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.