Conservatives decry U.S. 'elite'...just the wrong one

An anonymous conservative forwarded this op-ed to me. In response, I'm not going to get into this whole Gruber-Obamacare thing because it's dumb. But it is odd that Mitt Romney gets a pass for employing Gruber while Obama does not.

I'm bringing Williams' column to your attention because of his repetition of a conservative meme: that liberal professors are the "elite" in America. 

What gets me is that conservative willfully ignore the real American elite: the super rich, the One Percent, or more exact, the 1% of one percent.

Indeed, the Sunlight Foundation discovered that, "In the 2012 election, 28 percent of all disclosed political contributions came from just 31,385 people. In a nation of 313.85 million, these donors represent the 1% of the 1%, an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States."

But no, nutty professors with elbow patches are really running things.

Here's another illustration of the absurdity of a professorial "elite."  There are about 1.2 million college professors and instructors in the U.S. And there are over 11 million company CEOs and Presidents in the U.S.  The average CEO makes over $15 million, while the average full-time professor makes $127,000 and the average college instructor makes $50,000. 

So there are much fewer college teachers than CEOs, they're poorer, they don't influence consumer tastes, the economy, lobby the government or give huge campaign contributions the way CEOs do. And that's not even counting the CFOs, CMOs, boards members, and the true "capitalists" of the private sector who don't have jobs and let their money work for them. 

I think what really bothers conservative is that college professors' influence over American society is not proportional to their wealth and political influence. After all, isn't getting your way most of the time and bossing people around what rich people are supposed to do? Isn't that the whole point? That just seems correct to conservatives. Yet somehow in our free-market country, these eggheads in academia have managed to carve out a precious exception where they enjoy the power, (often while earning less than six figures), to mold young minds. That just goes against the natural order.

It's the same thing at the level of K-12, (even though conservatives would blush to call schoolteachers America's "elite"): these poorly paid teachers, most of them women, very sneakily or just by default (since nobody else wants to do it) retain the enormous power to shape young people's attitudes about the world. And it drives conservatives nuts. Nobody with so little economic power should have so much (potential) influence over people, they believe. It's unnatural.

Elite Contempt for Ordinary Americans

By Walter E. Williams

November 2014 | Creators

URL: http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams/elite-contempt-for-ordinary-americans.html

W. Williams: 'Republics' for Republicans, 'democracy' for mobs

Then call us a "constitutional democracy," Professor Williams. Same thing. So there, I solved the "problem."

Actually, with the exception of Britain, I don't know of any Western democracies without a constitution. (And the last time I checked, the mob hadn't yet taken over Britain and voted themselves rich.) So when we say "democracy" it's the same as saying "republic" or "constitutional democracy." When America was founded that wasn't the case, but thanks to the success of the U.S. model, it is today.

I'm not entirely sure why some U.S. conservatives insist on these semantics, but I think it has to do with their basic disdain for and distrust of ordinary people -- just like our Founding Fathers despised and feared the lower classes and called democracy "mobocracy." Elitism and classicm are alive and well among today's Founder-fawning conservatives, despite all their Palin-esque airs of Average-Joe folksiness to the contrary.

Case in point, Williams intentionally provocative opening sentence: "It is truly disgusting for me to hear politicians, national and international talking heads and pseudo-academics praising the Middle East stirrings as democracy movements."

Williams tries to qualify this statement in his op-ed but a sentiment this ugly really can't be redeemed or clawed back.

Whatever the outcomes of these protests may be, they certainly are democracy movements, where the people want more of a say in who runs their government and how it operates. The elitists, er, republicans, are showing their true stripes in light of the 2011 Mideast democracy uprisings.

Democracy Versus Liberty

By Walter E. Williams
February 22, 2011 | Townhall.com

URL: http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/02/23/democracy_versus_liberty

Re: W. Williams: U.S. Prosperity Lost

M,
Yes, sure, that cost of taxes is passed on to consumers, but government needs to pay the bills. It needs tax revenue from somewhere.

I know you have bought into this Business vs. Government dialectic, but really, business gets a lot from government, therefore gov't deserves its tax revenues.

Government registers and protects business patents, lobbies foreign gov'ts on business's behalf and negotiates foreign trade deals (which helps our exporters), regulates and punishes unfair competition (which hurts honest businesses), guarantees bank deposits, punishes insider trading and manipulation of financial reporting (which hurts honest shareholders and employees), educates businesses' workforce (a "free" benefit to the private sector), provides roads, bridges, ports, and other infrastructure (which lowers transaction costs and stimulates trade), provides police to protect businesses' assets and employees, and even provides "free" medical care to businesses' workers (like Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid).

Then there are things like disaster relief, clearing snow, putting out fires, stopping mudslides, etc. -- all paid for by gov't.

In addition, government provides a great boon to business in the form of the Census Bureau. U.S. Census data is mined and sifted by just about every consumer products company in America, trying to figure out who their customers are, what they want, how much they earn, where they live, etc. This top-notch market research is provided "free" by gov't to the private sector -- research which the private sector on its own would never, could never, buy for itself.

Moreover, gov't spends $ billions on basic scientific research which, again, most companies do not have the resources to invest in themselves. (Only a few big companies, like IBM, still do basic scientific research). And yet businesses take advantage of that basic research when they do their applied science, and make a profit from it.

Or look at satellites and GPS technology: how do you think those satellites got up there? The private sector can't afford rockets, and it certainly didn't spend the money to bring rocket science and satellite technology to the point where it is today. You can thank Big Gov't for that.

Or look at your son-in-law: government provides him financing and incentives to develop land and building projects, turning unproductive land into productive land, employing people, and eventually providng tax revenue.

And although I'm generally against it, you know that gov't frequently provides tax subsidies and tax holidays for business to invest in their city/state, in the belief that this creates more jobs and wealth than it costs taxpayers in subsidies.

I could go on and on. Walter Williams, as usual, oversimplifies and is way off base. He acts like all gov't does is leech off business, and gives nothing in return. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

As for "life's essentials," I have my doubts about Americans buying only essential consumer goods. Our erstwhile economic boom wasn't driven by Americans buying baloney and canned tomato soup, and saving all their money to invest in business ventures and equities; it was driven by them buying flat screen TVs and other electroncis, expensive SUVs, gaudy McMansions, vacations, and trendy clothes. Profligate spending (financed by tech and housing bubbles), low interes rates, and gov't borrowing have driven our economy for the past 30 years. You don't seem to realize what our country has become, and what makes it go. You baby boomers have transformed the America of your parents which saved and produced into our superficial, consumer-driven culture, which spends and throws away. Where plastic, throwaway things are the measure of a man's worth and a company's bottom line.

But back to taxing businesses: it is always a fine line, a tradeoff between allowing business to flourish and providing for the general welfare (including the welfare of business). Absolutist arguments about the "evil" of taxation or "taxation is stealing" are juvenile and get us nowhere. Contrary to your assertion, "having your cake and eating it too" is advocating lower taxation without any corresponding reduction in gov't services. (Exhibit A: the Reagan and Dubya years). You'd be better served to concentrate your anger on spending, not taxes. Tell your gov't representatives exactly what spending you disapprove of. Don't advocate "starving the beast" and running up our nat'l debt without addressing spending.

J

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 11:07 PM, <Mom> wrote:

This is my point. Raising taxes on businesses only passes the cost onto consumers and that is what Obama is asking. Get money from business and in addition have consumers pay higher prices and more tax on that price. It's called having your cake and eating it too. Poor and middle class people need to consume life's essentials and those essentials are going up in price. How does that get the rich guy?

Prosperity Lost

http://townhall.com/content/080fe5a5-edc5-4287-9f5a-1a9db685df4f