RoR: Forum

I was in the car this afternoon running errands and I heard almost the entire speech as it was delivered courtesy of one of my local NPR affliliates. In the Atlas Shrugged topics, I caution against the true beleiverism that the release will "make a difference." It certainly will not "change the world." But, you know, listening to the President, I thought, "Dude, in a week you are going to sound so stupid."

".. millionaires and billionaires... " Well that is three orders of magnitude. So, I turned it back to 1957 and wondered about "thousandaires and millionaires." You mean, people who in 1957 made a couple thousand a year were the predatory rich? I think not. In 1967, as an employment agent, I placed a corporate comptroller at $12,000 per year. But gold was $35 and silver was $1.29 and gasoline was $0.199 a gallon. So.... That comptroller is like half a million a year now.

And the President said that someone like himself [his income level] should pay more taxes lest 3000 elderly pay 20% deductible on Medicare.

"But, Mr. President," I thought, "you do not generate wealth. None of your decisions make us richer. At best, if you were George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, you could prevent an invasion, but you could not actually create new products, invent new processes, discover new elements. And the people who make those incomes did." The vast sea of millionaires and billionaires came from the technology boom of the Reagan Revolution -- except of course for the corporatist friends of George Bush and his alter ego, President Obama.

I thought of Anousheh Ansari. She and her brothers sold their telecom software for $60 million dollars. I don't know what the boys did, but with her $20 million she created the Ansari Prize for the first privately funded space launch. The President thinks that future history will be better served if seniors get free hip replacements. Being 61 years of age myself, I have to wonder if the President is senile.

Then, I thought about all the things I don't know enough to think about. That is true, rational humility, a quality lacking in the President and the hubris-crazed progressives who still cling to the liferaft of change they can believe in.

Post 1

Thursday, April 14, 2011 - 4:31pm

Generous, yes - but generosity does NOT come by way of servitude... the earned does NOT throw away to the unearned, and since we do NOT exist for the sake of others [as such is the hallmark of slavery, an immorality], for a black man to advocate in effect slavery is a distinct abomination, which should be railed against with all the muster due to such abomination...

Post 2

Friday, April 15, 2011 - 7:35am

Obama does want a nationwide slave-camp.

In actuality, only individuals can be generous. Obama won't come out and say it explicitly, but he wants us to make money and give our money to him, and he wants us to think that when he takes our money and spends it on things he chooses, that that makes us a generous people.

On this purposely-distorted view, if you do not give money for someone else's purposes (to someone revered as the "sage of altruism"), you aren't generous -- i.e., you lack virtue. The only way to have virtue is to fasten a ball-and-chain on your ankle and work dawn-to-dusk for the sage-specified needs of others.

Ed

Post 3

Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 2:48pm

Generosity is a vice, not a virtue. Its throwing values away, giving values to useless people who consume it with no return, creating a pitiful beggar niche in the economy who may in the future attack you if you decide to discontinue your charity. When instead the values could be invested/traded with people who create values, which would result in a mutually beneficial result.

Post 4

Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 3:46pm

Dean,

I'd say that generosity is a minor virtue, but only as long as it is not in he least bit a sacrifice. And I never support leeches. I support those with talent and promise and those that show qualities I admire. I do so in small enough efforts or amounts that I don't diminish my way of life. I get an enjoyment out this and that enjoyment is like a quid pro quo for the act, which might make Kant spin in his grave, but I think that is a natural part of any act of generosity that is not sacrificial, duty-generated, or in support of something the giver doesn't value.

Post 5

Friday, April 22, 2011 - 6:51am