George Carlin and the "Ownership Class"

Don't know if you've noticed but George Carlin is making the rounds on the talk shows promoting his new book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? I must say that I have long admired his ability to cut through the BS of things. This is the main reason he's so funny - he can tell the truth in a way that bludgeons listeners with the absurdity of it all. But the Carlin I've seen recently on Real Time with Bill Maher and Hardball with Chris Matthews is almost unrecognizable.

Yes, he's still wielding his sardonic wit. But now, in the midst of an election cycle, he is revealing himself to be a socialist. When asked how he feels about the presidential race, Carlin's first task is always to disclaim any real interest. Fair enough. He sees the whole thing as "high theater." On that, I agree with him. But then, he throws in the statement that the Republicans represent the ownership class and that they do whatever they want. I'm not interested in whether he's right so much as I'm interested in what the heck that kind of statement is supposed to mean, and, more importantly, what should be done about it.

It's obviously not a good thing. Assuming Carlin would support fixing it (and that may be a stretch), we need to know what an ownership class is. Is home ownership the litmust test for inclusion in the ownership class? Does the guy making $35,000 a year who just bought a condo for $89,000 fit into the ownership class? If so, according to the Census Bureau, more people now own homes than have ever before. So, Carlin should be scared - the ownership class is growing. Yikes! But wait. Maybe the ownership class only consists of the people who are really wealthy, the people who make money off interest from investments. That's got to be it.

So Carlin's term "ownership class" is really just a euphamism for rich. By the transitive property, that means that Republicans are for the rich. (No shit, George.) With the double-speak aside, we can see Carlin's socialist tendencies. This fine comedian has bought into the idea that rich people are bad because they don't earn their money and because they exploit poor people. I suppose the solution is to rid the world of rich people - by either taking their money away or making the private ownership of property illegal. Even when he's trying to be serious, this guy cracks me up.

This is funny for two reasons. Right away, I like to envision what Carlin would do if he got his wish. Suddenly, his little fantasy world would come crumbling down around him. You think this guy lives a regular-guy kind of life? Think he worries about making ends meet every month? (Maybe he does - celebs often write terrible books hoping to just cash in on their name, so maybe he's having cash flow issues.) Bottom line, whatever this dispicable class is that Carlin rails against, it is highly likely that he is a member in perpetuity. Somehow, I don't think George has considered what it'd be like to stand in the bread line next to the great unwashed. If ownership is what stands between him and that grim reality, should he rethink his position?

The second reason this is funny is because it illustrates how terribly ignorant most celebs are about economics. Their anti-rich sentiments are almost always driven by personal guilt, elitism, and by their exclusive association with people who share their liberal views of the world. These people have a disdain for business and capitalism because they see the two as exploitative. A simple stroll down history lane would be sufficient to cure their ignorance, assuming of course that they were open-minded enough to consider the facts.

1. Property can either be owned by individuals or by groups. That's it. In the history of this planet, no arrangement has ever brought more prosperity to more people than the individual ownership of private property... ever. Socialist and communist economic ideas are based upon the collective ownership of property. The benefit of this arrangement hinges upon the collective (which ultimately has to end up being humans) being able to make the right decisions as to how property should be used, by whom, and when. Never, EVER, in the history of humanity has any collective ever been able to outdo individuals controlling their own property. In Communist Russia, it was not uncommon to have warehouses brimming with unsalable material while shortages existed for easily obtained items. This is not because the Soviets had any inherent disadvantage in terms of resources. They just lived under an economic system that was entirely ineffective at meeting consumer demands efficiently. When the shortage is in floor mats, that's one thing. But when there's a shortage in farming equipment, people starve. Welcome to the no-ownership class.

2. The rich make prosperity possible for the poor. People who decry the "ownership class" operate on the assumption that rich people extract money from the economy and then only use it on themselves. The fact is that rich people create wealth. This is a basic idea that new economic liberals, progressives, as they are now called, do not seem to grasp. $2 can become $3, which can become $5, and so on. There isn't simply a pie with all the money, and the rich are doing whatever they can to pull more than their fair share away from the masses. I will concede that the rich demand more wealth from the economy than poor people do, but they return far more than they take. The pie gets bigger when rich people are left to their own devices. People with money, being human and all, typically want to make more money. To do so, they risk losing their money by investing it. When they do, they create jobs that pay poorer people. The more money they make, the more they invest, and the more jobs are created.

These statements are not my personal ideology. They are facts that are backed up again and again by history. So I'd like to thank George Carlin for providing an object lesson in economics and a reminder that you can't take the political opinions of celebrities seriously.