7 Responses to The World’s Bravest Man Discusses “Income Inequality”

1. Fenster says:

   February 1, 2014 at 12:40 pm

   If it is as much about race as Taylor says, then why is this happening world-wide, and in other countries, including Western democracies, that don’t have our racial issues?

   Why have so many economists concluded, as Mickey Kaus puts it, that inequality “seems to be driven largely by deep tectonic forces within the economy: global trade, which has devalued the labor of unskilled Americans, and technology, which has replaced labor with machines while empowering (and rewarding) those with skills.”

   And what about The Economist’s contention that finance is at the heart of inequality’s run-up?

   http://www.economist.com/node/21543178

   I used to work at Drexel Burnham in the 1980s. I wasn’t convinced I was surrounded by John Galts and Horatio Algers back then, and the shenanigans in the finance sector in the last several years supports that view.

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   • epiminondas says:

     February 1, 2014 at 12:47 pm

     As Taylor notes, states with largely white populations like Maine, Vermont, Wyoming, and Minnesota do not exhibit those large disparities of income. It’s certainly not as much in evidence in Northern European countries (except, of course, among immigrant groups who are chronically on welfare). Poverty is a feature of non-white/Asian populations the world over. If you really want to experience income inequality, pay a visit to Brazil. I’ve been there and it’s painfully obvious.

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2. Toddy Cat says:

   February 1, 2014 at 11:34 pm

   Damn, Fenster, aren’t you afraid that someone might use your reporting on growing income inequality to whip up a Communist revolution and kill millions of people? Better just not talk about it and pretend everything is all right- after all, there’s such a thing as “forbidden knowledge,” you know, according to our betters on the left…

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   • Fenster says:

     February 2, 2014 at 9:15 am

     It doesn’t take a close read of my post on forbidden knowledge to see that I was reporting on Dreher’s endorsement of the idea–see my reply to you in that post. It ought to be clear that my sympathies lie more with Dennett, who in my view comes closest to living without lies. I don’t have Dreher’s doctrinal allegiances to force me into promoting forbidden knowledge.

     Though, as Montaigne would surely add, on that I am not sure. Perhaps what frustrates you about my posts is that I opt more for skepticism in line with Montaigne than certainty.

     Blowhard Esq. wrote here that Montaigne is the patron saint of UR. So in one respect you could say I am just trying to be brand-congruent. That said, I am fully aware that a Montangnard POV is very much at odds with a number of ideas with currency on this blog which are filled with a kind of certainty that I often find perplexing.

     But we are all hostages to our past. I rejected the hard left’s certainties decades ago–dialectical materialism!! Storm the radio stations!! I find this year’s version tiresome for many of the same reasons–let’s form roving men-bands!! Bring back monarchy!! But I am an old fart and if I was not willing to be a culture warrior in my twenties I am not about to start today. Sorry for uncouth opinions.

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     • epiminondas says:

       February 2, 2014 at 10:01 am

       And thank you, Mr. Fenster for not hurling that “racism” charge which all leftists eagerly resort to when they merely seek to shut down any discussion they do not approve of. Much appreciated. Not that it would have deterred me. 🙂

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3. Fenster says:

   February 2, 2014 at 11:31 am

   And thank you Mr. epiminondas for the courtesy of you comments. I am more than willing to take Taylor at his word that his views don’t stem from racial animus. Perhaps I find him persuasive because he has the demeanor of many professors I know of some repute, including their smugness 🙂

   Now, I don’t agree with Taylor, mind you. To me, he sees the world through a pretty restrictive prism–to his silver hammer everything seems to look like a wrought-iron nail.

   I tend to share the view of the estimable Mr. Sailer. He wrote of what he calls “citizenism” in 2006, in an article he usually trots out as one his best and most important:

   “Nor does citizenism suffer the fatal paradox dooming the white nationalism advocated by Jared Taylor and others who encourage whites to get down and mud-wrestle with the Al Sharptons of the world for control of the racial spoils system. Unfortunately for Taylor’s movement, white Americans don’t want, as he recommends, to act like the rest of the world; they want to act like white Americans. They believe on the whole in individualism rather than tribalism, national patriotism rather than ethnic loyalty, meritocracy rather than nepotism, nuclear families rather than extended clans, law and fair play rather than privilege, corporations of strangers rather than mafias of relatives, and true love rather than the arranged marriages necessary to keep ethnic categories clear-cut.”

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   • epiminondas says:

     February 2, 2014 at 12:11 pm

     They can believe all those well meaning platitudes, but if we come under the cultural Marxist power of the racial spoil system, they will become meaningless desiderata of a corrupt age. I fear we’re headed there.

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