15 Jul 2012
reactionry
Sweet Bird of Fortune
Or: Wogs Begin To Fly From Calais
Mr. Fitzgerald should be happy as a clam and the world should be his oyster on account of the reduction of income inequality which generally accompanies a depression or severe recession. He must have been in Hollande hog heaven (a concept not to be truffled with) as he watched the loss of self assurance in the elite depicted in the sketch along with the evaporation of equity in their Dalrympian French estates. To be sure, Theodore Dalyrmple is no Antoine Lavoisier and HF goes to the behead of the class in (popular) front of the French President with a proposed 92% marginal tax rate, thus earning a solid "F" - when grading on the Laffer Curve.
Of course, the fly in the Alaric (whose Visigoths swarmed all over Rome -see also Agaric the Slav and his mushrooming hordes of Amanita Muscovia) is that confiscatory rates invariably reduce those revenues which HF imagines would be used to his liking by the slithy Khmer rouge rogues of the borogroves of the academy and mainstream media whose position is much more secure than those in the always precarious world of finance and who are viscously opposed to any restrictions on legal or illegal immigration. HF has an elephant's memory and is quite aware of the rougish ekwilistic elephants and their herd mentality which have supplanted the old order in the classroom and is aware of the Muslim or Third World immigrant in the room, but neglects the contribution of the latter to lowering wages and increasing the returns on capital and raising the price of land (particularly in the suburbs) and the rendering of vast swaths of otherwise desirable urban areas unsuitable for those of European ancestry inclined towards monogamous reproduction. Those factors and the allure of loosening of eligibility requirements (also see the Obama war on "the end of welfare as we know it") for all sorts of mean streets-tested welfare have had more than income inequality itself to do with the loss of the "wonderful" 1950's family stability.
Those above are utterly unoriginal observations as is the observation that during the 50's, the US did not yet face serious competition from still war-devastated Japan and Germany or poisoned-by-the-legacy-of-British socialist-thought India or China and Russia where consumer production was crippled by communism and that the proportion of the population in the US during that time which was foreign born (the proportion of the population descended from Europe was close to 90%) was relatively low. The crimes of the wealthy (some, but not all, were and are Republicans) in increasing the return on capital by importing low wage low skilled and relatively low waged high skilled workers were matched by those on the Left who supported immigration from the hostile Third World in its war against the West.
It was a little surprising and disappointing to read Dalrymple and Fitzgerald making "bad schools" observations without also noting that much less damage has been done by changes in teaching methods (at least in the US) than by the massive influx of bad students. I suspect that most teachers (of whatever political persuasion) are reasonably competent even if not the smartest among college graduates and the performance of students of European and Asian (for whatever reason for those terrified of accusations of "racism") origin in the US compares favorably to others on a world-wide basis.
With respect to job stability it seems difficult to determine to what extent mass firings (such as in hostile or non-hostile Bain or non-Bain takeovers) clear out unneeded or over-compensated middle and upper layers of management and to what extent equity is seized from "stakeholders" whose past contributions had been under-compensated (and whose potential future contributions are under-valued). (someone speculated some months ago in a column on NRO that some companies could make a lot of money by simply firing anyone over age 50) It seems at least plausible that while companies (see some in Germany and Japan) which place a relatively high value on employment stability can do well if subject to disciplines of an export-oriented market, companies which are for whatever reasons protected from foreign competition have a tendency towards relative stagnation. The contributions of immigrants, in particular those of Jews from central and eastern Europe (and of course, even more particularly those of refugees from Nazi Germany) have been widely and justifiably noted, but the economic performance of pre and post war ethnically homogenous Japan and Germany has not been too shabby and the immigration to the US after the mid 1960's, largely from "low trust" and anti-Western countries, has for the most part been a catalyst for decay and unlikely to ever lead to anything like the wonderful 50's.
(the keiretsu (spell checking on the fly would take me off this page and delete it) competed fiercely with each other but Japanese retail was notoriously "inefficient")
Ah well, time for noddy-blinkers and no mo for proof reading.
Tags: on account of the Fedayeen in the ointment, the French country homes of wealthy Brits and Frogs are vacated because of Hollande's tax rate of 75% and then occupied by Muslim devotees of Zanjeer Zani allah the practice of flogme
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