Let’s see – Native Americans were wards of the state for a century, and, until the recent casino boom, were the most impoverished, addiction ridden, unemployed group in society; the family farmer has been the object of endless state programs to save him for most of he 20th century, and his numbers have shrunk from over half the population to under 2%; black people were “adopted” by the modern welfare state about 50 years ago, with the result that the black family has shattered, perhaps irreparably, and the male part is massively either in prison or unemployed, while the female half now has a 75% or so rate of births out of wedlock, and single parent families struggling with poverty lead to homicide from gang activity being the primary cause of death for young black males.
The wars on poverty and drugs continues to decimate the very populations they were supposed to help, the federal education programs have overseen a massive decline in the competency and educational achievements of our youth across the board, and catastrophically poor literacy rates among the minority communities.
The Fed decided to massively aid the housing market, to assist people in buying homes, and within a few decades, the housing and financial markets collapsed into a recession which we are still struggling to climb out of, and return to a semblence of our former economic levels.
And so now, the progressive state under the current progressive regime is going to come to the aid of the struggling middle class?
Yeah, that will work out just fine…
– Samizdata commenter ‘veryretired’
I’m from the government and I’m here to help…..
Yes – if one wants government cradle-to-grave policies, then the Indian Reserves are classic example of them.
And to those (like the so called Nobel Price for Economics committee) that the “tragedy of the commons” has been “refuted” by recent work…………….
When government control was replaced by “Tribal Councils” the areas CONTINUED to be total mess, with poverty stricken populations dependent on the dole and so on.
Yet where indians have PRIVATE PROPERTY in their farms (and so on) they prosper.
Stolypin in Russia after 1905 would not have been surprised – “Mir” do not work.
As for the general housing policy of the American government.
Thomas Sowell “Housing: Boom and Bust” and the general monetary expansion explained in Thomas Woods “Meltdown”.
Sadly the American and the British governments are still doing everything they can to prop up the housing bubble.
By the way – very well written (as always) by veryretired.
It’s those “struggling middle class” taxpayers who are funding everything else. If the state messes them up just as badly the whole system collapses.
Luckily, the US Government has now stepped in to help us all out with healthcare. I wonder how that will turn out?
Jay—about as well as the food pyramid has helped with the “obesity epidemic”.
Less meat, more carbs! Now there’s a recipe for success in weight loss if I ever saw one.
(Go paleo)
They are quite efficient at killing people, especially when they tag team!
That’s really all that they’re good at, MM.
Andrew Z.
The system will collapse – de facto bankruptcy is now inevitable.
The thing the left (the hard left) know that as well as we do.
Bankruptcy is not the end of the game – it is when the real game starts.
Oh, I’m stealing this for tomorrow. Well, borrowing with attribution.
Paul Marks- You say, correctly, that the real game begins at bankruptcy. Perhaps that which has already been accomplished indicates what “real” game is that we’ll all be playing. This analysis perhaps sheds additional light on the subject?
Or perhaps this story gives further definition to the game we’ll be playing?
Lastly, the game’s been rigged far too long………..checkmate.
Yes, but I don’t think you can blame the demise of family farming on government, it has shrunk everywhere in the what we would call the “West”, and elsewhere unless very specifically protected like Japan.Families can keep farming, but it doesn’t make economic sense to do so, so why worry about it ? Other than for nostalgic reason’s that is ?
Ed – a family I know over in Oxfordshire are being forced off their smallholding by a govenment backed “EcoTown” (the regime does not even know what it is being ironic – force people off their privately owned small holdings, by all sorts of tricks and pressure, and and then call the new housing estate an “envionmental” project).
The books of Christopher Booker and Richard North show how government regulations have destroyed family farms – especially animal farming (but the regs – have aslo made making and selling stuff from plant crops very hard).
Why bother?
Because Britian has a popuation of 60 million people and the idea that we can export “finanial services” for food is nonsense – as the finanical services are mostly just a credit bubble. So unless you think manufacturing is comming back…..
By the way – farming is not subsidised in New Zealand, but nor is it regulated to bits either (although there is a lot of “Green” regulation hitting people).
Agenda 21 (and so on) are not a conspiracy theory – they are, sadly, only too real.
Michael.
Ammo is only as good (or as bad) as bad as the intentions of the human beings who fire it.
And government employees are human beings.
One must endure every insult, ever “poke”, every elite establishment effort to make anti big government people look “extreme”, and “violent”.
You are quite correct – anti big government people are being set up, but that does not mean that anyone just has to HELP themselves get framed.
Let us not make the regime’s disinformation efforts easy – let us make them as hard as possible.
So a lot of those soldiers (and civilian government employees) can see that their orders are based upon LIES.
And if the worst comes to the worst?
I will keep bouncing till I can not bounce anymore.
Friends of my keep telling me I should visit the United States.
When I was younger I visited all sorts of places – even places where I had not got a clue about the local langauge.
I have been timid and depressed for too long.
And the United States is as good a place to die as anywhere else.
But, I repeat, do not make the frame-up easy – do not play into their hands.
Do not what you want to do – but what they would least like you to do.
Smile when you want to scream – and make a quiet, polite (and, if possible, witty) comment when you want to curse.
Be quiet and reasonable at all times – even when the media are spitting at you (for they will only broadcast your anger – not their provication).
I grew up on a farm, raising pigs, poultry and crops. Now, post retirement, I have gained access to some agricultural land for which I pay in kind. I grow lots of different stuff, I also raise chickens and ducks (there’s a rather nice pond adjoining the land). I also have two sows which are regularly put to another farmer’s boar. Piglets aplenty result!
I’m forbidden by law from slaughtering my livestock for sale but I am permitted to slaughter for my own consumption. So now I ‘give away’ that butchered pork and dressed poultry I find is ‘surplus’ to my needs. That the recipients ‘give’ to me either their services or products ‘surplus’ to their own requirements is neither here nor there.
The rural economy was ever thus and no amount of EU or Government regulation has the slightest effect on this well-entrenched system and no tax at all is ever paid!
Our little fraction of the middle class will survive because we reject all governmental interference that we can and we are very happy being able to do so just about completely legally.
To the comment above—I’m not claiming that the state caused the entire loss of family farms, but that the myriad programs to prevent it were essentially meaningless at best, and may very well have been harmful in their unintended consequences, as so many state actions are.
For example, it is a well documented result of many farm programs that it is much more advantageous to be a large corporate farm, which receives all the various assisstances of a small farm, but on a larger scale, and therefore the effects of these programs are, in their net result, to encourage small farmers to sell out to corporate farms and quit farming small acreages.
There was an article at NRO the other day about various state programs akin to my essay, in which the author uses the tag line from hillary’s Senate appearence “What difference does it make?”. In it he lists another group of state interventions, and some of the same as I, in which the point is how utterly pointless they have been.
They don’t know what they’re doing, and never have.