The Great Society vs anemic DSA

 Having recently finished reading Amity Shlaes'  Great Society: A New History about the Johnson administration's "war on poverty" in the 1960s, I couldn't help comparing the ambition then with the anemic goals of Democrat Socialists today. 

Trump isn't the first politician to claim he could make America great again. President Johnson and his administration aimed for the complete elimination of poverty. The DSA wants cheaper food through government owned grocery stores, free healthcare and education, and rent control. Of course, the scaled down ambitions of the extreme left probably has a lot to do with the massive failures of Johnson's Great Society depicted in Shlaes' book. 

Will Musk kill 9 million people?

 

While head of DOGE, the department of government efficiency, Elon Musk dismantled the US Agency for International Development, UDAID. Many claimed that would lead to massive deaths. The Lancet medical journal tried to quantify the human toll – projecting that global aid cuts could lead to at least 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030.

Statistics are the easiest and most effective way to lie to people because very few understand statistical analysis and are suckers for charlatans who pretend to be experts. A few have responded to the poor analysis by the Lancet. One of the better is at Reason magazine. 

Biblical Jubilee did not redistribute land

Christian socialists try desperately to squeeze socialism out of a few Bible passages, especially those in the Torah on Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8–13  and debt forgiveness (Deuteronomy 15). But they only expose their superficial grasp of the passages. 

Jubilee did not involve land redistribution. In modern terms it prevented the permanent sale of land. It only allowed others to lease the land until Jubilee, 49 years at most. The price paid was the value of the produce of the land for the years remaining until Jubilee. So, if the land could produce 1,000 bushels of wheat in a year and there were 10 years left to Jubilee, the lease price was the value of 10,000 bushels of wheat. The lease ended at Jubilee. The owner didn't sell the land then get it back for free at Jubilee as socialists think. 

Vance attacts Friedman and economics

Recently, Vice President J. D. Vance attacked the economics of one of the greatest economists of the 20th century and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman. In an interview,  Vance made the following comments:

“Milton Friedman’s ideas made more sense in the 1980s because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity.

“Trump is right that he wants to 'seize the equity of the AI companies.'

World's first trillionaire!

 

Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez, AOC, recently asserted that no one could earn a billion dollars. She needs to update her claim now that Elon Musk has become history's first trillionaire. 

AOC wasn't making a factual statement. She was regurgitating old Marxist nonsense that profits are theft from the workers: business owners shouldn't make profits; all income above the cost of materials belongs to the workers.  AOC made that clear by adding that businessmen can under pay workers, but they haven't earned their profits. They have stolen them from workers. 

I agree with socialists that billionaires and trillionaires shouldn't exist, but for different reasons. They exist today because the Fed has destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar by counterfeiting tsunamis of them over the past century. If the dollar still had the purchasing power it had before the Fed, a trillion in today's dollars would be worth just $29 billion in 1912.  Elon Musk might still be a billionaire, but far from a trillionaire. 

Why do socialists hate the poor?

Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Baptist News Global and other Christian media promote socialism as the cure for poverty. They assume their own moral superiority because they have good intentions, they claim. But none can give an example of a socialist country helping the poor. The record of socialism is one of punishing and impoverishing the poor in every case and the more socialist the country the poorer it became. In addition, the defunct Soviet Union murdered over 60 million of its own people as did communist China. 

Of course, those countries tried to honestly implement Marx's political nonsense to the fullest, being true believers. What about Europe? Western Europe didn't believe as much in Marx as others, so it implemented democrat socialism, a half-hearted attempt to follow his principles. The result was stagnation. The poor in the U.S. are as wealthy as the typical European. 

Media discovers K-shaped economy

 

A few economists and the media have discovered what they call the "K-shaped" economy.  According to the US Bank website, 

"A K-shaped economy describes an economic recovery where different groups or industries experience vastly different outcomes – some thrive and grow, while others struggle or decline. This term was intended to highlight the widening economic inequality during periods of recovery or downturn. It fits the saying, 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.'"