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Entry: Greenspan's Gambits Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/greenspans_gambits#5988 Post contents: MSS: Instead of an inheritance tax there is a much older and surer way of penalizing the frivolous rich. It is summarized by the maxim, a fool and his money are soon parted. People like Paris Hilton are products of the modern egalitarian state in which the upper classes are not taught the duties appropriate to their station in life. “Noblesse oblige,” to be sure, but noblesse can only obligate when it is recognized as noblesse. That’s biggest load of crapola I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t do the retired worker who just discovered that his pension payment got cut in half because some finance capitalist stole money out of the pension fund in the 1980’s to make a profit that wasn’t there, and pay the CEO a bonus he didn’t deserve. In the 1990’s the new CEO goes to bankruptcy court to dump his pension obligations, so he can pay himself another $25 Million dollar bonus. Barry Goldwater hated unions because he didn’t see any need for unions, ‘cause he took care of his people. So did a lot early industrialists---like George Eastman, the Hormel Brothers to name a few. But not everyone was a George Eastman. But they were the exception---most were robber barons and crooks, like the Walkers and the Bushes. So instead of “noblesse oblige”, we’ve got Bush2, the spoiled prep school brat, as the poster child for American “entreprenuership”. What little men and families of good existed, ended with the 60’s. A good book on this is Christopher Lasch’s books, The Triumph of Narcissism, and the Revolt of the Elites. Furthermore, James Burnham documented the phenomena where actual power was transferred from the owners of property to the bureaucrats and managers. The CEO classes in other words. Both btw, were ex-Marxists. MSS, you’re an idiot. Even when your ideas had some merit 50 or 60 years ago, they really didn’t work. And with the changing times they are even more irrelevant today. Sent at: 2008 11 22