A while back I asked if jealousy should be posited as a viable economic theory. The liberal outrage at such a preposterous idea was palpable. They accused me of lying, projecting, and basically kicking puppy dogs. Then today, I noticed one of those insipid, “stop the attack on the middle class,” signs. Somehow, the unions, and their idiotic supporters have decided to lay claim to the invention of the middle class. The sign you see was in opposition to Ohio Senate Bill 5, which was signed into law months ago, and does nothing more than limit some of the more egregious money laundering capabilities of Ohio’s public sector unions. whenever these purveyors of the union middle class fairy tale are pressed for details, we are immediately treated to a litany of outright bull about the growing gap between rich and poor in this country. We are told that the free market system has made our poor worse off than anywhere else in the world. Laughable on its face, this argument is easy to refute, most especially since we do not exist in a vacuum. The rest of the world is visible to us, and what would be considered middle class in the Sudan for example, live in absolute squalor, without even the benefit of running water. We also had a vibrant middle class before the very first union was in existence. I realize that the left wishes to travel through debate without facing trite little things known as facts or reality, but most of their statements are just too goofy to take seriously. Most arguments over economics or policy will start with an assumption for a starting point. When they come from the left, that starting point is usually in fantasy land. In order to buy in, you must believe that the government creates jobs, entitlement spending creates wealth, wealth redistribution schemes are as American as apple pie, there is such as thing as, “green jobs,” and that the basic laws of supply and demand do not exist. As predicted by many of us in 2008, the policies of Jimmy Carter have had the exact same results as they had when enacted by Jimmy Carter. The silver lining of course is that the American people will react the exact same way in November of 2012 as they did in November of 1980. I just hope we get another Reagan this time around.
