The Rich Get Richer: None Dare...pp. 35-40

Page 34 ended with this gem, "Jefferson knew that if the government were not enslaved the people would be."--that's a fun claim about Thomas Jefferson. 

Moving forward, and still waiting for those Socialist policies of Richard Nixon to be enumerated, we move to a fake coffee sit down with the "man in the street." This is never a good sign because what always follows is the strawest of strawmen or the easiest setup for a softball. Even the book isn't disingenuous to pretend that this isn't going to be one of those things, "he might say: 'the one thing that I can never figure out is why all these very, very wealthy people like the Kennedy's, the Fords, the Rockefellers and others are for socialism..." 

The fake quote comments how these families would have the most to lose from Socialism while this fictitious person has the least to lose but is against it. A lot is going on here, but most notably, it's the appeal to "common sense," which a friend of mine liked to comment isn't common, and if it is, it's not sense. This is the real endemic problem in America...and it always has been that the average person's gumption is somehow more important than any expert. I have a cousin who, despite my Ph.D. that I earned on the subject of conspiracy theories, thinks that his view on the election being stolen is as correct as mine because he "feels" it. The average person in this fake interview "cannot figure it out" because he's never looked at the issue to find out why, or even if it is true. 

Right off the bat, we have to separate socialism from socialist policies. "What's the difference?" this person might say. Well, one of them advocates for an overhaul of our entire economic policies, while the other is just instituting a couple of safety nets here and there. One requires a fundamental shift in the nature of the country, while the other might be using the power of the federal government to create a works program during a time of economic crisis. 

The second issue is that Allen is still not talking about what actual Socialism is. He's got the scare word that he correctly defined on the last page, but now that this is laid out, he can just call everything Socialism, and people like me might agree, out of context, that he defined the word right. 

Finally, Allen goes on a long tirade about how these rich families all have tax-free foundations--which is a bad thing? I'm confused at the point he's making here. At first, he seems to be saying that their personal property is all held in these foundations--which is something of a problem when it is true. If he's going to condemn them for using these foundations as tax shelters to hide assets, yeah, I'm with you. But those foundations actually do stuff, so is he saying we shouldn't have those at all? Well, this is a mixed bag; on the one hand, Allen advocates that they should donate all of their funds to the downtrodden in a show of being honest.

 Yet, that's what the foundations do. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates (I have no idea what her last name is now) foundation was the couple spending their own money to help with causes that they found to be worthwhile--the eradication of Malaria comes to mind. Gates' attempt to fix education problems was a disaster, but the money he supplied was more than most school districts could dream of getting. Is it right? I don't have an answer for that because when it works--of course, but when it doesn't, it can be horrible. 

Allen laments that one of the Rockefellers only paid 685$ in income tax. Is this a problem? It sure is. And this is where the eagle of cognitive dissonance comes swooping in: Allen isn't saying that we should have a progressive income tax, the kind that Adam Smith recommends; he's just using this to anger up his readership. Allen needs to walk a fine line here; yeah, it's bullshit that a Rockefeller paid less than I did (even adjusting for inflation), but I advocate that he should pay more. I'm on the AOC/Sanders train for this--but Allen won't be, so he has no solution to the problem except to call Rockefeller/Ford/Kennedy hypocrites. 

To see how the future will work, Allen compares the dreams of the super-rich to the only Socialist countries he can think of--the Communist ones. As a bonus, he even refers back to his definition, but which definition, Allen? The COMMUNISM definition or the Socialism definition? Not that this question matters because it's dropped in favor of the most basic understanding of the federal government that I've read in a long time. It begins ok, with an amateur's description of the relationship between the federal and state governments. Then it talks about how this system is the only thing preventing tyranny and how the leftists are slowly edging towards a dictatorship by spending federal dollars and granting it to the various state agencies. 

Again, Nixon is president as this book is being written. First off, if you want to limit the capacity for dictatorship, you need to throw all limits against the executive branch. Sure, stop Nixon, but then stop every president from executive order abuse. Second, that states receiving funds from the federal government isn't new in the 1970s and wasn't new for a long time. That's just how the system works. Third, Allen doesn't understand government, and importantly--he doesn't have to. All he has to do is makeup something, claim that this was the founding fathers' intention, and no one will fact-check him. 

What Allen does not understand is that the nature of the U.S. government was set up through compromise. The strong federal government was supposed to be a check against the more powerful states, which is why we have the Congress that we do (I'm elementary here). Without the centralized government, you would have the dominance of a few states against the rest. For example, my state, NY, would have more authority than Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, etc., because of the state's economic power. 

The idea of centralized power is so anathema to Allen that he quote-drops English philosopher/atheist Thomas Hobbes, "Freedom is government divided into small fragments." He also quotes Acton's cliche "power corrupts" and Wilson (before he became a tool of the Insiders), "the history of liberty is a history of the limitations of government power, not the increase of it." 

A quick aside about Hobbes, I cannot find this quote in Hobbes's writing. Allen should be wary of quoting Hobbes, Hobbes is a tricky fellow in trying to pin his political views down--but one thing is clear in Hobbes' writings: that sovereign is absolute and that, if a republic becomes tyrannical, you don't get to leave unless they say so. The right to revolt is outlawed, and the government possesses the sole right to violence. 

Allen closes the chapter by talking about something called the "Great Merger," which he claims is the unification of the SOCIALIST countries "probably under the auspices of the United Nations." I like the word "probably" here: it's just a fun little addition to the utterly baseless claim he's making. I want to point out that the UN has always been the enemy for these people; it's a foundation for the modern right wing's inability to work with other countries. It's just that when Allen was writing, they kept the quiet part quiet.