Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati

Guest article by Don Robertson

For some time, time measured in now years I have read the Cincinnati Beacon as I’ve watched Cincinnati with an interest in relocating.  There’s a special honesty in Cincinnati book-ended by the not-so-special dishonesty so common throughout our entire country.  Upon reading a recent BBC economics article, I decided it was time to pay a few debts and give Cincinnati the benefit of my observations about more than Cincinnati.

There’s an odd, almost historically quaint class warfare mentality in Cincinnati, one common to much of the rest of the country.  “Aristocracy” is a term seen bandied about in both the articles and on the far more critical and tellingly crucial on line comment boards of the paper.  So, perhaps we should start there, and define what it is everyone seems so unconsciously aware of by their banging of the social drum top of class warfare and against the so-called aristocracy.

Government statistics while readily available in this digital age, they are rarely honest enough and, void enough of misguided social propaganda purposes to expose any sort of truth.  But it’s obvious, there is no such thing as an American or Cincinnati aristocracy.

If it seems so, it is more likely what is being observed is that those thought of as rich, pass their wealth on to their progeny through better education and higher aspirations.  If these were static advantages, then we wouldn’t ever see the economically aggressive outsider making any gains in the wealth landscape.  But this surely isn’t the reality.  And, as such any notion of an aristocracy is misplaced.

There is still however, something there everyone has a right to complain about.  And, it doubtlessly is the disparity in remuneration between one person and another.  We should examine this phenomenon to see what it is that we’re talking about, before we call out for class warfare carnage, if just to know whom it is that might be sent to the gallows.  None of this of course, is unique to Cincinnati and, guillotines might yet make a national comeback.

Were any government so disposed, it could print lists of all classes of occupations and employers statistically coupled with remuneration that would give us illuminating graphs and charts that would describe what it is everyone has and is becoming increasingly aware of concerning wage disparity.

The vast majority of better paying, the most often obscenely ridiculous remuneration in our transitional economy fostered by the pressures of the tepid experiment in globalization, that which would stand out, are remuneration disparities between government jobs and jobs in a narrowed view of the private sector, one excluding employers and jobs whose function do not rely upon government for payment.

The contrast is especially obvious if we examine exactly what constitutes a government job in this era of NGOs, non-governmental organizations, nonprofits, the so-called not for profit, that which is really far less taxed, and, those jobs that seem like they are private business, but which are wholly manufactured by government pay-outs and are regulated by statutes that limit economic competition to small cadres of like professionals and quasi-professionals generally paid for at some level by expenditures from government coffers.

That is the aristocracy everyone is so naively aware of in all our communities throughout the nation.  Simply, no government has been required by the economic pressures of globalization to tighten its belt the way every business has been required to tighten their belts in a globalized economy.

In addition to the pressures of globalization, there is a business fostered fraud being perpetrated upon the working class in the private sector, that there are jobs Americans just won’t do, and that these “vacancies” require tens of millions of legal and illegal aliens to be let into the country to perform these tasks, which in reality, while making the American economy more competitive in a worldly sense, also puts wage price pressure upon all the non-governmental jobs.

What the graphs and pie charts of wage disparity would show were any government willing to expose them to a public eager to understand the economics behind their general wage torment is that, government jobs pay so much better than non-government jobs there is something economically obscene enough going on to rile the country.  And this is rightly so.

Virtually everyone however is feeling the effects of inflation that go on unreported in the economy, but which are surely being factored in by wily economists throughout the nation even as they tell us inflation is modest and under control.  The BBC article that prompted me to write this letter concerned the Governor of the Bank of England.  It was reported in that article, Mervyn King wants to change the way England measures inflation by including in that measure the cost of housing and specifically mortgage costs.  Such an adjustment would add a great and realistic rise to the extent of inflation in any economy, including our own.

But even this economist, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England should be considered less dependable than any plumber who would be satisfied leaving a job as finished if the water line on the damp walls in your cellar measures less than a foot or two from the cellar floor when he scampers out the door to the odd ring of his cell phone.

In other words, economists are willing to leave all of us as if we were in good shape, if we’ve suffered something less than a Katrina, in effect telling us everyone’s cellar is wet, and yours, requiring the hip waders worn by fly-fishermen and some sewer workers alike is average or even better as he might have us believe.

Another common economists’ expression about inflation recently is, if we discount the cost of fuel.  A lot of Americans, or at least those who think they can still afford to drive, drive V8 pickup trucks and SUVs, some of which get roughly six miles to the gallon.  When most people who drive those things consider their own wages, I seriously doubt they’re aware that when they are driving at sixty miles per hour, at three dollars for a gallon of gasoline, they’re paying $30 an hour just for the fuel.

That’s a figure economists likely consider just in relation to wages, if we want to equate how fast an employee could push such a vehicle and, what an employer might want to pay him, or her to do it.  But don’t ask a government employee to push your car, because that could throw this rickshaw economic justification for the price of gasoline way out of wack.

And, most economists are government employees.

The only truly worthwhile measure of economics I have found is best related this way.  Every year there is a new set of kids who are five years old.  At one time or other, we were all five years old.  It’s a precious age, and that age examples economics in a fashion most economists have never considered.

The measure of any economy could be best given by asking each of us to consider what life was like for us when we were five years old.  And then reflect upon the many sets of five year olds since we were five years old, one for every year, and what their lives were like at five.  The economic measure is then applied this way, by asking, has the quality of life and the standard of living of all those successive generations of five year olds since we were five years old been rising or falling?

That sinking feeling you have right now is what economists refer to as economic progress.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher

Bio- The Philosopher Don Robertson is the discoverer of The Moral Imperative of Life, the basis for everything moral and the wellspring of all things moral.  It was the philosopher Immanuel Kant who postulated the possible existence of a Categorical (moral) Imperative, but left it void when Kant died in 1804.  Don has also philosophically posited that the only truth that can be of real moral value to humanity is Categorical Truth, that truth which is true in every instance without exception.  The basis of Robertson’s philosophic theorems is that the moral requisite of Categorical Truth necessarily excludes empirical truths, both the sciences and mathematics, which are mere approximations of reality and are currently far too prone to catastrophe to be of value to humanity over the short term.

Thank you for reading (and printing from) The Cincinnati Beacon.