“Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands… Such people, as they them-selves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men’s labour… Those unproductive hands, who should be maintained by a part only of the spare revenue of the people, may consume so great a share of their whole revenue, and thereby oblige so great a number to encroach upon their capitals, upon the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour, that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment.” Adam Smith. And that’s socialism for you.
“What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.” Thomas Sowell.
The socialist John Maynard Keynes had a central theme, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, which is that "the state is wise and the market is stupid." "Working from that sort of perspective, India’s top economists for a generation supported policies of regulation and central control that failed abysmally — leading one of them to lament recently, ‘India’s misfortune was to have brilliant economists.’” (George Will). These brilliant economists were brilliant only on the INTEND-IS side while failing, of course, on the DOES side–shiny in the academy and dull in the market.
“The idea behind giving professors lifetime tenure is that this will enable them to speak out freely. But it would be hard to name any other occupation with a more cowardly record than academics, who have been giving in to politically correct campus bullies ever since the 1960s.” Thomas Sowell. This is the effect of giving someone a “Golden Rice Bowl” or Job For Life. It makes them less courageous, not more. Most universities are a microcosm of socialism: The professors have jobs for life, travel predictable paths and need produce nothing useful, but generate stunningly similar nonsense.
“No matter how well you do, we are the ones who do good.” Socialist assumption.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken. If H.L. were alive today, he would undoubtedly present “GLOBAL WARMING” as one of these imaginary hobgoblins used to scare school children and others under thought control.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
