Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Down Hill Slide

Today was a good day, then every day in Wisconsin is a vacation.

I listened to Bernie Sanders last night describing how great Socialism is. He said the middle class is getting screwed by the upper one percent. That the wealth of the middle class has migrated to the richest people in America and the middle class has suffered accordingly.

In listening to Bernie I was amazed by how sincere he sounded. Bernie is an avowed Socialist and has spent his time abroad visiting countries that had socialist governments. He knows what a miserable system it is. He has seen it first hand. Like many academics he only sees what he wants to see. Has there ever been a country that went socialist, where the middle class prospered? Having lived in Europe let me answer that. The middle class steadily loses ground under Socialism until it falls to a level the lower class once exclusively occupied. The money does not flow upwards into the hands of the rich, it is redistributed downward to make the "Have Nots" feel better about themselves. The only change is that the upper one percent becomes those who control the government once the Capitalists are given the boot. Never mind that it is those Damn Capitalists who create the engine of a vibrant economy that allows more people to prosper. The result is that the middle class takes a couple of steps down the economic ladder, closer to the poverty level. The upper one percent gets a change of faces.

Meanwhile the rich move their money to offshore accounts or put it into tax shelters, trusts and non Profits. If things get bad enough they flee, taking their money with them. Short of that they build a better security system around their gated communities. Keep in mind that the rich already have their wealth and their strategy is to keep it. There is a diminishing set of returns on buying a more ostentatious mansion or bigger power boat. To hedge their bets they contribute to support both political parties as an insurance policy. Donald Trump makes no bones about giving to Republican and Democratic political candidates.

The wealthy like the Democrats because they can be counted onto placate society as the standard of living goes steadily down hill. The middle class doesn't believe yet that they are destined to become part of a gigantic lower class. If they ever wake up, it will probably be too late. There will be a single Democratic Party and everybody will all be too afraid to complain for fear of losing Food Stamps and a Crappy Single Payer Health Care Plan.

The wealthy like the Republicans because a capitalist, free enterprise system is the font from whence their wealth derived. The monied elite, as mentioned earlier, has more then they can ever spend and worry only about a change in the status quo. They still dabble in the economics, playing the market and investments abroad but largely are satisfied where they are.

The money that gets redistributed under Socialism is the wealth of the middle class. It gets spent on all the government give away programs. What the government doesn't get in taxes they acquire indirectly by printing currency, borrowing and dumping gold reserves. Savings of the middle class get periodically looted in those periodic "Market Adjustments. As of yet Public Lands have only been mortgaged and not sold. The government hates gold because it is a pretty good indicator of what the dollar is worth. So when the value of gold rises on the open market the government quietly begins dumping. Of course the closest guarded secret of the Federal Reserve is how much gold is actually in Fort Knox and how much the stockpile has been depleted since the end of WW2.

How come the politicians aren't talking about that?