Democrats want to ban profits

File this under “Democratic Party says we all belong to the government.”

Libertarian radio host Peter Schiff asked delegates at the Democratic convention what they would think about a law banning corporate profits. One after another, they all supported the idea.

As Andrew E., who sent the clip, explains here, only a quarter of the delegates Schiff spoke to said that banning corporate profits was going too far. The rest either positively supported the idea or were sympathetic.

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Now how’s this for synchronicity: I posted Andrew E.’s comment with the video last evening, and at the same time prepared this present comment (consisting of the three preceding paragraphs), planning to post it as a new entry this morning. Earlier this morning, in my ongoing reading of Atlas Shrugged, I came upon a scene where, at a high-level social gathering, an elderly, old-fashioned businessman is speaking with a government type:

[The businessman’s] face had the expression which, these days, was the mark of an honest man: an expression of bewilderment. He was looking at his companion, trying hard—conscientiously, helplessly, hopelessly—to understand.

His companion was younger and shorter, a small man with lumpy flesh, with a chest thrust forward and the thin points of a mustache thrust up. He was saying, in a tone of patronizing boredom, “Well, I don’t know. All of you are crying about rising costs, it seems to be the stock complaint nowadays, it’s the usual whine of people whose profits are squeezed a little. I don’t know, we’ll have to see, we’ll have to decide whether we’ll permit you to make any profits or not.” (Atlas Shrugged, page 390.)

- end of initial entry -

September 10

Bruce B. writes:

This entry suggest that the Democrats aren’t merely “cultural Marxists” and that the “classical Marxism” idea of economic and social-class leveling is alive and well. So I propose “comprehensive Marxism” or “comprehensive Leftism” as our preferred description of what they believe.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 08, 2012 11:40 AM | Send