Invisible Handjob

Please don’t jump to the conclusion that I am a socialist based on this article. Socialism has at least as many problems and inanities as capitalism. Also, it is not the only alternative. Besides, I detest all ideologies. All that I ask is that you not insult me by associating me with any of them.

I am critiquing capitalism because that is the system people pretend brings us the unalloyed, unsullied record of economic bliss we all enjoy. More than a critique of capitalism, it is a critique of the naive, credulous ideologues who think they know what capitalism is.

These intellectual little tykes have boiled the complex works of Adam Smith down to a handful of magic words. This was easy as it didn’t require them to understand what he meant and allowed them to ignore the important parts.

The Patron Saint Who Isn’t

First, let’s look at Adam. Who was he? What did he say? He was a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. For those unfamiliar with that intellectual nova, it provided the foundation for the development of the political system of this country. It was the basis for the modern world.

You could do worse than spend a bit of spare time reading about it. The best starter book is the former best seller, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It, by Arthur Herman. It’s an easy, even fun, read that’s available in hard cover, paperback and Kindle versions.

Back to Mr. Smith. He was a a professor at the University of Glasgow when it first became one of the world’s leading educational centers. He held the chair of Social and Moral Philosophy.

His first significant publication was The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It was an immediate best seller. As Wikipedia states, “It provided the ethical, philosophical, psychological, and methodological underpinnings to Smith’s later works.” Several years later, 1776, he published the book for which he is most famous, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. What the rabid, would be devotees of Adam Smith fail to appreciate is that the first tome is absolutely necessary to understanding all of his other works, particularly those on economics.

They have, as I earlier said, pulled out a few words that they use as incantations: the invisible hand, the free market, supply and demand, a market economy, et alia. Their use of these words is alien to his. They completely misapprehend him as favoring laissez faire capitalism. Most of these people think he created it.

Mr. Smith believed that government has three obligations. It must protect us from violence and invasion from other societies. It must protect us from violence, injustice and oppression from each other. It must erect and maintain certain public works, public institutions and public programs that, “which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual, or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.”

There but for the grace of God go I. We’ve all heard that sentiment. We may even have dwelt on it recently when a friend or relative lost their job or you lost a neighbor due to actual or impending foreclosure. It isn’t our fault that banks decided there wasn’t enough profit in banking and changed into casinos. It isn’t our fault that BP cut corners to make a few thousand extra bucks. A civilized people will take care of its own in times like these. Even the Red Cross is dwarfed by disasters, both natural and man-made. Frequently, only government can marshal sufficient resources. Adam Smith knew that.

Mr. Smith’s apostasy goes even further, much further. For Smith, obligations of the government of a civilized society include – consumer protection – building codes – government subsidies – price controls – busting monopolies – erecting and maintaining certain public works and public institutions intended to facilitate commerce (roads, bridges, canals and harbors) (he left out electricity, telephones and broadband Internet) – regulation of institutions, such as company structures (joint- stock companies, co-partneries, regulated companies and so on – education of youth – education of people of all ages, including higher education – encouragement of ‘the frequency and gaiety of public diversions (CPB, PBS, NPR, NEA, museums and such) – prevention of ‘leprosy or any other loathsome and offensive disease’ from spreading among the population (wow! he considered health care a public good, a responsibility of the government) – government restrictions on interest for borrowing (usury laws) to overcome investor ‘stupidity’ (did the bankers conveniently forget that part?). The list is incomplete. I do thank Jacob Viner, a Canadian economist for paring it down and saving me from having to plow through those works again just for this article.

Smith also said, “The government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that the one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich. There are many expenses necessary in a civilized country for which there is no occasion in one that is barbarous.” A significant number of your fellow citizens rejoice in the possibility of plunging this country, your country, the country they want to take away from you, into barbarity.

The childish, proudly proclaiming their devotion to what they think are the principals lain down by Adam Smith, presently see an opportunity to impose upon this nation their harsh, unthinking solutions; solutions leading to a disastrous, dystopian future. They want to take from the poor, the ailing, the aged, the young, any hope for dignity, health care, security, education, the American Dream. They want to apply those savings to the tax refunds of those making $250,000 a year or more.

We need to reduce spending. Cutting half a trillion dollars a year from the “Defense” budget would be a start and we would still be the unchallenged Colossus of the world, militarily.

Could the oil industry survive without their taxpayer subsidies? How about the corporate farmers, Archer, Daniels, Midland and the rest? Do we still need to subsidize the sugar beet industry? If ethanol from corn uses more energy than it provides, raises the cost of animal feeds and other uses of our agricultural produce but needs a taxpayer subsidy, do we need ethanol?

Why is the Treasury not seeing the royalty checks from energy producers, lumbering and others making billions from our public lands?

Why cut the IRS budget for recovering owed taxes when they need more manpower to bring in that $330,000,000,000 outstanding?

Why does a person making minimum wage pay 15.2% of his first and every dollar in payroll taxes while a multimillionaire can sit on his duff and pay only 15% on capital gains from gambling; before his deductions and exemptions, of course?

They feed the public those magic words. They feed the public lies as facts. They feed the public promises they never fulfill. They make that gullible public believe in a dream that is, for almost everyone, fading further into the distance. They take our tax money and fly away to another of their manors.

Here in this, the once upon a time, original land of equality, our society is becoming less equal ever more rapidly.

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