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November 07, 2005
Economics 000
Despite the apparent naivety of the “liberal in the street,” the one who soaks up and believes all the dramatic nonsense preached by the likes of Howard Dean, John Kerry, Al Franken, Jesse Jackson, Michael Moore, Dick Durbin and the rest of that dubious crowd who claim to be Americans of some sort, there are some pretty sharp thinkers lurking in the background over there on the left who know how to orchestrate situations that enable their political and media lackeys to blare accusations and innuendo at the GOP and the eeevil corporations in an attempt to draw votes to the left side of the aisle.
I don’t believe these strategists are creating any of their own strategies, but they are simply following guidelines set down by leftists of decades past.
Before I go on, I must once again say this: I was raised in what would today be called a Conservative Democrat family. Back then, the Democrats were a viable party that stood for real ideals, stood behind the concept of America and could be respected for their political beliefs, if not agreed with. They, like the Republicans, were true patriots.
Somewhere along the line, however, they were hijacked by far left liberals – the folks who nowadays prefer to be called “progressives,” and since then they’ve been allowing these liberals to do their talking for them. As a result, we have the privilege of listening to grown men, senators and reps, no less, comparing our Armed Forces members with Nazis(JFK would neither have condoned nor kept silent over something like that, but he was a genuine war hero and a true patriot), calling the president a liar and a fascist, comparing Camp Delta, the detention center where we store captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, with the “killing fields of the Pol Pot regime” – my favorite Durbin idiocy – and a ration of other innuendo that only a total moron would listen to and then vote to reelect the politician who said it.
That said, my topic here is more an economics related commentary than anything else.
It must be understood that liberals, whether it occurs to them or not, support a socialist or, in as many cases, a purely communist itinerary for the United States. Everything they stand for literally screams this.
America is a capitalist republic. We were founded on the concept of limited government , which means that the Fed’s responsibility is to protect and govern the country on a “big picture” level and leave social and “detail” issues to the individual states. Where local disputes as to law arose, the Supreme Court ruled based on the Constitution. This policy served us well for a long time. We became the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet, the world’s manufacturing dynamo and a nation whose benevolence has helped numerous poor countries develop independent means of economic survival, even to the point of lending them megabucks we have never even collected interest payments on.
Enter the left:
The left believes that as many jobs as possible should be unionized, even unskilled positions, so as to milk companies for as much of their profits as possible. I am in favor of unions for skilled personnel in jobs that present physical risks that might shorten their career spans, such as carpenters, roofers and so forth{my best friend was a carpenter for nearly three decades, and before turning 48 his knees were shot – if it weren’t for the union, he, his wife and four children would be screwed – his disability retirement is due exclusively to the union as his condition, which included internal replacement surgery, was the result of many years’ high impact work rather than a single incident that could be cited at a hearing}. I am not in favor of someone who has no skills and performs a function anyone could do being compensated according to a union scale that is well beyond his value to the marketplace. That is absurd.
The left believes differently, and they back the unions 100%.
The left believes that the government must micromanage business, whenever possible saddling corporations with costly regulations and taxing them mercilessly.
The left believes in “going after” companies that have become industry leaders, because success means independence to a certain degree, and independence brings any entity farther away from government control – who needs any kind of subsidy funds or tax considerations when they are worth a ten digit figure?
The left believes in bribing people not to work, so that the continued bribery(welfare, anyone?) will get them votes.
The left believes that their every whim should be a federal case, ignoring states’ rights, that the federal government is mom and dad.
The left believes that those who bust their touchases, gamble, sacrifice and achieve financial success should divide their profits with the lazy, who have contributed nothing and have no intention of contributing anything, ever.
We go to the company in which the unskilled people are “earning” $35,000.00 per year plus an impressive package of benefits and perks, all paid by the employer due to the union. On top of everything else, for those who don’t know, an employer has to match the Social Security tax paid by an employee, including the overly compensated employee.
The liberals and their labor unions, all for the sake of gaining votes, make this unskilled labor too expensive for the firms involved, and in order to make it affordable, the victimized companies seek out foreign labor, lay off employees , and suddenly the guy making over twenty bucks an hour in a nine dollar job has no job at all.
Here in California, where liberals rule the roost, financially smothering regulations and high corporate taxes run many businesses out of the state and into more business friendly states. They often leave behind four digit newly unemployed figures.
The sad part is that they really don’t give a damn, and I mean they have no feelings one way or the other, for those families and individuals who go through financial hell as a result of their actions. To the liberals, more unemployment and more misery, despite the fact that they caused it by design, are completely insignificant. They just don’t give a damn about the victims of their political plays, and that’s exactly what they are: To liberals, unemployment and/or poverty they’ve caused is perfectly acceptable as long as they can blame it on the Republicans and those eeevil corporations I mentioned earlier.
My whole point here is that the socialist left has acquired the recipe for sabotaging big business and then blaming it for its survival-oriented responses, all in the name of sleazing out a few additional votes. It is both pitiful and tragic that the Democrats, under the control of their Marxist liberal associates, feel no shame when they manipulate people out of jobs in order to blame the political opposition and attract votes to their side of the aisle.
The goal is financial chaos, anything they can do to be able to blame or attack{at present} the Bush Administration or (at any time) the Republican party, capitalism or any vestige of American business tradition they can label negatively in order to gain popularity for their cause.
Their cause is obvious to anyone who really pays attention to the left’s activities: The end of the American way of life and the beginning of the sort of collectivism we see under the heading of socialism.... Or worse.
If only those mindless twits that support “liberalism” were smart enough to understand exactly what they are trying to drag this great and free country into....
Posted by Seth at November 7, 2005 11:44 AM
Comments
heh. i don't even know where to start on this.
but it's always humorous (or sad?) to see people like you doing what you do best- supporting "liberal" policies when they actually affect you. or, in this case, you went a step beyond your typical conservative and actually cared about your friend, not just yourself. you support unions for people like your friend because he got screwed on the job, and because of the union, got some compensation for it. and damn the rest!
get over it- unions are part of the market. they're an organic part of the market. if a company doesn't want to play by union rules, it can move on and try to find other employees.
Posted by: armondo at November 7, 2005 12:49 PM
Armondo
My attitude where unions are concerned were formed long -- stress long -- before my friend became disabled.
People in necessary high impact or potentially more dangerous fields are performing needed services at risk to themselves, and one of the lesser risks is becoming disabled years before you've completed your career.
On the other hand,
A person who, basically, is charging a company double(this includes all compensation and "perks") or more what the average non-union shop compensates, which defines the asset value of a given position(no lib double-speak, please, I'm talking about non-union firms that do everything legally -- yes, they do exist)and can't be fired for violating half the regs in an employee manual, whose job is a physically safe, non-strenuous no-brainer is basically a parasite from the company point of view.
I worked for a company a number of years ago that was non-union but had better health benefits, compensated sick days and useful perks than most union members receive. Some union folks tried to muscle in.
They didn't succeed. Had they, on the other hand, the company would've shown their displeasure by taking away perks that no union has the authority to demand.
Many companies take really good care of their employees, and when a union pushes its way in to one of those, it is not doing so out of any concern for "brother workers," it is doing so to squeeze money for itself from said concern.
Most unions today are about as sincere as any liberals who express concern for anybody but themselves.
Unions like to successfully gouge employers, because it provides them an opportunity to raise membership dues. When the rank and file unskilled worker has to be so highly overcompensated, the price for the firm's product has to go up to cover it, or people have to be laid off, or -- the company has to relocate the operation someplace where people will work for less. This means massive layoffs in a big firm.
Your "hire other employees" idea is ludicrous, the union will just target them as well, and the company will spend a lot of time they can't afford to waste on dealing with that. Unproductive. So they leave altogether and here come the layoffs.
It's great for liberals, rather than truthfully saying they drove the employer out of the area by making local production prohibitively expensive, they blame the layoffs on "corporate greed."
This is business -- a company has responsibilities to the people that own it. They are the shareholders, who have invested in the company to earn dividends.
This is called capitalism, and it is coin-of -the-realm in America. It is a prime reason we are the richest country in the world, and that whether you like it or not, Corporate America feeds, clothes and powers the entire country because of capitalism.
Lastly, I call your attention to your remark that conservatives don't care about anyone but themselves. That is very funny indeed!
Try reading up on some of the financial activities of your liberal political VIPs, the ones they would deny everyone else. Ask Teddy K if he'd mind having a minority gas station attendant and his family of six move in down the street from him.
Liberals(marxists, if you prefer) are the most self indulgent, me-me-me people around.
One more thing: I have no problem with the occasional epithet at my blog, God only knows I would be a leading offender, but I do not countenance obscene personal attacks here, so I have deleted yours from your comment. It definitely defined your charactar, I'll give you that.
Posted by: Seth at November 7, 2005 02:45 PM
Seth, the libs in this state are nuts. After the election results from yesterday I am convinced that the left coast is called that not because of geography, but because of the moronic, brainless twits that passed crap yesterday and put down the measures that MIGHT have started California on the road to redemption.
Anyway, thought you may want to see this
Posted by: kender at November 9, 2005 05:30 PM
Kender, the results from the polls yesterday made me more certain than ever that for me, getting out of this socialist hell hole is the right move -- my next travelfest to the east coast begins within the next 2 weeks, if that, and so will house hunting.
Your post on yesterday's results is spot on, these people in California are dead set on using their existing rights to fight to end up with no rights, they are beyond stupid.
And to many of them, it's not even about the usual convoluted liberal logic, it's about voting against Arnold's policies because they hate Arnold. He should have pretended to want the opposite of what he wanted, then maybe they'd have voted the RIGHT way.
Posted by: Seth at November 9, 2005 07:53 PM