BILL AND BILL'S "TRUISMS" - Part I

When one has political views and a viewpoint, be it liberal or conservative, and when one expresses said views and indicates a political viewpoint, one gets responses, not only from members of the choir, but from those who disagree with both your views and your viewpoint.  So I get e-mails.

I am presenting today the gut of one e-mail I received from “Bill”, an internet acquaintance of mine who expresses views and the viewpoint of the far right.  What Bill sent me is clearly not original thought, and I assume he picked it up from some conservative blog (Free Republic chat board, perhaps?) and he passed it along to me.  Based on other e-mails I have received from Bill, he regards these items as basic truisms – that is, statements that are true on their face.  With the exception of one of these statements, Bill, to my mind, is in error.  Here is what Bill sent me:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

A word or two about Bill before getting into the heart of my response:  Bill is a guy who is now in his 50s, and he grew up in Los Angeles.  While I do not know what his socio/economic status was prior to hitting it big, I do know that he was essentially Middle Class and/or upper Middle Class, and that he is White.  I don’t know, but I do not think Bill attended college -- the language of his communications with me does not suggest a college education.  After fumbling around for a few years (as did I, after I graduated from college), Bill came up with an idea for a computer/internet service and worked very hard at going into business for himself and promoting/selling the idea. 

It was a good idea and this, combined with Bill’s hard work and attention to detail he has done very well financially as a result.  I do not know how wealthy Bill is, but he now lives in Florida in a very nice home – I have a photo of his house with a luxury car parked in front of it, and my guess is the home is valued at over $1Million, but I could be wrong.  As Bill’s company is not a huge corporation (as far as I know he owns all of it), he is, to the best of my knowledge, a highly successful “small business” owner/operator, and while I do not know just how wealthy Bill now is, I do know that he is living far higher on the hog that I ever did in my best years.  Kudos to Bill for having an idea and making the idea work and achieving upward financial movement.

Bill is a classic example of the “self-made man”, and his communications all are loaded with the smugness that such folks often have, as Bill suffers from what I call “The Self-Made Man Syndrome”. 

Two outstanding elements of the Self-Made Man Syndrome are that one suffering from such hold the position that (1) The did it all themselves – eschewing factors beyond their immediate abilities and hard work – such as friends who lent a hand or luck, and (2) any person of REAL worth can do what he/she did – that is, hard work, a sense of responsibility and attention to detail results in financial stability, if not considerable wealth – with the clearly implied notion that people who are not financially stable and/or wealthy, are in such a condition because they are lazy and irresponsible – that is to say, it is their own damn fault.  Such thinking is the legacy of America’s love affair with Social Darwinism during the years of The Gilded Age, and while the premise of Social Darwinism has long ago been proven bogus, it still echoes and reverberates because it sounds good – especially for those who have made a bundle of boodle. 

Bill, like many who espouse conservative talking points/truisms, denies that he is a Republican.  And, in spite of the fact that his thoughts, when deciphered, are often right out of the book of libertarianism, denies being a libertarian.  He is, he says, an “Independent”, and proudly so.  He feels that he is an independent because he realizes that some of the things said by some Republicans are baloney – but alas, this acknowledgement does not prevent him from agreeing with the positions taken by the Republican Party as a whole.  The prime Republican/libertarian element that he agrees with is that because government interferes with the operation of business (those pesky business taxes and regulations) government causes more damage than good, and thus must be limited in its size and scope – which results, alas, in the over-simplification that business = good, government = bad; bad in the sense that government, especially a liberal government (Bill would call it “Socialist”) all too often oppresses business.

This arises, of course, out of Bill’s knowledge, such as it is, of economics.  Bill’s economic concepts are based on the economics of business and the economics of the home.  Like most of us, his concepts arise out of what he KNOWS, and I have no reason to question that Bill KNOWS how to run a business.  Bill’s knowledge of economics is “hands-on” knowledge, not academic knowledge:  I am quite sure that Bill would not know the difference between Ludwig Von Mises and Thorstein Veblen for the simple reason he has never heard of them.

What Bill and those like him fail to appreciate is a government is not a business.  The whole point of operating a business is to make a profit; such is not the aim of any government, and most certainly the government of the United States (the aims of the U.S. government, by the way, are spelled out in the Preamble to the Constitution).  But Bill, like Calvin Coolidge before him, is of the view that the chief business of the American people is business, which is one of those particularly misleading half-truths politicians are famous for, and he is of the view that the prime concern of American Government is properly that of doing what business feels is best for business (expanding profits). 

Be that as it may be, I find I rather like Bill.  He is honest (if inaccurate) in his opinions and he actually tries to discuss ideas rather than sending me rants that call me names.

Well, so much for talking about Bill.  I have used up a lot of space in talking about Bill, so I will bring this posting to an end.  In the next few days I will discuss Bill’s “truisms” and why they appeal to him and why they aren’t necessarily true.