Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.of the Mises Institute calls the soak-the-rich types out for attacking the rich for not spending more of their greed-inspired wealth to help America recover from the recession (emphasis added):
Maybe you saw the headlines blasting the rich (again!) for failing to spend money in order to enable us to get out of this ever-lasting recession. It turns out that in boom times, the rich spent $145 per day. Now they are only spending $119. So, there we go: a new scapegoat! Those greedy rich people are failing to do their duty.
The press reports that the rich are not booking at the Four Seasons, not putting on the Ritz, and not filling their closets with furs and jewels from Saks. It gets worse. The women who shop for goodies by Dries van Noten and John Galliano told the New York Times that their husbands are telling them to cool it on designer bags, shoes, and dresses. Yet another reason for the recession: patriarchy!
Let those tax cuts expire!
Rockwell sees the hypocrisy (emphasis added):
But, still, I’m not entirely sure I can follow this.
In normal times, we are told that the rich are rich only at the expense of everyone else. One man’s wealth is another man’s poverty. It’s a fixed pie, and one reason for human suffering is precisely the tendency of the rich to spend their filthy lucre on fripperies. They engage in conspicuous consumption that does nothing but feed their egos even as the world’s poor suffer.
Suddenly, the line has changed. Now it is the moral obligation of the rich to cough up in order to help the rest of us.Especially now that government stimulus has proven to be ineffective, the rich should make it their patriotic obligation to spend, spend, spend! To be sure, the left-leaning commentariat is not willing to go so far as to favor tax cuts for the rich. For that would put us “in an Alice in Wonderland world,” says Sam Pizzigati of the Institute for Policy Studies, in which we help the people we are supposed to hate.
I’m just trying to come to terms with the intellectual model here.
On the one hand, the rich are usually blamed for poverty simply because they have money while others do not. On the other hand, their failure to behave like rich people is also to blame for economic hard times. It’s like this swath of the population can’t do anything right.
Excellent, Mr. Rockwell, but you are naive to assume that the left hasn’t always known that when the rich have more spending money, they spend more money, and that when the rich spend more money, the economy improves.
Supply-side economics works, but the day the left admits it is the day the NHL announces that the Stanley Cup finals will be played in the Gobe Desert.
Haters of the rich are not satisifed merely to lessen the suffering of the poor, but require a commensurate hightening of the suffering of the rich. This is why, despite myriad studies that show that when the haves get richer so do the have nots, the radical left continues to propose policies designed to punish the rich.
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1 If you scare enough people, you can change the economic mood (and political leanings) - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community // Aug 2, 2010 at 10:42 pm
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