The Right Network: "Charity Never Solved Anything"

The wonderful new site, The Right Network, has just posted a revised version of my post: "Charity Never Solved Anything." Link here.

If you read through the comments my first post elicited, you will have noticed that some commenters were kind enough to point out that I got a couple of facts wrong.

I am grateful for their being gracious enough to point these out to me. Where they were right, I have corrected the errors in the revised version that Right Network just posted.

I don't mean this as an excuse; rather, an explanation, but the original post was written on a Saturday morning, a time when my exceptionally talented fact-checkers are enjoying a well-earned weekend repose.

Again, I appreciate having had the opportunity to correct the record for The Right Network. I have not changed anything in the original post. If I had, the commenters' objections would not make any sense.

Charity Has Still Never Solved Anything

You may recall, or you may not want to recall, my comments on Carlos Slim’s response to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Link here.

When Gates and Buffett challenged the world’s billionaires to give half their money to charity, Carlos Slim responded that charity never solved anything.

Slim was saying that free market capitalism was by far the best way to help underdeveloped countries to overcome poverty.

He was not saying that it was all that was needed, but he was saying that it was the primary thing. When all is said and done, charities rarely create very many jobs. They are not engines of economic development and prosperity.

However well-intentioned their donors, and however much charities commit to scientific research, they tend to support leftist causes and leftist solutions to problems.

Whatever their founders intended, charities tend to fall into the control of people who hold progressive beliefs. Those who make careers out of giving away money rarely understand the entrepreneurial spirit. They distrust markets and prefer to believe that they can make better decisions than those who receive their largesse.

Some people find the issue difficult to understand. And that does not just include commenters on the blog. According to John Dizard many savvy investors are missing the story of the economic progress happening today in Africa. Dizard explained the issues in his Financial Times column on poverty in Africa. Link here.

First, he addresses the question of what charities have done to help Africans overcome poverty. Dizard answers: “I grew up surrounded by international do-gooders. Much of the foreign aid they advocated came in the form of free food imports (that impoverished local farmers) or consulting contracts (that paid for their graduate theses).”

Then he adds: “In Africa, neither Soviet, nor American and European foreign aid transformed the continent. Instead, the aid tended to inflate the parasitic elements of the post-colonial state structures. When that created internal conflicts, the secret services of all sides got involved, with miserable results. To the degree the leaders’ money came from foreigners, they had less reason to pay attention to the needs of the public. Development handed down from above did not work.”

Like it or not, good intentions do not make for economic progress. Nor do top/down management directives.

As it happens economic progress is coming to Africa today. But it is not coming from charities. It has been spurred, in part, by Chinese investment in commodities.   

Giving away food might make you feel better than going into Africa and buying up mineral resources and creating industries to make use of those resources, but the latter produces and spurs far more economic activity than the former.

As Dizard writes: “What is working now, and what is creating a sustainable expansion of investable African opportunities, is growth from below. Yes, Africa is a commodity exporting continent, and it is earning much more from exports of metals, oil, and agricultural commodities.”

But that is not the whole story. It is not, Dizard says, just a “China story.” The economic activity that has been stimulated by the commodity boom has provoked an entrepreneurial spirit among Africans. Especially among those who have gotten over the idea that they would be saved by charity from abroad.

So, “32% of the continent’s GDP growth between 2000 and 2008” is attributable to income from natural resources. But that is only part of the story. The rest, Dizard explains, “came from growth of internal sectors, including transport, telecommunications, more efficient wholesale and retail, and manufacturing.”

Investment in natural resources provided the impetus to economic growth and development. This does not mean that charity has no place. It simply places the correct emphasis on what really does  solve problems.

"Charity Doesn't Solve Anything"

As you know, Bill and Warren have set out on an excellent adventure.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have been traveling around America and the world trying to persuade their fellow billionaires to join them in pledging half of their assets to charity.

Now you know that Bill and Warren are very generous people. They will not merely be remembered as obscenely rich, but as paragons, as paladins, as champions of progressive causes, as men of unimpeachable moral standing.

If we are not feeling quite so charitable ourselves, we would note that we are witnessing the spectacle of two men who are so rich that they can burn money. It does not really matter how much they burn.

After all Bill himself lives in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe he is just reviving the old Native American custom of potlatch.

Half of an infinite amount of money is still an infinite amount of money. Bill and Warren can burn half of it and still, if they wish, ensure that their descendants will always be richer than everyone else.

If they have decided not to make their children and grandchildren absurdly rich, because they understand that living off of trust funds does not promote human initiative, self-reliance and self-respect, then why would they want the same rules to apply to non-family members?

For all I know, Bill and Warren are just avoiding taxes. They do not trust the government, and want to have a say in how their money is spent.

Ironically, both Bill and Warren tend to favor high taxes. When you are a billionaire you do not effectively pay taxes, so no matter what your tax rate your lifestyle does not suffer.

The best irony here is that while Bill and Warren are off on their grand adventure, Bill, Sr. father of the Microsoft billionaire, is promoting an initiative in Washington State to raise state taxes on wealthy people.

Is this part of the Gates philanthropy business? To make sure that others give more money to the government, the better to make up for the money that the Gates family is sheltering from taxation.

Unfortunately, it is also public policy. As Arthur Laffer pointed out, state income taxes tend to stifle economic growth. Maybe, having gobs of money blinds you to reality. Link here.

All things considered Bill and Warren’s excellent adventure looks like a self- promotional junket by people who have too much time and money on their hands.

Yesterday, the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, answered Bill and Warren's initiative. Slim responded: “Charity never solved anything.” Link here.

Slim continued: "'The only way to fight poverty is with employment,' he said. 'Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything.'"

Charities do create employment, mostly for administrators and for do-gooders. But they do not create the kind of economic activity that sustains a prosperous society, and allows people to arrive at a point where they do not need charity.

The point is very obvious. It has been repeated over and over again. Apparently it has made no impression on Bill and Warren. As the Journal reports, Slim’s: "… point seems to be that society would benefit more if the wealthy channeled their creative energies and talents toward building job-creating businesses rather than doling out cash."

Here’s an idea. What if Bill and Warren dedicated ten percent of their fortune to providing seed money for new businesses in poorer American neighborhoods. What if they set up cooperatives that would train and help prospective entrepreneurs run these new businesses?

Human societies have always had charities. After all, religions have been on the front lines of charity as long as they have existed.  Christian love is called agape in Greek, caritas in Latin, and charity in English.

When the New Testament says that you should love your neighbor as yourself, it uses the word: agape.

But how much of the money that Bill and Warren and their friends are going to be funneling into charity is going to be given to religious organizations? How much of it do you think will go to Catholic charities or Hadassah or the United Methodist Committee on Relief?

Don’t hold your breath.

Bill Gates wants to cure malaria. It is certainly a worthy goal. Of course, you would think that given the prevalence of malaria, pharmaceutical companies have plenty of incentive to find a cure.

I will guarantee, without even looking it up, that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is not involved with research that would produce new pesticides that could kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. Progressive values would preclude such funding.

Carlos Slim was pointing to the simple fact that if you send boatloads of food to feed the world’s hungry, you are going to feel very good about yourself, but you are also going to destroy local agriculture.

No one can compete with “free.”

Gratifying your philanthropic urges can easily create a cycle of dependence, one that saps initiative, self-respect, and demeans individuals.

Keep in mind, no matter who begins these foundations, and no matter whose name is on the door, ultimately they will be run by people who are in the business of philanthropy, and that means, people who have made it their life’s work.

These people are not champions of the free market; they are not especially interested in building businesses. They are interested in assuaging guilt, their own or someone else’s, by giving away money.

These charities will be promoting liberal and progressive causes; they will become advocacy organizations. They will not be promoting capitalism.

It is a good thing to fund education. It makes you feel good to fund education. Except that the problem with education has very little to do with money.

Education is a system that has been run by liberals and progressives, with precious little interference from moderates and conservatives. More and more it has devoted itself to inculcating the values associated with political correctness and self-esteemism, rather than teaching children.

All the world’s money is not going to change that.

It’s one thing to give money to the poor and the indigent. Religions have always done as much. It’s quite another to create a special class of people who can promote their own ideology under cover of philanthropy.

And who are not answerable to market forces or even to God.

The Downside of Charity

In previous posts I supported Carlos Slim’s idea that: “charity never solved anything.”

I even had the temerity to challenge the basic concept of the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet charity challenge.

Aside from the negative tax consequences for the U.S. Treasury, throwing that much money into the charity world will almost certainly lead to political advocacy, especially for leftist causes.

I even expressed some suspicions about the Gates Foundations signature effort to try to find a cure for malaria, not so much because I am well versed in the topic, but because I wanted to open a dialogue where we can weigh the  good feeling that produces all of this charity against the real consequences experienced by its intended recipients.

Just because your heart is in the right place, and just because  you fervently desire to do good, that does not mean that your efforts are going to be positive, constructive, or beneficial.

As it happened, one or two commenters on the blog were kind enough to point out that I did not know very much about malaria.

The point was well taken.

But it is hardly the end of the story.

Today, I read an article in the Harvard Business Review by Ro and Bill Wyman. The Wymans have dedicated themselves to improving the health care system in Africa. Link here.

They explain that targeting a “niche” disease-- like malaria or AIDS-- as many charitable foundations do, is not necessarily the best way to bring better health care to Africa.

Ro and Bill Wyman write: “Despite the large doses of health aid that humanitarian organizations have poured into Africa, many Africans are still living with — and dying of — a lack of basic healthcare. Why? Primarily because most aid is niche aid.”

They add: “In the sub-Saharan region, pneumonia and diarrhea kill nearly two million children under five each year — pneumonia alone kills more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined — yet less than 20% of children with pneumonia receive the antibiotics that could cure them. And most maternal deaths are preventable with access to reproductive health services, equipment, supplies, and skilled healthcare workers.”

And finally: “Instead of pouring millions of dollars into disease-centric programs, international aid organizations should be working with African stakeholders to build a community-level primary care delivery system, which can prevent and treat the deadly, everyday illnesses as well as administer complex disease protocols more reliably.”

For those who are interested in these questions, I recommend their article.

Charity in Haiti

You may recall, or better, you may not want to recall Carlos Slim’s statement: “Charity never solved anything.”

I found it so touching, and so compelling that I posted about it a couple of times already. Link here.

Still, it can easily lend itself to misinterpretation. It sounds like it reflects a very cold heart indeed.

In fact, it states that if you really want to solve long term problems in underdeveloped countries, industry and trade do a better job than handouts.

Today Nicholas Kristof offered an excellent illustration of the point, by taking the full measure of what charitable giving has accomplished in Haiti. Link here. As you know, no one has ever accused Kristof of being cold-hearted.

In his words: “Private and public donations saved lives in Haiti, no question. But it’s also true that well-meaning bleeding-hearts tend to exaggerate the impact aid typically has on a country. Those nations that have managed to lift themselves out of poverty have done so mostly with trade, not aid — with giving people jobs and a ladder, not handouts and an elevator.”

He concludes: “ What Haiti needs above all these days is these kinds of livelihoods for its people, not just shipments of food and clothing. It’s hard to think of a charitable project that will be as beneficial as the Coca-Cola Company’s decision to build up the mango juice industry in Haiti, supporting 25,000 farmers. The same is true of the move by South Korean garment companies to open factories in Haiti.

“I strongly believe that we have a moral obligation to address extreme poverty around the world. But sometimes the best way to discharge that obligation isn’t charity in the old-fashioned sense of handouts, but rather helping people like Ms. Jean find their own ways to support their families.”

Capitalism and free trade, not charity... that's the solution.

Free Enterprise Is Coming to Africa

While much of the developed world is working off its debt binge, Africa has been moving ahead.

Africa’s progress has not been propelled by massive amounts of foreign aid from guilt-ridden Western celebrities and billionaires. It has advanced economically thanks to Chinese and other foreign business investment.

Free enterprise is coming to Africa.

For some time now I have been posting about the negative effects of guilt-generated charity to underdeveloped countries. MS just sent me an old, but still pertinent, interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati about foreign aid’s ill effects in Africa.

Shikwati explains how foreign aid destroys local African businesses and farming. It mostly produces a class of corrupt government managers who use the money and the food for themselves, their cronies and their tribesman. When Westerner hand out free food, African farmers go out of business. Thus, the populace comes to depend on free food.

In 2005 he begged the West to stop seeing Africans as pathetic victims who cannot to help themselves.

Surely, Africa suffered from colonialism. Now it is suffering the effects of the do-gooder effort to atone for colonialism. Unfortunately, do-gooders privilege government bureaucracies and place no faith in the Africans themselves or in the free market.

Sound familiar?

Since Shikwati had his say, the aid his not ceased. What has changed is Chinese and other foreign investment.

In recent years, China has been scouring the world for raw materials to fuel its economic boom. Finding massive quantities in Africa it has invested in the continent. You cannot run mines and industry without infrastructure, so China and other nations have been building it.    

Companies are investing in Africa because it is good business.

Africa has attracted, The Daily Beast reports:

… China’s largest sum to anywhere in the world. Tourists leaving Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport now pass a sprawling landscape of cranes, machinery, and workers building the Chinese-financed, 16-lane Thika Road superhighway. American companies are also making strategic moves. Over the last two years Walmart completed a $2.4 billion acquisition of South African retailer Massmart, IBM announced a $1.5 billion investment in African-focused technology company Bharti Airtel, and U.S. private-equity giant the Carlyle Group launched a sub-Saharan Africa investment practice.

Without offering foreign aid Chinese businesses have done more for Africa’s economic development than the armies of celebrities and billionaires who are whining about how much we owe the Africans.

In the past, Americans may not have connected with Africa much at all; perhaps a friend who was in the Peace Corps or a donation to a celebrity charity. Media coverage has largely been a stream of poverty, war, or corruption, with an occasional safari. But new developments, largely in the business sphere, are changing that narrative rapidly. The simplest breakdown: Africa is growing, Africa is modernizing, Africa is the next consumer market, and Africa’s influence is rising.

From New York to Davos, business discussions echo with references to Africa’s astounding economic growth. While most of the globe is still reeling from the great recession, Africa is booming. It had six of 10 of the world’s fastest-growing economies of the decade to 2010 and is projected to claim seven of 10 to 2015, outpacing the entire Asian region. “Compared to dismal rates in the rest of the world, Africa’s growth is exceptional,” said Gustavo Galindo, a portfolio manager with Russell Investments. “It surprises me many U.S. investors don’t realize the opportunities this creates, [with] some African stocks gaining 15 percent to 20 percent returns.”

The Daily Beast describes what is going on:

In Freetown, Sierra Leone, traditional market traders who previously practiced under-the-mattress banking are getting their first ATM cards and small-business loans. With 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s adult population unbanked, its financial-services sector is projected to grow 40 percent by 2020. In mobile phones Africa has now overtaken Europe in the number of connections and the U.S. in number of users. Apple is expanding shops for iPhone sales across the continent to meet demand of a mobile market predicted to number more than a billion users by 2020.

Of course, there’s still the corrupt bureaucracy to deal with. And the do-gooders will still work to undermine it in the name of their own good feelings.

Africa’s progress tends to prove the wisdom behind Carlos Slim’s response to the Bill Gates/Warren Buffer charitable extravaganza:  “Charity never solved anything.”

And it also demonstrates the wisdom that Nicholas Kristof showed when he explained, in a moment of rare lucidity, that the people of Haiti would do better with more Coca-Cola factories and less charity.

Footnote: Unfortunately, the advent of free enterprises seems limited to sub-Saharan Africa.

In North Africa, the crack Obama/Clinton foreign policy team has managed to empower Islamist fundamentalists who have no interest in free enterprise. In fact, they have no interest in free anything.

U2 Concert Disrupted by Protest and Violence

There they were on stage, in concert at Glastonbury, England.

And then, all of a sudden, U2’s performance was disrupted by a protest group called Art Uncut.

The Sydney Morning Herald described the scene: “The anti-capitalist group Art Uncut inflated a 6-metre balloon emblazoned with the message "U Pay Your Tax 2." Security guards wrestled them to the ground before deflating the balloon and taking it away. About 30 people were involved in the angry clash.”  Via Instapundit.

So, rich sanctimonious liberals, even noted anti-poverty crusaders like Bono and his band do whatever they can to avoid paying taxes.

Somehow or other, the liberal voices who rail against hypocrisy when some conservative is caught in flagrante delicto are silent when it comes to the hypocrisy of anti-poverty advocates not paying their fair share of taxes.

In Ireland, from whence they hail, U2 are folk heroes. At least they were until recently. As you know, Ireland has recently run into a serious spot of financial trouble, which has involved severe economic austerity.

People then noticed that the greatest Irish rock band, whose members count among the wealthiest Irishman on the planet, had been dodging its taxes.

Not that they did anything illegal. U2 moved its corporate base from Ireland to the Netherlands, where taxes on royalties are next to nill.

Of course, U2 is hardly alone. President Obama’s favorite corporation, General Electric, paid no taxes last year either.

And then we see the great humanitarian billionaires, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who are, legally, sheltering their vast fortunes from taxes by giving it away to the Gates foundation.

One might ask how much of the foundation’s massive philanthropic activity takes place in America and how much of it takes place around the world.

And one might ask whether all that money would not be put to better use if it was invested in new business. As Carlos Slim famously noted: “Charity never solved anything.”

Unless you want to count charity’s ability to salve the guilt of the liberal conscience.

So, we are treated to the spectacle of watching sanctimonious liberals like Buffett rail against the inequities of the tax code while sheltering their fortunes from taxes.

It brings to mind the great statement from billionaire Leona Helmsley: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

Will Techies Save the World?

Famed Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson spent a weekend among the techno-wizards. He has returned to tell the tale.

Ferguson found that the techno-wizards of Silicon Valley were largely optimistic about the future. They are convinced that their new technologies will be able to solve all of the world’s problems.

If you became rich and famous by discovering problem-solving mechanisms called algorithms you can be forgiven for thinking that what’s good for sorting data can be put to work on a larger, more human scale.

Abraham Maslow once said that if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you see the world in terms of data, of bits and bytes, then human beings look like data in search of a solution.

For a techno-wizard that means that it’s not a question of how, but when their algorithms will bring peace and love to the world.

Techno-wizards are visionaries; they refuse to remain mired in the past. If they are young or young at heart they have very little experience with the past. Perhaps they don’t know enough to know how much they don't know, but still ignoring the past and ignoring counsels of despair have paid off for them. 

They are young and naïve, but they have been richly rewarded for venturing into worlds that the rest of us never even imagined.

Ferguson finds their optimism cloying. To a sophisticated historian anyone who sees human history as a mountain of data waiting to be managed does not see the world as it is.

On the other hand, cognitive psychologists value optimism. They believe that people are better off being optimistic about the future. Seeing the future as a problem to be solved is better than seeing it as something we need to endure. 

Ferguson explains how the techno-wizards are going to solve the world’s problems:

We heard a description of what Google’s Project Glass, the Internet-enabled spectacles, can already do. (For example, the spectacles can be used to check if another speaker is lying.) Next up: a search engine inside the brain itself. We heard that within the next twenty-five years, it will be possible to take thousand-mile journeys by being fired through tubes. We also heard that biotechnology will deliver genetic “photocopies” of human organs that need replacing. And we were promised genetically engineered bugs, capable of excreting clean fuel. The only note of pessimism came from an eminent neuroscientist who conceded that a major breakthrough in the prevention of brain degeneration was unlikely in the next quarter century.

Ferguson is not very impressed by recent technological advances:

The achievements of the past twenty-five years were actually not that big a deal compared with what we did in the preceding twenty-five years, 1961–86 (for example, landing astronauts on the moon). And the twenty-five years before that, 1935–60, were even more impressive (e.g., splitting the atom). In the words of Peter Thiel, perhaps the lone skeptic within a hundred miles of Palo Alto: in our youth we were promised flying cars. What did we get? One hundred and forty characters.

And he offers a remark by the only pessimistic techno-wizard, one Peter Thiel:

Thiel responded with a classic depressimistic question: why, if information technology is so great, have median wages stagnated in the forty years since 1973, whereas in the previous forty years, between 1932 and 1972, they went up by a factor of six?

Will the new technologies produce change that was as momentous as that produced by the Industrial Revolution? Probably not.

On the other hand, the internet has not been with us for a very long time, so it is difficult to predict the future. At the very least, major industries like publishing, have been seriously affected. Who can predict the ultimate fallout from the Amazonization of retailing? If more people shop at Amazon, fewer people will shop at stores. But, that will not just change retailing; it will also impact the commercial property market.

Google and Amazon will not change the world the way the steam engine or the cotton gin did, but they are not nothing.

But great industrial and technological revolutions produce massive social disruptions. The Industrial Revolution tore apart local communities, sent people hither and yon in search of new job opportunities and produced a wave of social anomie that contributed to many of the major horrors of the twentieth century.

When technology scrambles the social order, people do not know who they are or where they belong. Without understanding the social dislocations produced by the Industrial Revolution we will have difficulty understanding why everyone in Europe was so thrilled at the advent of World War I. If I recall correctly, Herbert Croly commented at the time that Europeans were happy to join the war effort because a full-scale mobilization provided young men with a social structure and a purpose. 

There isn't an app for that.

Ferguson is correct to see that the techno-wizards of Silicon Valley are extremely naïve. They are wrong to believe that Facebook and Twitter are going to solve the world’s problems, but they are also wrong to believe that Blue State policies of income redistribution will solve anything, either.

He doesn't mention it, but these techno-wizards are throwing their money and influence into electing more Democrats. Perhaps it means that they are young; perhaps it means that they are buying protection. Whatever the reason, that much money promoting a political ideology is not nothing.

Ferguson argues:

It’s a dangerous world. Ask anyone who works in the world of intelligence to list the biggest threats we face, and the list is likely to include bioterrorism, cyberwar, and nuclear proliferation. What these have in common, of course, is the way modern technology can empower radicalized (or just plain crazy) individuals and groups.

I wish I were a technoptimist. It must be heartwarming to believe that Facebook is ushering in a happy-clappy world where everybody “friends” everybody else and we all surf the Net in peace (insert smiley face). But I’m afraid history makes me a depressimist. And no, there’s not an app—or a gene—that can cure that.

There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic. All told, it's a good thing. There’s a lot wrong with being out of touch with reality.

If the techno-wizards were investing in new enterprise, that might help the nation. Heck, it might even help the world.If they use their money to found massive new charitable behemoths, then their naiveté is going to cost everyone.

If you are searching for new solutions, even a new algorithm charity is not where it's at. As Carlos Slim famously remarked: "Charity never solved anything."

Resentment, Inc.

Warren Buffett feels sorry for his secretary. She is paying a higher tax rate on her income than he is paying on his capital gains.

He feels that it’s is unfair. Not sufficiently unfair for him to pony up a little extra to the IRS, but sufficiently unfair to inspire an op-ed column.

Buffett is more concerned with conserving his reputation than his wealth.

His wealth is so vast that he does not, in the final analysis, pay taxes. Whatever the IRS takes from him, he cannot possibly miss it.

It’s the law of infinite numbers. Take away a few numbers from an infinite number and you still have an infinite number.

Buffett can, however, lose his reputation. Not his reputation as an honest man, but his reputation as a political kingmaker.

As a conspicuous supporter of Obama, he does not want to sit back and watch his candidate flounder. So he is throwing Obama a life vest.

Ultimately, Buffett is telling the world that he was not wrong about Obama. The fault for the failure of the Obama fiscal policy lies with those goddamned superrich-- they don’t pay enough taxes.

Barack Obama couldn’t have said it any better himself.

When a businessman starts getting in touch with his inner political flack, don’t take him too seriously.

As many people have noted Buffett does pay a lower rate on his capital gains than his secretary pays on earned income. If he feels so badly about this, he could always pay himself a salary, but he probably does not feel quite that bad.

Buffett believes so strongly in government that he has sheltered the better part of his considerable fortune from taxes by giving it away to charity.

Instead of raising tax rates on the upper middle class why not eliminate the charitable deduction for sums over, let’s say $10,000,000.

Compared to the intemperate ranting of Paul Farrell, Buffett is the voice of cold sobriety.

Writing at MarketWatch, Farrell has gotten himself into a considerable lather over the possibility that if we do not raise taxes on the rich, we will soon be having riots in the streets.

Like in Egypt and Syria and London.

Farrell is quaking in terror over the arrival of the revolution. And it’s all the fault of those Tea Party folk who refused to raise taxes on the rich.

Resentment is building up. More and more people are out of work. Union Square in New York is about to morph into Tahrir Square in Cairo.

If anyone really believes that the situation is Egypt is comparable to the situation in America he needs a few cold compresses to calm his fevered brain.

His analogy is perfectly idiotic.

Everyone knows by now that we have a jobs problem. Too many people have been out of work for far too long, and they are decidedly unhappy about it.

This does not, in and of itself, make them into a mob storming the Bastille. Still, Farrell is afraid. He is very afraid.

He is so afraid that he does not even bother to recommend a real plan for helping the economy to create jobs.

He seems to believe that the solution to the jobs problem is to tax the rich. Of course, increasing the tax rates on the rich is not going to solve the jobs problem.

Farrell does not even pretend that it will. He thinks that it is going to be therapy for everyone’s resentment.

But, Farrell is not arguing the case for increased tax rates. He certainly does not consider that increased tax rates might not produce more revenue.

Since rational argument is not his strong suit, he attempts to threaten, intimidate, and blackmail people into going along with the Obama agenda.

If you don’t raise taxes on the rich, the resentful masses will rise up and burn everything down.

Farrell’s essay is simple-minded to an extreme.

He errs most seriously in assuming that resentment is a staple of American life. It is not.

So much so, that some people are seriously offended a thte lack of popular resentment in America.

Naturally, they are hard at work trying to produce it.

Today Thomas Sowell explains that those who are trying to excuse riots and violence by saying that the people are filled with resentment are really fomenting it.

In his words: “Today's politically correct intelligentsia will tell you that the reason for this alienation and lashing out is that there are great disparities and inequities that need to be addressed.

“But such barbarism was not nearly as widespread two generations ago, in the middle of the 20th century. Were there no disparities or inequities then? Actually there were more.

“What is different today is that there has been -- for decades -- a steady drumbeat of media and political hype about differences in income, education and other outcomes, blaming these differences on oppression against those with fewer achievements or lesser prosperity.

“Moreover, there has been a growing tolerance of lawlessness and a growing intolerance toward the idea that people who are lagging need to take steps to raise themselves up, instead of trying to pull others down.”

But why has resentment not taken hold in America to the same extent that it has in England.

The Economist brings up the old theory that Americans are not resentful because they have: “…income mobility. Joe the Plumber might not be making enough to be affected by proposed hikes in tax rates on those making more than $250,000 a year, they argue, but he hopes some day to be one of them.”

Or else, as Kiri Blakeley explains, in a bit of rhetorical hyperbole, Americans have been fed the illusion that they are all superrich.

In her words: “But will America ever riot over the superrich not being sufficiently taxed? No. Why not? Because Americans are constantly fed the dream that they too will one day be superrich. The theory, drilled into us since infancy, goes like this: Anyone who works hard enough and is smart enough will one day have all of his or her dreams come true. If you don’t—well, it’s no one’s fault but your own.”

She continues: “Americans are too invested in the fantasy that Bill Gates, Jay-Z or Warren Buffett-like riches are going to be theirs someday too. All it takes is a little hard work.”

As though there is something wrong with a little hard work. Or even, a lot of hard work.

I find this argument strange. Most Americans do not aspire to become colossally wealthy. They are smart enough to know that it is impossible for everyone to be that rich.

Most Americans want to succeed. They want to get ahead in the world. They want to achieve something. They want to know that they will have a fair chance at success. And they want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. But they also know that the path to success lies in emulating those who have succeeded, not in resenting them.

Americans are opposed to excessive taxation and they are not too thrilled about giving money to people who have not earned it.

They see an injustice in trying to milk the rich for every last dime because they do not believe, rationally speaking, that more taxes will translate into more jobs.

They also seem to know that an individual who is consumed with resentment will not be able to do his best on the job or in the world.

Resentment is a negative emotion, one that cripples your efforts to focus on your work and to achieve yourself.

Become sufficiently resentful and you will conclude that it doesn’t matter how hard you work. If the game is rigged against you, you can become resentful about it, but the only way to act on that resentment is to destroy what others have earned.

Resentment never solved anything. It does not contribute to economic growth and prosperity.

Resentment is an enemy disguised as a friend. It provides good feelings on the cheap, at someone else’s expense.

The skills you pick up in a flash mob will not stand you in very good stead in the workplace.

I must say that I find it bizarre that Blakeley is taking pot shots at the work ethic.

In England people are rioting because, among other things, many of them do not work, do not know how to work, and do not want to work. Yet, they have been told that they are entitled to live comfortably off the fruits of someone else’s labor.

Sowell explained the point clearly: “A recent study in England found 352,000 households in which nobody had ever worked. Moreover, two-thirds of the adults in those households said that they didn't want to work. As in America, such people feel both "entitled" and aggrieved.

“In both countries, those who have achieved less have been taught by the educational system, by the media and by politicians on the left that they have a grievance against those who have achieved more. As in the United States, they feel a fierce sense of resentment against strangers who have done nothing to them, and lash out violently against those strangers.”

When you fail to work and live a parasitic existence, you are going to feel disconnected from the life of society. You will suffer from feelings of alienation and isolation and unworthiness.

You may not know what the problem is. And you may not want to know. But when the pundits in the media offer to diagnose your condition by calling it resentment, they will be offering you a way to express your own inability to function within society. They will also relieve you of responsibility for your condition.

Teach a man to fish, the old saying goes, and he can feed himself. Teach him resentment and he will blow up someone else's fishing boat... in he name of social justice.