The Seat of the Scam

We are all enablers

A Matter of Scale

The population of Washington DC is about 713,000, a little more than two tenths of 1% (0.002147683037) of the population of the country over which it rules. It occupies less than 70 square miles, just under two one thousandths of 1% (0.00001800105346) of the total US land mass.

Stop whatever you are doing right now and spend six minutes watching Roy Beck explain world poverty. Using glass cannisters of gumballs, Beck clearly demonstrates the utter hopelessness and total futility of immigration as a cure for poverty. Beck’s point is that you must make people prosperous where they are.

The proof is here in Washington DC, because that is what we do. Imagine every year that all the working people in our country send 15% to 37% of their income to a place that occupies less than two one thousandths of one percent of the country. For simplicity, let’s use an average tax rate of 25% and a full-time work force of about 135,000,000 people. What do you think happens when you take one quarter of the income of 135 million people and give it to 713,000 people? What do you suppose is the VERY FIRST THING THEY DO WITH IT?

Welcome to Wealthland

If the math is too overwhelming, if the scale seems unimaginable, let me help by describing in two words what I see when I visit Washington DC: ENORMOUS WEALTH. I see wide, pristine streets bordered by manicured parkways and spotless sidewalks, full of well dressed people; block after block of newer steel and glass motels and office buildings; minimal commercial vacancy. I see huge, stone government office buildings, some stretching for city blocks, housing “free” museums full of fine art. I walk tree-lined neighborhoods of residential areas where the MIDDLE of the house values is $640,000. The subways and busses are sparkling clean. At 3 pm on week days, restaurants with outside seating (OK, it is barely June, I get it) are serving expensive food and beverages briskly to a full house.

Never before have I so clearly understood why we constantly hear the same refrain from this city. From now on, every single time I hear a Washington pol say “We must raise taxes on the rich…” I will mentally complete the sentence with “…to insure that we, here in Washington DC, remain rich.”

Of course, I know, like any large city, all is not well everywhere. I see a few homeless people. How is that possible? You have a medium sized city, awash in money, full of people whose avowed purpose is to eradicate world poverty and they can’t even prevent the impoverishment of a handful of people a few feet away from them? Or, perhaps the DC poor are not really poor. Maybe they only identify as poor.

But, you say, those in Washington don’t take that money for themselves. They take dollars from the evil RICH and distribute quarters to the downtrodden poor. True. Sort of. The seventy-five cent difference is for the ubiquitous “middleman” in all those transactions. They are cloistered in fine air-conditioned government offices and get up every day to do what everyone else on the planet does: Look after themselves first.

People Matter but You Don’t

This is scam on us rubes out in the Heartland, well illustrated by this DC bus stop poster.

DC is a Company town and the Company is government. The mindset is based on Company values, which is Collectivism. If you believe their PR, they are all about helping “The People” (while generously helping themselves). You can have Benefits and Payroll, as long as you COMPLY. This means living by Byzantine rules that make obtaining benefits as hard as possible, furthering the “work” of the agency handing out the spoils. No matter what, be sure that nothing stops or even slows the payroll to the moneychangers in Government with lifetime employment, Cadillac healthcare and super-rich pensions. They never get defunded and there is always plenty to go around because you and I send it here.

An average of no individuals

One of the few things I am happy to pay government to do is protect property rights via a disciplined police force and an independent judiciary. Yesterday, outside the US Department of Justice I happened upon one citizen waiting for Justice.

It takes a huge, expensive effort to move the average of anything a very small amount. You have to pass lots of laws to make people do things they do not want to do, you have to organize an enforcement mechanism. If you have any luck and people actually do COMPLY you then must deal with unintended consequences, system gamers, market disruptions and other natural blowback. Along the way you have trouble finding a single individual who admits to actually benefitting. But, fear not, the purveyors of the scams, the poverty pimps and the social jackals will always pocket Major Moolah.

Help Me Help Those In Need

I can’t resist this gravy train. I have set up a Washington DC consulting firm, Save Our Survivors. At SOS we will right the wrongs we see in government. Our first outreach will be to obtain, free, honorary membership for each and every Californian in this particular Washington DC Museum

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