{"id":22303,"date":"2019-02-25T11:23:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T16:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=22303"},"modified":"2019-02-25T11:25:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T16:25:48","slug":"ponzi-schemes-and-socialism-rely-on-the-same-economic-snake-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/02\/25\/ponzi-schemes-and-socialism-rely-on-the-same-economic-snake-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Ponzi Schemes and Socialism Rely on the Same Economic Snake Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Below is an excerpt from George Will\u2019s op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post, \u201c<\/em>It\u2019s common to praise socialism. It\u2019s rarer to define it,<\/a>\u201d (bold added) that starts with this summary of Marxist\/socialist philosophy from Karl Marx: \u201cFrom each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!\u201d<\/p>\n

After many subsequent dilutions, today\u2019s watery conceptions of socialism amount to this: Almost everyone will be nice to almost everyone, using money taken from a few. This means having government distribute, according to its conception of equity, the wealth produced by capitalism. This conception is shaped by muscular factions: the elderly, government employees unions, the steel industry, the sugar growers, and so on and on and on. Some wealth is distributed to the poor; most goes to the \u201cneglected\u201d middle class. Some neglect: The political class talks of little else.<\/p>\n

Two-thirds of the federal budget (and 14% of gross domestic product) goes to transfer payments, mostly to the non-poor. The U.S. economy\u2019s health-care sector (about 18% of the economy) is larger than the economies of all but three nations and is permeated by government money and mandates. Before the Affordable Care Act was enacted, 40 cents of every health-care dollar was the government\u2019s 40 cents. The sturdy yeomanry who till America\u2019s soil? Last year\u2019s 529-page Agriculture Improvement Act<\/a> will be administered by the Agriculture Department, which has about one employee for every 20 American farms.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s angrier socialists rail, with specificity and some justification, against today\u2019s \u201crigged\u201d system of government in the service of the strong. But as the Hoover Institution\u2019s John H. Cochrane<\/a> (a.k.a. the Grumpy Economist) says<\/a>, \u201cIf the central problem is rent-seeking, abuse of the power of the state, to deliver economic goods to the wealthy and politically powerful, how in the world is more government the answer?\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cboldness\u201d of today\u2019s explicit and implicit socialists \u2014 taxing the \u201crich\u201d \u2014 is a perennial temptation of democracy: inciting the majority to attack an unpopular minority. This is socialism now: From each faction according to its vulnerability, to each faction according to its ability to confiscate.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n