Today’s Guardian leader, purportedly on social class, is worth reading. It is utter rubbish. But it is worth reading because it is utter rubbish.
It is an informative compression of the muddled thinking of the reflex left: non sequitur piled on fallacy, piled on miscomprehension of both theory and real people, piled on all-or-nothing thinking, piled on misprision of fact, bonded together only with a sticky, sighing outrage. Read it out loud and you may find yourself using that furious-sobbing-child tone and plonking emphasis affected by professional radical activists—especially women—to convey how strongly they feel about the world. As is universally acknowledged, strength of feeling is the same as strength of argument.
I say ‘the reflex left’ because the alternative, ‘the conventional left’, though it offers the pleasure of mocking the unoriginality of the radical, suggests a developed coherence in what is usually just attitudinal stamp-collecting reinforced by mutual approval (libertarians beware). Considering that the reflex left is obsessed with economics and sociology, and professes to derive its policy from them, the arrant ignorance of either, even as they are invoked, is an unending wonder. (Libertarians beware, bis.) That is on fabulous display here in a jazz hands incursion into social mobility, offering numbers that are not numbers (“But a child born 20 years later who is a successful professional now would probably come from the top quarter…“) and that lead to no detectable conclusions, which can only have been included for emotional colour. Impersonal social forces are held to dominate, but paradoxically regarded as tools of the wicked if they do not do what is wanted.
There is another way that ‘reflex’ is appropriate: this is reflexive discourse. It preaches to the converted. It says, “Look! We were right all along.” And assumes therefore that nothing need be said to engage the unconvinced (and again, beware). It is offered within code.
The best non sequitur in the piece is an epitome of an epitome. I considered offering it as a quote of the day. It has everything: it erupts into the discussion from nowhere, is complete nonsense, is nowhere meaningfully followed up, involves an appeal to shared attitudes and beliefs in the reader as reinforcement, and contains an implied accusation of wicked motives in others:
Politicians want us to believe that it is possible to make better-off people richer without making poor people poorer.
The Guardian leader-writer thinks we already do believe that it is impossible. Not even unlikely. Impossible. If we object that sometimes people have got rich by enslaving and impoverishing others, but that mostly both rich people and poor people have got richer together, though at different rates, then we must be wrong. The rich are richer ergo the poor are everywhere poorer. If the Prince of Wales is running his Aston Martin on spare wine and skiing every winter, it can only be at the direct expense of the Duchy of Cornwall’s serfs – who are now starving in greater numbers than in 1337. The politicians stand accused of denying such an inconvenient truth
No wonder the people think they are out of touch.
It’s all about control!
Perhaps if we push you this way, or that way, you will fit our mould a little better.
The interfering, busybody obsession.
Only one word, no, two:
Back off!
Let the people breathe.
But I suppose if they did then they’d be out of a job?
The Fixed Quantity of Wealth Fallacy is the most pernicious and the most manifestly preposterous axiom that underpins all redistributive belief systems… It indicates a ‘dunce’ level of economic understanding.
Guardian logic 101:
Wealth is fixed
Wealth has always been fixed
Therefore the standard of living for humanity as a whole is 90% worse than it was when the worlds population was 669,203,027 rather than now when its 6,692,030,277…
Either that or their whole worldview of fixed wealth is pure crap.
Perhaps someone could help me out here, its a toss up which it could be.
And the Grauniad, in defiance of all logic, wants us to believe that it is not.
Could some of you Englishmen comment on how the Gawdjen keeps going (financially, not verbally diarrheatic); and on its observable trends – are its adverts getting larger in page space, but fewer and less frequent, etc. ?
Is it being displaced by the FT?
RRS,
The Grauniad is heavily subsidised by the Government (this subsidy is laundered through the large amount of advertising the Government do there, particularly for recruiting).
“It is utter rubbish. But it is worth reading because it is utter rubbish.”
If it was really worth reading rubbish because it is rubbish, you’d have your nose in the Guardian day-in day-out and would barely get anything else done!
The disguised government subsidy isn’t whats fueling the Grauniad. It is a bunch of more profitable publications (car sales, I think!) that are part of the same group, which is a trust devoted to keeping the G running. Actually a very clever, and eminently capitalist scheme.
The Political Dictionary: Liberal Economics
Money falls from heaven for everyone to use. But, the immoral and sneaky rich gather more than their share. The government’s purpose is to redistribute the money the way God intended. Or, if you wish, the way Gaia, or the Tooth Fairy, or whoever intended.
Taxes remove the excess income of the rich and give it to the voting poor, through a fair and organized bureaucracy. The rich oppose this action by selfishly and spitefully decreasing employment. Government responds by increasing grants and spending, to boost employment. The government runs a deficit while it discovers the “knack” for creating the jobs that the rich are hiding.
I don’t see the point of reading rubbish. I think it is now taken as given that much of the economic/social analysis of parts of the left is about as coherent as the ramblings of a drunk, and far less amusing.
If I read the Guardian, I do so for its sports coverage, which is pretty good.
I AGREE that governments should not “make better off people richer”.
A classic example of how governments make rich people richer and poor people pooer is by “expanding the money supply” – a policy of “cheap credit” or “monetary expansion” always, IN THE END, leads to subsidy of rich elties and greater and greater inequality as the capital structure of the economy is distorted – the history of most of Latin America is a sad example of this.
However, the above is not what they Guardian thing means.
What the article is saying is not that governments should not artifically “make rich people richer”, no what the artile is saying is that PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICHER – because this makes the poor pooer.
This is the exact opposite of the truth – as it is precisely the efforts of people to make themselves richer (via the economic method of business, not the political method of plunder) that makes the poor LESS poor. Trying to “take from the wage payer” will, in the end (over a period of years), make the “wage earner” worse off (not better off) than they otherwise would have been.
“Trickle down economics” – actually it is rightly called “the history of Western Civilization”. But then the Guardian does not really approve of the West.
Life is not a zero-sum game.
Wealth can be created and destroyed.
To see wealth destruction in action, try formatting your hard drive and erasing your backups.
Creating wealth is a bit more difficult, and left as an exercise for the reader.
More to what Paul Marks said:
I hope a lot of those lurking here are familiar with the pithy writings (and other commentary) of Thomas Sowell.
He regularly points out how these identifications of the “poor” and the “rich” and the contrasts of the income conditions in those categories are limited to comparisons of statistical composites of various percentiles without regard to changes in the composition of the individuals making up those segments.
In plain words, the constantly shifting composition of any percentile, up or down the income scales is totally ignored.
Individual capacities to “move” in the income scales vary widely from nation to nation for a variety of factors, but does exist throughout most of the “West.”
Use of governmental functions for redistribution of incomes seems to be more “popular” in those economies with the most sluggish income “mobility” trends.
When the cases are examined in terms of people instead of percentiles, the true nature of growing wealth in those nations with the least governmently deployed redistribution (there are other kinds) becomes more apparent.
Not long ago at ?Boggart Blog we posted an item in response to government health warnings under the title We’re All Going To Die, WTF.
It seems from what you are saying we will not even be free to die at a time and in a manner of our own choosing.
Guy:
That is a stunning quote! Each time I read it it seems to expose a new layer of misunderstanding and misconception. It’s definitely going into my quote collection.
Yes RRS, and the learned Thomas Sowell has a new book out on “intelllectuals” and society.
Sadly the “enlightened” elite are really closed minded statists.
They may be “intellectuals” – but people of intellect they are not.