points were made !!

Summary: If we are not going to support policies that force America’s billionaires to care about taking care of the American system of government, and of their fellow Americans, then I guess we should go ahead and allow them to own people outright. This step would simply be applying the basic concept of current economic thinking to the situation, as a practical solution. I think the GOP should go ahead and get behind this, if they are really serious about their constant position of more tax cuts for the rich.

What do you do when the state of current politics makes you want to scream? Read this. THIS. Swift issues an Oh Snap that is so deftly, scathingly understated that it rips through all the “because reasons” arguments like rounds of armor piercing bullets through a convention of fleshy NRA delegates.

******* Here is my Modest Proposal*****(circa 2019)

“For preventing the poor, the homeless and the forgotten people of America, from being a burden on the upright taxpayer citizen, and for making them a benefit to the public and to themselves”


It is a deeply saddening and melancholy sight to those who travel through the countryside of this great land or regularly watch the cable news, to see the constant parade of ambulances and overdose victims, homeless persons and drug addicts, refugees and illegal immigrants, often with their children in tow, frequently in rags, covered in sores and tattoos, begging for a handout. These homeless, these addicts, these illegal immigrants, living or imprisoned amid the carnage (as even our President has said) of our once great country, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are reduced to begging, crime, illegal entry, drug dealing or gang membership for want of basic material goods such as, food, shelter and health care and, regretfully, opiates.

Those of us who are sufficiently advanced in years will remember that this problem has been growing from at least the early Reagan administration, or perhaps even Nixon, and has merely increased in depth and scope through multiple reforms of welfare, through the gradual privatization of public schools, through multiple rounds of generous tax cuts, through the deliberate and ever widening liberalization of trade and flow of capital, and the unceasing globalization of the American economy that has been steadily pursued first by the Republican Party and then with increasing enthusiasm by the Democratic Party over the past half century. None of these supposed economic solutions, from the cutting of welfare, to the cuts to public education, to the generous tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy, to the easing of rules to welcome corporate mergers, to the strengthening of creditor rights, none of these purported solutions has seemed to have any ameliorative impact on the problems of poverty, drug abuse, or illegal immigration, all of which have only seemed to increase over this period. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that whoever could, despite all of these failures of policy and blind alleys, discover a fair, effective and reasonable solution that would make these poor people sound, that would, once and for all, meaningfully reduce the number of homeless, destitute, illegal immigrants, addicts and criminals, would be more than well deserving of universal thanks and acclaim as a heroic preserver of our great nation.

But I do not intend to blow my own horn. It is not my intention to make such a proposal merely for approbation and reward. Rather, it would be sufficient reward for me to see the return to first principles, the application once again of time-honored methods, the growth once again of common sense across this great nation, and the rescue of the situation of these forgotten peoples. For my part, I have thought long and hard over this conundrum for many a month and year. I have read volumes of economics and political economy, suffered through mind-numbing historical documentaries, listened with quivering ear to the angry rhetoric of radio commentators and cable news punditry. I have always found these prognosticators to be vastly mistaken in their assumptions, to be devastatingly missing the point, to be shockingly blind to the pure application of their own classical economic principles.

My proposal is no more than a simple return to the basic principle of private ownership. The principle is thus: where an object is owned, its owner has an unimpeded right to control it for his own profit and is, by the immutable rules of classic economics, bound to take care of such property in order to further his own greater interest. When a person owns property exclusively, that person has a desire to take care of that property to ensure that he or she will profit from it, and will endeavor to devote adequate resources to the development of such property in order to reap a profit from it.

The problem (as I see it, and given my education in classical economics, I see it quite clearly, clearer than most) of the indigent, the homeless, illegal immigrants and drug addicts, is that no one is motivated to do anything for them because any amounts spent on such persons do not benefit anyone except those persons themselves. An able bodied adult is clearly capable of supporting and assisting in a wide variety of activities that many a wealthy benefactor would be interested in receiving support and assistance with. Even children from the tender age of at least eight are, properly trained, capable of a wide variety of household chores including trash collection and disposal, simple cleaning, pet and baby care. By nine or ten, they should be able work simple factory machinery, and by age eleven or twelve, as we have seen well demonstrated in Africa, are capable of wielding lethal weapons in an organized fashion, and so could be strong contributors to our national armed forces. The point of course, is not merely to obtain more labor from our population beginning at a younger age. No, it is much broader and, at the same time, much more simple than that. I have it from the Office of Budget and Management, which is on the verge of being eliminated by the current administration, that there are approximately 1.5 million households (including 2.8 million children) living in the United States who have less than $2 per day (before any government payment) on which to survive. These families struggle day to day for ample food, clothing, shelter, health and education. At the same time, the top five hundred thousand households in this great country of ours own approximately one half of the assets that are privately owned. Given this situation, a simple and straightforward application of the laws of supply and demand would be the most efficient and sustainable solution, i.e., to permit the top 1% to own the members of the bottom 10% percentile. But in fact, there is really no need to limit the supply of buyers or sellers in this way, and in the interest of having a true market-based economy, any person should be permitted to sell, and any person should be permitted to buy, not only time and services, but entire lives, if they so choose.

I think you will discover, when you have time to contemplate its genius, that this scheme has very much to recommend it. The trend of the present economy is already well on its way to beggaring large swathes of the self-employed. These people used to be children and spouses of middle managers, local bankers, university and college professors, assembly line workers, equipment and industrial salesmen, machinists, community hospital workers, public service employees, coal miners, teachers, stenographers, cashiers, floorwalkers, and small business employees, that is to say, what we used to refer to as the “middle class”. But the decade-after-decade of corporation mergers and acquisitions, the privatization of public services, and the resulting cost cutting (all in the good cause of “market efficiency” or “consumer savings”), offshoring of production, design and management, mechanization and automation, computerization and data creation, has resulted in the elimination of millions of these jobs that will never return to our shores in our lifetime. These persons now have no health care, no social benefits, and many, no hope. They struggle daily to make ends meet. This is on the one hand.

On the other hand, there are at least half a million, and perhaps several million (and it may be even higher) households that have benefited wonderfully from the very same series of corporate amalgamations and out-sourcing, the very same automation and computerization, the very same privatization of public services, and who have seen their salaries and assets swell, their stocks skyrocket, and the balance of their bank accounts exceed their wildest expectations. These households tend to vie with one another as to who owns the fanciest cars, the fastest airplanes, the largest houses, the grandest estates, who takes the most lavish vacations, and who works the hardest on running the global economy. Why not allow them the additional competitive metric of who has the most and best appointed slaves?

You may be shocked by the word, but please give me a bit more of your patience. Much of modern marketing and politics comes down to a question of words. Is undesirable news good reporting or is it fake news? I think many Americans are flexible enough in mind to agree it can be either. So let us not call this system ‘slavery’, but the ‘human chattel’ system. That has a much more pleasant ring to it, much like the phrase ‘alternative fact’ has compared to the word ‘lie’.

So let us first consider the myriad advantages to this human chattel system. First, and most importantly, if these millions of persons in poverty become the property of others, the owner will, under the principle of private property, have an incentive to obtain the most from his or her investment. It will logically be in the self-interest of the owner(s) to ensure that their chattel is adequately fed, clothed and sheltered, much as wealthy families take good care of their cars, homes and other possessions, by keeping them in good repair and in respectable appearance. Much like the objects owned by these households, the state of their human chattel will also reflect upon them in the eyes of society.

The subject chattel, who could not previously afford adequate health care, will now be covered by the generous insurance (it would likely be casualty insurance) policy of their owner, who can well afford the tiny additional premium as an add-on to the policy by which they cover their estates, their top-of-the line cars, their art collections or their yachts. The owners would also, presumably, contribute to the adequate education of any offspring of their chattel, in accordance with the needs of the owners and the perceived talents of such offspring.

Of course, we must also consider the advantages for the property owner, the job-creator, if you will, whose interests are foremost. What advantage, besides competitive social one-upmanship, would a wealthy chattel owner obtain from such an arrangement?

First, free labor. The maintenance of a large estate entails a substantial amount of manual labor in order to keep it in good working condition for the master and mistress. Of course, I realize that this labor is not, strictly speaking, free. Food and board must be provided, as well as annual trips to the doctor, and some level of education to the “young-uns.” But compared to the cost of third party contracted labor, these costs will feel practically free. This is an advantage which should not be gainsaid. As we have seen through the years, savings and the potential for savings are nearly as powerful a motivator, even to the wealthy, as increases in income from tax cuts.

Secondly, there is the uplifting feeling of having such resources within one’s unfettered control. After a hard week of meetings and dinners and rounds of golf at Davos or Telluride or Mar-a-Lago, the enjoyment obtained by being able to pull down a long lane of properly pruned trees to a spotless and efficiently run mansion, to be able to put your feet up on a cleanly brushed ottoman and enjoy a cigar and a snifter of the finest, with a footman, a maid and a butler at your beck and call upon the mere tug of a rope is literally priceless. And such feelings of pride and ease need not be confined to the boundaries of one’s own estates. As slavery would be legal throughout the fifty states, one could travel anywhere in American with their ready assistants at hand. No more tiresome lining up for tickets or license plates or any such problems of interaction with the wiles of government bureaucracy or popular restaurants or entertainments. Moreover, travel with a large retinue does not have to be costly. As chattel is merely property, it would not be necessary to purchase airline seats, as such. The master’s property, to the extent not required for on-flight services, could be checked-in in appropriately designed crates, and smaller chattel could be stored in the overhead bin. For short-haul cross country travel, there is a low cost bus system that still runs all the major routes, and luggage is often shipped this way.

Of course, chattel, like other property, will be freely tradeable. The principle of a completely unregulated free market has been the basis for our society since at least the Reagan-Friedman “revolution.” Hence, another advantage to this proposal is that it creates a new market in which anyone can participate. Everyone has a body or a life to sell, and they will be free to sell it. Once they have converted themselves to some wealthy household’s property, they will be assured of protection from the storms and ravages of economic dislocations, of corporate downsizings, outsourcings, and further elimination of public jobs through privatization. They will no longer need to feel anxiety about whether their employment arrangements will end suddenly and they will be left out in the cold. Once they have become the property of a master or mistress, that master or mistress will be responsible for them. If their owner can no longer, for whatever reason, afford, or wish, to support them, such owner will of course be able to sell them to another master or mistress, because, unlike in current employer/employee relationships, they will continue have a value to their owner. This is of course the beauty of the principle of private property, which creates value where there was none before!

There may be up to five million households who can keep two or more slaves, and at least one million households who can afford to keep ten or more slaves, and as the system becomes more popular, the custom of slave ownership should spread even more broadly to a large proportion of the wealthiest American households. Assuming an average of three human chattel per household, this leads to a total human chattel number removed from the population of at least 10 million, and perhaps even 20 million persons, who will be rescued forever from economic hardship. The burden on the government finances will also be lessened by this amount, as these persons can also be removed from the welfare rolls and unemployment benefits, and Medicare and Medicaide.

Now I know there are those bleeding hearts among you, perhaps, more among the sore loser Democrats, than among the winning Republicans, who will tremble at this proposal, and perhaps assert that America already crossed this road over a century ago. But please hear me out. I am not advocating such brutal treatment as was meted out to the African slaves in certain, isolated incidents in the antebellum American South. Families do not necessarily have to be separated. This is will be a matter freely determined by the impartial hand of the unregulated market. The appropriateness of corporeal punishment will also be determined by these same market forces. Certainly no forms of punishment that could be defined as torture would be permitted by the market that we all know and have come to trust like an old friend. Moreover, in order to allay concerns about race, the subject chattel will not be limited by a particular skin color, but will be open to all comers. Any race, creed or ethnicity will be free to sell themselves into slavery, and the freedom of contract will be observed. As that respected philosopher of the Virginian founding fathers, John Locke, asserted, mutual consent will be the basis of contract; breaches will be redressable under civil law. And of course, the question of whether such chattel should have the right to vote is something that should be carefully and thoroughly debated. Both sides should be heard and considered, with the views of the property owners being given full and fair consideration.

With the application of proper principles, I can think of no valid or reasonable objection that could possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that, as a result, the number of free Americans will be much lessened in this great land. This is of course true, and I completely acknowledge it, but it was in fact one of the main reasons for my proposal in the first place. I desire the reader to observe that I have designed my proposal with the idea of the best and most appropriate fit with the current culture and values of America, that Shining City on the Hill, the Home of the Brave, that gleaming exception to the rest of the world, truly unique and ever forward-looking. Therefore, let no man talk to me about ridiculous alternatives, such as: returning to a progressive tax system; or restoring the rules restricting monopolies; or providing ample public funding for education; or increasing to any degree public support for health care; or practicing the Golden Rule of treating others as you would be treated; or quitting our petty animosities and factions; or being a bit more careful not to sell our country and consciences for the momentary gratification of the shock value to the other side. Lastly, of requiring the spirit of honesty, industry, and integrity in our elected and appointed government officials, and showing them only that measure of respect that they deem to show to us and to each other. I repeat, let no man waste his breath in talking to me of these or any other similarly ludicrous and laughable policies, until he has some glimpse of hope that there will ever be a hearty and sincere attempt by Republicans working together with Democrats, to actually put any of them into practice.

A modest proposal was very good, but the other satirical works were… not as good. Tough to give an L in the aggregate but he may be a bit of a one hit wonder.

I love satire, and this is a collection from one of the past masters of the craft.

At first I thought oh my lord he’s not even joking..... I mean people have suggested crazier things. But oh, the glorious satire against the political state in Ireland at that time is palpable. Good show.

A Modest Proposal was great. So were the rules for servants. Jonathan Swift is a master satirist. But a lot of the accompanying papers were snores--inside jokes, and even languages, with friends. So, 4 stars to the funny papers, and 2 stars to the boring letters, with an average of 3 stars.

First off, A Modest Proposal is fantastic. I imagine the humor to be ages ahead of it's time, completely invested in this false voice and hilarious. It is five stars plus.

The other stories though, man, they are hard sledding. I'm not sure I've ever fallen asleep more then when trying to read Battle of the Books, and Mechanical Operation of the Spirit. Once I finished with them, I was like hey not so bad. But getting through that first read was hard work.

Read A Modest Proposal and enjoy it, but for the rest, I'd say take it on only if you are fond of your dictionary and long trains of thought that require focus and concentration to follow.

The modest proposal would have been if someone had asked not to write this horrid thing.

When I taught this piece, I had my students come up with different dishes that babies could be made into--it was absolutely hysterical.

I originally had two shelves:

books that make me want to have children so I can read to them

and

books that make me want to have children so I can eat them

But really this is the only one that would fall in the latter category.

This is one of the greatest pieces of satire ever written, but seriously, have you ever noticed that babies really do taste better? Think about it. Veal, lamb, kittens. I could go on.

He was in kind of a silly goofy mood methinks

Kitabı yarıda bıraktım çünkü yazılan dönemin ruhuna ya da satirik anlatımının içine giremedim. İçindeki denemelerde hiciv yaptığı çok belli yazarın ancak hediye bir kitabı okumak için insanın kendine bir sebep yaratması gerekiyor ve bu bazen çok zor olabiliyor.