Road to the Middle Class - by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYBODY’S been asking: “Where’s Obama” on just about everything. What’s his take on the auto bailout? Rush Limbaugh wants him to issue a statement promising no tax increases for a few years.

But at least there seems to be movement on the auto bailout, according to Bloomberg.

President-Elect Barack Obama`s transition team is exploring a swift, prepackaged bankruptcy for automakers as a possible solution to the industry’s financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter.

That is what they call a trial balloon.

And it seems that, from the various quotes from Washington barons of the realm, that the idea has some support.

It would probably be my preferred option. But whatever it is, it has to include haircuts all round.

The whole point of a recession is the liquidation of the malinvestments of the previous boom. Well, we are well into the liquidation of the mal-mortgages of the previous boom. Now it’s time to look at the malinvestment of the previous half-century in sky-high wages and benefits for auto workers.

It seemed like a good idea half a century ago, to promise good wages and benefits out of the huge profits of the auto companies. But things got a bit out of hand, as they do when politics gets involved in anything. Now it is time to face reality.

It’s time to get past denial, as our liberal friends say.

What New Deal?

RUMOR HAS it that Obama’s advisors are planning some sort of a Big Bang program in January. As Rahm Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council:

You should never let a crisis go to waste. [It lets us address long-term problems] in the health care area, the energy area, the education area, the fiscal area, [and] the tax area.

You can see what is coming, given that President-elect Obama represents the progressive educated unfold

Not Your Father's GOP

KATHLEEN Parker is a conservative columnist who went off the reservation during the recent campaign with an article praising Christopher Buckley for endorsing then-candidate Obama.

Then she got some hate mail.

Now she’s got an article in the Washington Post that urges Republicans to get G-O-D out of the unfold

Bail-out for the Banks but not for Detroit?

IF WE CAN spend $700 billion on a bank bail-out why not spend a measly $25 billion on the auto companies?

The simple answer is that we can’t let the banks go broke. We tried it, sort of, back in September when Lehmen Brothers went belly up. The fallout from that nuclear explosion is still irradiating us.

But the bankrupty of an industrial corporation is not so bad. The railroads went in and out of bankruptcy with regularity in the 19th century. And the world didn’t end when the Penn Central went bankrupt in 1970 unfold

Those Pesky Russkie UHIs

LAST WEEK was great fun for global warming deniers. There was an almighty cock-up on the monthly temperature front as NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies released a “record” month temperature for October. Trouble was that the temperatures for a bunch of stations in Siberia were for September, not October. Not our fault, said the chaps at GISS. Blame the chaps at NOAA.

(Gotta love those unfold

The Social Liberal/Economic Conservative Chimera

WHY DON’T conservatives just give up on the social conservatism, a lot of people argue? Then they could pick up the votes of all the social liberal/economic conservatives out there.

That would be a good idea, writes Jonah Goldberg, if indeed there was a great reservoir of social liberal/economic conservative votes out there. But the record is that they ain’t there.

Economically conservative social liberals are unfold

PJ's Lament

POOR OLD P.J. O’Rourke is singing the blues. In a post-election lament in The Weekly Standard he writes we’ve only ourselves to blame. “We blew it,” he writes.

The financial crisis that is hoisting us on our own petard is only the latest (if the last) of the petard hoistings that have issued from the hindquarters of our movement. We’ve had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about unfold

| November blogs | October blogs |

OPED

The Weight of Government

IN THE CHAOS of defeat Republicans and conservatives feel most ashamed about the profligate spending. How was it that the conservative President Bush and the Republican Congress of 2001-2006 could have so increased the weight of government on the backs of the American people—including that most shameful spending of all, earmarks?

The answer is simple. Republican politicians know that the American people don’t really want to cut government. They found that out in the 1995 government shutdown battle with President Clinton. ...

| more | comment | 11/21/08

The Rape of Honor

Last week’s election really was the best possible result that conservatives could have hoped for. ...

| more | comment | 11/12/08

Hope and Change in the Real World

Not Exactly Piracy and Plunder

There is Still Hope

RMC CHAPTER-A-DAY

RMC Contents

Chapter 1: After the Welfare State

Chapter 2: Down in South Carolina and Out in Brooklyn

Chapter 3: Awakenings of Monotheism

Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century From the Top Down

THE GREAT EVENT of the second millennium was the rise of the world-historical middle class.... more

Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century From the Bottom Up

RMC BOOKS

RMC Book of the Day

Carter, Stephen L., God�s Name in Vain

RMC Books on Education

Andrew Coulson, Market Education
How universal literacy was achieved before government education

Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
How we got our education system

James Tooley, Reclaiming Education
How only a market in education will provide opportunity for the poor

James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women
How the feminists wrecked education for boys and for girls

E.G. West, Education and the State
How education was doing fine before the government muscled in

RMC Books on Law

Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital
How ordinary people in the United States wrote the law during the 19th century

F. A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1
How to build a society based upon law

Henry Maine, Ancient Law
How the movement of progressive peoples is from status to contract

John Zane, The Story of Law
How law developed from early times down to the present

RMC Books on Mutual Aid

James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In
How the welfare state makes crime, education, families, and health care worse.

David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
How ordinary people built a sturdy social safety net in the 19th century

David Green, Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State
How ordinary people built themselves a sturdy safety net before the welfare state

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy
How the US used to thrive under membership associations and could do again

David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry
How modern freemasonry got started in Scotland

RMC Books on Religion

David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is booming in China

Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
How the United States grew into a religious nation

Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
How progressives must act fast if they want to save the welfare state

David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish
How Pentecostalism is spreading across the world

Amazon.com Widgets

READINGS

Oligopoly and the fall of the American automobile industry
Lifson tells the story of Detroit's decline.

Honestly, Another Abe?
Don't hope Obama is another Roosevelt or Lincoln. Hope that the next few years won't need great leadership.

French Soldier Recruited
Here's what the French think about US soldiers. (They are in awe.)

Get Serious about the Auto Bailout
Obama's people seem to be pushing a "prepackaged" bankruptcy, meaning, presumably, that haircuts are figured out first.

Karl Rove does the numbers
headline percentages on the election

Take the Test!

THE PROJECT

Work to restore the Road to the Middle Class. Here’s how. Ground it in faith. Grade it with education. Protect it with mutual aid. Defend it with the law. more>>

THE ARGUMENT

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king�s peace, the law of contract, and private property.