Thursday, December 12, 2013

"Rockin' in the Free World" - Leningrad Cowboys (video)

We've got a tangle going in Comments regarding taxing the rich so I might as well bring this out in the open as it doesn't go away.

When it comes to taxing the rich, I'm talking about the ultra rich.  The basic premise of trickle down was that reducing their taxes would stimulate the economy.  It didn't ... except for them.  Argue if you like but any graphic on economics will show it and I'm sure you know it anyway.

The moderately-wealthy have formed an immense defensive barrier around those parasites out of the deathly fear that the object is to increase taxes on them too and not just the über rich.  That's not true as doing so would simply recreate the middle class and start the upward drain all over again so there's finally nothing left at all and the U.S. becomes the second outpost of the English welfare state.

The answer doesn't seem inordinately complex to me.  Create another fucking tax bracket.  Even a politician could figure it out.

The object isn't to take all the money from ungodly rich and give it to the poor in some kind of twisted, pipe dream version of Robin Hood.  Leveling mechanisms have existed throughout history and the ones that work take SOME from the rich and re-distribute it.  The rich don't care as they have so much it doesn't matter and it keeps the poor smiling.  Simple.  Easy.

The poor should work.  OK, I get that.  Here's a tip:  not all of them can or, gasp, they wouldn't be poor.  Here's another tip:  when the jobs were sent overseas by the filthy rich, it didn't exactly improve work prospects for countless Americans and, what do you know, many ended up poor.  The same thing happened in Britain.  Manufacturing jobs were about forty percent of the economy and now they're less than ten percent.  Welcome to the welfare state and guess who fucking made it.  How do you like NAFTA so far.

I have no admiration of the welfare state in England as what I saw was the most soul-sucking environment I have ever encountered in my life.  Pink Floyd sang that 'quiet desperation is the English way' and it's now more so than ever.  People don't look at your eyes and frequently just look at the ground.  They're living off the state, it will never get any better, and it's drilled into every bone in their bodies.  The longer I lived there, the more I understood how this was the place where writers like Anthony Burgess ("A Clockwork Orange"), George Orwell ("1984"), or Aldous Huxley ("Brave New World") lived.


There was a time when America was rocking' in the free world as it was the free world.  Now the song comes from the Leningrad Cowboys and they know better what it means than those who created the music in the first place and then let it slip through our fingers.  I'm not feeling sorry for myself; I'm feeling sorry for the whole fucking country.

Take it away, Leningrad Cowboys.  You think these guys are just comedians?  Guess again:

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