Shorter Arnold Kling
- Sure, having vast inequalities between the super-rich and everyone else might not seem like an ideal way to run a society, but things will be much worse if the government tries to oppress Bill Gates by making him pay taxes.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
And just so you know, I discovered this piece via the Ole Perfesser, who seems to have a nose for finding the most insultingly illogical bits of foolishness on the Internets.
Check out this tasty excerpt:
Can you name the members of the County Council in Montgomery County, Maryland? I can’t name very many of them, and I live there. Still, getting elected to the County Council in Montogmery County, which is pretty far down the ladder in terms of political power in the United States, enables you to control more annual spending than the wealth of Donald Trump or Steven Jobs.
At the Federal level, the Budget is $3 trillion. If you divide that by 535 (the number of of Senators and Congressmen), then on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year. That is more than even the world’s richest person could spend annually.
At this point, you may be thinking that this is not a valid comparison. It is misleading to compare legislative budgets with the wealth of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, because legislators are spending money on all of us. They are not spending money on themselves.
Well yes, that is something of a key difference, isn’t it? In fact, it’s such a key difference that it sortakinda makes your entire comparison between Donald Trump and the Montgomery County Counselors stupid and meaningless.
Even so, it’s nice to see that some of these guys are actually refuting their own arguments. Saves me the work.
Heh. Great minds think alike once again.
Man, I’m amazed you guys do this kind of work at ALL. All I can handle of these goobers is maybe a paragraph or two before I start getting the urge to gnaw off my own ankle.
So, if only democratically elected governments weren’t so financially powerful, the gap could be filled by billionaires, who would have just as much power as county governments do now, but they’re farther away and, you know, famous, so that would be okay and stuff.
Give him credit for trying a new way of arguing for greater protections of the rich.
So rich folks are only a fraction as rich as their stockbrokers?
That argument isn’t going anywhere, Arnold. Therefore, I officially dub you “Static Kling.”
I also love how he writes “But the point of this essay is not to berate rich people” immediately after berating Bill Clinton for making too much money.
I notice he rounds the budget up to the nearest trillion, it’s actually closer to 2.5-2.7 trillion, depending on your math.
So, what’s his point, anyways? Yes, government officials are entrusted with a large amount of power and money, which is why we’re supposed to have open, transparent government, with a strong tendency of responsibility and accountability for their actions and expenditures. You know: the sort of things the Republicans have been working against for the last few decades.
That the stupidest thing I’ve heard since….well, since I heard that incandescent light bulbs will cool my house.
Back to Civics 101 for you, Mr. Klingon.
If you took all the stupid on the internets and divided by pie, you could end starvation among billionaire moguls practically overnight.
Since Mr Kling shows us that in actuality HR departments are responsible for new job creation, can we now all agree that CEOs should be paid less?
Wow! So being elected to the House of Representatives will give me a $5 billion annual discretionary budget to do whatever I damn well please with? Sign me the fuck up!
Awesome. In an article about the imbalance of political power, there’s no mention of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush’s blatant dismantling of the Constitution. No no, instead we should be worried about the excess power of Bill Clinton (who holds no political office) and Elliot Spitzer (who holds no political office). Sigh.
When did my old shop teacher start writing op-eds? Mr. Static Klingon (because I like them both!) needs to get back to the wood shop and leave the serious thinking to the PE teachers…like Coach Dave!
Ummm… Err… Gahhhh! This guy realizes that people like Buffet and Gates got rich by NOT spending their money right? That they use their wealth to make more make more money by investing it over and over again? Something government by design and function really doesn’t do.
Limpy- Uh, what?
Anyhoo, nice to see TCS “daily” keeping teh linkage up-to-date. On the front page we still have something about Spitzer, and something about Liberal Fascism.
Richest man in the world: Ben Bernanke? Jean-Pierre Roth?
I’m afraid it’s out of the question since that pesky conviction for child molestation.
That conviction was bogus on your know it, SNYG. It was all just a hilarious mis-understanding about wanting to get a firm grip on your wood before screwing it into the drill press.
A MG in the army commands 12,000 people, but a parent of even the largest family is responsible for only a dozen or so people, so, ah, damn, where was I again?
Bonus idiocy in which Mr. Static redesigns the American system of government: His main point: There are too few states, so he wants to add another 200. I’ll just let him describe his plans for electoral reform…
Yes, because having Senators and Representatives not elected by direct popular vote will ensure less control of the system by special interests.
What the… if you’re going to have a set number (3, in his case) of Federal congressmen, what the fuck is the point of having two houses? Good god, Fucktard.
So his point is that public works take a lot of money, so we shouldn’t tax rich people to fund those public works?
Also:
(I’m vaguely ashamed that I had to look that up. I should know more about my local politics)
Is he kind of missing the point that there’s, at least ideally, some oversight built into how government uses its power and money? And that that’s missing in all but the most abstract way from how Bill Gates does?
Or am I just too hopped up on imitrex to understand why this is irrelevant.
His point is, corduroy shirts are soft and comfy.
Arnold Kling had a strange hobby
Collecting clothes
Moonshine washing line
They suit him fine
On the wall hung a tall mirror
Distorted view, see through baby blue
He dug it
Oh, Arnold Kling, Quite different thing,
takes two to know
Two to know, two to know, two to know
Why can’t you see?
Now he’s caught – a nasty sort of person.
They gave him time
Doors bang – chain gang –
he hates it
Okay, someone mentioned Coach Dave upthread, and that prompted me to look this guy up in the Sadly archives. And I realized that I knew this guy. Well, I knew of him…in a one-or-two-degrees sort of way. My mother was a teacher at the school district where his whole prayer fracas erupted that gave him the wingnut cred that he…apparently had at one point. This all happened in a little burg about 20 minutes from my childhood home.
Eesh. Rural central Ohio was not a pretty place.
If you divide by the number of every single elected official in the country it proves that the richest people really aren’t that rich and why is anyone worried about it anyway, we should instead be spending our time wanting to win in Iraq!
Oh stop with the sex offender stuff. Most of it isn’t even true. I mean, criminy – you blow a goat just ONE time…..
Did I mention that when you put our incomes together and divide by two, me and Bill Gates have an average income of two billion dollars a year?
Hey, in Communist China, the only people with REAL money & power got them through their political connections, amirite? So if we were talking about Beijing instead of DC, Mr. Kling’s analogies would be totally perfect!…
… always nice to be reminded what kind of oligarchies our Right-Wing brethren are actually in favor of, yes?
Do you think he sometimes tears his shirt off and runs down the block screaming “I am the Lizard Kling!”
I hope not.
Oh God. Bluurgh. And to think I didn’t like it when I moved to the next county.
On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax.
The oligarchy do not play
But gentle pull the strings
And smile as the puppets dance
In the court of the Arnold Kling.
we should instead be spending our time wanting to win in Iraq!
Arnold King on John McCain’s Iraq policy: If you divide 100 years by every member of the U.S. armed forces, it’s only, like, 2 months. What’s the big deal?
“There is a lot of money out there. I feel better when government doesn’t have any of it. But this is central to my point.”
The Kling is dead. Long live the Kling.
Wait a minute…each member of Congress controls $5 billion? Did I miss a recent amendment to the Constitution that did a way with majority rule and just divide all congessional powers into proportional fiefdoms?
I always thought that, if you are a congressman and you want the government to spend $5 billion on anything you had to get more than 50% of the members of your house to agree and get more than 50% of the other house to agree and get the President to sign off on it.
What’s more, I’ve always labored under the belief that a large percentage of the federal budget is spent on fixed costs like salaries for government employees, air traffic control, etc. Apparently, however, members of congress can decide to stop paying for those things whenever they want and spend them on a big shiny boat instead.
Only if the ‘big shiny boat’ is described as “military procurement”.
Did anyone else notice this resemblance? Coincidence? I think not….
http://carpediemblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/batboy2007bye.jpg
Is that a ‘shop? Is he leaning into the camera? Does he have a neck like an okapi?
Still not gonna click it.
I just read Kling’s ‘We Need 250 States’ piece. That’s an impressive level of stupiditude.
This screwball doesn’t have even a child’s grasp of how society functions or how government works. His scheme to “increase the power of ordinary voters” by stripping them of the power to elect Congressmen is exceptionally unhinged, but the whole thing is cornucopia of whackiness.
One especially fine statement: “In a town of 3,000 people, there is not much scope for political arrogance.” Sheee-it.
then on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year.
I can’t bear to read such stupidity in more depth, but does this fool understand how public agency budgets work?
What he is saying is rich people rule! Or should rule…
Why is it that when freedom lovin Libertarians describe the perfect government it winds up sounding like a monarchy?
So, is he saying we should appoint rich people through democratic elections? Recall Bill Gates!
but does this fool understand how public agency budgets work?
No.
I especially like this assertion:
on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year. That is more than even the world’s richest person could spend annually.
I’m absolutely positive I could figure out how to spend over $5 billion per year. Submarine yachts and vintage airplanes for everyone! For all his other faults, Kling at the very least lacks imagination.
“Static Kling” ? Please, in about 4 years Arnie has worked his way up from Tech Central Station to tcsdaily.com ! Next, the Noble Prize.
This piece turns out to make more sense if you imagine it sung in a baritone voice, accompanied by Act II of Parzifal.
[Inside the inner keep of a tower, open above. Steps lead up to the crenellated edge of the tower?wall. Magic and necromantic paraphernalia.]
KLING [Seated in front of a metal mirror]:
Can you name the members
of the County Council in Montgomery County, Maryland?
I can’t name very many of them, and I live there.
Up then! To work!
Yep. That 5 bill might go to build roads and schools and all that fine stuff that hundreds of thousands of people will use but it is the exact same thing as having 5 bill for private use.
How do these morons turn on a computer, much less type? There must be a charitable organization called Typists for Asshats out there. Must be.
Smut Clyde said,
April 8, 2008 at 6:10
Oh, Christ, I can’t stop laughing.
Two hundred and fifty states? Pshaw! I think we should have 30 Million states states. That way, every ten or so Americans would be a state, 3 of every ten would be members of Congress, and 2 more would be Senators! The other 5 would be little kids, I guess. Just think of all the lobbyist money we’d rake in! Ka-ching!
Oy:
Man…I remember when MIT used to be a respectable school.