Two Nations Under 401k - Road to the Middle Class

MANY SOCIAL changes do not occur in the blaze of national publicity but work their way under the radar, slowly changing society one person at a time. Such a change may be the 401(k) revolution, the rise of defined contribution pensions, or more exactly, the rise of pre-tax individual savings plans. Donald Lambro at the Washington Times celebrates their huge expansion.

The numbers are astounding and explosive: Since 1990, total worker assets in 401(k) plans have grown an average of 13 percent a year, from $385 billion to an estimated $2.1 trillion in 2004... says the Investment Company Institute.

At $2.1 trillion, we are talking about real money. But what political junkies want to know is: Does this change the political balance in the United States towards an ownership society?

"Investors, regardless of income, gender or race, vote more Republican than non-investors," tax cut crusaders Grover Norquist and Cesar Conda wrote in a Wall Street Journal analysis about the effect of President Bush's tax cuts.

But there is another thing to think about. While the ranks of investors grow what about the people left behind? What about the dependent classes, the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party who live by remittances from the government: from government programs, from government jobs, and from government pensions? These people have a completely different outlook on life, and live lives that depend, until their dying day, upon the continuance of that check from the government. For the last half century the Democrats have been happily growing the ranks of the dependent, instinctively understanding that their political support comes from the dependent classes.

When will the clash come between these Two Nations, between the defined contribution nation and the defined benefit nation?

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

mysql close 0