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SEIFFE:  Advertising Sends America To The Tipping Point 

Monday, April 7, 2008

By Ralf Seiffe

Just over the horizon, Americans will suffer the greatest expansion of government power in our history.  At the federal level, the Bush tax cuts are about to expire and there appears to be no energy to extend them.  Illinois will soon impose a 66% tax increase--probably with Republican help--and then there’s a bill that would tax high-income taxpayers twice.   Locally, Strogerism is rampant as municipal taxing authorities demonstrate the concept of insatiability before our very eyes.  And, as if that were not enough, socialists disguised as global warming mystics are actually advertising for our permission to let them pinch even more of the economy.  If they are successful and the public sector triumphs over the private sector, America's economy may come to a tipping point.

Several years ago author Malcolm Gladwell published The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference.  This influential book examined how major social changes have similar elements and have predictable trajectories.  Gladwell likens the tipping point to the behavior of viruses which grow exponentially until they cannot be ignored and, in social movement terms, cannot be stopped. 

Economies can have tipping points, too, and ours is beginning to exhibit the traits that Gladwell identified as preceding a very large--and unexpected--change.   

The “big things” that are challenging our living standards include these new taxes and the effects they have on jobs, our currency and our ability to compete in the globalized economy.  They are fairly easy to identify.  The smaller things are less evident and often obvious only in hindsight.  One of those “little things” may be appearing on television, right now.

Perhaps you have seen the television advertisement showing scenes from the Second World War, the Civil Rights Movement and the moon landing.  The narrator tells us that we didn’t wait to take on these challenges.  In fact, we did wait until the crises of Pearl Harbor, Bull Connors and Sputnik, but despite this historical inaccuracy, the commercial asks us to take up the cause of global warming with the same fervor but without presenting a similar motivating crisis. 

By equating these noble historical events with “climate change” the commercial is asking viewers to give their permission for the self-appointed protectors of the environment to appropriate the resources necessary to fix the problem.

This positioning is utterly insidious--and brilliant.  Unlike previous efforts to expand the government, global warming promoters are creating unfocused demand which acknowledge no limits on the effort to be made.   The Axis Powers had a limit.  Once we got to the moon, the space program was essentially over.  Statutory racial discrimination is a distant memory. The number of people in poverty was finite but we’ve provided for them.  That’s why we have to upgrade the definition of poverty every so often to make sure that the population in poverty remains constant. 

The brilliance of battling global climate change is that it is not a consequence of human activity.  It exists and will continue regardless of any puny effort humans might make to stop it.  Climate hoaxers certainly know this but by asking for permission to remedy an “unfixable” problem, they seek a claim on the nation’s resources which is permanent and unlimited precisely because the problem cannot be fixed. 

Even more sinister is the repositioning of this issue as “climate change” as opposed to “global warming.”  This makes it immaterial which way temperatures move so the crisis of change, itself, endures.   

No one would expect the appearance of mere commercials to change the nature of the American Experience.  But this situation is different and these commercials likely much more effective because the promoters have stunningly achieved surrender from those who should know better.  When Newt Gingrich appears in common cause with Nancy Pelosi, one can see these messages might be one of those “little things” posterity will identify as a tipping point.

These advertisements have the potential to tip the economy in favor of the public sector.  If they do, American living standards will begin to decline.  As we waste our energy, resources and capital attempting to fix an impossible problem, we will suffer huge opportunity costs and cede economic, social and political leadership to others.  One thing is certain, however; if these ads are influential, they will make socialist, climate charlatans temporarily richer even as they make the rest of America permanently poorer.

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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