More Control Loop Feedback from the Blogosphere

Mr. Harris over at Ipse Dixit has an excellent analysis and disassembly of Michael Kinsley's latest Slate piece, "Return of the Class War". This is why I loved reading his stuff back on Themestream and why I'm happy to find him still writing. An excerpt:

Gaze, my friends, at the living, beating heart of the Left. Here, in its natural habitat (an op-ed in an elitist, left-leaning publication), is the very essence of liberalism: The care and feeding of envy. No-one is wealthy but that they were blessed by "the luck of the draw." Capitalism in America is a massive, US$10 trillion lottery in which the lucky few get to drive Rolls-Royces while the rest of us toil and sweat to make their lives of ease and idleness possible. But they accept this dreary lot because - hey! who knows? - maybe one day they'll get the lucky hand and be given a key to the secret inner kingdom.

The facts: 80% of American millionaires are self-made. The average American millionaire earns US$150,000/year and drives a Ford. He lives modestly and saves 15% of what he earns. But you'd never know that reading to this quasi-Marxist pabulum.

Go read every damned word.

Oh, and I happen to work for two of those 80-percenters. In 1981 they risked everything they had to build a company - the company I've worked for the last 17 years, and that pays me a pretty damned good salary. I don't begrudge them their money at all. They busted their asses for it, and I helped them get where they are.

And if I want to take the risk they did, perhaps in ten or fifteen years I too can have the kind of income they draw now. This is America - land of opportunity, not the land of handouts.