Great Kurt Schlichter column at Townhall today entitled"Seven Hard Truths Liberals Just Don't Want to Hear." All seven of the hard truths are worth examining. I particularly liked number three:
If you need government to set you a “living wage,” it’s because you have failed to make yourself worth a living wage. A higher minimum wage is merely a subsidy to ensure you don’t have to put in the effort necessary to earn what you want. I’m unclear why your failure to work hard, gain skills and not do the stupid things that lead a 30 year old to be making minimum wage morally compels me to give you my money.
But it is Truth Number One, and its codification of what Schichter points out in his introductory paragraph that I find particularly significant. I've long held that there are two levels to the great leftist enterprise: There are the earnest believers, the kind who network at Unitarian coffee hour and congratulate themselves for being caring people because they recycle and shop for "sustainable" grocery items and serve on human-rights councils. Then there are the ones who understand the game, that all the hoo-ha about fairness and stewardship of the planet and such is designed to amass power for themselves.
Here's Schichter's first hard truth:
If you are a liberal who really believes that your liberal heroes actually believe in liberalism, you are a sucker and a fool. Maybe even foolish enough to let your daughter take a drive with one across a bridge.
Oh, and there's number seven: "This can't go on."
Oh sure, da man (which you have continually asserted does not exist, but you know what I'm talkin' about), he always true and always honest and he always reward good work and he always pay commensurate with qualifications and experience. He always hire the best person no matter how fat or ugly she is or how old or what color he be. How he be so honest and above-board is beyond me, but he is.
ReplyDeleteThere is no such entity as "da man." There are people in a position to pay for x number of hours of other people's labor. Whether they will do so and at what rate depends on a panoply of considerations, all of which are their prerogative.
ReplyDelete"Da man" is a straw figure perpetuated by hard leftists with a vested interest in getting people to believe there is some kind of muckety-muck class in our society with its thumb on all other classes.
No one should fall for such childish dig vomit.
You are free to leave a restaurant or a tire store or any other commercial establishment without conducting any business if you feel the prices are too high, or for any other reason. It's the same with anyone in a position to hire other people.
ReplyDeleteYour ilk is big on the human nature thing, you know the war thing, how convenient of you to ignore de slave thang. Given enough freedom da man would pay peanuts or less. You know as well as I do it's a bottom line world for da man.
ReplyDeleteOnly problem: "da man" is a fiction.
ReplyDeletePlus, who gets to impose an objective definition of "peanuts"? Once again, because it appears you're still missing the main point, an hour of labor is worth what buyer and seller agree that it's worth. Each side is free to take a pass on the arrangement if no agreement can be reached. And the free market is the perfect antidote to slavery. Every person is empowered to choose the kind of labor he or she will offer on the marketplace, and what is an acceptable compensation for it.
ReplyDeleteYour free markets have put the squeeze on the professors, but not the coaches and now not the players, because they have had it and are not gonna take it no mo. Leave? Why? Make 'em pay, if you can.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/homeless-professor-protests-conditions-adjuncts/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=newshour
A Canadian view of American exceptionalism, seems some like it excessive here to him at least: Before arriving there as part of the big push, Katsuyama had never laid eyes on Wall Street or New York City. It was his first immersive course in the American way of life, and he was instantly struck by how different it was from the Canadian version. “Everything was to excess,” he says. “I met more offensive people in a year than I had in my entire life. People lived beyond their means, and the way they did it was by going into debt. That’s what shocked me the most. Debt was a foreign concept in Canada. Debt was evil.”
ReplyDeleteRead more at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/flash-boys-michael-lewis.html?action=click&contentCollection=Americas&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
It seems to me that what the Canadian is observing is some pretty slick and selfish behavior by the many offensive people who he found engineering our free markets on the Street. This might be da man. Da man it all goes around for, right?
ReplyDeleteYou and your ilk don't like governmental interference in wages & you don't like unions. It seems whatever da man want, da man get with you.
ReplyDeleteYou're exactly right that those who understand and value freedom don't like government interference in wages and don't like unions. It's kind of by definition, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteSo you like da man, da man, he pay what he want to leave more for him. Da man only pay if forced to. Da man hot to stay on top, to be better, to have more, not want to give up only when he have to give up. Then he blame. He blame good.
ReplyDeleteAnd if your ilk does not always get its way, and it certainly does not, not now nor likely in the future, you chalk it up to lack of understanding of freedom. I suppose that is where you came up with that slam on the low info voter who we were introduced to by your ilk, mostly since the Obama reelection you thought you had in the bag so you could bring Rummie and Cheney and their band of preemptors back. Maybe next time.
ReplyDeleteYou need to ground yourself in reality. As I've stated about four times so far on this thread, there is no "da man."
ReplyDeleteAnd sometimes you have to per-empt when it's obvious that waiting any longer on diplomatic possibilities is a recipe for disaster.
You bet we chalk it up to a lack of understanding of freedom. That may be the overriding and central illness plaguing our society today.
ReplyDelete