Running a Close Second to John Lennon's "Imagine" for "Worst Song Ever"

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OK, admittedly "Me and Bobby McGee" is a very catchy tune and has some good lyrics, but Andrew Cline has a bone to pick with one line:

Among his many memorable contributions to American arts, the great singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who passed away in September, wrote one of the most quotable lines in rock history.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

It’s a fabulous drifter anthem.

It’s also entirely wrong.

Part of the American political left at the time was infused with a hippie ethos that disdained possessions and social connections. Freedom to them meant getting “back to the garden,” to quote another anthem of the era.

They should’ve read fewer radical poets and more Enlightenment philosophers.

Good advice for us all.

Not to pile on the recently deceased—OK, I guess I am going to pile on the recently deceased—John Fund notes that Kris Kristofferson Was Great at Singing & Supremely Lousy at Politics. Specifically, he "was fully marinated in the mythology of communist sympathizers."

In 1979, he played the first Cuban-American rock festival, in Havana. The high point for the hand-picked audience of government flunkies came when he dedicated a song to Fidel Castro, praising him, Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, and Christ as great revolutionaries.

Later, he fell under the spell of the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. A Washington Post profile in 1987 noted that the only spot of color on his all-black outfit was a small red button with the picture of Augusto César Sandino, the patron saint of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution.

Indeed, his dedication to the Sandinista cause was such that he was on a first-name basis with Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega. After one of his many visits to Nicaragua, he released an album called “Third World Warrior” that was chock-full of songs celebrating the hard-Left.

We got nothing but contempt for Nazi sympathizers, but are inordinately forgiving to fans of Communism, an ideology with a much higher body count.

And don't even get me started on what a shit he was to Rita Coolidge. (Google for yourself if you want.)

Also of note:

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    If only Kristofferson were still alive. He might want to use Joseph Stiglitz's new book (Amazon link at your right) as the basis for a new song. Ryan Bourne reviews it and describes Why Joseph Stiglitz Wants to Redefine Freedom

    Given the pervasive existence of negative externalities, misinformation, market imperfections, and the suffering of the poor within “free markets,” Stiglitz thinks we need a more positive conception of liberty — one that considers opportunity-enhancing supports and public goods provided by the government as pro-freedom. In short, he argues that a benevolent state can make us freer, on net, by taxing, spending, and regulating to make the poor richer (“freedom to act”), provide social security (“freedom from want and fear”), and expand opportunity (freedom to live up to one’s potential). This coercion for the greater good will protect us against various market failures and exploitation. It’s the “freedom” that Vice President Kamala Harris promises on the campaign trail.

    Why does Stiglitz try to redefine “freedom” rather than just use other existing words such as, say, “wealth,” or “opportunity,” or even “economic welfare” for these ambitions? Well, because he thinks that “freedom” resonates with people and that the libertarian-conservative conception of it has unfairly dominated our politics since the “neoliberal” revolution of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. To read Stiglitz, in fact, you would think we’d seen minimalist government since the early 1980s, driving economic failure, climate-change destruction, and, ultimately, the economic disappointment that he thinks is fueling populist authoritarianism. Achieving his vision of real freedom requires “progressive capitalism,” Stiglitz concludes, by which he means a much more expansive form of social democracy and the regulatory state.

    The above link is my first of five NR "gifted" links for October. Don't let it go to waste!

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    Not a fan of this lady either. James E. Hartley writes on The Religious Idiocy of ‘Limitarianism’. He leads off with a appropriate quote:

    “In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men….The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document.” ~G.K. Chesterton, Heretics 

    And continues with his review of…

    Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth by Ingrid Robeyns is a very bad book. Writing a review of it thus presents a challenge. Who wants to read a review that is the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel of dead fish? Yet, while reading Robeyns’ tendentious screed, I was faced with the absolute certainty that quite a few of my colleagues and students would love this book. Chesterton’s observation thus puts the right question forward. The interesting thing about Limitarianism is not why it is so very flawed, but rather why Robeyns and others would think it was good.

    The thesis of the book is simple. Robeyns thinks it is wrong for anyone to have more than a million dollars in wealth, but she will agree to a compromise of a maximum wealth of ten million dollars. Robeyns doesn’t care what currency unit you use (dollars, pounds, or euros) as long as there is an enforced maximum. To the immediate reply that a 100% tax on wealth over that amount might be problematic, Robeyns repeatedly insists that she isn’t necessarily advocating that tax rate. Not that she thinks there is anything wrong with a 100% wealth tax, there are just other ways to get there. For example, you could convince everyone in the world it is bad to have lots of wealth.

    The bulk of the book is Robeyns shouting at the reader about why anyone having high wealth is so incredibly bad. First: “It’s Dirty Money.” Some wealthy people acquired their wealth by stealing it. Obviously, that is an argument against theft, not high wealth, but in a perfect example of how this book works, having established that we all agree stealing is bad, Robeyns then notes that people get wealthy in lots of other similar ways — like only paying whatever they are required to pay in taxes or owning companies that pay wages less than what Robeyns thinks workers should be paid. You see? Stealing wealth and not paying more than you owe in taxes are both “dirty money.” So, high wealth is evil.

    Amazon link at your right, although after reading Hartley's take, I can't imagine why you would want to take advantage of it.

  • I'm dubious of the claim. Specifically, David C. Rose's claim that he knows How to Make Social Security Reform a Winning Campaign Issue. But let's take a look:

    The Social Security program was too vulnerable to demographic bubbles from the very beginning and subsequent reforms have increasingly over-promised benefits thereby inviting our present budget insolvency. Voters are frustrated and losing confidence. They are looking for genuine leadership, not the “third rail of politics” policy détente we now have.

    Harris and Trump now have an opportunity to provide such leadership. Each could promise to do one quick and simple thing as president to reduce the unfunded liability gap in Social Security funding. It’s easy to explain to voters, it will appeal to both younger and older voters, and it will especially appeal to those in the political middle who are looking for practical solutions rather than ideologically driven bumper sticker slogans. It would behoove both candidates to jump on this reform proposal first. 

    In 1972, an amendment was passed to protect Social Security beneficiaries from the effects of inflation. A mistake was made in the procedure for implementing the Cost of Living Adjustments indexing of benefits. This had the effect of over-accounting for the effects of inflation, leading to the prospect of benefit levels soaring out of control as inflation worsened in the 70s. In 1976, a Congressional panel led by a Harvard economist, William Hsiao, was convened in part to correct the error. The panel also recommended that the initial benefits calculation employ price indexing rather than wage indexing out of fear that the latter would produce an unsustainable budget. Unfortunately, wage indexing was chosen over price indexing. 

    So Rose's proposed fix is to switch over to price indexing. And he quotes Social Securities trustee's report as claiming that One Simple Fix "wiil remove about 80 percent of the unfunded liability gap over the next 75 years."

    Pretty good, right? The problem being that it's inevitable that this reform would be demagogued as a "benefit cut." (Because it kinda is.) And that demagoguery has proven to be extremely effective.

    Also: someone's sure to point out that if you're going to use a CPI statistic to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for retirees, wouldn't CPI-E (where the E stands for "Elderly") be more appropriate?

    Sure it would. But the problem there: that would almost certainly increase benefits more than the current CPI-W calculation.

    Bottom line: this won't be solved painlessly, I fear.


Last Modified 2024-10-05 11:15 AM EST