The problem is that the promised outlays can't be honored, not even close. Push total tax rates (payroll, federal income, state income, property, sales, etc) up too much higher on what's left of the middle class and they won't be middle class anymore. Push them significantly higher on the truly affluent and there will be capital flight. The productive class will end up winning no matter what political clout the AARP and SEIU think they have. Somebody has to plan and run the businesses, and a strike of knowledge and capital is not so many years away. It is the one thing a technocratic society cannot risk.
Yes, this means the emergence of an angry political schizm much worse that what exists today. I do not look forward to it, but I expect it and see the same waterfall ahead that you do.
Ave Caesar
No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather--for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists--
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who'll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.
Robinson Jeffers
|
