Old Dogs, Watermelon & BorderLine Whine

"There is a premise you see spewed by the left, the media, and a certain socialist blog here in St. Croix County and that is the concept of "income inequality". This mainstay of the left depicts the United States as a nation starkly divided between the rich and poor...So inequities do exist, but not at nearly at the the hyped levels you hear about from the left. Additionally, many of the inequities are self imposed. Do you think the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, could have achieved what he did by going into a profession where market influences did not affect his endeavors? Oh, he did not finish college, and the industry he spawned employs millions and millions and has help America to continue to be the greatest nation of the face of this planet. It was not unions, not education, not entitlement mentality, nor exploitation that earned Bill Gates his fortune, it was good old entrepreneurial western capitalism."

Chris@OnTheBorderLine.net



"Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we'd want to get involved."

Bill Gates



"Conservatives, on the other hand, entertain no illusions about computers in the schools or anything else. Instead, they stick by the bootstrap myth, and free marketism as the course to personal and national success. We have over 200 years of evidence strongly suggesting that America's favorite theological premise, Adam Smith's “unseen hand,” like the gravity defying bootstrap theory, is a sorry thing indeed for any sane person to hang his ass on, given that both are endorsed chiefly by the smuggest, the greediest and richest among us. Most working folks would simply prefer an even start -- a fair break for everyone without depending on bootstraps or unseen hand theology crafted by a man who offered that the self-interested pursuit of money somehow made men more altruistic. Despite modern apologists' assertions to the contrary, Smith also believed the unseen hand was actually that of God, “whose wisdom works itself through competition for wealth,” and that “providence rightly divided the earth among a few lordly masters.” He disliked government except when it was clubbing down "the vice ridden and slothful poor." Property is government, he said, and “Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor,” thereby writing the Republican Party platform a full 89 years before the party was even born. Even allowing for the times, the guy was a bloodless prick. But then, so was Ronald Reagan, yet we are forced to suffer a similar deification of his addled free market cowboyisms. Feel free to hold your head and scream."

Gavin Kennedy@ Adam Smith's Lost Legacy