Deep thoughts, omphaloskepsis, and other random musings.
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Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, a historian and scholar of classical times, a man whose opinion I respect, worries that we may now be in The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization. Excerpt:
Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume.
Every three working Americans provide sustenance for two who are not ill, enfeebled, or too young. The former help the disabled, the latter take resources from them. The gang-banger has only disdain for the geek at the mall — until one Saturday night his liver is shredded by gang gunfire and suddenly he whimpers (who is now the real wimp?) that he needs such a Stanford-trained nerd to do sophisticated surgery to get him back in one piece to the carjackings, muggings, assaults, and knockout games — or lawsuits follow!
Given that the number of non-working is growing (an additional 10 million were idled in the Obama “recovery” alone), it is likely to keep growing. At some point, we will hit a 50/50 ratio of idle versus active. 
Then things will get interesting. The percentage of workers’ pay deducted to pay for the non-working will soar even higher. So will the present redistributive schemes and the borrowing from the unborn.
Why does Dr. Hanson’s opinion matter?
From his biography: Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester 
courses in military history and classical culture.
Dr. Hanson is a scholar with few peers, a dedicated student of history with a deep background in the rise and fall of past republics, including the Rome and Greek republics – two nations which were in large part the inspiration for our own republic. And it is familiarity with the manner in which those republics self-destructed that makes one pessimistic about our own future, for reasons Dr. Hanson articulates very plainly in this column many of his other works.
Dr. Hanson concludes:
Each day when I drive to work I try to look at the surrounding communities, and count how many are working and how many of the able-bodied are not. I listen to the car radio and tally up how many stories, both in their subject matter and method of presentation, seem to preserve civilization, or how many seem to tear it down. I try to assess how many drivers stay between the lines, how many weave while texting or zoom in and out of traffic at 90mph or honk and flip off drivers.
Today, as the reader can note from the tone of this apocalyptic essay, civilization seemed to be losing.
I wish I could find more reason to disagree with him.
This just in from the always-worth-reading Dr. Thomas Sowell: Fact-Free Liberals. Excerpt:
Someone summarized Barack Obama in three words — “educated,” “smart” and “ignorant.” Unfortunately, those same three words would describe all too many of the people who come out of our most prestigious colleges and universities today.
President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again. Economic equality?
That was tried in the 19th century, in communities set up by Robert Owen, the man who coined the term “socialism.” Those communities all collapsed.
President Obama and various other pols, most (but not all! Oh, no, not all!) on the left side of the spectrum, have been whinging on quite a lot lately about “income inequality.” Dr. Sowell has repudiated the notion in a number of forums, including in his recent work The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. (I highly recommend it.) The problem with bemoaning inequalities in income or wealth – they 
aren’t the same thing – are legion, but the most simple refutation is simple. I’ve done so before in these pages, but that post has vanished into the ether, so here it is again.
Let’s say I invent something new, something sure to appeal to a broad swath of the consumer market. My invention, the Super-Kool Hyper-Gizmo, sells in the millions and makes me a billionaire.
Now, where did that money come from? From millions of voluntary transactions, millions of individual people who decided they wanted my Hyper-Gizmo more than the $109.95 purchase price. Millions of voluntary transactions, in which both parties gained value – both parties walked away feeling they’d come out ahead.
Oh, and during the realization of the product, I also employed a few hundred or a few thousand people, and did business with suppliers, shippers, and many, many others along the way. All of these things were again voluntary transactions in which both parties gained value.
That’s how wealth is created. Entrepreneurship is the wellspring of wealth; creating value from ideas.
It’s the rare pol that understands that, or any matter involving economics. They don’t understand that the economy is not a zero-sum game; it grows.
Now, let’s consider the pols arguing that income inequality is a problem, and that something must be done about it. No matter what the pol claims, no matter what he proposes, all government solutions boil down to one thing: Taking wealth away from those who have earned it, and giving it to those who have not. No matter what the pol’s claims, no matter what the pol’s promises, it must come to that.
And government – government is the only entity that can deprive you of your property without recompense, with the implied threat of force. (Try not paying your taxes and see how long it takes the government to send men with guns out looking for you.) Free citizens, legally, can only engage in economic activity voluntarily. If a citizen takes another’s property by force, that is robbery; if he takes it by deceit, that is fraud.
That’s the point that must be abundantly clear. When a pol whines about “income inequality,” he is talking about confiscating the property of one citizen to give it to another.
The proper way to address this issue is through economic growth, but for the last decade or so the Imperial Federal government has been pursuing policies that may as well be deliberately designed to squash economic growth.
Theodore Dalryrimple asks: Should The Age to Buy Cigarettes Be 21? Excerpt:
While Colorado permits the use of marijuana by those over 21 for any purpose, New York City prepares to prevent sales of tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. An article in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine comes out strongly in favor of this more restrictive approach to the sale of tobacco. The arguments it uses and those it refutes are instructive.
Those who go on to smoke throughout their lives generally start at an early age: earlier, that is, than 21. Thus if adolescents could be discouraged from smoking, rates of smoking among adults would decline markedly.
My answer? Not only no, but hell no. In fact, since we seem to have established the legal age of majority at 18 for the purposes of the franchise, then there is no rationale argument, morally or ethically, for raising the bar higher for any other reason. If at 18 a person is deemed too irresponsible to drink a beer, hold a concealed-carry permit or buy a pack of smokes, then why the hell do we let them vote?
Enough of the incremental-adulthood bullshit. If you’re an adult, you’re an adult. That age will always be somewhat arbitrary, but it has to be set somewhere. Since we have a Constitutional amendment setting it at 18 for voting purposes, then that’s our bar. When you’re 18, you should be able to:
Buy a handgun and apply for a carry permit, subject to the same requirements as any other adult.Sure, 18-year olds are sometimes (OK, frequently) immature, impulsive, irrational, irresponsible. And sometimes they aren’t. 18 is an age of transition, where you have one foot each in two different worlds. So, once again – why do we let them vote?
The point isn’t so much where the age is set – the thing is to have it set at the same bar for everything. No more incrementalism. You’re an adult or you aren’t.
Alice said it best.