Caring about liberty
In my family it doesn’t make sense to call either my mother or sister “leftist” — they aren’t political in the sense that they have never really thought about politics philosophically or participated practically. But my 60ish sister listens to NPR during waking hours — I think as a status thing. And my 90 year old mother, in her third decade of retirement, is tuned into MSNBC all day. Therefore they loath and detest Trump and Trump supporters. When we meet, we don’t discuss politics — but it is simply weird to have had a major election and no one says a thing! And it is peculiar that my mother, raised during WWII, still watches sports on tv, with absolutely no issue at the kneeling, the “Black National Anthem” etc. *She* was raised with Civics classes — and she had not commented at all on statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson being removed defaced or removed, not a word.
To me, the issue is how much people care about matters such as liberty, history, or truth. Many years ago I used to think that the vast majority of Americans cared deeply about such things, or at least one of those things. Why did I believe that? Probably because I cared about such things, and I wrongly assumed that my attitude was typical.
There was no single incident that disabused me of that notion. It was gradual. But for many years now it hasn’t surprised me to hear stories like the ones Nancy B tells, or to experience the equivalent in my own life. Part of the phenomenon has to do with the sources of information people use – in the case of Nancy B’s relatives, for example, we have a heavy dose of NPR and MSNBC. That’s an indoctrination that would take some time and effort to counter, and most people are not motivated to challenge their own assumptions.
Actually, many political change experiences are sparked almost by accident. In my case, for example, I started reading conservative media online about twenty years ago without even realizing it was conservative. I was merely following wherever links piqued my interest (the internet was relatively novel back then), and I ultimately found (to my surprise) that the sources that made most sense turned out to be sources on the right. Another friend I know who’s a political convert dates the beginning of his change from having had some workmen in the house for a project, and overhearing their radio that was tuned every day to Rush Limbaugh.
And both of us were at least relatively interested in politics and the abstract issues behind it, and were therefore willing to pay attention to what we were hearing and to think about it. I have come to think those traits are somewhat unusual, and even more unusual in the Democrats I know compared to the people on the right that I know. Of course, there are also highly political people on the left, but they tend to be the activists and/or people who, unlike the relatives Nancy B describes, talk incessantly about politis and have no hesitation to disrupt social occasions by doing so.
Every political revolution in the direction of tyranny is actually spearheaded by an engaged minority. Those in the frontlines of fighting against tyrannical political revolutions are an engaged minority as well. At some point, though, a majority of the public becomes aware that something big is happening. Often, though, that only happens when that majority finds its rights have been irrevocably altered for the worse. And even then, depending on how badly they’ve been altered versus how well that person still is doing in daily life (financially, for example), many people just shrug and continue to go about their business.
In this, as in so many other things, Czech expat author Milan Kundera has something to say (in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Here’s what I noted in a 2005 post:
[Kundera’s] story of Karel’s elderly mother and the pears–that, I understood from the start. Here it is:
“One night, for example, the tanks of a huge neighboring country came and occupied their country [a reference to the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia]. The shock was so great, so terrible, that for a long time no one could think about anything else. It was August, and the pears in their garden were nearly ripe. The week before, Mother had invited the local pharmacist to come and pick them. He never came, never even apologized. The fact that Mother refused to forgive him drove Karel and Marketa crazy. Everybody’s thinking about tanks, and all you can think about is pears, they yelled. And when shortly afterwards they moved away, they took the memory of her pettiness with them.
“But are tanks really more important than pears? As time passed, Karel realized that the answer was not so obvious as he had once thought, and he began sympathizing secretly with Mother’s perspective–a big pear in the foreground and somewhere off in the distance a tank, tiny as a ladybug, ready at any moment to take wing and disappear from sight. So Mother was right after all: tanks are mortal, pears eternal.”
That’s an exaggerated version of what seemed to happen to me (and others) during those years [after Vietnam]: the tanks didn’t disappear, but they receded into the distant background; and the pears loomed, large and ripe, in the foreground. And who wouldn’t want that to happen? Who would choose to focus on tanks when they could think about pears instead? Most people seemed only too happy to throw themselves into life itself, and to leave the interminable political discussions to the politicians and the policy wonks.
This is always true, I think, and the left most definitely counts on it. If they control the means of information, they can count on the vast majority of people to accept passively what they’re saying, to not seek out other sources of information, and to tend their pears both actual and metaphorical.
[NOTE: I’ve written on this general topic before. Please see this and this.]
Many Americans receive their information and form their opinions about politics and about the world rather passively, from sources they have been conditioned, over many years, to trust, without having the evidence to realize that those sources (WaPo, NYT, CNN, NPR, etc) can no longer be trusted on any issue of real importance. It is also true that most Americans (like the citizens of other nations) live mostly in the microcosm which for them is most meaningful (family, friends, pets, colleagues, neighbors, etc) without devoting much attention to matters of more substance, except at certain times, such as a national election. Thus it is that propaganda, especially when well-produced and superficially plausible, can enable the indoctrination of large numbers of people, even those supposedly “educated” and “informed”.
I told about my brother in law before, but it bears repeating. Before the pandemic lockdown, he was definitely MOTR or even slightly conservative. He’s black of Cuban descent. However, he never really was much of an independent thinker, and was always up with the latest social trends.
Since the pandemic, he has basically been housebound (he has Afib and some other factors that make him at risk), and by August every time we saw him he immediately started in about “Trump!!”, or “evil Republicans!” He never mentioned politics very often at all before, and now as soon as he walks in the door he starts in. His wife said he spends his whole day in front of the TV watching CNN. A better example of brainwashing I can’t imagine. And think of the millions of others who spent the last 9 months watching CNN, etc while locked down. This virus has been a godsend to the left, and they know it. No wonder they want to keep the fear/lockdowns/masks going forever.
Have an older brother in law that has always been a blue collar Democrat voter but what he wasn’t was scared of everything until the last year. He retired a couple of years ago from a very physical job and has spent the last year watching CNN and MSNBC all day and consequently now freaks out if some stranger approaches him outside without a mask.
I’m not sure it applies to your larger point, about politics, but regarding the pears…
I think many people have a suboptimal perspective. The phrases; “pennywise, pound foolish” and “not seeing the forest for the trees” are English language statements that speak to this phenomenon.
Coincidentally my neighborhood had a great many Czech and Polish immigrants and as I developed into my late teens I noticed how much of my neighborhood was “pear” focused, rather than “tank” focused. People would devote large segments of time to saving and curating things of little value. There was no sense that time, especially their own time, may also correlate to money or value.
Two examples (not necessarily from my childhood neighborhood, but they help to make my point); canning and fishing. If one calculates the amount of time and effort that it takes to travel to an orchard, pick fruit (and pay for the privilege), and the equipment and time required to turn a bushel of pears into pear preserves sealed in mason jars it cannot be more economical than hopping in one’s car and driving to a grocery store to buy a jar of Smucker’s. The same with fishing. Once you add up the money in equipment (maybe even a boat) and time traveling to and from; bait, lures… It can’t compare with simply going to the local butcher and picking up a filet for that evening’s dinner.
Now, if one enjoys putting up preserves or angling, then by all means! Such hobbies can be very cathartic, rewarding and renewing. A day picking pears at an orchard or standing in a river casting for trout can be of great psychological value and help one have a better, more fruitful (and fishful) life.
But the Czechs and Poles I lived around would spend hours on minutiae that had little value and that they did not appear to enjoy. I think many people are just not “big picture” people. I’ve had conversations with some folks who complain about “having to work.” I’ll ask them why they work. “I need the money.” I then ask, how much money they need to save before spending 40 hours a week managing their own savings won’t result in a better return than what they earn? They don’t have an answer. Have never considered the question. I ask how much additional money do they spend every month because they have a job? Again, crickets. Dry cleaning, gas for one’s commute, maybe a second (third, or fourth) car dining out because one lacks time to shop and prepare a meal, business attire, more expensive vacations because you are pressed for time and cannot plan ahead… They spend so much time on the micro of getting to and from their jobs they never stop to calculate the value of what they are doing.
Many, many people have no long range goals, nor have they developed the skills necessary to achieve a long range goal. I wonder if that element of human nature bleeds over into politics, and is a root cause for what neo writes about?
To me, the issue is how much people care about matters such as liberty, history, or truth. Many years ago I used to think that the vast majority of Americans cared deeply about such things, or at least one of those things. Why did I believe that? Probably because I cared about such things, and I wrongly assumed that my attitude was typical.
Neo, I could have at one time introduced you to a Seven Sisters graduate who had previously finished in the top 3% of her class at a handsome Washington-area high school, a school chock a block with the children of the professional-managerial bourgeoisie and chock-a-bloc with Jews. It was the high school to which Clark Clifford sent his oldest daughter (who was razzed mercilessly about the government limousine which disgorged her at the door each morning). She had season tickets to the philharmonic and listened to the Metropolitan Opera every Sunday. Broadcast, of course, on the NPR station, the only station to which she would listen (as she had no interest in popular music).
Whether it’s domestic life or whether it’s surveying public affairs, making sense of your world isn’t a school assignment, and when she didn’t have a teacher grading her essay, making sense of her world decayed into an exercise in offering her tastes and managing her emotions. She said sensible things only about matters in which she was steeped professionally or avocationally, because she studied them rather than just reacting to them. For some people, being unserious is their default state.
I think the most troubling (depressing, scary, you name it) thing from this entire year is how incredibly sheep like so many people in this country have become. I naively thought back in March, April that there was no way people would put up with this garbage for long but here we are.
I think the biggest reasons are technology allowing a not small portion of people to work from home and unprecedented fiscal support from the government masking the rot underneath.
Pretty sad.
I think I have told this story here before, but it applies to pear focus vs. tank focus and that it seems to be human based, not intelligence based.
My sister, a College Professor, volunteered with some other Professors from her University to spend a day of service preparing a meal at a homeless shelter. When they arrived an administrator showed them the kitchen, the supplies, utensils, pots, pans, the menu and gave instructions on how to prepare the meal for the diners who were due to arrive in one hour. They needed to serve over 100 people.
They started working and did a decent job of dividing up tasks to keep things efficient and moving. As boxes and cans were opened to fill pots and pans with food a debate started forming on how best to recycle the empty cartons. They were of all manner of material, cardboard, tin, aluminum, plastic… My sister said the debate remained cordial, but became more and more complex. Finally, after over ten minutes of this with no resolution my sister had to, rather loudly, state, “Excuse me. But we are hear to feed the homeless and if we don’t finish dinner they will not be fed.”
I love that story because it shows how quickly people can lose focus of the big picture and devolve into minutiae. I’m pretty sure every one in that room had a PhD, yet they nearly failed at doing something that is likely done daily by folks with a High School education.
The opposite of Liberty is slavery. These same fools condemn this country folr its past slavery and now total okay with surrendering their liberty.
My Maternal great grand parents were Jews. I suppose my grand mother was too even though she married a non Jew. My grand mother used to tell us stories of the old country. Some of her family lived in Germany. She and my grand father immigrated to America before Hitler. She would tell us of how her brothers and sisters would not leave Germany even when Hitler came to power. One of her brothers had an Iron Cross from WWI. They were sure they were safe. We grandchildren could not understand how her siblings could not see what was happening and what was going to happen. NOW I understand. But there is no America to flee too.
My 92 year old mother is. similar to Nancy B’s.
She grew up a farm girl, knows hard physical work, and has a superior work ethic – never procrastinates, always has carried her weight. She’s financially conservative.
Yet . . . she’s a bleeding heart liberal. Somehow, she feels sorry for the underdog, never thinking about how people’s decisions, decisions she would never make, have often put them into their sorry position.
I’ve asked why doesn’t she hold others to her values and expectations? She says if they were never taught, how can they know better? She thinks stuff happens to people that is beyond their control, and that they deserve pity. She thus sees any kind of tough response to people who are down as mean. She is the kind that on a certain level agrees with spreading the wealth in order to help the ‘less fortunate’ among us.
IOW, it’s all personal. She can never see, for example, why you might want to not have minimum wage laws.
She can’t see the forest from the trees.
A late relative was a very loyal New York Times reader. One of the last times I saw here, about 3 years ago, she said it was ridiculous that some states were passing laws restricting rest rooms to people of the corresponding biological sex.
I’m quite sure that–absent being given her instructions by the NYT–she would have thought it was ridiculous and just plain crazy to NOT restrict rest rooms to the corresponding sexes.
Ron…”She would tell us of how her brothers and sisters would not leave Germany even when Hitler came to power. One of her brothers had an Iron Cross from WWI. They were sure they were safe. We grandchildren could not understand how her siblings could not see what was happening and what was going to happen.”
In the Polish town of Eishyshok at the time of the German invasion in 1941, many of the local Jews viewed the coming of the German troops with equanimity. The town had been occupied during the earlier war, and the German officers and troops of that time had been very well-behaved and even helpful, and those residents who had been POWs in Germany during WWI spoke highly of their good treatment. Too many of the town’s Jews failed to realize that “German soldier” meant something different in 1941 than it had in 1914.
And in America, “Democratic politician” means something very different in 2018 than it did in 1960.
See my post The Phobia(s) That May Destroy America:
https://ricochet.com/548927/archives/the-phobias-that-may-destroy-america-2/
Pears instead of tanks. << most people, most of the time, do NOT want to think too much about politics, or law making, or law enforcement – which means cops with guns using force against guilty folk who have committed crimes. And some innocent folk.
The Dems have long had radicals, who believe the personal is political. Few radicals are happily married with kids and a normal middle class or lower job. Most married folk are too busy with kids and family to spend too much time on the junk that political junkies spend their time obsessing over.
And, actually, that's kind of good; we were a healthier civilization when spending less time on law-making and telling others what to do.
"Part of the phenomenon has to do with the sources of information people use "
No doubt for most low-info voters, perhaps especially the more highly educated low-info folk, they can easily believe they are well informed by only hearing and believing Dem half-truths, veiled lies, and flat-out false facts.
Like M Williams noted, there's the group of Christian and Christian-influenced folk who don't like the reality of poor people being poor. The poor need help.
This is mostly true – poor folk do need help. But as noted, most poor folk make a lot of poor decisions. Bad decisions which have a high (5%? 10%+?) chance of having a bad outcome. I haven't yet seen the movie, but read the book Hillbilly Elegy. With hard working folk making dumb decisions. Not always, not usually, but often enough to stay poor.
Allowing the poor to suffer from their poor decisions is one way to reduce the poor decisions – but it seems mean. It is certainly “not nice”. And most Americans want to be nice.
The Dems will always have this “being nice to the needy poor” unless there is a better policy to help poor folk help themselves. And education about how important it is for folk to help themselves with better decisions. [I support Job Guarantee over Uni Basic Income; for another rant]
Finally there is the increasing number of college indoctrinated folk who want to signal their own virtue, and claim status – by talking about tanks, and partial history of tanks, to make sure normal folk don’t enjoy pears because of the Dem opposition to tanks.
Also as noted above, it’s sad how few Americans are P.O.’d about Dems talkin’ & whining so much about tanks so far away, in time and place. We need more Reps who laugh at and insult such Dems more often.
In some ways, having Trump as an unjustly punished martyr might even help – laugh at Dems who support Stealing Elections.
I’ve listened to NPR for years. It’s not leftist. It’s certainly informed and more in depth than most radio. So in that sense it’s likely progressive but there are some amazing interviews or pod casts that are on NPR that are not really political but great for learning and debating. I love listening when driving long distances. MSNBC, on the other hand, is leftist. It’s as hard to watch as FOX News IMO.
Let me add that the I don’t know how anyone would have an issue with kneeling. Less than 2% of the NFL player ever did it. Yes, it was not tolerated and then it was. But so what? Isn’t that what America is about? If you stand with hand on heart that’s fine. That’s a choice. If you kneel that too is a choice. I see no reason why football players [or anyone] should be expected to conform. Especially over trivial actions like kneeling.
M Williams
She can never see, for example, why you might want to not have minimum wage laws.
Wait, what? That is way out of the mainstream. I don’t see appreciating minimum wage laws as ‘bleeding heart liberal’. It’s called being able to make a living.
Tom Grey,
Ben Carson had a piece up (Townhall?) the other day about things HUD is now doing to help the poor. It is a one-person-at-a-time approach, and then giving housing vouchers to help when they start learning how to manage their lives.
That is also how I like to help people. I give them one thing that can open their minds and set them in a new direction.
Ron; David Foster:
I don’t doubt your story, Ron. Some German Jews were falsely and fatally optimistic. But although a lot of people today think that attitude was typical of German Jews, it definitely was not. The vast majority of German Jews left the country during the 30s when they still were able to, and even then it was difficult to leave and to find a place that would take them. It wasn’t as though all doors were open to them and they merely preferred to stay. And later, more and more doors were closed. In the main, those who remained in Germany were the poor who couldn’t get the money to leave, the very elderly, or those caring for the elderly who didn’t feel able to leave them.
I wrote a post about this, which you can find here.
As for the Jews of Poland, I believe that in the main they knew, as well. I wrote a post referring to that too, although I’m unable to find it at the moment. Anyway, there’s this:
The site goes on to mention that in the eastern part of Poland there were a few communities where a small number of Jews are reported to have welcomed the Russians as being better than the Nazis. I don’t see any mention of Jews preferring the Germans. Do you have a cite for your report on Eishyshok? I can’t find any mention of it here or here, or here.
Montage:
See this, this, this, and a host of others.
Here is the link to that Ben Carson article:
https://townhall.com/capitol-voices/drbencarson/2020/12/29/hud-is-bringing-families-home-for-the-holidays-n2582231
As I said he thinks like I do. Help people to help themselves.
Montage:
NPR is not leftist and fish don’t know that they swim in water.
And of course you can’t fathom disrespect shown to the flag and to the country by the “kneeling.” You may have noticed that they stand for other countries’ flags when abroad? Why would they do that? Wonder about that? Tool.
Montage …
“I’ve listened to NPR for years. It’s not leftist.”
Yes NPR has some fabulous programming. Some of the documentaries or series are great.
When it turns to politics on NPR we must be watching and listening to a different NPR. The one I’m watching is about as left as you can get.
To quote a grotesque saying in the recent vernacular, “You gotta have skin in the game”.
Most people don’t have in the broader community; so, anything that doesn’t affect them directly, just isn’t worth the bother.
During my formative years, the country faced WWII, post-war Soviet aggression, Korea, and the Cold War which was dominated by a nuclear cloud. Folks had some sense of unity, and some appreciation for the liberty we enjoyed, and the cost of maintaining it. That has all faded into untaught history.
As government grew in size and impact, a growing number decided that liberty stuff, implying that you will think independently and take responsibility for the consequences of your own decisions was hard. Your caring government is ever willing to take up your burdens so long as you toe the line. History shows that is a seductive song. (Never mind that politicians and their apparatchiks screw up most everything they touch.)
Maybe off topic; but, some thoughts on the waves that are engulfing our society.
I grew up in the segregated South so we had a unique perspective. We felt, rightly I believe, that much of the country viewed us as backward. So, when we sang Dixie at football games, we weren’t making a racial statement; we were expressing some defiance, as well as solidarity with our heritage. (History books seldom speak of the devastation wrought throughout the Confederacy. Southerners of my generation were taught.) Coincidentally, we were fiercely loyal to the United States of America. Exploring that anomaly could be interesting. Unlike much of the country, we had to face up to our prejudices about 50 years ago. Maybe later generations across the country are experiencing deferred guilt, or maybe I should say “taught” guilt, which makes them ripe for exploitation.
Few radicals are happily married with kids and a normal middle class or lower job.
By all accounts, Bella Abzug, Eleanor Smeal, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Molly Yard had passable domestic lives. They were still public nuisances.
Here is Wikipedia on the Katyn forest massacre.
I thought I knew the rough story of Katyn when I started the comment, but “the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland”?? Whew. So much history, so little time.
Tom Grey:
All the radicals in my family were/are in stable marriages, with kids, and with middle class or upper middle class jobs.
neo states,
“To me, the issue is how much people care about matters such as liberty, history, or truth.”
Few care about history, failing to see its relevance. Perception of truth is seen through the filters of beliefs and personal motivations. The loss of liberty is only impactful for most people when they are confronted by a grave injustice that affects them personally.
“At some point, though, a majority of the public becomes aware that something big is happening. Often, though, that only happens when that majority finds its rights have been irrevocably altered for the worse. And even then, depending on how badly they’ve been altered versus how well that person still is doing in daily life (financially, for example), many people just shrug and continue to go about their business.”
Reportedly, 1/3 of the American colonists revolted against the British crown. 1/3 stayed loyal and 1/3 waited to side with the winner.
This after having experienced, ” a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism…”
Those 2/3rds of American colonists demonstrated Churchill’s afphorism; “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
Neo…the information about Eishyshok comes from the book ‘There Was Once a World,’ by Professor Yaffa Eliach.
Rufus T Firefly,
“I wonder if that element of human nature bleeds over into politics, and is a root cause for what neo writes about?”
I can’t say to what extent but it’s certainly a factor.
Robert Shotzberger,
They are enabling the chains of their future enslavement. It’s their supporting of that future for their children and grandchildren that I find unforgivable.
The SciFi author and libertarian philosopher Robert A Heinlein once observed that ‘everyone has a right to go to hell in their own way’. The deeper message being more often than not we are the engineers of our own descent into hell.
I’m sure he’d agree that no one has a right to drag other people with them down into hell. And its their willful blindness to what the result of what they advocate will be, wherein the evil lies.
Ron,
My understanding is that in the Jewish tradition if your mother is/was Jewish then her children are Jewish. In Islam it’s the father. A Jewish friend once told me that in the Jewish tradition, inheritance is through the mother. As historically, its most often been through the father, I asked him why? He answered, “there’s never any doubt as to who the mother was…”
I smiled in admiration at the logic.
Like M Williams noted, there’s the group of Christian and Christian-influenced folk who don’t like the reality of poor people being poor. The poor need help.
The sort of material deprivation incorporated into ‘poverty’ as it was understood 90 years ago is almost unknown today except among vagrants. What we have today is not poverty but anxiety, insecurity, and (now and again) humiliation. Some of this is just the human condition and some can be addressed by public policy. You might have a few wonks like Harold Pollack who have ideas for salutary policy adjustments, but for the most part leftoids have no interest in that. The left is all about abusing people they hate and ginning up excuses to employ people like them in zero-marginal product jobs, not addressing actual social problems.
Republican politicians are less injurious to people up and down the social strata than are liberals, but they tend to be much more interested in bon-bons for business and twee hobbyhorses than they do in repairing anything. Heather Mac Donald is an example of someone who actually does take a practical interest in salutary policy adjustments. You’ll notice she doesn’t vote Democratic.
The poor may temporarily need help but what they really need is opportunity.
I fully support anyone in poverty having the opportunity at tax payer expense to better their ability to get out of poverty. Provided that they’re willing to work for it through study, application and rejecting counter-productive habits.
Poverty is nothing new, “the poor ye shall always have with you” Jesus fully and deeply understood the aspects of human nature that result in a varying percentage of humanity experiencing poverty. His parable of the Good Samaritan illustrated his acknowledgement of our obligation to help those less fortunate than ourselves. That did not however obviate the responsibility of people to help themselves to the degree that they are able.
Prior generations wisely embraced the proverb “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” that proverb presumes that the poor want to learn how to stand upon their own feet and are willing to do so if given the chance. Nothing can be done with a man able but unwilling to help themselves.
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” Robert Frost
David Foster,
I agree with the conclusion you draw in your Ricochet post. Christians are not surprised by the enmity. They know Matthew 10:22 and John 15:18-19.
Neo,
While it is definitely arguable that raising the minimum wage to $15 can cost jobs [as well as lift some people out of poverty] the argument seems to be about literally NOT having a minimum wage. So, my reading of his comment is that we could consider eliminating $7.25 an hour as the minimum and pay people as low as possible – such as $2 or $3 – so long as it is it’s profitable for the business.
Considering CEO’s make so much more today by comparison to most workers than in the past it could seem problematic by everyone – regardless of political leanings – if, say, Amazon decided to drop employee’s pay to $5 an hour while Bezos adds to his billions. And if the lowest paying jobs pay merely $5 an hour then it stands to reason the pay for managers and experienced workers would also remain low since there is no reasonable minimum wage to contrast it with.
In that light:
“From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5%, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.”
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/
jack
True, some NPR stations are to the left – like Pacifica radio. I’m thinking more of NPR that can be heard nationally via their website, which tends to be moderate to liberal.
Geoffrey Britain @ 9:07,
I cannot understand how any Christian feels moral by voting that someone else should be taxed to help the poor. I seemed to miss the part of the Gospels where Jesus encouraged his followers to sit idly while others helped the poor through taxation. Taxation enforced at the point of a Roman spear. Maybe it’s a mistranslation of the original Greek for “widow’s mite?”
I think the key word in your discourse is, “passivity”. It’s a very unusual behavior, when one reflects on it – certainly not related to the survival instinct, or any of biology’s forces that compel an organism to maximize its chances in nature.
Passivity is almost a form of luxury; at least it is when we view politics within the USA, and people’s approaches to getting their information about the world around them. And yet in many societies it has been observed that passivity is also the product of desperation. Some of the great writers of the Soviet era noted that the slow grinding decline of the USSR in many ways depended upon the passivity of its many victims, staying in the yoke even though the end was in sight, being too demoralized, being kept too ignorant, made too weak by the system to do anything different than what they had always been instructed to do.
One sees this also in societies that are collapsing in real time – Venezuela makes a good proximal example. People there are losing weight due to starvation, hospitals becoming abattoirs, no food, no toilet paper, no water, no electricity – but also, no revolution. At least, not yet.
No revolution yet, in what we would all conclude are shockingly desperate and violently oppressive conditions. And in the US – sometimes it seems hard to get people with opposing political views to even attempt explaining them, much less defending them in debate. Our passivity is the most dangerous of all – not caring because we don’t have to; Indifference, on a full belly.
Yes, he probably would; but that is one of the characteristics that differentiates him from a solidarity pimping, inclusion mongering, distribute-the-pain-because-nature-is unfair leftist.
Life for them, is all about “inclusion”. It can be debated whether this psychological need is greater in women than in men, but it is clearly one of a couple of mental attributes and dispositions that probably should have been dealt with by Haidt when he eventually broadened moral tastes to include “liberty”. Maybe he figured he had it covered implicitly with “care”
We all have seen this inclusion obsession rising for years. But the crescendo which has now been reached reflects, I think, a genuine revelation – an insight – which has been enabled by a present lack of social inhibitions, into the true and natural psychological make-up of large percentages of the population. These are humans for whom “belonging”, rather than liberty and property, are the critical values. They are perfectly happy to be social elements rather than persons, as long as being a social element is physically and emotionally comfortable.
The recent brouhaha mentioned here regarding one Mimi Groves, is I think, illustrative of this innate moral lability – or an at all costs attention seeking drive – in pursuit of acceptance. After reading a few articles, it became glaringly obvious that the display impulse behind the headlong utterance that first set her up for trouble, was the same drive for attention and group validation which subsequently caused her to start shouting that Black Lives Matter and somebody do something: only to be branded a hypocrite by a rather peculiar young male (I guess) who was storing up grievances for future deployment. Because : inclusion, too.
I suppose for [some] females, the need to be noticed and appreciated and supported with affirmations may have some biological basis in evolution. What reason males might have for wanting to drag others into their troubles or to be “included” is a bit more mysterious to me.
But it’s become so obvious that despite the notion being so incredibly politically incorrect, it clearly manifests politically: and it is at the same time so undeniable that it creeps into all kinds of conversations.
In-effn-credible …
” … they are willing to distort reality in order to make their friend feel better …”
“Feelings” vs Reality. And “feelings”, wins.
https://youtu.be/YIFdWhRwfFg?t=464
Montage,
No offense, but you have a very rudimentary understanding of economics. Eliminating the minimum wage would go a long way towards helping the poor.
The cost of labor (a wage) is where the demand for that labor meets the supply of folks able or willing to perform that labor. Artificially manipulating that intersection by moving the cost up may increase the supply of folks willing to do that particular job, but it will also decrease the demand for that job.
This article “The Churn” from the Dallas Fed does a good job of explaining why manipulating markets and wages is deletirious and it uses real world examples: https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/fed/annual/1999/ar92.pdf There is no real “churn” in Cuba, where salaries are almost completely controlled by government policy. It also gives some great stats on the length of time most people earn the minimum wage in the U.S. (not long) and how many past minimum wage earners are now in the 1%, and how volatile that 1% level is.
One of the most obvious refutations of a minimum wage is the following argument:
montage: “The Federal minimum wage ought to be increased to $15/hour. It would greatly increase the money minimum wage earners have to buy food, housing, clothing and other essentials. That would also stimulate the economy as more people would be buying more goods.”
rufus: “Good point. If increasing it to $15 does that, why stop the stimulus there? Let’s really juice the economy by increasing the minimum wage to $150/hour.”
montage: ” ”
I assume you get the point, but if not, how much are you willing to pay for a hamburger, to have your car washed, to have your groceries bagged? If labor costs double at your local fast food restaurant menu prices will double, or close to it. With sky high menu prices fewer people buy fast food. With fewer people buying fast food the restaurant lays off half of its staff. So now 50% of the staff are on unemployment while 50% earn twice what they had before.
By the way, the minimum wage has nothing to do with your complaint about CEO salaries. I can agree with you a little on that topic (but for different reasons), but it is unrelated to the minimum wage.
Montage:
Everyone employed by NPR and CPB(PBS) should be paid the minimum wage and no more than that. (not sarc)
They are public servants (art for art’s sake and starving artists guild) and should be doing their “work” as a “gift” to the masses. (sarc)
Rufus T Firefly,
Before I suggested that the poor should have made available to them the opportunity to better themselves at tax payer expense, I reflected upon it and certainly thought of your objection.
That led to my qualification that to avail themselves of an opportunity paid for by others, they had to demonstrate a sincere willingness “to work for it through study, application and [the] rejecting [of] counter-productive habits.”
Though unmentioned as obvious, those who do lift themselves out of poverty through the acquisition of skills and work habits that make them producers… also simultaneously reduce the drain on society’s resources making it a societal investment…
With a commensurate ROE that cannot help to make a society more prosperous with a resultant higher quality of life.
Not to mention, reducing crime (if one accepts the premise that poverty increases crime) which BTW I do not. Though that might be useful in getting liberals on board as an alternative to supporting proposals for a “Universal Basic Income”.
I submit to you that ‘Christian principles’ are not so rigid as to bite its nose, so as to spite its face…
DNW,
I submit to you that “inclusion” is inversely related to the degree of personal sacrifice involved. There are very, very few Mother Teresa’s. But there is little to no personal cost to virtue signaling.
Rufus T Firefly
I guess our entire economic system and Democrats and Republicans in government and most all business also have a rudimentary understanding of economics. I’m in good company.
Your anecdotal example is not really based on the reality we have seen in America over the past 10 years. Unemployment has been way down and business [until Covid] has been doing fine – even in cities and states that mandate a minimum wage increase every year. Yes, the cost of living goes up as wages go up but I’m not seeing fewer employees making more money and more employees laid off on a regular basis because of minimum wage increases. Theoretically, yes, it could happen. But again my argument is not about raising the wage each year – that is costly. It’s about at least having a minimum wage as opposed to just paying people well below the standard minimum we have had for years.
Montage:
Well, rufus beat me to it, but he was far too generous. You’re an economic illiterate, frankly.
And what really boggles my mind is that, despite holding what appear to be mostly leftist viewpoints on issues, you spend time reading and commenting at a conservative blog (good for you!) and yet cannot even repeat the likely well discussed reasons why the minimum wage is a bad idea. The mind boggles.
As Rufus mentions, labor is a finite resource, no different than iron or gold. And as he states, the value of that resource is determined by the supply of, and demand for that resource.
The ironic thing is, as I’ve observed through the years, most people attribute to others, their own thoughts and values. Most likely, if YOU were in charge, you’d definitely try and get away with paying your lowest skilled workers $5, or $3, or $2 an hour.
People in this country make FAR more than minimum wage. Its inconceivable to me that someone could understand that a significant number of people make many times more than minimum wage and not comprehend that their wages are not remotely set by the lowest paid, lowest skilled workers in the labor pool. Per BLS stats, only 0.5% of the workforce actually makes minimum wage. The median individual income in the US is $20.77 per hour. Nearly triple the federal minimum wage.
I’ve seen that fallacy of your viewpoint up close. My daughter and her friends are recent HS graduates and have worked for corporations such as Walmart, PetSmart, and McDonalds. All of them started above minimum wage despite having no work experience or skill and were rewarded with raises in short order for what is nothing more than average performance in attendance, aptitude, and effort. My daughter went from making $11 per hour at entry level in a nationwide, corporate retail retail chain to moving to a bigger store making $13.50 as a “floor manager” within a year. And not in a particularly tight regional labor market, at that. If they could legitimately get away with paying flat minimum wage without any consideration for the market value for labor, they would never do any such thing.
Amazon can’t get away with paying their workers $5 an hour because people aren’t going to work for that kind of pay, least of all when you’re not talking about entry level, unskilled labor jobs. The fallacy that people who hold your opinion work under is that people are being paid minimum wage for jobs that they think should be life supporting careers. They aren’t. Minimum wage jobs are temporary, unskilled labor positions for entry level, unskilled workers, IE teenagers. And as I’ve pointed out, even expending minimal effort is required to advance beyond that point.
Your economic illiteracy is further demonstrated by regurgitating the leftist obsession with “inequality” and CEO pay. As I’m sure you’ve heard, and I certainly hope you understand, the economy is not a zero sum game where there is only so much pie to go around. How much a CEO is paid has zero effect on how much workers are paid, and even if there were, that relationship would be the exact opposite of what you believe it to be. Beyond which, if you could do rudimentary math, you would understand the ridiculousness of focusing on such a thing.
Robert Igor, CEO of Disney got $65M+ in compensation, one of the top ten highest paid CEOs. Disney has 223,000 employees. If he gave up every single penny of his compensation, it would be worth $300 per employee. Do you see how nonsensical the idea that there is any practical impact of “excessive” CEO pay is ? Disney brings in $69 billion in revenues. His compensation is less than 0.1% of that. What do you think is the appropriate compensation for managing $69 Billion in revenue, and based on the irrelevance of the “inequality” between employee and CEO compensation, what imaginable basis is there for you, or anyone else to say otherwise ?
Silly. Moreover, CEO pay is directly a function of the crony capitalist system we’ve established. Don’t for a second think we have some kind of pure, free market capitalist economy in the US. We’ve long since disconnected the job of a CEO from growing a company and moved it to a PR / lobbying job where their primary responsibility is risk avoidance and reputation polishing to pump up stock prices. The fact is, the #woke tendencies being displayed by a company like Disney flies in the face of the new role of CEO and demonstrates the emerging disconnect between stock value and real revenues. They’re actively working to alienate their core audience in the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, where we can already see the company bottom line suffering as a result, and yet, stock price soars, regardless. Meanwhile, if they ignored the SJW mob they appear to be trying to satisfy, that isn’t a fan of any of it, the effect would ultimately be nothing. Much like Trader Joe’s ignoring the furor over Trader Ming and Trader Jose. The fact is, the SJW mob is a niche paper tiger. Their actual influence is minuscule.
Meanwhile, Igor presides over a company actively working to undermine their own bottom line and his compensation is designed for him to maximize value that is no longer really measured by revenue and profit, but rather by stock price which also reflects what can only be described as societally toothless “social credit” scheme.
I don’t disagree that he’s paid too much, especially given the company’s direction, but that’s up to the shareholders and the board to decide, not you, not me, and most of all, not the government.
And yes, you ARE seeing more people laid off because of minimum wage increases. Automation is displacing unskilled labor as a direct result of the convergence of the cost of automation vs the cost of labor. And the actual evidence based on 2020 isn’t in yet. You’re still living in the extremely tight labor market pre-Covid. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has any concept of what’s really going on with employment post Covid.
Median individual income was rising at an unprecedented rate over the last few years while the majority of minimum wage rules have remained completely static. Not to mention, again, than only 0.5% of the workforce is actually paid minimum wage.
Beyond which, the world of Covid 19 has made it quite clear how the impact of minimum wage laws can be on small businesses. Some 50% of restaurants in this country are closed for good because of the razor thing profit margins of that industry. And they rely on minimum wage workers more than any other industry. You have to make some connection between the two phenomena. They both represent lost profits in a very profit sensitive industry.
While it is definitely arguable that raising the minimum wage to $15 can cost jobs [as well as lift some people out of poverty] the argument seems to be about literally NOT having a minimum wage. So, my reading of his comment is that we could consider eliminating $7.25 an hour as the minimum and pay people as low as possible – such as $2 or $3 – so long as it is it’s profitable for the business.
You’re not getting it, or you’re pretending you don’t. When an employer advertises a position to be had in return for a particular compensation package and someone the employer deems acceptable is willing to work for that package, a job is created. What compensation floors do is prevent some of those transactions from taking place. Voluntary transactions do not take place unless they are beneficial to both sides of the transaction, i.e. ‘profitable’ to both parties.
An object of labor law should be to promote transparency – i.e. to correct information deficits in labor relations. That means that the law extends to the employee certain entitlements derived from his status absent an explicit contract, and that the employer is expected to know what these are and provide for them.
To wit:
1. Clear definitions which distinguish employees from contractors.
2. Proper bookkeeping. so that the withholdings are calculated correctly and sluiced to the appropriate parties and accounts and the employer is liable for any errors.
3. Workman’s compensation – a risk-rated policy mandatory for all employers covering every employee.
4. Mandated paid leave – and no retaliation for requesting and availing oneself of paid leave.
5. Transparency in re fringes: disclosure of the features of the benefits program, timely extension of benefits, and no retaliation for availing oneself of benefits.
6. Actuarially sound benefits programs (and a legal architecture to administer cram-downs when programs lapse into insolvency, and to punish perpetrators).
7. Timely payment of regular cash compensation: monthly for salaried employees, biweekly for wage employees.
6. Timely payment of commissions, piece rates, and per diems, monthly or biweekly.
7. Timely payment of contractual bonuses. Annual.
8. Standard premiums for overtime. X% over the regular rate for the first 8 hours, Y% for the next 8 hours, and so forth.
9. Due notice for changes in compensation rates and for changes in features of benefits programs (say, 90 days).
10. An institutional architecture for rapid collection of unpaid compensation.
11. A legal architecture which provides for criminal penalties and civil liability for employers and their agents for extorting the co-operation of employees in schemes which are criminal, tortious, or licentious.
12. A legal architecture which provides for criminal penalties and civil liability for employers and their agents for conduct at worksites analogous to conduct referred to in penal codes as ‘harassment’.
13. A legal architecture governing the operations of labor unions.
14. Definitions in law of an employees right to avail himself of the services of mutual aid societies and collective bargaining agents without retaliation from his employer, appended to which would be criminal penalties and civil liability for employers and their agents for engaging in retaliation.
15. A legal architecture delineating the rubrics of collective bargaining and employee voice in business enterprises.
Ideally, labor law would promote accounting practices which would make compensation and labor costs more apparent to all parties, e.g. financing all benefits (bar workman’s comp) by withholding standard percentages of an employee’s stated compensation (within the bounds of a certain minimum and maximum dollar value adjusted annually). By way of example, employers could withhold a certain sum for the financing of employee medical coverage and then solicit bids annually from insurance companies to provide coverage specified in a standard contract over a certain deductible in return for the sum of withholdings. The bids would be in the form of the deductibles the insurance company would insist on – $x for a single person, $2x for a two-person household, and $3x for a household with > 2 persons. (Small employers could join a trade association for a fee which would let out these contracts for its members).
In the spirit of the foregoing, the law might define a minimum cash take home pay which would provide a convenient standard differentiating an employee from a volunteer or contractor. It could be adjustable annually according to changes in the mean nominal compensation per worker as calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and be made regionally specific. You could divvy up the continental United States into two or three regions and then have local rates for the off shore territories. If you set minimum cash take home pay as 0.1 x nominal compensation per worker, it would be around $3.65 an hour for wage employees and $600 a month for salaried employees. This would prevent very few transactions from taking place.
All of the foregoing would add some (often opaque) compliance costs to what’s on the employer’s plate. That’s quite enough. If you’re concerned about the material well being of low wage workers, certain costs can be socialized over the whole population and thus spread evenly among different economic sectors and different classes of employers.
Eliminating the minimum wage would go a long way towards helping the poor.
It would assist some marginal workers. Socially beneficial, but a small benefit.
What might help the impecunious would be (1) controlling the border; (2) limiting temporary residency visas to diplomatic and quasi-diplomatic personnel, refugees, students, teachers, and the dependents of such people; (4) limiting the stock of temporary residents to about 0.5% of the extant population; (5) limiting the annual issuance of settler’s visas to 0.125% of the extant population.
Another thing that might assist the impecunious in the long run would be structuring common provision in such a way that departures from the labor force are circumscribed. To wit,
1. Open-ended cash benefits go to the elderly and the genuinely disabled and require some amount of buy-in. Term limited cash benefits (unemployment compensation and workmen’s compensation) require buy-in and commonly require administrative hearings before an award is made.
2. Subsidies for specific goods and services are limited to problem markets. In practice, that means extensive socialization of costs in the realm of medical care, l/t care, and schooling and socialization on the margins in the realm of legal services and shipping and transportation. Subsidies for groceries, housing, utility bills and other mundane expenditures would go away. Obamaphones delenda est.
3. Matching funds for earned income delivered through income tax rebates – IOW, replacing the EITC with a program which features simpler calculations.
4. Tax rebates which provide in effect an income floor for the elderly and disabled. NB, the statutory retirement age should float so that the ratio of the elderly to the working population is a constant.
Ideally, socialization would be through means which reduce administrative costs and allow for consumer choice. By way of example, replacing government schools with a segmented set of private providers. A parent would be issued by a county government a voucher for each child in his custody. The parent could (1) enroll the youth in a school that accepts vouchers and is debarred by law from charging tuition or fees; (2) turn the voucher into the county government in return for a partial rebate of his property taxes and enroll his child in a tuition-charging school; or (3) turn the voucher in for the rebate and home school.
Other ways you can help the impecunious:
a. Replace half-assed liberal education in high schools with vocational / technical schooling. As we speak, about 2% of the manpower in primary and secondary schooling is devoted to VoTech. Let’s increase it to 15%.
b. Replace baccalaureate degrees at the tertiary level with specialized courses of study which take less time. A calendar year or two academic years of study given over to one thing should suffice for most.
c. Decennially, identify through census data the least affluent census bloc groups in any given census defined ‘urbanized area’. The set in question should encompass about 15% of the population of the whole ‘urbanized area’. Have the levy rate on real property in these bloc groups be 0% of assessed valuation. Identify another set of census block groups which are outside this zone but are the least affluent among those outside. The population of this set should be about 5% of the population of the whole urbanized area. Tax property in this zone at 1/2 the standard rate. Given that your redefining the zones every ten years, some property will be bumped to zones where a higher rate is charged. Give the owners of such properties a generous grace period before imposing the higher rate.
d. Make amendments to land use ordinances and building codes to allow a greater variety of housing options to arise in those parts of the metropolis where tax remissions are in effect. Flop houses, rooming houses, apartments with shared facilities &c should return in these areas.
Considering CEO’s make so much more today by comparison to most workers than in the past it could seem problematic by everyone
That’s a problem with corporate governance, not the labor market. Address the real problem.
Other ways you can help the impecunious: build metropolitan police forces and put ample manpower into patrolling slum neighborhoods. Lots of people belong in prison.
Another suggestion: staff the child-protective and foster care service with sheriff’s deputies, nurses, and junior grade psychologists who have earned cross-training certificates. Staff management positions in social welfare bureaucracies with people trained in public administration who have passed promotional examinations. Close down all social work programs at colleges and universities.
I don’t recall any of those who complain about CEO pay of firms they have no financial interest in, complain about the high salaries of professional athletes. Just maybe the demand for great CEOs and great basketball players exceeds the supply by multiples. I enjoy watching great athletes perform and am thankful for the many goods and services supplied by companies led by these well compensated CEOs.
I don’t recall any of those who complain about CEO pay of firms they have no financial interest in, complain about the high salaries of professional athletes.
Recall what James Garner had to say about this. “Oh, I got a good salary. I used to feel guilty about getting a good salary until I realized someone could pay it”. The compensation of professional athletes is consequent to an arms length transaction. The same deal with others in the entertainment professions. The relationship between public admiration and compensation may be fuzzier with screen actors than it is with singers, but it’s present. What people value may be regrettable, but that’s a cultural problem, not a problem of political economy.
In re corporate CEO’s, these aren’t arms-length transactions and much of this compensation is simply boardroom looting of other people’s money.
Art there is competition for top flight talent regardless of the profession or occupation. Company CEOs are no exception. As a retired trial lawyer, I use to tell my clients that I get paid the big bucks because I get results. Bad CEOs get fired.
deadrody,
Disney’s stock value is now determined by the success of its virtue signaling?
If so, there’s an ‘artificial’ dynamic in play.
There’s an explanation for the rise in CEO pay; peruse company annual reports and it becomes obvious that many CEO’s are sitting on each others boards in an incestuous “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”… once those CEOs raised each others pay, the ‘competition’ angle ‘forces’ other companies to match it to stay ‘competitive’. It then has become a self-reinforcing dynamic. Wait 5 years and then do it again. For whatever the reason, Japan doesn’t play that game.
BTW, top management’s salary is just the tip of the iceberg. Stock options are where the real compensation lies. Many years ago, Disney’s then CEO Eisner fired 300 middle managers just before Christmas in a purported cost cutting move. Disney’s profits were squarely in the black and many of those managers were lifelong employees. A few weeks later, Eisner sold off HALF his stock options for $650 MILLION Dollars.
BTW, top management’s salary is just the tip of the iceberg. Stock options are where the real compensation lies.
Note that the practice of keeping treasury stock is debarred here there and the next place abroad. It should be banned here as well. It’s at the source of shenanigans.
Company CEOs are no exception.
Yes they are an exception, because they effectively define their compensation.
Lots of people expressing concern about CEO salaries, not much mention of movie actors, athletes, and various ‘celebrities’…not to mention lawyers and lobbyists.
There is one major factor that operates in all of these cases: the expanded size and reach of the global markets, across almost all industries. A ball player is worth more financially if his performance is viewed around the world than he was when his audience was the local stadium audience plus a national radio audience.
There is one major factor that operates in all of these cases: the expanded size and reach of the global markets, across almost all industries.
In 1980, the most highly compensated executive in the United States was Robert Charpie, who was president of the Cabot Corporation, an energy concern. Mr. Charpie’s annual compensation amounted to around 206x the mean annual compensation of employed Americans at that time. In our own time, the most handsomely compensated executive is the nuisance who runs Alphabet, who received last year a package worth 3850x the mean annual compensation of employed persons in this society. There was an executive who received Mr. Charpie’s 206x mean annual compensation of employed Americans. He occupied 249th place on the Russell 3000 and S & P 500 rankings.
International trade is not some novelty. We had ample international trade 40 years ago. In 2019, the ratio of the sum of this country’s imports and exports (of goods and services) to our gross national income was 0.212. In 1980, this ratio was 0.198. You want to establish that some feature of international trade accounts for gargantuan increases in CEO compensation, OK, but some of us might like to know how that’s supposed to work.
not to mention lawyers and lobbyists.
Lawyers and especially lobbyists have incomes contingent on the contours of the regulatory state and the rubrics of legal proceedings. There’s a lot of rent-seeking in both occupations.
“the left most definitely counts on it”
Wrong – partly so.
It ignores the right – and there are those on the right to also “count on it”.
More accurately, they are both counting on an audience “listening” uncritically to a message they already want to hear – an audience absolutely convinced that they are unbiased, informed, and logical.
It ignores the right – and there are those on the right to also “count on it”.
Wrong. I get a double dose of what street-level Democrats fancy every day, because they cannot restrain themselves from telling you and they’re forever importing their hobby horses into every kind of venue. We of course, have Republican friends. They use Facebook to post pictures of their grandchildren.
And you’d have to scrounge to find an employer who subjected their employees to encounter groups or agitprop sessions on the subject of abortion on demand, unilateral divorce on demand, or lax law enforcement. Or trashed their brand in the service of some starboard cause. Oh, and just two days ago the Sulzbergers launched their vendetta against Coinbase, indubitably because the Coinbase CEO sent a memo to his employees telling him that business was business and they weren’t to engage in SJW agitation on company time.
The liberal causes d’annee are complete humbug, of course, and they cannot construct arguments in their favor, just engage in rhetorical gamesmanship. Among the street level Democrats we encounter, it’s all John Oliver clips, inane memes, and silly rants. The more sophisticated attempt the tactic of linking to offsite documents which don’t actually support whatever asinine thesis they’re promoting.
There are people who want to put politics in its proper place, recognizing the autonomy of other spheres of human activity. Then there’s people like you.
Geoffrey Britain @ 1:00am:
Sorry, I was not accusing you of being unchristian. First off, that’s not for me to judge. Secondly, I didn’t think you were being unchristian. I meant it as a generalism since I hear a lot of christians explaining to me that the “christian” thing to do is to vote to force others to alleviate the suffering of the poor. There may or may not be good, political, fiscal policies or programs that help others. If so, let’s do them. But sitting around stating Jeff Bezos isn’t doing enough to help the poor, then voting that an armed tax collector take some of his money and give it to someone who is suffering? I just don’t see that anywhere in the Gospels.
Geoffrey Britain @ 10:14am,
I’ve done a fair amount of board presentations and know quite a few board members personally. Your comment about back scratching is correct from my perspective.
deadrody,
Great job expounding on my limited explanation. My guess is we will not hear from Mr. Montage again on this thread. If he reads what you wrote he has one of two options before him:
1. Thank you for the education and state that his understanding was incorrect.
2. Hide.
Here’s Elon Musk trying to educate Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on this topic. It didn’t go well for Reich: https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/09/10/hello-911-i-need-to-report-a-murder-elon-musk-had-a-brutal-comeback-after-robert-reich-accused-him-of-being-a-modern-day-robber-baron/
My parents were (note past tense although still alive) conservative Republicans most their lives. I remember the disgust my mother had at Carter’s election, and my dad actually sent a telegram to Nixon not to resign.
All the kids stayed right (myself going much further right) but weird things started happening with my parents. First my dad went through bankruptcy and he blamed the tax laws passed by Reagan (years after they passed). He still rails about these tax laws and those who passed them, and I point out all those politicians are now dead and the tax laws changed a few times since then so no need to be angry. No avail, but that thinking planted the seed for him. They then got on Medicare and it became all they cared about, and today would happily give up their grandchildren’s liberty if they knew it would keep running.
If fact the family tension started with Obamacare debates which the kids pointed out its passage would not only hurt Medicare long term, but their children and grandchildren’s current coverage would be hurt immediately. They wouldn’t listen, and we kids all realized that this was no longer a rational argument.
In their twilight years they just watch left wing cable news, and it’s remarkable that they can no longer make rational arguments or have rational policy discussions – they can only puppet emotional triggering from the left wing news. The kids chalk it up partially to cognitive decline and tv saturation since they have little else to do, but it’s sad to see your own parents who brought you up with conservative values gladly abandon them in later life.
First my dad went through bankruptcy and he blamed the tax laws passed by Reagan (years after they passed).
The Reagan era changes in tax law had three notable features:
1. Reduction in marginal income tax rates
2. Increases in payroll tax rates
3. A reduction in the prevalence and incidence of special deductions and exemptions.
I’m not seeing how the first could injure anyone’s domestic finances. The second involved an increase in the levy from 10.2% to 12.2% of payroll. I’m sure that injured someone decisively, but how common could that have been? I cannot imagine how the last injured your father unless he sunk megabucks into tax shelters.
Rufus T Firefly,
I appreciate the clarification.
I’m not in favor of through law, extracting money from the rich, its theft pure and simple.
I am in favor of redirecting money from some of the pork expended into programs that help the poor obtain the skills needed to lift themselves out of poverty.
Again, predicated upon the proposition that the poor who would avail themselves of such a program, consistently demonstrate a willingness to do whatever work is required to do so.
And then reducing expenditures as those poor become productive citizens. Less poor = less welfare/entitlement expenditures.
I also realize that, as things currently stand, this is unlikely to happen.
PS: I reached my conclusion regarding CEO pay simply from reading the background profiles of the board members of major corps. They don’t try to hide it because they know Congress will do nothing about it. Nice little sinecure they have there.
deadrody
Businesses survive because of customers. They die if they don’t have customers. Paying employees ‘too much’ is not a reason most businesses die out. I know quite a bit about paying people and the effect it has on a business because I work in payroll for a midsize company that employees hundreds of employees at minimum wage in multiple states. Anyway, as I noted above if I am ‘economically illiterate’ then I’m in good company. You are making Ivory tower arguments not arguments based on reality. Some conservatives do that. Any business that complains about minimum wage going up to the point that they let employees go or cut hours are businesses that were meant to fail anyway. And btw, I think your daughter and most teenagers are worth getting paid a good wage. Pay them and let them save for college. That is not a bad thing.
They die if they don’t have customers. Paying employees ‘too much’ is not a reason most businesses die out. I know quite a bit about paying people and the effect it has on a business because I work in payroll for a midsize company that employees hundreds of employees at minimum wage in multiple states.
You work in payroll but the relationship between revenue, costs, and profit eludes you.
Any business that complains about minimum wage going up to the point that they let employees go or cut hours are businesses that were meant to fail anyway.
Is it really your contention that when a manager makes the decision that it’s no longer beneficial on the margin to hire x workers and we should hire x-a workers that the world’s a better place if the company goes out of business and everyone’s out of work? In which community college bookkeeping textbook is this bit of wisdom granted us?
Montage finds his economic truths in the Book of Unicorns and Skittles, because he works in “payroll.”
He is enjoying his lockdown and downturn.
When he is dead broke it will be his fault because he was meant to loose it all. Montage logic.
“Businesses survive because of customers. They die if they don’t have customers. Paying employees ‘too much’ is not a reason most businesses die out.” Montage
Businesses do indeed survive because of customers.
They certainly will die if they don’t have customers.
Paying employees ‘too much’ will result in businesses having to either raise prices, cut employees, cut their hours or cut profits.
Small businesses typically work on a thin profit margin. As, if they profit greatly, they become big businesses.
The typical small business that operates on a relatively thin profit margin, that substantially raises the pay of its employees must either raise prices or reduce its labor costs in some fashion.
A small businesses with a low profit margin cannot afford to operate with excess employees. So to raise employee wages, a small business is generally forced to raise its prices.
As example; when the price of a hamburger and fries goes from $8.00 to $12.00… the restaurant will experience a reduction in its customers… get it? Plus given inflation, as wages over time rise in compensation that burger continues to go up in price and even fewer customers patronize the restaurant and inevitably the restaurant goes out of business… Got it?
I’ve never worked in finance and only took Econ 101 in college. But even I get it. What’s your excuse? Or is it that you simply reject economic reality in favor of an “alternate set of facts”?
Geoffrey Britain
when the price of hamburgers and fries goes from $8 to $12
Prices rarely jump that high for hamburgers in a short period. But if they did then it would give other restaurants a chance to win back those customers with cheaper hamburgers. Viola!
Art+Deco
I’m not saying anything about a manager’s decision over and above what is legally permissible. Few managers would give a raise to an entire group of employees that is beyond what’s reasonable without the CEO or president of the company approving it.
I understand the Libertarian argument against minimum wage. I’m saying the problem is if we eliminated the minimum wage all together. But it’s a moot argument because the [state or local] minimum wage goes up most everywhere every year or two. And, yes, it does cause issues for businesses who in turn raise prices on goods – but I don’t think the solution is eliminating the minimum wage. People earn money and people spend that money and business stays afloat.
Happy New Year!
Montage:
“People earn money and people spend that money and business stays afloat.”
Until they don’t. Wonder why that happens to countries and societies? Probably not. Maybe next year you will think about such things.
I understand the Libertarian argument against minimum wage. I
It’s a standard microeconomic conception, not a specifically libertarian argument. And you’ve repeatedly misunderstood it in this thread.
“The opposite of Liberty is slavery. These same fools condemn this country for its past slavery and now total okay with surrendering their liberty.” – Robert Shotzberger
Mostly, they are okay with surrendering OUR liberty.
But the point is taken.
“NOW I understand. But there is no America to flee too.” – Ron
The realization that we are living through the same kinds of events that gave rise to Hitler & the Nazis; Lenin, Stalin & the Communists; and, even further back, the religious and monarchical wars of the past is … very frightening.
The Old Testament also makes a lot more sense now.
“I think many people have a suboptimal perspective. The phrases; “pennywise, pound foolish” and “not seeing the forest for the trees” are English language statements that speak to this phenomenon.” – Rufus
The discussion on this covered a lot of interesting ground, and presented some good arguments, but I think one of the primary reasons people concentrate on the pears and ignore the tanks is that they can exercise some degree of control on the former, and absolutely none on the latter.
Revolutions happen when some members of the group (1/3 or 3% or whatever) get fed up enough to throw their pears at the tanks, and discover they DO have some control after all. It isn’t easy, and it costs a lot, but at some point they decide that they are willing to pay it.
Once upon a time, those revolutions could succeed, because the disparity between the adversaries was not so great as between pears and tanks.
Now, I’m not as optimistic as I would like to be.
Whatever —
In re your parents and their irrationality about Medicare: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”