Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Peter Robinson ·
August 21, 2012 at 3:29pm
"[L]arge increases in inequality such as those observed in recent years," former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers wrote in the Washington Post yesterday, "should call forth increased government activity."
In yesterday's "Ricochet Essay Assignment of the Day," more than three dozen Ricochetians proved that they're smarter than the former president of Harvard. (Summers is a "former" lots of things.) To offer, so to speak, a cherry on top, here is Margaret Thatcher, on November 22, 1990, her final day as prime minister.
What a magnificent woman.
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Comments:
Apr '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Now, those were the good old days.......
Jun '10
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
As long as Satan roams the Earth, the politics of envy will have wide and vigorous support.
May '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
It doesn't matter how many times I've seen this clip, I still enjoy her income inequality refutation and the ease with which she does it.
It defies belief that liberals still don't get that simple point today. Has income ever been equal? Don'tcha think there's a reason why?
Oct '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
I like to call this her "mind the gap" speech.
Apr '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Margaret's upbringing in a grocery business run by her family gave her more insight than an Ivey League education. Paul Ryan also has the small business experience through his mother and his father's law practice.
Aug '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Bravo
Sep '10
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Erik B:
It defies belief that liberals still don't get that simple point today.
Oh, they get it alright. At least the smarter ones do. It's more important to engage in class warfare than to raise people up from poverty. As another Briton, Samuel Johnson, observed many years ago, "Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves."
May '10
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Someone should photoshop a theremin into the video at the point she raises both her hands. Then dub in the soundtrack to Spellbound while she says "they'd rather the gap were that". It would be great!
Edited on August 21, 2012 at 5:49pmMar '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Seeing this post jogged my memory, has anyone heard for Claire Berlinski lately?
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
She wrote this on media coverage of foreign affairs and it's great.
Jun '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Magnificent indeed! Would that Britain might see her like again, and quickly!
Apr '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Her point is really secondary, although perhaps more potent politically. Not only, as MT says, do the rich get richer and the poor get richer, but the poor get rich.
Perhaps this wasn't apparent in the economy of 20 years ago, but the real flaw as economic and moral analysis in the widening-gap complaint is that it assumes that the same people are in the same buckets at the start and the finish. (A mediæval viewpoint, one more example of how reactionary the left is.) The static view doesn't track how much of the new wealth in the top buckets of the distribution has been carried there by people who started out way down, often leap-frogging the old money, e.g., entrepreneurs who built a business, impecunious grad students whose startup had a good IPO, DINKs realizing the value of their educations.
Edited on August 21, 2012 at 9:32pmApr '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Fearless. If you have not read Claire's book on Why Thatcher Matters, please add it to your queue.
May '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Peter; you, as Mrs Thatcher phrased it, hit the nail on the head...a magnificent woman indeed !
Jul '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Very misleading headline. I thought she came out of seclusion to issue a statement or something.
From wikipedia:
Born
Margaret Hilda Roberts
13 October 1925 (age 86)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_thatcher
Jul '12
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
Why can't we do this in the US? Where the President has to come to congress to answer Questions from the members there. Considering that the president never really has to answer to the people directly for his actions, except at the ballot box of course but thats every 4 years.
A State of the union speech where the only way a member of congress can express themselves is with applause (or lack of it), and its painful to watch anyway. The press surely doesn't ask the tough question to the president, and it is his decision if he wants to hold a press conference. Why not have the members of congress do it? After all they are the duly elected representatives of the people, AND I think it would be really entertaining. If anyone thinks this is a bad idea for whatever reason I would really like to know why?
Sep '10
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
This is an excellent point, one that needs to be taken up whenever the gap is mentioned. And yes, the Left are the true reactionaries, nostalgic for the pre-industrial days of yore: a simple life of organic farming, earthy values, rampant infectious disease, and crushing poverty.
May '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
That headline had me all excited for a moment; I thought Thatcher had somehow emerged briefly from ill health and retirement to fire the big guns one more time. Alas. Good to watch the old times, all the same.
Dec '11
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
The world is a far lesser place without her contributions.
Nov '10
Re: Margaret Thatcher Replies to Lawrence Summers
When people start complaining about inequality, it's almost always their last gasp refusal to admit that free market capitalism works. They can't complain that the poor are worse off, because it's objectively untrue, so they complain that the poor are "relatively" worse off, which is irrelevant.