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A living, breathing self parody
Whenever I come across an article by Robert Reich or listen to him speak it becomes ever clearer to me how America, and by extension the world, came to be in the sorry social state it is in today. We’ve had people like him, tens of thousands, pouring worthless mush into the skulls of our young adults for generations. And now Hillary Clinton is said to have been offered a professorship at Columbia University. Is there any hope for our kids?
Reduced down to it’s simplest portrayal, academics (left-leaning “economists” like Reich) teach kids that 2+2 does indeed equal 4. But stating it as a simple fact, and NOT creating nonsensical exceptions, or not claiming how it tears at the fabric of society and the environment,… well, that’s just racist, or greedy, or harmful to the environment. And if you ask a student to show you his work in a more complex equasion, well, you’re a classroom Bull Connor! You might as well be teaching in a white hood! Don’t take my word for it. People, ADULTS, are actually trying to turn this into a serious discussion.
And, of course there is no end of the “hate the rich” talk and teaching students to strive for victim status.
It is the easy notoriety resulting from the mystical transmogrification of hard facts into chewy, socialist propaganda that has the professors themselves eventually BELIEVING the nonsense they make up. They make themselves into Ivory Tower caricatures? They become so enamored with the nonsense, that whatever hard facts they actually did learn as students are replaced with the mush they now provide OUR kids.
It’s not all bad…kinda…
It isn’t hard to actually read or listen to Reich. He has a pleasant (if not a little smug and self-righteous) tone that he’s developed speaking publicly for a century or so. If he were to teach history with the integrity of say, a Victor Hanson or Larry Arnn, I cold listen to him all day. I should be so lucky as to have that voice. Sadly, I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint.
And Reich usually doesn’t fill the air with figures and jargon. Jargon always requires a running translation on the part of the listener. And figures, in Reich’s case, would often undermine whatever point he may be making. He replaces figures with flowery claims or emotional complaint.
To be certain, his specific celebrity is based on whatever it was he did, way back when, to earn his degrees (yes plural) and his unholy alliance with BJ Bill and his wife.
So, more than anyone, the professor has cashed in his actual credentials to become the caricature of the Ivory Tower do-nothing. And therein lurks the danger.
I recently read an article by this man entitled America's growing zero-sum economy. The subtitle is It's also where you find many of the nation's ultra-rich.
And it is with this heading my series will start blowing apart this article and the nonsense behind it.
I don’t possess a PhD. I have an Associate’s Degree in robotics. Any of the electro-mechanical or electro-hydraulic devices I used professionally are long obsolete. But I do come equipped with an excellent bullshit detector and keep company with Hayek, Smith, Sowell and Hazlette. You can safely assume it is they who will make my arguments more than me.
And far less than all that is needed these days, to rip into the work of people who are in possession of lofty degrees, who then ignore whatever was valid in their own education to push a political narrative steeped in nonsense, observable by anyone who with an ounce of common sense.
I will get to the actual title in a bit. It will be a recurring theme. And it will require more space to rebutt than the original work took to defile the page.
So, in the subtitle we have a highly politicized “professor” using the term “ultra-rich'“. Right out of the gate you have a non-academic, unobjective, emotional term. Why? And, pretending the term has a valid point, how do we define ultra-rich?
Professor Reich has held forth in tony universities like Harvard and UC Berkley for decades. They pay well from what I understand. He collected some fine fees from his days campaigning for the Clintons and working in the White House. At that level you are paid several times what a top GS employee earns. He is certainly VERY wealthy. He and his wife and son never need worry about the future.
But is he Ultra Wealthy? I would argue that compared to someone who is naked and standing on a piece of ground they don’t own, he’s outrageously wealthy. Compared to a handsome, witty writer living mostly on a Navy pension in Virginia, I can tell you Reich is LOADED! But compared to his peers in Ivy League academia he’s just a drinking buddy. Samie same.
If I was in a bar, talking to a fellow patron about rich people one of us might throw out a term like ultra-wealthy. It is an empty term, inartfully describing someone’s relative net worth. And in a conversation like that, meh, who cares. We both know what is meant by the term. But in this article, as has been the case with Reich since he was a regular on Nightline with Ted Koppel, the term “ultra-wealthy”, and terms like it, it is meant to sew discord. Like the entire article itself, it is meant to inspire class envy and distain for capitalism. This is and always has been an important tool for the Ivory Tower Left. Many of them ARE the very people, living the very lives they pretend to disparage.
Consider the arrogance of people who live that well and yet try to torture YOU with angst about people who have more than you. All these bankers and lenders are getting rich while you suffer. Tell me, is this fair!? Then, like Jeremiah Wright, golfing with rich Whities, people like Reich hobnob with their fellow rich people. It’s okay for HIM. HE’S an academic!
So much for even the subtitle of Reich’s article where in one line Reich demonstrates the lack of value of 3 degress, including a JD. But as I eluded to earlier. This rebuttal will be a series. It will require that much to unpack the BS piled into America’s growing zero-sum economy.
I could make a living just dispelling the myths in a few posts from this guy. It’s fun and may some day be profitable. (I don’t think Substack has laughing emojis. Assume you see one here.)
Best of the P4B: Educating Robert Reich Part 1