Individual Net Worth & Ideology

["John Gelles" <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	It would be nice if the EU discussion minimized
	class struggle analysis.  Every European (and human
	being) has both a net worth and a set of political
	beliefs that motivate him on election day.

	"Class" may be a concept someone can make
	good sense of.  At the moment, voters with plenty
	of net worth support pro-labor and green policies.
	Others with little but dreams of making it, support
	the Thatcherite solutions for bloated government
	and less than necessary economic output.

	Let us not argue that the wannabe rich are all
	brainwashed by Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner
	(both who know ideology and business competition
	first hand).  What about the economists on this
	forum -- none are poor or brainwashed. None fit
	any useful definition of  "class".

	Let us get down to policy, economic models (that
	voters will respond to), and the rest of what it takes
	to go into politics with an agenda, a platform, a set
	of arguments for debate, etc.

	The now-largely forgotten discussions between
	Trotskyites, Stalinists, Maoists, Castroites, etc.,
	lend themselves to seven hour talks by a guy
	who wants to be dictator -- (and sometimes is.)
	I (and all of us) do not want to be dictator.
	I (and the rest of us) want to end poverty and
	pollution (and war, too) -- and leave most of the
	lesser faults of society to be ironed out over
	millennia to come.

                                 John Gelles
        jjgelles@xxxxxxxx                http://www.rain.org/~jjgelles/
        Modern nations cannot afford poverty, it costs too much.
        Its price is the money  the poor don't spend  that the rest
        would earn if they did.  If those with the least spent what
        it takes for a decent life, the rest would all have more for
        a grander one. That is  the nature of  production and free
        enterprise  protected  from monopoly  by law, and  from
        deflation and inflation by  individual indexed savings held
        in tax free accounts to create a controlled flow of money.