Democrats Pit A Negative Against A Negative

[Flanders]

With the 2020 presidential election around the corner, Democratic presidential hopefuls and lawmakers have put forth bold proposals such as returning the top marginal income tax rate to 70 percent, levying wealth taxes as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have proposed, or “taxing the hell out of the wealthy” as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio put it.

Others such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claim that capitalism is “irredeemable” and a system that “allows billionaires to exist” is “immoral.” Sanders recently declared he does not think “billionaires should exist.”

Warren went further when she told voters they could attribute frustrations in their lives to the rich and powerful: “You’ve got things that are broken in your life; I’ll tell you exactly why. It’s because giant corporations, billionaires have seized our government.”

Many have also noticed the uptick in support for socialism among Democrats as well as the increasing popularity of candidates affiliating with the “democratic socialist” moniker.

What Matters More: Compassion or Envy?

Supporters often contend their motivation is compassion for the dispossessed, and they reason their tax proposals would protect democracy and raise revenue for social programs. With such a rhetorical focus on the rich and powerful, however, critics ask if the motivations are simply about compassion or whether envy and resentment also play a role?

For instance, in a famous exchange, former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded to a member of Parliament who lamented that income inequality had increased under her watch. Thatcher replied, “All levels of income are better off [in 1990] than they were in 1979 … but what the honorable member is saying is that he’d rather the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich.”

Thus she implied his true motive was a desire to make the rich worse off rather than the poor better off. Watch here:

What Does the Data Say?

In a new study, I examine these two competing explanations and ask whether envy and resentment of the successful or compassion for the needy better explain support for socialism, raising taxes on the rich, redistribution, and the like. The analysis is based on the “Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey” of 1,700 Americans.

Statistical tests reveal resentment of the successful has about twice the effect of compassion in predicting support for increasing top marginal tax rates, wealth redistribution, hostility to capitalism, and believing billionaires should not exist. Notably, however, compassion and resentment both equally predict support for socialism.

The survey asked respondents to answer a series of survey questions psychologists have developed to measure a person’s level of compassion and envy or resentment of the successful, respectively. These questions don’t mention politics — or even the rich specifically. For instance:

To measure a person’s level of compassion, the survey asked respondents if they agree or disagree: “I suffer from others’ sorrows,” or “I feel sympathy for those who are worse off than myself.”
To measure a person’s resentment toward the successful, the survey asked respondents if they agree or disagree: “Very successful people sometimes need to be brought down a peg or two even if they’ve done nothing wrong,” or “It’s good to see very successful people fail occasionally.”

Americans’ answers to these questions were used to measure the extent to which compassion or envy predict their opinions about taxes, socialism, and capitalism.


Raising Taxes on the Rich

Statistical tests (OLS regression) find that resentment against successful people is more influential than compassion in predicting a person’s support for raising taxes on households earning more than $200,000 a year, raising top marginal tax rates to 70 percent, and redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. (Full statistical results found here.)

This means people who agree that “very successful people sometimes need to be brought down a peg or two even if they’ve done nothing wrong” were more likely to want to raise taxes on the rich than people who agree that “I suffer from others’ sorrows.”

In each of the charts below, the blue line (resentment) is steeper than the red line (compassion), which suggests resentment is a more powerful motivator. Nevertheless, compassion for the needy is also a statistically significant predictor as well.

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content...3.04.53-PM.png

This data implies that those who support tax increases on the rich and wealth redistribution may be motivated by resentment or compassion, but they are more likely to be motivated by resentment.

Billionaires and Inequality

Next, I ran another series of statistical tests to investigate the motivations behind the following beliefs: 1) It’s immoral for our system to allow the creation of billionaires, 2) billionaires threaten democracy, and 3) the distribution of wealth in the United States is “unjust.”

Again, the statistical tests find that resentment against successful people is more influential than compassion in predicting each of these three beliefs. In fact, not only is resentment more impactful, but compassionate people are significantly less likely to agree that it’s immoral for our system to allow people to become billionaires.

Furthermore, compassion is not significantly linked with the idea that billionaires threaten democracy. Compassion does contribute to concerns about the country’s wealth distribution, but resentment is more influential. This suggests that concerns about inequality may have more to do with antagonism toward the successful than they do with lifting up people in need.

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content...3.09.52-PM.png

Socialism and Capitalism

Statistical tests find that resentment of the successful is more influential than compassion in predicting hostility toward capitalism. However, both compassion and resentment largely and significantly predict favorable views of socialism. In the charts below, the blue line (resentment) is steeper than the red line (compassion) in predicting hostility toward capitalism, but the blue and red lines look similar in predicting support for socialism.

This implies that it’s hard to know the motives of a person drawn to socialism. It may be compassion, resentment, or perhaps a little of both that motivates them. But a person hostile toward capitalism is much more likely to be motivated by resentment of the successful than compassion for the vulnerable.

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content...3.11.45-PM.png

Implications for 2020

These competing motives of compassion for the vulnerable and resentment of the successful may play a role in dividing the Democratic primary electorate approaching 2020. Analysis of survey data shows that resentment toward the successful significantly divides voters between the two leading Democratic presidential candidates: Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.

Statistical tests find that people who expressed higher levels of resentment toward the successful — for instance, those who agreed that “it’s good to see very successful people fail occasionally,” or “very successful people sometimes need to be brought down a peg or two even if they’ve done nothing wrong” — were much more likely to support Warren. Those who disagreed were more likely to support Biden.

Readers should keep in mind, however, that this survey data was collected in March 2019, before the Democratic debates this summer. Thus, voters may have shifted since then.

Surveys cannot read minds. But this data suggests support for socialism is likely the product of both compassion and resentment. On the other hand, support for wealth redistribution and hostility toward capitalism may have more to do with resentment of the successful than empathy for the poor.

That doesn’t mean compassion doesn’t matter; it may be the true motive for many people. But statistically speaking, resentment is more likely behind such opinions.

Study: Top Motivation For Hating Capitalism Isn’t Compassion, It’s Resentment
By Emily Ekins
October 1, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/01...ts-resentment/

I do not espouse Libertarian views; nevertheless, I would like to piggyback on Ms. Ekins’ interesting premise with a few of my thoughts and observations.

To begin, Democrats are masterful at transmuting positive human emotions into negative policies:

compassion (noun)

Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it. See synonyms at pity.

True compassion is a divine grace in decent human beings. In the hands of Democrats the word compassion becomes a vile political mask —— none more depraved than compassion for women slaughtering millions of babies.

More importantly, envy is the sole motivation driving every one of the Democrat Party’s big government policies. Every Democrat talking point is built on envy. To me, ENVY is deadliest of the Deadly Seven Sins:

https://res.cloudinary.com/vop/image...thumb3-3x2.jpg

Utopian EQUALITY is one of Communism’s greatest mutations. Indeed, the false charge of capitalism’s lack of compassion is rooted in Communism’s envy of everything —— topped by EQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE WEALTH.

. . . Equal Distribution of the Wealth is unworkable; so American Communists replaced it with Circulation of the Wealth. There was one inherent flaw in utopian economics. As tax dollars circulate time after time the parasite class consumes more and more of the nation’s wealth. At least working Americans before 1913 had the choice of working for themselves in the private sector during boom and bust cycles; whereas, Circulation of the Wealth forces every private sector American to work for strangers rather than work for themselves and their loved ones.

NOTE: A majority of Americans remained employed during the worst busts before and during the Great Depression. The same is true of contemporary “downturns.”

https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...59#post2760359

Ms. Ekins focused on the conflict between capitalism and Socialism (She never says Communism.). So I will close with an observation about slavery minus the whips and chains:

Individual liberties do not flow from those who have them to those who do not have them. Emily Brontë (1818–48) had it exactly right when she had Heathcliff say:

“The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them.”

Crush them is exactly what Obama preaches to his faithful. His deep, inbred, envy provides the tool for oppression: COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM.

Ms. Brontë describing the mechanics of envy could have been written for Obama. The slaves envy the master, but they punish those who are even weaker because the slaves dream about becoming objects of envy themselves. That is why Obama always talks about himself.

Envy will always insist that slavery for all is better than freedom for some. That unwritten rule is the foundation for every government’s authority. In short: Endless oppression by an omnipotent government.

History shows that on those rare occasions when freedom was wrested from the oppressors, the process of destroying that freedom begins with envy and ends in the halls of government. Obama proved it more than any other politician. Just look at American private sector freedoms and you will see the blueprint in motion. Americans were most free on December 16, 1791.

Obama is the most envious man on the planet Everything he said and did in his adult life appeased the envy that has been eating his soul since he was a child. Every word he ever uttered was designed to punish a free people. Worse still, his governing philosophy is convincing his sick followers that envy is the way to get everything they desire.

https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...08#post2938208

[PostmodernProphet]

I have Flanders on ignore but I am assuming the thread is about Warren and Biden being the front runners?......

[Flanders]

I have Flanders on ignore but I am assuming the thread is about Warren and Biden being the front runners?......

To PostmodernProphet: Since you obviously read the title you will be amazed at the number of things you can ascertain by simply reading the message.

[Flanders]

I do not espouse Libertarian views; . . .

This is why:

Libertarians have become pawns of the progressive Left in America, and in an ironic twist, both of them have been co-opted by globalist corporate interests. When everything is privatized, rationed and metered, corporate rent seekers gain new revenue streams.

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
– John Rogers, “Ephemera 2009,” Kung Fu Monkey

Libertarians are handing America over to socialists. That’s not what they want, but that’s what’s happening. How can this be? After all, if you want limited government, you’re a libertarian. So where’s the problem?

The problem, as John Rogers suggests in his unforgettable quote, is with the “real world.” In the real world, America is a two party system, and if a strong libertarian candidate shows up, he take votes away from other candidates who also—despite all their other impurities according to libertarian lights—oppose socialist candidates.

When the anti-socialist vote is split, the socialist wins.

In the real world, we have nations so that people with a common culture and heritage can govern themselves. This necessitates the existence of governments, laws, regulations, taxes, public spending, and a host of other things libertarians may consider nasty. To oppose overreaching laws, bad regulations, high taxes, excess spending, wasteful spending, or inappropriate spending, is the duty of any fiscal conservative. But the role of government is to protect a national culture, not to just get out of the way so corporate multinationals can commoditize the world.

This ought to be embarrassingly self-evident, but libertarians don’t seem to understand the implications of these real world constraints on their ideals.

Thank God the libertarian presidential candidate in 2016 was a befuddled stoner. And pray to God their presidential candidate in 2020 is equally problematic.

Libertarian Influence is Harming America

The Libertarian Party hasn’t yet swung an American presidential election, but the influence of libertarian orthodoxy is felt everywhere. And while their overall message—limited government—is far better than its opposite, in its extreme that message can also cause grievous harm. One glaring example concerns the interdependent politics of immigration and welfare.

Libertarians, along with plenty of Republicans who are influenced by them, are fond of quoting Milton Friedman, who once said, “You can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” Yet libertarians, if they are true to their principles, favor open borders. All the while, they insist that of course they’re also opposed to state welfare.

To-date how many Republicans in the House of Representatives, influenced by libertarian donors, have resisted legislation that would enforce America’s borders, whether through sanctioning employers who hire illegal aliens, or by funding more effective border security?

Other glaring examples include opposition to the war on drugs, where libertarians tend to think it’s just fine to let an entire generation of Americans marinate themselves in a pharmacological stupor, and foreign policy, where wishful thinking libertarians reject the reality of rising nations filling the vacuum wherever Americans withdraw.

When it comes to trade, powerful libertarian donors actually have worked to destroy Republican incumbents who recognize that selling America to the Chinese because that’s “free trade” is a recipe for national destruction, and if tariffs are the only way to get their attention, so be it.

And shall any of these issues be discussed openly on the most powerful means of communication ever known, the internet? Well, maybe. But not too openly. Progressives run the companies that monopolize the online platforms for search and social media, they exercise blatant censorship of views that threaten the progressive narrative, and libertarians applaud.

The Unwitting Libertarian Support for Unpleasant, Unaffordable Housing

Moving beyond the obvious, libertarians also exert a destructive influence in the area of housing and infrastructure development. The influence of libertarians in these areas is hard to see at first, but it is causing even greater long term damage to America.

It seems counter-intuitive to suggest that libertarians are against a free market where land developers can easily navigate their way through a streamlined, discounted permitting process so more homes can go onto the market which will lower prices. And indeed, libertarians are calling for those sorts of reforms. But these libertarians are ignoring the most critical variable—expanding the footprint of cities.

Instead of recognizing that housing cannot possibly become affordable unless new construction spreads outside the boundaries of existing urban centers, libertarians, by default, are joining with progressives who want to stack and pack all new residences into already established neighborhoods. The implications of this policy are cruel and far reaching.

Not only is it much harder, if not impossible, to increase the supply of homes enough to lower prices if the only new homes allowed to be built have to be constructed inside existing cities, but when that happens the quality of life in these cities is tragically diminished. In Oregon, new legislation now permits multi-family dwellings to be constructed in any residential neighborhood, regardless of current zoning laws, in any city of more than 25,000 residents. Similar legislation is pending in California.

It may not be a “libertarian” concept to have zoning laws, but they exist for a good reason. People invest their life savings into a home purchase, relying on zoning laws to ensure the neighborhood where they expect to spend the rest of their lives is going to stay reasonably intact. Clearly this can’t always be the case, sometimes neighborhoods get in the path of dense urbanization, but it is a principle worth defending.

This nuance—how cities are permitted to increase their population—is far more profound than it may appear at first glance. As America’s population grows from an estimated 334 million in 2020 to an estimated 417 million by 2060, the progressive vision is to cram nearly all of those 83 million new Americans into existing cities. They want to do this despite the fact that the lower 48 states in America are only 3.7 percent urbanized, and despite the fact that such a policy will make a detached single family home with a yard unattainable to all but the most affluent Americans.

The libertarian position on urban containment is similar to their position on immigration. Just as they effectively support immigration but ineffectively oppose the welfare state, they effectively support making it easier to get permits to build homes but ineffectively oppose urban containment. The problem, again, is that accomplishing one out of two is worse than nothing.

The de facto result is libertarians are offering substantial support to the progressive goal of turning American cities and suburbs into socially engineered, unaffordable, extremely high-density warrens.

Libertarians Prevent Vital Enabling Infrastructure

In a perfect libertarian world, every time you set foot off your personal property onto so-called public space, the meter starts running. The principle at work here is that you only pay at the rate you consume, rewarding the private interests who constructed—presumably at lower cost—social amenities such as roads.

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking plays into the hands of progressives who want to monitor and ration everything, at the same time that it benefits the high-tech companies and manufacturing corporations who sell “connected” appliances that are overly complex, high maintenance, expensive, and rarely perform as well as legacy products. But start the meter. Let the market work.

If forcing consumers to pay the government and their private partners for every vehicle mile traveled were the only innovation where progressives and libertarians affect infrastructure, that would be bad enough. But libertarians often oppose new roads from even getting built, regardless of the funding model. Instead of just letting the government blast new interstate highways and connector roads into rural areas where spacious new cities could be built, some libertarians have begun reflexively to oppose these projects because they don’t want taxpayers to “subsidize the automobile.”

And yes, in the drive to no longer “subsidize the automobile,” there is a whiff of “climate change” hysteria beginning to emanate from more than a few establishment libertarian think tanks.

What libertarians ought to be doing with respect to roads and other enabling infrastructure is fighting to reduce the regulations and environmental legislation that, at the least, has more than doubled the price and more than quadrupled the time it takes to build public infrastructure. Instead they fight against any new infrastructure that might consume public funds, playing into the hands of the progressive environmentalists who don’t want to build any new infrastructure, anywhere.

Libertarians have become pawns of the progressive Left in America, and in an ironic twist, both of them have been co-opted by globalist corporate interests. When everything is privatized, rationed and metered, corporate rent seekers gain new revenue streams.

When progressives put punitive regulations onto virtually all forms of land and resource development, existing holders of those resources enjoy artificial asset appreciation at the same time as emerging competitors lack the financial depth to survive.

In cities densified by urban containment, land values and rents soar to stratospheric levels, driving out independent businesses and turning every commercial district into a generic multinational corporate slurb.

And of course, when progressives cheer as hordes of unskilled immigrants pour across the U.S. border, libertarian donors applaud the free movement of people and goods—while paying impotent lip service to welfare reform.

The Libertarian Party has never been a serious contender in American politics. But their influence should not be underestimated, nor their role in tilting the political balance in favor of the progressive agenda across a host of important national issues.

The value of libertarianism is to remind us that the private sector performs most functions in a society more efficiently than the government, while preserving more individual freedom. But that’s as far as it goes. The real world is complicated, and culture is not a commodity.

Why Libertarians Are Unwitting Enablers of Socialism
Edward Ring
October 2nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/02/w...-of-socialism/

https://ssp.scottdunn.com/xp-slidesh...193&width=1024

A big cheer to Edward Ring for nailing libertarians for the big government frauds they are. Open-borders, unrestricted immigration, and the home builder industry are horses pulling the troika. That is why every Realtor is a libertarian driving the carriage:

Realtors do more to keep the borders open than every business entity looking for cheap labor. Keeping upward pressure on private home sales benefits Realtors. Few realize it, but Realtors would lose hundreds of billions of dollars in commissions —— trillions in the decades ahead —— should the real estate market tank because the borders were secured. Realtors and illegal immigration is a marriage between sleazy partners that neither will acknowledge.

https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...53#post2858653

[Flanders]

ENVY UPDATE

More importantly, envy is the sole motivation driving every one of the Democrat Party’s big government policies. Every Democrat talking point is built on envy. To me, ENVY is deadliest of the Deadly Seven Sins:

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Individual liberties do not flow from those who have them to those who do not have them. Emily Brontë (1818–48) had it exactly right when she had Heathcliff say:

“The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them.”

I wonder how many Democrats realize they are sick with envy? Every Democrat hates presidents that espouse any part of Trump’s political philosophy, yet Donald Trump is the only president that ever triggered so much crippling envy in every Socialist. Democrats have a multitude of reasons to envy their enemies, but nothing comes close to the envy they feel toward Trump.

I never saw so much envy against President Trump and his family until I read the following article:

Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a mental disorder in which a person has effectively been driven insane due to his hatred of Donald Trump, to the point where he abandons all logic and reason. Such people are impervious to facts that contradict their preconceived notions of the president.

As to a syndrome, it's a group of symptoms that consistently occur together and indicate the presence of a particular mental or physical disease. For example, symptoms for the onset of diabetes include things like increased thirst and urination, insulin resistance, high belly fat, blurred vision, and so on.

One of the symptoms of TDS is envy. It is one of the main causes for driving many TDS sufferers over the edge. When speaking of envy, however, one should make a distinction between it and jealousy, as the two are commonly used interchangeably. Defining jealousy, sociologist Helmut Schoeck writes in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, "Basically, jealousy can be defined as a heightened emotional state for either the craving for something another person has or the fear of losing something to another." As such, jealousy can be constructive. For example, if a man is jealous that his neighbor received a promotion at work, it could spur him to work harder to earn one of his own.

Envy is different. It is far darker, which is why traditional Christian teaching lists envy, not jealousy, as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, writes in Back to Virtue,

Envy is deadly because it is demonic. The ancient Book of Wisdom says, "By the envy of the devil, death came into the world" (2:24). Pride and envy are Satan's own special sins. Envy is horrible because it comes straight from Hell.

Even Mohammed tells his followers to" "Keep far away from envy" and that no Muslim can go to Paradise if his heart is filled with envy.

So what is envy?

Envy leads a person to hate another just for having or achieving something good. As Schoeck puts it: "[e]nvious is defined as a disgruntled emotional state arising from the possessions or achievements of another, a spiteful wish that the other should lose them." This hatred for the success of another stems from the belief that the person doing the envying is not capable or competent enough to achieve a similar success. His goal therefore becomes not to gain what the other has as in the case of jealousy, but to destroy it. In this process, a person's mental state is so disordered that he is even willing to destroy himself if it will hurt the person of his envy.

Envy is a pure evil. It is not an exaggeration to say it afflicts the NeverTrumps, the entire Left, and a large segment of the Democratic Party. Trump's opponents hate him not for his mistakes, tweets, or manners, but for his achievements — achievements they themselves could never produce. They are even highly envious of Trump's wife, Melania, a most gracious and beautiful first lady, especially when contrasted with the oafish Michelle Obama. The media are loath to report anything good about Melania and take gratuitous shots at her at every opportunity. Why? They want to damage Melania only because she's the wife of Donald Trump. That is hate inspired by envy.

Filled with envy, the Democrats are more than willing to damage themselves and the country if that is the price to take the president down. Look at their masochistic behavior. Democrats wish for a recession, with some even outwardly calling for one. Democrats fabricated a nothing-burger impeachment out of thin air, something that will cost them dearly at the polls. As for the racial divide, instead of applauding Trump's accomplishments, Democrats and their fellow-traveling leftists work night and day to inflame racial resentment. None of this goes unnoticed by the public.

Because the Democratic Party and the media are main institutions in society, the country will suffer as they thrash about from their TDS affliction. There's a silver lining in all this, however. Envy invariably destroys the ones who carry it in their hearts. This is already happening. The Democrats are staking out such fringe positions that it can only ends in a calamity for them. As for those in the media, they have made a complete fools of themselves due to their TDS. As a result, faith and trust in mainstream news reporting has sunk to an all-time low. These are seeds for a brighter future for America.

Blue is currently the color used to designate the Democratic Party and red the GOP. This is wrong. The color of the Democrats should be green. This is not because of environmental issues, but because green is the color of envy, and envy is a defining characteristic of the Democrats today.

November 3, 2019
Envy is a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome
By Peter Skurkiss

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog..._syndrome.html