We were the first to point out the J.D. Vance weird attack on Milton Friedman’s free market policies a few weeks ago, when he declared:
“The Republican Party of the future is not going to be the party of Milton Friedman. We’re going to enjoy spitting on his grave, metaphorically speaking.”
Last week, Vance went weirder still by praising the “share the wealth” bromides of the late Democratic Senator Huey Long, who advocated socialist policies and ran Louisiana as his authoritarian fiefdom. Here are the Veep’s exact words:
“The great southern populist – probably most of you in the room don’t know who I’m talking about, but he’s an interesting guy – kind of a crazy guy – his name was Huey Long, and he once said: ‘every man a king’ was the goal of his political program.”
We’re all for everyone getting rich, but Long and apparently JD want that to happen not by building wealth, but confiscating it.
Long’s”Every Man a King” phrase came from his Share Our Wealth plan, a radical program of wealth redistribution that included a universal basic income, a maximum income, and a wealth tax that would reach 100%.
See if you think he sounds like Bernie Sanders:
I propose a limitation on the size of fortunes — both ways.
I propose a limitation on how big a fortune can get and a limitation on how little a fortune can get…
A capital levy tax to be levied — the first one million not to be taxed except as it is now taxed; and the second million to be taxed 1%; the third million 2%; the fourth million 4%; the fifth million 8%; the sixth million 16%; the 7th million 32%; the eighth million 64%; the ninth million 100%. That means that no man with that tax levied against him every year can possess a fortune of more than from 3 to 4 to 5 million dollars to any one man…
How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10ths of the people to eat. The only way you’ll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub he ain’t got no business with…
What’s Morgan and Baruch and Rockefeller and Mellon going to do with all of that grub. They can’t eat it. They can’t wear the clothes. They can’t live in the houses. Give ’em a yacht! Give ’em a palace! Send them to Reno and get them a new wife when they want it, if that’s what they want.
But when they’ve got everything on the God’s loving earth that they can eat and they can wear and they can live in, and all that their children can live in and wear and eat, and all their children’s children can use, then we got to call Mr. Morgan and Mr. Mellon and Mr. Rockefeller back and say, “Come back here. Put that stuff back on this table here that you took away from here — that you don’t need. Leave something else for the American people to consume.” And that’s the program.