Elizabeth Crum

A faithful reader who knows I am interested in socio-political things sends this little book report blurb on Shenfan: The  Continuing Revolution in a Chinese City:

The author points out that while peasants are learning to cooperate with one another in planting and growing crops, the bureaucratic overseers try to outdo one another by falsely reporting yields - proving that the competitive spirit can’t be obliterated but only moved from place to place. 

So, in one village, X reports that “his people” produced 200 catties per mou (I’ve forgotten what those translate to in bushels per acre), and then Y says “my people” produced 300.  And pretty soon, someone is reporting 10,000 catties per mou. 

This is all well and good until all the cadres (bureaucrats) start harassing “their people” to produce to at the enormously inflated level, making all the peasants feel inadequate and depressing the collective to the point that it can’t function.

At which point, because this is socialism/communism, the state steps in and sends the peasants the grain they need but are no longer producing because they can’t meet unreasonable quotas.  

Making them totally dependent on the state – which works only for a short time, because since all collectives are producing less, the state has less to distribute.

 Forcing the peasants back into growing crops the way they used to – on their own land privately.

 And:

Mao wanted to put his trust in “the peasants,” believing that they could learn to cooperate in order to benefit both themselves and the state as soon as they could be taught that it was in their best interest to do so.

 But Mao was opposed by others at the top who didn’t trust the masses at all and felt that they needed to be controlled and managed (exploited) and that power had to remain in the hands of an elite few.  Unfortunately, these elite few were full of pie-in-the-sky ideas about farming and production, and when their projects fell apart, they simply blamed the masses for the failure.

It occurs to me that  whether we are talking socialism or capitalism, true progress is made when those at the bottom cooperate to improve their own lives (bigger yields, more food on the personal table) while supplying the state with the excess, so that the state can, in turn, build roads, keep the peace, improve technology, and the like. 

And that neither system flourishes when an elite loses touch with the grassroots.

Well, I guess we need to have another Tax Day TEA Party ASAP!  What part of “get out of our wallets” and “stop ‘helping’ us!” and “stop spending money that doesn’t need to be spent” and ”stop hiring government employees to do things we can do ourselves” does the government not understand…?   Good grief!!

This “plan” from the White House is so outrageous and hair-brained and so likely to have the opposite of the intended effect that it is hard to even believe (copied and pasted from The Corner to save time):

Veronique @ The Corner is on fire today.  Memorize the data so you can speak intelligently on the issue of income taxes:

Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes   [Veronique de Rugy]

I am sure the proposition that “everyone should pay income taxes” seems obvious to you and me. And yet, the reality is quite different. Over at the Wall Street Journal, Ari Fleischer, Pres. George W. Bush’s former press secretary, has some interesting numbers about how many taxpayers pay the income tax, and how much each group contributes.

At the top:

A very small number of taxpayers — the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year — pay 72.4% of the nation’s income taxes. They’re the tip of the triangle that’s supporting virtually everyone and everything. Their burden keeps getting heavier.

At the bottom:

According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 — 60% of the country — paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation’s income.

While very politically appealing, it has some serious economic implications:

Picture an upside-down pyramid with its narrow tip at the bottom and its base on top. The only way the pyramid can stand is by spinning fast enough or by having a wide enough tip so it won’t fall down. The federal version of this spinning top is the tax code; the government collects its money almost entirely from the people at the narrow tip and then gives it to the people at the wider side. So long as the pyramid spins, the system can work. If it slows down enough, it falls.

The open question is: When will it stop spinning? Read the whole thing here.

Just when you thought your blood pressure couldn’t rise any higher over the ill-conceived, pork-stuffed stimulus bill on-which-the-ink-is-not-yet-dry, Nancy Pelosi says ANOTHER package may be needed.

(Note:  in Liberalspeak, “may” = “will”)

She cites “job growth” as the reason for “keeping the door open” in this extended season of stimulus.  And here I thought saving and creating jobs was the meat and potatoes of Stimulus ~ Part I.

No, silly!  That was just a teaser.  A mere morsel.  A yummy bite-sized bacon-wrapped appetizer.

Pelosi and Friends are now going to start cooking up the next course – the one that will really, Really fix everything – for your consumption.

If anyone feels the need to puke, the bathroom is that way —————->

Strange that a British writer - Peter Hitchens - is the one to re-break my heart re: election night with this piece in the Daily Mail. 

Hat Tip:  Derb, who provides the column’s four paragraph close

Great IBD op-ed on Obama’s under-the-radar socialism and how he came by these methods and beliefs.  If you have any doubts about Obama’s formative ideology, please do yourself (and all of us) a favor and read it.

Moonbattery also reminds us of the intro to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  If that doesn’t chill your spine, I don’t know what would.

Last night in his interview with Bill O’Reilly, Obama said:

“If I am sitting pretty, and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t — what’s the big deal for me to say, ‘I’m going to pay a little bit more.’ That is neighborliness.”

Well, Senator Obama, it WOULD BE neighborliness if you were doing it VOLUNTARILY, i.e. if free will were involved.

However, if the amount you pay is decided by the federal government, collected by the federal government, and distributed where and whence the federal government sees fit, and if you resent the hell out of it (as I do), then the act is NOT neighborliness but state-mandated SOCIALISM, otherwise known as the forcible redistribution of wealth, otherwise known as highway robbery by the Nanny State bandits of the world.

(I was pleased when O’Reilly called him “Robin Hood Obama.”)