy with other concerns.  Maybe they were just cowards.  No one questions why a man did not serve, it's a choice left up to him.  He is still a citizen, he still receives - unearned - the protection of the very military he did not support.

Likewise, and industrially, if a man cannot - or will not - support the great industrial complex that is the American economy, why would that deprive him of his inheritance?  Or his benefiting from the industrial complex the same way a non-veteran benefits from the military complex?

So you see, "welfare" is not your taxes.  Your taxes are pretty much as filthy rags compared to the combined and collectivized might of any nation, let alone this one called the United States.  "Welfare" is but the odd name we assign to the pittance we dole out to those who have had their inheritance - in land and in cultural heritage - robbed of them by the elite.

That welfare deserves then to be re-named "Basic Income" and ramped up to be as fair as anything that the elite are already awarding themselves.  No, not so that everyone gets the same billion dollar bail out that a Wall Street CEO gets.  But that so that CEO then receives no more or less of a "bail out" then any other man, woman and child in America.

Keynes and the Art of Stealing

John Maynard Keynes did understand economics in a sense. At least a very specific, though large, branch of it concerned with "force and fraud". "Government", for short.

See, there is an art to robbery. Yes, it's evil, but there's an art to it all the same. Like anything else, it can be done well or done poorly.

And it's a quite in-depth art, even a science, and it's been perfected - and is still being perfected - since the first supertribes called "cities".

Take the first person to desire practicing it as an art, and not just random hitting people with a club and taking their food. Or otherwise tricking them, which you can really only do once with a nomad.

What if you initially aid them in coming together to practice agriculture? It'll be a tough sell, as the average nomad ate better and for less work than farming.

But say you convince them. After a generation is raised knowing nothing else, they are wedded to the land. A nomad that you seek to rob may run - but a farmer cannot leave behind his invested labor.

It's still not just a case of "let the robbing begin!", though. If you went to each farmer and said, "I'm strong, you're weak, give me a tenth or I'll kill you and take it anyway!" then that might work briefly, but they'd nurse grudges, meet in private, and conspire to kill you.

You have to give them a face saving reason for letting themselves be put upon. So you do not flat out say that you'll kill them, but you speak extensively on the dangers of "random nomads". And you give them a reason for passing over the food - good reasons, of course.

That you'll save it for times of famine. That you will use it to raise up a group of special protectors called "warriors" that will do nothing but keep the peace and keep the nomads at bay.

You offer what can be a real value, and as the person overseeing it, the portion you take would be modest.

Some may honestly find it to be a good deal - and in various times and places, it may even have been a good deal.

Yet even then, you are easing it over into a "required", not a "voluntary" payment. You do this by the simple act of pointing out to those who do contribute voluntarily, that one is not. They find that unfair, and agree to your proposal that all who in any way benefit "must" pay.

For them, that is no hardship, they are paying anyway. And by the time they have a crop failure, and you still expect the same amount, the rule will already have been established, and they will not wish to look a hypocrite, and so will, grudgingly - and somewhat for seeing what your warriors did to the hold out - pay.

A loved cow gives more milk.  Don't beat your cow - too hard.

Now you've a government. Now you've "perfected", for that time, the Art of Stealing.
 

For now all know they must pay, they each tell themselves the soothing story to settle their outraged manhood, and they will of themselves enforce against others with persuasion - or force - because misery loves company, and if they must pay, then all must.

Fast forward six thousand years. An industrialized democracy is not the same as an agricultural village. And we've money now, which along the way, other Artists of Theft learned how to inflate.

Yet still, sometimes the game goes too far. Sometimes rulers of old took too much, and the people rose up, or ran off, or simply starved. Other times, like in Roman times, a partial inflation went well, but then they got greedy and inflated too much, and all collapsed.

The point of the Art of Stealing is to be able to get as much as you can, for as little effort, and for as long as possible.

There is such a thing as a "social surplus", though Ayn Rand (author of "Atlas Shrugged") would disagree. And such does not really belong in a Lockean sense to any one specific individual, even a Hank Reardon*. That surplus, above and beyond the group of individuals efforts, has always gone to the elite. The thieves.

Yet explanations must still be gave. Why a pyramid with that social surplus instead of another irrigation canal? Why does Lucius who is cousin to the Emperor always get the aquaduct contract instead of Gaius who has proved time and again that he is better at it, and cheaper? Why the social programs advocated by the President's wife instead of the more constructive aid - with less graft - that others have proposed?

These questions need answering appropriately. If the theft is to continue. And new ways of theft, unfamiliar to those robbed, must also be sought. Because greed is insatiable, and while you can squeeze a bit more taxes, or give a bit less services, or even inflate a bit more, it all must come to a final maximum point at some time, unless you find a new way.

Inflation, by the way, was such a new way of old. Later, in the middle ages, there are things you can do with banking - like the fractional reserve system - that allows more looting. In each case, the deficit is made up with the people working a bit harder, and for a bit less, that the few might have a lot more. Even the concept of "private property" can be manipulated so that social surpluses can be drained off. Disparities of property ownership allowed the great Lords of England to dispossess many of their tennant farmers, driving them to the cities to work the new factories or starve. This may have been better for such who survived in the end...but was a crap deal all the same, and some died from it.

The elite thieves of the mid-20th century had seen the result of the Federal Reserve system in the market crash of '29 and the following depression. Seen and not particularly minded, since that was the specific plan, it worked perfectly, and they were better off than ever.

But they'd seen that plan gone awry, too, in Czarist Russia and the Weimer Republic of Germany. Which while Ayn attributed those to ideologies, had a lot more to do with the game going too far, and the people starting to starve. Andrei Taganov did not rebel against the Czar because he was a Communist. He was a Communist for wishing to rebel against the Czar.

The trick then, the real art, was spoke of by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. How much do the people need to be content tax-slaves? They had wildly different answers, one based upon raw force and fear, the other on providing mindless hedonistic pleasures. Both were extremes to make a point, the real answer of how to steal, how the art works, is of course, in the middle. Where much may be debated, of course. And is debated. By those far above us who own us.

See, you want your slaves educated enough to provide real goods and services for you. But then they too often see through the game. And want some of that social surplus to come back their way. Or even just want less taxes. Taxes, you handle purely by fear and the dodge that it's everyone's duty for that social good that does exist. From the dawn of agriculture, that has never got old! But the social surplus created by that very social good you just told them about? Ahh, that has always been more delicate.

Because they'll notice that most large surpluses do not go to social service programs. Taxes pay those. And they'll see through inflation nowadays, with our education and knowledge of history. So how to drain the surplus without them getting uppity?

Here's where Keynes came in. He was the codifier of the rules of how to attack and whittle away at that surplus in a dozen more ways than previously known of. Or if known of, not systematized. And he knew how to squeak more out the social machine of a nation than before, building off of the old tricks of inflation and fractional reserves and his baby, "deficit spending". That was his talant, that was his, sad to say, "genius". In learning of, discovering and writing of those ways.

And bear in mind strongly the dark brilliance of it - he had to write it not as a "Guide for the Despot to Milk his People", but as a work of goodness in how a nation as a whole could be better! And for most, who are not economists, thinkers or philosophers, the work has enough sophistries and such to utterly baffle them at best, and at worst, even convince them of the justness of their own robbery!

All the rises and falls, the bubbles bursting, the crises - these are not for the criminal elite being stupid, this is them being smart. Evil, sure, but smart. Has everyone been tricked into stashing their retirement funds in a 401k? Great - time to arrange for a stock market crash so that we can scoop all that surplus up at once, while telling them to stop whining, "You win some and lose some, not our fault!". Has everyone been tricked into thinking that housing and real estate never loses value, but only increases? Yes? And they've all their surplus in there? Great! Time for that bubble to burst, and since we're the ones bursting it, they'll be hurt, but we won't be!

Has the game been played a bit much, and now it's time to get things back on track - for us? Sure, no problem! The social surplus does not exist as grains or gold any more, but by calculations on what a given population can afford, productivity-wise. The figures say several tens of billions? Then we will "quantitatively ease" ourselves, with money printed up which the workers of the nation will have to be good for! And will be good for! True, it inflates things, but calculations show that they'll still be able to keep their refrigerators powered and their internet access current, and the sociological boys assure us that there'll be no armed uprising while those two things hold true! But we'll keep militarizing the police just to be sure!

The Conservatives of America love to preach a "hands off" approach, such that helping no poor person, in theory ushers in capitalism and that famous - and utopic - "rising tide" that "lifts all boats". The reality is that when you stop helping the poor with government money, or don't grant raises in the minimum wage, you may be 100% sure that the rich thieving elite are STILL skimming that social surplus off, and so while the poor see none of it, the thieves still see all of it! And the "rising tide" only raises them up, as with the enormous anchor of regulations, taxations, inflations and burst bubbles tied firmly to the middle classes, the middle and lower class boats are held under by the weight of all that, and rise not at all!

Thus the increasingly large distance between the 1% and the rest. Which under real capitalism could not happen.

Keynes, you can see now, was a genius. Just a really mean one. He's why each generation is not now better off than the previous, except perhaps in access to technological toys. Which are really only allowed because they have not invented Soma yet, or the other fun stuff of Huxley's "Brave New World". But iPhones serve as well as Soma. And we're allowed them for the same reasons. Focus on the tiny screen, and forget the big picture.

This is why, by the way, that while I am a "capitalist" in the sense that Ayn Rand described, I am also as practical as Fred Kinnan* was. I know these thefts are the norm, I know they will continue. Thus I advocate that while they do that - and they always will - that yes, some "come back" in the form of welfare programs and minimum wages. Not for being a "socialist", but for pragmatically recognizing that while they steal trillions for themselves, that tossing some hundreds of billions to the least is appropriate. The CEOs have their billion dollar bailouts and yachts. They can afford to drip some of that down to the singe mother who wants food stamps and Top Ramen.

"Oh, no, that's socialism, end it all!"? Uh huh. If "ending it all" is an option, I choose that, of course. But that option has NEVER existed, and is never going to exist as long as some wish to steal. They are stealing. They always will. I'm simply then up for negotiating the terms of our captivity, and for me, I'd as soon see a more comfortable slave cabin, instead of everyone in tents while they build a third wing to the Plantation house.

* Hank Reardon was a capitalist creator in the novel "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Fred Kinnan was an amoral, but wise and practical Labor Leader in the same novel.