An Investment In Failure

by Thomas Sowell - August 21st, 2007 - Townhall.com

Despite whatever the left may say, or even believe, about their concern for the poor, their actual behavior shows their interest in the poor to be greatest when the poor can be used as a focus of the left's denunciations of society.

When the poor stop being poor, they lose the attention of the left. What actions on the part of the poor, or what changes in the economy, have led to drastic reductions in poverty seldom arouse much curiosity, much less celebration.

This is not a new development in our times. Back in the 19th century, when Karl Marx presented his vision of the impoverished working class rising to attack and destroy capitalism, he was disappointed when the workers grew less revolutionary over time, as their standards of living improved.

At one point, Marx wrote to his disciples: "The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing."

Think about that. Millions of human beings mattered to him only in so far as they could serve as cannon fodder in his jihad against the existing society.

A conversation I had with some people on Thursday about Thomas Sowell was fresh in my mind when I read this article. Its focus brought me up short. Its focus is political even if the arguments are about creating wealth and jobs. For a man who started his life as an economist and mathematician, the evolution of Thomas Sowell has been interesting. He still uses his economic underpinnings when he strays into politics, but he is fighting a battle that many of the active members of the Republican Party have abandoned.

That battle is against the willingness of a democracy to vote for "bread and circus" as Robert Heinlein called it, echoing the weakness that destroyed the Roman empire. The power to vote has always been inherent even in nations that did not have the formal vote which is why the trend to socialism is always so strong.

In America we have the right to vote and for our nation to remain free our voters must listen to people like Sowell. Thomas Sowell is pointing out that we have an entire political party whose focus is fanning the flames of greed and outrage. At the same time, this party votes for actions that are holding down the people they profess to represent. The poor are not served by such duplicity.

Our current education system is designed to teach feel good narcissism while not providing the mathematical and language skills to succeed and break out of poverty.

Our welfare system is designed to trap the poor into a level of living that is not quite middle class while making any attempt to break free punitive. As an example, going from welfare to work means that a full time job producing $5500 more total income produces only $200 more in take home pay. What mother with children can afford to pay for child care in order to work with only $200 more take home?

Too many Republicans have started to echo the democrat program of pandering to greed and envy. It is time we stop this before we lose our nation to the failed system of socialism.