Capitalism at its worst: Great individual wealth can breed great selfishness

After reading the cover story of last week's edition of Newsweek, November 8, 2010, ("Power of 50") and hearing the feedback from the angry voters who successfully gave control of the House back to the Republicans, I am struck by a strong tentative conclusion: That it is mostly the extremely wealthy who are giving the general public the distorted impression that the federal government is trying to spend too much of their money (in the form of taxes for domestic and foreign government expenditures). The reality is that the wealthy are too protective of, and selfish with, their wealth. It is selfishness in the guise of a protective warning: a greatly exaggerated (verging on paranoid) warning to the public that the federal government of the United States, under the Obama administration and its passage of legislation, has become an oppressive, mammoth, Socialist, and autocratic federal government. Ironically, those who listen and believe the wealthy proponents of this scenario keep themselves ignorant and poorer while the wealthy grow all the more wealthy. In short, demonizing the federal government for the normal and necessary regulation of national capital is a decoy by the wealthy for a compulsive desire to remain individually, selfishly, and egregiously affluent.

Even though it is true that millions of people are still out of work and have lost their homes, and even though the national debt is still dangerously out-of-control, I don't feel that the severity of the anger generated by extreme conservatives is appropriate or directed at the correct source. The Obama administration was correct in acting as swiftly as they did in the passage of the Stimulus Package (which saved the country from bankruptcy), and they were correct in passing a preliminary health care bill because the health of health care is directly tied to the health of the economy. These were necessary emergency measures, probably necessary in their expense, and likely actually inadequately funded rather than too expensive. One of the reasons that unemployment is still too high and the health care reform disappointing (no Public Option) is that the Obama administration compromised too much and did not press for more spending for both initiatives. In other words, maybe you get what you pay for; not enough money means not good enough results. However, it is then highly unreasonable to give the impression that too much money was spent when in fact it was exactly the opposite. To little was spent in the short term for adequate enough gain in the long term.

According to the article in Newsweek, "Power of 50," the largest influence on voter anger and negativity is Rush Limbaugh. Of the wealthy people listed in the article, Limbaugh is the wealthiest. I suspect that if one is prone to anger and negativity, and if one is wealthy, and one is as self-righteous in their personal and political agenda as Limbaugh sounds (from his quotes in the article), this is the kind of person who would be the most likely to warn against the evils of a source other than himself (namely the federal government). In my view, one of the primary traits of immaturity is a quick and consistent tendency to demonize others (in this case, large institutions like national governments). In other words, to find everyone else but oneself in error.