Well, you asked...
Mr. Simon summarizes the problem of economic disparity, the growth of our prison population and general national malaise as due to “what can only he describes as “greed.” You know, the evil rich, the faceless corporation, the 1% (as of yesterday according the A.P. it’s now the evil wealthy 20%) and the same class warfare blah, blah… It all started in 1980, (no doubt when Ronald Reagan was elected).
So Mr. Simon offers a solution from our past, he writes:
“So how does it get better? In 1932, it got better because they dealt the cards again and there was a communal logic that said nobody's going to get left behind. We're going to figure this out. We're going to get the banks open. From the depths of that depression a social compact was made between worker, between labor and capital that actually allowed people to have some hope”. This is presumably by workers becoming long term wards of the state and the redistribution beneficiaries of government largess appropriated from the greedy hoarders.
Mr. Simon thinks labor unions are an answer when their popularity outside of the public sector is at an all-time low. Their traditional role in protecting worker safety and rights had been taken by numerous government agencies and the courts. Their bureaucracies are often seen as self-serving and corrupt; their memberships dues and fees exorbitant.
Sadly, Mr. Simon may not have been paying attention in history class.
The idyllic “better” 1932: the year Franklin Roosevelt, author of the New Deal” and Time Magazine “Man of the Year” in 1932 and 1934 was elected. The country was in the depths of depression that lasted until WWII. The resurgent Ku Klux Klan in the U.S. was at the zenith of its national political power and discriminatory Jim Crow laws rampant. The massive crop failure of the dust bowl turned millions into migrants and banks failed in droves. In Europe, Adolph Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 when he began what was later called “Hitler’s economic miracle”. (He was the Time Magazine “Man of the Year” in 1938) Those were the halcyon days alright.
Back in 1933, the vast array of government interventions known as the New Deal had features suggestive of the corporate state. The National Industrial Recovery Act created code authorities and codes of practice that governed all aspects of manufacturing and commerce. The National Labor Relations Act made the federal government the final arbiter in labor issues. The Agricultural Adjustment Act introduced central planning to farming. The object was to reduce competition and output in order to keep prices and incomes of particular groups from falling during the Great Depression.
It is a matter of controversy whether President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was directly influenced by prevailing European economic policies. Mussolini praised the New Deal as “boldly . . . interventionist in the field of economics,” and Roosevelt complimented Mussolini for his “honest purpose of restoring Italy” and acknowledged that he kept “in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.” Also, Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration, was known to carry a copy of Raffaello Viglione’s pro-Mussolini book, The Corporate State, with him, presented a copy to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, and, on retirement, paid tribute to the Italian dictator. As and aside, by 1934, nearly half of all American families lived in poverty, earning less than $1,250 annually.
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, the “new compact” sought by Mr. Simon would operate indirectly, through centralized control of (nominally) private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, the “new compact” would so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the elites in the autocratic authority conceive it. Not that it matters much but these are words lifted from the economic tenants of fascism.
The state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter.
-Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialist (Nazi) Party adapted fascism to Germany beginning in 1933.
Keith, we’ve all seen this before. I grew up in Louisiana where a fellow named Huey Long was (and in many places still is) revered as a martyred saint. 1934, Huey Long unveiled his “Share Our Wealth” plan, a program designed to provide a decent standard of living to all Americans by spreading the nation’s wealth among the people. Long proposed capping personal fortunes at $50 million each (roughly $600 million in today's dollars) through a restructured, progressive federal tax code and sharing the resulting revenue with the public through government benefits and public works. In subsequent speeches and writings, he revised his graduated tax levy on wealth over $1 million to cap fortunes at $5 - $8 million (or $60 - $96 million today).
Long charged that the nation’s economic collapse was the result of the vast disparity between the super-rich and everyone else. A recovery was impossible while 95% of the nation’s wealth was held by only 15% of the population. (Sound familiar?)
In Long’s view, this concentration of money among a handful of wealthy bankers and industrialists restricted its availability for average citizens, who were already struggling with debt and the effects of a shrinking economy. Because no one could afford to buy goods and services, businesses were forced to cut their workforces, thus deepening the economic crisis through a devastating ripple effect.
“Our present plan is that we will allow no one man to own more than $50 million,” Long told his radio audience of millions. "It may be necessary, in working out the plans that no man's fortune would be more than $10 or $15 million. But be that as it may, it will still be more than any one man, or any one man and his children and their children, will be able to spend in their lifetimes; and it is not necessary or reasonable to have wealth piled up beyond the point where we cannot prevent poverty among the masses.”
Long contended it was morally wrong for the government to allow millions of Americans to suffer in abject poverty when there existed a surplus of food, clothing, and shelter. He blamed the mass suffering on a capitalist system run amok and feared that impending civil unrest threatened the democracy.
Interestingly, President Franklin Roosevelt called Long – a fierce opponent, “one of the two most dangerous men in America.” (The other was Gen. Douglas MacArthur.) Ironically he used many of Long’s policies for the “Second New Deal”.
Of course, Long was utterly corrupt and ran Louisiana like a banana republic dictatorship that would make a Mafia Don envious. He was ruthless and his graft and corruption were legendary. His attempt at censorship by taxation culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grosjean v. American Press Co. in 1936, a landmark decision that laid the basis for the protection of modern freedom of the press in America. Also read the book “Huey Long” by one of my former history professors, T. Harry Williams or the fictional characterization of Long in the book “All The Kings Men” by Robert Penn Warren. It took Louisiana two generations and a petroleum boom to recover from Mr. Long’s corruption and patronage but in New Orleans, you can still the vestiges of the state’s corrupt past and his family remains in Louisiana politics to this day.
The problem is that when centralized, power tends to corrupt. As John Acton said, “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”. By nature, the power becomes unwieldy and bureaucratic with the primary client and beneficiary becoming the power elite who wield the power in their own preservation and enrichment. Case in point; examine members elected to congress net worth prior versus post political careers.
The truth is, the mess we’re in is our fault. Not the rich, fault, the poor fault, everybody’s fault with a payoff for each of us. If you are on the bottom end of the economic rung, blame the evil rich guy. Payoff: you don’t have to study in school or really try very hard, you been convinced you can’t succeed anyway. If you are on the top end, advocate unsustainable government social policies that don’t really work. Payoff: I feel really good about myself and I didn’t have to personally do anything to help those smelly poor people. If you’re in the middle, you really don’t have the time to think about it because you are trying to juggle work, getting the kids to school, the dog fed, manage the grocery bills and get through the day. I like the way P.J. O’Rourke put it, “We've reached the age of accountability. The world is our fault. We are the generation that has an excuse for everything—one of our greatest contributions to modern life—but the world is still our fault.”
The last thing we need is more centralized power. We need a smaller limited government without redundancy and decentralized to the state and local level where it can be more accountable, nimble and efficient.
Most of all we need the value of personal accountability and a belief in the possibility of success reasserted into our society. What Mr. Simon misses is the fundamental tenant of capitalism being individual responsibility, to self, family and society. We’re quick to talk of the responsibility society has for the pregnant inner-city teenager but we never mention the responsibility she may have to society. Simon talks of the responsibility of society for the prison population but not the prisoner’s responsibility for the abhorrent acts that resulted in their incarceration. We have a society that preaches blame and therefor there is no individual responsibility for improving one’s lot. As a result we have substituted a culture that used to be “I must work hard so I can achieve” to a culture that preaches, “those that achieved, did so by screwing someone else” and so they are objects of scorn. The values of hard work, commitment, risk and perseverance are reviled and substituted with blaming, victimization and societal whining. But sadly, I think we’re past the point of no return and our decline will continue.
For insight, read Thomas Sowell’s article on “A Challenge to Our Beliefs”.
Thomas Sowell: A Challenge to Our Beliefs
In other words, Mr. Simon may somewhat deficient in his history, he states, “I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically” – a brilliant flash of the obvious. Visit Cuba, North Korea, or ask someone in Budapest how much they liked the Soviet Communist era. He clearly doesn’t understand Marxism or really even capitalism. Instead he streams a diatribe of pseudo-intellectual pabulum in an attempt to be the coolest, hippest guy sipping an iced decaf tall sugar-free vanilla Valencia non-fat less ice caramel macchiato at Starbucks but I understand he leads the league in nostril hair.
