Saturday, February 1, 2014
Know Your Class War: Take Peter Schiff (Please!)
I've been doing my "Know Your Class War" series for a long while now, usually pointing out that working people are being, well, screwed by the "The Man", but I don't think I've ever explained what the title "Know Your Class War" is about. Basically, it's sort of tongue-in-cheek: the Strangely Blogged working definition of "Class War" is "the term used by wealthy people when they have been uncomfortably reminded that they are outnumbered". I started noticing this particularly when the OWS movement brought income inequality as an issue out on the street instead of talking about it in "quiet rooms". The apparent concern that criticism of the inequities of the capitalistic system was tantamount to war is pretty evident in the awkward Godwin violation of Tom Perkins. But the flip-side of the "class war" is real hostility that impacts the lives of working people--and to show an outstanding case of it, why, here is Peter Schiff on The Daily Show.
It takes a special kind of person to suggest that the intellectually disabled should be economically exploited because, hey, that's what they are worth! It probably takes an even more special kind of person to later on complain that his interviewer could have tipped him off to the proper politically correct term (his word was "retarded"--and pro-tip to Mr. Schiff, the job of making yourself not look like an asshole should never be outsourced) and that "Others may disagree, but I believe a job for such a person at $2 per hour is better than no job at all.”
Which is very probably why people take jobs for less-than-living wage--being half-starved is better than being all the way starved and a leaky roof is better than none. But it seems like he's missing something--people don't work for fun, but to make a living. If something is to be worth someone's time at all, it has to be renumerative enough to be worth it, otherwise an employer is basically stealing something of value from their worker--time. People don't do jobs at, for example, McDonald's, because they long to be near sizzling tallow. They do it because they could use the money--because food and rent and utilities are not free. Saying that people should not be paid enough to live on is like saying they do not perform any function that makes living worthwhile for them. That strikes me as a very low opinion of human dignity.
One could counter that any person is free to not take a job that does not pay them a reasonable sum, but what a person is not free to do is have nothing and live--people are born dependent. They need food and water and warmth. If the idea that people work for "a living" and that it genuinely means they need gainful employment to live is an abstract concept to someone like Mr. Schiff, at the risk of not being politically correct, I would say he is stupid. If he recognizes it as a concrete reality but simply does not care, he's an asshole. In any case, the "freedom" to work for less that he extols is not far from the economics you'd see under, say, Rand Paul.
So, class war? Maybe not a war with live ammo. But a political struggle? Yes.
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3 comments:
"I can hire half the working class to kill the other half."
- Robber Baron Jay Gould.
And this is the problem with glibbertarians and their hypothetical arguments.
We already know what happens when rich shitheads get to do whatever they want.
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My response at the link to the standard, "But what if you made the minimum wage $100/hr., then no one would have jobs, herr-derr-herr!"
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Hi Vixen,
in the United States we have a rhetorical war between team "Capitalists" and team "Socialists."
It generates a lot of intellectual flourishes.
The problem is that that is all it is, rhetorical.
In fact, we do not live in a capitalist society or a socialist one. We have what economists call a "mixed economy,", i.e., a certain arrangement composed of socialist and capitalist elements. We are not alone, as virtually every industrialized country has such an arrangement.
One of the effects is that we never actually see the benefits that might theoretically come from either possibility.
If we had an extremely socialist economy, a huge number of people, including those in need, would receive government assistance. And that is true.
If we could liberate some of the multi-billions from government and allow them to remain in the private sector, you would create an enormous number of jobs with upward mobility. And that is true.
Then there is what is good for the United States as a country. President Obama has realized that punitive taxation on multinational companies simply drives them offshore to capture profits in more benign taxing countries.
(Every country is a tax haven to countries other than its own. Every country tries to make advantages for citizens and companies in an alternative country to bring their money.)
So in the SOTU he proposed lowering US corporate taxes to 5% in hopes that multinationals would bring their revenues back to the States for taxation.
In addition, the Pentagon has now stated that China will have exceeded our military in 5 years. China has global ambitions, starting with countries like Japan in its region.
We have ironclad treaties with some of these countries and would immediately be sucked into any hostilities. Can we afford to allow our military to become vulnerable in this way?
So we have the leftist claim, which is true.
We have the right's claim, which is true.
And we have economic needs for the country that demand attention. What to do, what to do?
One of the things that divides the conservative view from the libertarian view is that conservatives believe in a safety net as part of our personal and national commitment. However, we believe once that safety net has been provided, then our moral obligation is concluded.
As for your video, both parties are useful idiots. The girl is an idiot because she is astounded that there are capitalists in the US. Surely the reasoning of an impoverished mind. She does not seem to be aware that she works for a multimillionaire many times over. and that he works for a network filled with celebrity multimillionaires and executive multimillionaires, all working hard to return value to shareholders.
Apparently, it's OK to make a lot money if you are on TV.
The pro-capitalist is an idiot because he believes he lives in a capitalist society. We have social security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, a large number of welfare and child-assistance programs, and various government subsidies too numerous to count. All this is administered by huge federal bureaucracies whose executives make salaries well into 6 figures. There is nothing capitalistic about it.
The vexation is that none of the factors mentioned above or the million other contingencies that could be enumerated are going to change. Left and right will continue to scream at each other, occasionally weaseling out a concession on one side or the other. And the US will continue to suffer because polarization does not allow the fruits of any one system to materialize. It's a rather grim scenario.
I personally have found a measure of peace when after many years I realized that what I think simply doesn't matter at all.
The other day I ran into my old Congressman, a Blue Dog who has been out of office for a few years. Now he's a lobbyist. One of his issues is horse meat factories, because apparently horse meat is a delicacy in Japan and Europe. I'm rather fond of horses, but what are you going to do?
--Formerly Amherst
Very rarely do they actually blurt out how they really feel. He'd shiv a kid with Down syndrome to earn a buck.
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