Topic: Liberal Fascism
Stop the presses! This just in:
[N]early all job growth in the United States comes from entrepreneurial startups, which by their nature are products of Main Street. It is equally significant that more than 90 percent of the entrepreneurs responsible for job growth come from middle-class or the top end of lower-class backgrounds. Less than 1 percent of America’s job-creating entrepreneurs come from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds.
If you think I lifted this from a GOP press release, you’re wrong. In fact it comes from an article by David Korten and John Cavanaugh in Nation of Change, a progressive on-line screamer. NoC has been loud, not to say hysterical, in its support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, so why this wet kiss for the bourgeois bloodsuckers, er, entrepreneurs of America? Why, because they’re not “U.S. transnational corporations.” Main Street, not Wall Street—get it?
So far, so good. I’m all in favor of policies that support entrepreneurs and small business generally. But hold on! It turns out that Korten and Cavanaugh are merely attempting to enlist Main Street into the Vanguard of the Proletariat. Here’s their seven-point program to foster entrepreneurship in America:
- Redefine our economic priorities by replacing financial indicators with real-wealth indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance.
- Restructure the money system to root the power to create and allocate money in Main Street financial institutions that support Main Street job creation.
- Restore the middle class by restoring progressive tax and employment policies and a strong and secure social safety net.
- Create a framework of economic incentives that favor human-scale enterprises that are locally owned by people who have a natural interest in the health and well-being of their community and its natural environment.
- Protect markets and democracy from corruption by concentrations of unaccountable corporate power.
- Organize the global economy into substantially self-reliant regional economies that align and partner with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere.
- Put in place global rules and institutions that secure the universal rights of people and support democratic self-governance and economic self-reliance at all system levels.
Even when they start with a valid premise, progressives can’t help drifting off—no doubt on a cloud of marijuana smoke—into leftie la-la land. How to support small business? By redefining our economic priorities! By organizing the global economy! By securing the universal rights of people! In short, by enormously expanding the power of government! Why, an ambitious entrepreneur with a good idea should welcome the help of the Department of Human-Scale Enterprises!
What a bunch of dorm room bull session baloney. If this is the best that the Revolution can do, Wall Street has little to worry about.
