Something for Leftists to Worry About

It is fairly commonplace to note that we are in some ways living in a reprise of the 1970’s, complete with a bad economy, expanding state power, a fearful population, worries about national decline, a bull market in gold, money being made selling water purifiers, freeze dried food, garden seed and survivalist manuals, and, of course, our own Nixon and  Carter in Bush and Obama.  As in the 70’s leftist or left leaning political notions and policies have been ascendant .   This is obvious with Obama, but also  true of  Bush. Much like Nixon, he increased  the government’s reach and power and expanded spending and deficits at rates that would have earned him a place in the leftists’ pantheon if he had been a Democrat.  Though this is  good news for the left in the short run, I believe that, again as in the 1970’s, it is leading to real and serious danger for the leftists.

The basic enterprise of  the American left is to take money and resources from people who earn and produce them and give them to  its constituents. That is not the only goal. Other things - such as weakening national defense, opposing traditional mores and social norms, exercising more control over people’s daily activities, and assorted “green” proposals -  matter too. However, since the end of the Cold War, nothing has mattered as much as the imperative to take and distribute money.

The ability  to keep taking that money rests on the acquiescence of the people who earned it. The great danger for the left is that the suckers will someday wise up en masse, realize that they are being taken, and decide to do something about it. This danger is compounded by the fact that the conflict between wealth producers and tax consumers is fundamentally different from the disputes between labor and management in the first part of  the 20^th Century.  Then, bitterly as they might go at it, each side objectively needed the other, and sensible people on both sides knew it.  That is not the case with the present division in the country. The taxpayers could do quite well without the tax consumers. The tax consumers are  totally parasitically dependent upon the taxpayers.  Productive self-supporting people would fair better  if the most of the  regulators, bureaucrats, officials, welfare recipients, and corporate welfare recipients were left to do something else with their time and without the taxpayers’ money. Stated bluntly, they do not need most of  those people and would be no worse off without them. It is very much in the interest of those on  the left that that blunt fact never be noted by enough people at once  to upset things. 

That came at least somewhat close to happening at the end of the 1970’s. The marks were thoroughly fed up and catching on to the game  in significant numbers. Things settled down after the election of 1980, and we saw almost a quarter century with very little in the way of unrest from those of us footing the bill.  Now, though, that seems to have changed.  The left has once again gone too far and failed too much. The natives are restless. The rubes are wising up again. The left may again be able to hunker down, compromise and temporize a bit, and wait out the storm. However leftists should not be certain of that. The suckers could stay awake longer this time. If so, there may be real change.