Why the elites fear a prosperous America

At some point during the Clinton presidency, a friend said something that I found curious. "The rich," he said during a political discussion, "fear the middle class and try to keep them down."

I think I'm finally beginning to understand. The truly rich are easy to satisfy. They simply want a safe and predictable return on their investments (which yields a safe and predictable income for them).

They don't care about social issues. They don't care about economic issues (beyond the above). They don't care about estate taxes or Social Security (their money is in trusts, professionally managed). They don't care about wars or patriotism or national sovereignty. They don't care what a gallon of gas costs. They don't care about welfare, crime or inner cities; their wealth isolates them from the effects of those policies.

Since the truly rich are few, they have little to no voice in a presidential election. Their only hope in affecting the outcome of a national election lies in selecting the candidates who will be offered to the rest of us in the general election. This they attempt to do through their ownership and influence in the media.

So how are they doing?

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America's economy is not hard to fix. I covered it in my column "American oil: The path toward prosperity." The solution even pays off Obama's disastrous national debt. Unfortunately, the truly rich LOVE national debt, because it provides ... what? Secure and predictable income from their investments.

But the growth and opportunity this would generate for ordinary Americans terrifies the rich. They know that new wealth and new opportunities would spring up everywhere. They know the genius of Americans to seize opportunity, and it scares them to death! The coattail generations to great wealth seldom have any talents and abilities, save social skills. Thus they fear an upset in their status and a rockier investment road with a less certain path to predictable investment success.

Anybody who thinks the economy is doing fine today lives in Washington, D.C. The king and his court are at the top of the heap, thanks to corruption that would have been unimaginable even one presidential election ago. Next come the lobbyists and the lawmakers and the dealmakers, who have their own stimulus package that never runs dry, thanks to "we the people." What? Me worry?

Well, I guess they do worry. The Newt Gingrich cannon rolled across the deck of his campaign ship and fired this blast. The rich will now have to write more checks to their environmental surrogates, who can provide grants to generate more phony studies about the hazards of a prosperous America – while the SS Romney sails on toward the Republican nomination. Barring a well-placed torpedo, the rich can again rest easy.

I guess if you like what we've got now, Mitt will be a good caretaker. I just don't see him dismantling any of the freedom-killing federal bureaucracy, or letting America once again become "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Mitt may turn off a light switch or two here and there, but he will leave the switches in place for the next Democrat to flip back on.

Socialism is, after all, so much more predictable and less risky for the uber-wealthy. And as for the rest of the country, who really cares?