This time it’s Susan Estrich. She voted for Dear Leader. She voted for Him for many reasons, mostly involving his promises to provide free stuff to people. She voted for Him because of her concerns for things she likes, like “ObamaCare,” which she doesn’t want to see repealed; like environmental suffocation of American businesses regulation, which she doesn’t want to see rolled back; like contraception (which she conflates with Roe v. Wade, which of course dealt with abortion, not contraception), which she doesn’t want to see at “risk”; like local schools being held in thrall by centralized bureaucrats more generously funded by a munificent Uncle SugarDaddy; like the federal assistance to New Jersey and New York in cleaning up after Tropical Storm Sandy, which she didn’t want to see diminished (although the Staten and Coney Islanders might politely inquire just how the level of federal assistance they’re getting could be diminished); like ending the war in Iraq, which He ended, and the war in Afghanistan, which He is committed to ending.
She didn’t, she wants us to know, vote for Him because she thinks she doesn’t pay enough in taxes.
That’s a comfort (I’m chewing on my index fingers, trying not to append h***y to the end of that). I’m so glad that you voted for an ethnic separatist mountebank of a class warrior not understanding that he remains, as he has always been, dead set on increasing taxes on “the rich.” I do have just one teensy li’l ol’ question for you: How in the Sam Hill do you propose to pay for all that stuff you did vote for, all of which involves the spending of money (except arguably the war stuff, but then all that means is that in 20 years when we have to go back in and do it all over it will cost that much more, so I’m not willing to concede that point to you, at least not 100%)?
Estrich’s plight is in fact lamentable. She qualifies as “rich” by Dear Leader’s standards, which means that her neck is on the block. But unlike all them other rich people who don’t have to work, or “work all the jobs” she has to (and whose existence angers her), she actually “earns” almost every penny she makes. (a) Well done, Mme. Estrich. You caught the car; you’re living the American Dream. You’re part of the 1%. I congratulate you; I really, honestly do. And know what? Your being in the 1% does not impoverish me to the extent of a single dime. So enjoy the fruits of your labors. Enjoy them now if you please, and live up to your income. Or live well below your income and put some by, so that one day you, too, can “not have to work,” which brings up (b) Where do you imagine the wealth of the “truly rich” came from? Someone busted his ass to make that money, to put the family just over that hump where what they’ve not lived on, what they’ve put by, begins to generate a significant amount of income, which (because by hypothesis these folks are actually living on less than they earn) those who have gone without can now put out to additional productive uses, all the while they continue to live below their “earned” incomes. And at some point the calculus shifts; at some point paying full-time attention to what you have managed to save up makes more economic sense than going to the office each morning to try and figure out how to make payroll next week. You can make more money selecting other people to worry about how to make payroll than by worrying yourself. And by hiring that person you give him (or her) the chance one day to reach the position where you now are. You call this “not having to work”; in the world of Paying Your Own Way it’s called minding the store. At some point your particular “store” no longer has a bricks-and-mortar front, but rather consists of all the fruits of enjoyment deferred, of piano recitals missed, of little league games arrived at late in the 3rd quarter, of young children for whom daddy (or mommy, nowadays) is a tired voice at the end of a telephone line. That’s the price, Mme. Estrich, of “not having to work.”
What Mme. Estrich is noticing is that when the government simply decides that you’ve made as much money as it’s willing to let you make, and decides to confiscate the balance so that it — not you — can decide how to spend it, what’s it’s really doing is artificially forcing you to live up to your income. That amount that you were doing without, so that one day you might “not have to work,” or so that, in the event of some untoward event like, oh . . . say, the bursting of a governmentally-inflated housing bubble tanks the economy and we have 44-plus months of 8% unemployment, you and your family have something to live off of, so that your children don’t lose the only house they’ve ever called home, so that you don’t have to explain to your children why there’s no money for them to go and visit their only set of cousins next summer, so that you don’t have to choose between a pair of shoes for you to replace the worn-out ones you have, or a brake job on the car that’s got “only” 230,000-plus miles, so that the one you drive, which has 248,000 miles, might last a little longer, so . . . oh hell, Mme. Estrich, if I have to explain it to you, then you really never will understand.
But you will understand the tingle of the cold steel on the back of your neck, won’t you?
Respectfully, Mme. Estrich, I don’t think you have thought through your political preferences very carefully.
In addition to her economic remedial education, I also submit that Mme. Estrich has a little additional soul-searching to do. Remember her mentioning her “anger” at those who “don’t have to work,” or work as hard as she does? A scant few lines later she rolls this one out onto the table:
One of the amazing things about this country is that the middle class doesn’t hate the rich. We are not a society divided by economic castes. Yes, there are real issues as the gap between the top and the middle, between CEOs and those in good but not great jobs, grows. But beginning a new term with what will look to many like a class war is not the way to fulfill the real mandate of this election, which is to bring us together, not turn us against each other.
I guess it’s OK to get all angry about all them folks who don’t have to work, as long as you don’t “hate” them. And truly, was she not paying attention to the actual campaign that Dear Leader ran? Did she really think that the election was fought on the one side by people who were actually proposing to undo Roe v. Wade, and on the other by people who weren’t stoking a class and race conflict? What color is the sun on your planet, Mme. Estrich? I don’t even own a television and I picked up that much about the campaign.
In short, you got exactly what you voted for. You just got rooked into thinking you were voting for all the other stuff.
Rube.
™”Another Rube Self-Identifies” is used without permission of, but with extreme gratitude towards, Instapundit.