The Tragedy of Government School Education
I had to think for a while before responding to this. No, I didn't have to even ponder responses to Tucker's ignorant screeds for ten seconds, but I have been mostly ignoring him because he doesn't have enough self control to avoid argumentum ad hominem. But this one, amazingly enough, only has an ad hominem content of about 10%, and it contains so many incredibly erroneous assertions that I figured I would comment on a few of them. They happen to be the ones I recognize most often from folks who didn't pay close attention in school, or are recent victims of the propaganda brainwashing offered up as education in government-run schools, or both.
Free market capitalism is based on greed!
No, it isn't, and Tucker can't demonstrate otherwise. But it might be entertaining to watch him try. Before wasting everyone's time with quotes from the Communist Manifesto or Bukharin's ABC of Communism, I hope he'll read up on what Adam Smith had to say on the subject.
Executives (and American consumers) want the cheapest goods possible. And the cheapest goods possible are produced by paying the lowest wages possible.
I'm not sure why he chose to differentiate between Executives and American consumers. It seems a specious affectation. Tucker appears to be blaming someone for this awful, rank consumerism, and in doing so he attempts to rhetorically distance himself from said perpetrator. I don't know everything about Tucker, but I do know he doesn't live in a mud hut, nor does he wear sackcloth and ashes and eat bugs. So he is consuming away along with the rest of us evil capitalists. The only explanation is a bad case of self-loathing, but I digress...
The second sentence is both true and untrue. It is true in fact, untrue in implication. The lowest wage possible for producers is that which retains an acceptable workforce. The lowest wage possible for workers is the minimum they are willing to accept for their labor. Communists would like us to believe that workers are somehow victims of their own greed. They portray evil employers as taking advantage of workers' willingness to accept a wage that is less than some arbitrary meritorious rate set by elites who wish to adopt workers as mascots. In fact, workers sell their labor to employers and the price is largely set by the laws of supply and demand. I say largely because the government meddles in this market as well, setting minimum wages and attempting to arbitrarily enforce "fairness" which is code for universal justice.
Fortunately, the federal government...outlawed slavery meaning ALL people HAD to be paid
Well, actually emancipation doesn't mean any such thing. Tucker might want to actually read the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments instead of regurgitating the Graham Flynt/Cliff Notes version. Tucker might be amazed to find out that there is no law on the federal books that requires any employer to pay any worker anything. As mentioned above, there is a law that states that if an employer pays a worker anything that it must meet an arbitrary minimum. This law is also known as the unemployment enhancement law since the only thing it accomplishes is to increase unemployment. I guess it's a good thing there is so much productive capacity in this country. But this is really just more rhetorical monkey-business since slavery and free-market capitalism have nothing to do with one another, regardless of how hard Tucker might wish they did.
Then, when mills across the country weren't paying their workers enough, the government again over-stepped its bounds & forced employers to pay fair wages (imagine how unfair that was to those poor wealthy factory owners...
Pure, regurgitated propaganda. I can find half a dozen left-wing extremists all posting nearly these identical words. The intellectual poverty of the left is nothing if not depressing. With regard to wages, who decides how much is enough? In the Marxist's system, the government, meaning the oligarchic elite decide some arbitrary amount of largesse to distribute to their mascots and this is christened "a fair wage." Of course, no one can define quantitatively this benchmark of "fairness." It is simply a subjective measure intended to enhance the self-image and power base of the leftist elite. As for the "wealthy factory owners," evidence abounds that the cost of the minimum wage is overwhelmingly borne by small business. So it's not Tucker's fat-cat, cigar-smoking robber barons who are getting the screwing he believes they so richly deserve, it's Mom and Pop down at the country store. Also, as mentioned above, artificial minimum wages depress employment, so it is the lowest echelons of wage earners who are also bearing the brunt of the elites' ego-stroking.
Now, with globalization inevitable, corporations have stopped paying people in our own country those gawdy wages ($14 an hour) and opt to select their work pool from third world countries where their governments don't meddle in peoples' business (like safe working conditions & reasonable wages).
Nice fantasy, too bad not a word of it is true. First, those gaudy wages are largely the result of unionization. These wages have the cost to the producers of dealing with the unions built into them. This is also one of the reasons real wages are declining. Second, many of the countries to whom business is outsourcing their workforce are socialist, with some being functionally Marxist. This means their governments control the wages paid by American companies and completely control the Americans' presence there. The sweatshops hiding under government radar and paying children pennies a day to churn out tennis shoes are largely American liberal mythology. In those countries which do not host planned economies, the wages are largely a function of the cost of living and the absence of labor unions. In India for instance, IT and customer service work pays about 20% of what a similar position earns in the US. Before any liberals get their panties in a twist over this, the people earning this wage live like Kings. I know, I work with them every day. I know an Indian project manager who makes about one fifth what his American counterpart makes, yet he has a maid and a chauffeur, lives in a very large house, and has five children, all in private schools.
With all this, the outsourcing flow has actually been stemmed somewhat of late. Buchanan is right about the number of jobs that have moved overseas, but he neglected to mention they all moved in the period from 2000 to 2003. There was no action by the Bush White House that either started or stopped this activity, it was simply a business cyclical process.
...why can't the rich & powerful just be charitable on their own?
Actually they are. The vast majority of all money flowing into voluntary charity comes from the wealthy. Look it up. This is just more regurgitated Marxist propaganda.
I guess the government doesn't HAVE to regulate: we could just go back to breadlines, illiteracy, 80 hour work weeks, & 50 year life expectancy.
I'm getting all choked up here. Of course there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that government interference had anything to do with changing these conditions and there is no rational argument or evidence that a lack of government interference would cause any of those conditions to recur. I don't think Tucker is interested in being rational, though.
I see you talking about "liberals", & "socialists", & "marxists" and abortion (wait, i thought the government should get out of people's business).
This whole sentence is completely non sequitur and doesn't really merit a response, but I thought I would mention that most of us regard the prevention of and punishment for murder a proper function of government.
None of Tucker's rant actually constitutes a response to what I posted, but was merely a screed composed of rote platitudes from the Marxist playbook, peppered liberally with Tucker's own special blend of venom and ignorant posturing. I almost feel ashamed for responding to it, but maybe there was something useful in my response for one of our readers.
Free market capitalism is based on greed!
No, it isn't, and Tucker can't demonstrate otherwise. But it might be entertaining to watch him try. Before wasting everyone's time with quotes from the Communist Manifesto or Bukharin's ABC of Communism, I hope he'll read up on what Adam Smith had to say on the subject.
Executives (and American consumers) want the cheapest goods possible. And the cheapest goods possible are produced by paying the lowest wages possible.
I'm not sure why he chose to differentiate between Executives and American consumers. It seems a specious affectation. Tucker appears to be blaming someone for this awful, rank consumerism, and in doing so he attempts to rhetorically distance himself from said perpetrator. I don't know everything about Tucker, but I do know he doesn't live in a mud hut, nor does he wear sackcloth and ashes and eat bugs. So he is consuming away along with the rest of us evil capitalists. The only explanation is a bad case of self-loathing, but I digress...
The second sentence is both true and untrue. It is true in fact, untrue in implication. The lowest wage possible for producers is that which retains an acceptable workforce. The lowest wage possible for workers is the minimum they are willing to accept for their labor. Communists would like us to believe that workers are somehow victims of their own greed. They portray evil employers as taking advantage of workers' willingness to accept a wage that is less than some arbitrary meritorious rate set by elites who wish to adopt workers as mascots. In fact, workers sell their labor to employers and the price is largely set by the laws of supply and demand. I say largely because the government meddles in this market as well, setting minimum wages and attempting to arbitrarily enforce "fairness" which is code for universal justice.
Fortunately, the federal government...outlawed slavery meaning ALL people HAD to be paid
Well, actually emancipation doesn't mean any such thing. Tucker might want to actually read the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments instead of regurgitating the Graham Flynt/Cliff Notes version. Tucker might be amazed to find out that there is no law on the federal books that requires any employer to pay any worker anything. As mentioned above, there is a law that states that if an employer pays a worker anything that it must meet an arbitrary minimum. This law is also known as the unemployment enhancement law since the only thing it accomplishes is to increase unemployment. I guess it's a good thing there is so much productive capacity in this country. But this is really just more rhetorical monkey-business since slavery and free-market capitalism have nothing to do with one another, regardless of how hard Tucker might wish they did.
Then, when mills across the country weren't paying their workers enough, the government again over-stepped its bounds & forced employers to pay fair wages (imagine how unfair that was to those poor wealthy factory owners...
Pure, regurgitated propaganda. I can find half a dozen left-wing extremists all posting nearly these identical words. The intellectual poverty of the left is nothing if not depressing. With regard to wages, who decides how much is enough? In the Marxist's system, the government, meaning the oligarchic elite decide some arbitrary amount of largesse to distribute to their mascots and this is christened "a fair wage." Of course, no one can define quantitatively this benchmark of "fairness." It is simply a subjective measure intended to enhance the self-image and power base of the leftist elite. As for the "wealthy factory owners," evidence abounds that the cost of the minimum wage is overwhelmingly borne by small business. So it's not Tucker's fat-cat, cigar-smoking robber barons who are getting the screwing he believes they so richly deserve, it's Mom and Pop down at the country store. Also, as mentioned above, artificial minimum wages depress employment, so it is the lowest echelons of wage earners who are also bearing the brunt of the elites' ego-stroking.
Now, with globalization inevitable, corporations have stopped paying people in our own country those gawdy wages ($14 an hour) and opt to select their work pool from third world countries where their governments don't meddle in peoples' business (like safe working conditions & reasonable wages).
Nice fantasy, too bad not a word of it is true. First, those gaudy wages are largely the result of unionization. These wages have the cost to the producers of dealing with the unions built into them. This is also one of the reasons real wages are declining. Second, many of the countries to whom business is outsourcing their workforce are socialist, with some being functionally Marxist. This means their governments control the wages paid by American companies and completely control the Americans' presence there. The sweatshops hiding under government radar and paying children pennies a day to churn out tennis shoes are largely American liberal mythology. In those countries which do not host planned economies, the wages are largely a function of the cost of living and the absence of labor unions. In India for instance, IT and customer service work pays about 20% of what a similar position earns in the US. Before any liberals get their panties in a twist over this, the people earning this wage live like Kings. I know, I work with them every day. I know an Indian project manager who makes about one fifth what his American counterpart makes, yet he has a maid and a chauffeur, lives in a very large house, and has five children, all in private schools.
With all this, the outsourcing flow has actually been stemmed somewhat of late. Buchanan is right about the number of jobs that have moved overseas, but he neglected to mention they all moved in the period from 2000 to 2003. There was no action by the Bush White House that either started or stopped this activity, it was simply a business cyclical process.
...why can't the rich & powerful just be charitable on their own?
Actually they are. The vast majority of all money flowing into voluntary charity comes from the wealthy. Look it up. This is just more regurgitated Marxist propaganda.
I guess the government doesn't HAVE to regulate: we could just go back to breadlines, illiteracy, 80 hour work weeks, & 50 year life expectancy.
I'm getting all choked up here. Of course there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that government interference had anything to do with changing these conditions and there is no rational argument or evidence that a lack of government interference would cause any of those conditions to recur. I don't think Tucker is interested in being rational, though.
I see you talking about "liberals", & "socialists", & "marxists" and abortion (wait, i thought the government should get out of people's business).
This whole sentence is completely non sequitur and doesn't really merit a response, but I thought I would mention that most of us regard the prevention of and punishment for murder a proper function of government.
None of Tucker's rant actually constitutes a response to what I posted, but was merely a screed composed of rote platitudes from the Marxist playbook, peppered liberally with Tucker's own special blend of venom and ignorant posturing. I almost feel ashamed for responding to it, but maybe there was something useful in my response for one of our readers.
posted by Anonymous | 10:50 PM
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