A question to ponder - Granite Grok

A question to ponder

Don Boudreax, Professor of economics and blogger at Cafe Hayek flips a standard question on its head and pulls it inside-out sideways:

Last night and this morning your news anchors introduced your report on D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s ambivalence toward the pending “living-wage” bill with this question: “Will the District force large retailers to pay their workers more?”

A more illuminating introduction would be “Will the District force low-skilled workers to demand wages that make many of these workers unprofitable to employ?”

Socialism is the New SlaveryThe SEIU is the union that is principly behind the Fast Food Strikes held all over the country yesterday and the impetus behind the question.  Frankly, while the leadership there is pretty much all in the tank for Obama and would more at home in a Communist regime (“Workers Unite!  Death to the 1% (or at least force them to downsize to a single bedroom condo)), they are not stupid.  There is no way that those strikers are going to get $15 / hour.  The short term goal is, with the confirmation of Obama’s newest Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, is to begin to shape the battlefield for “wage reform” and “work rules” – here is his “supportive fire“:

 Perez said job creation is a focus and that he views the Labor Department as “the quarterback in the workforce system,” bringing together workers, businesses and labor unions to build a “demand-driven” workforce that has the skills needed to meet employer needs.

The quarterback calls the signals and runs the offense (and make no mistake, this quarterback has the full blessing of “Coach Obama”).  This is how they see economics – top down command and control.  The Government should be in its rightful place, so goes their ideology, and manages the rest of us.  Just like any other player, we are to move and do according to The Plan – and The Plan comes before anything else (hmm, their Plan has worked just so well these past five years; is the Left willing to say “oh, socialism IS the best way to go – it’s just that the right people haven’t implemented it right just yet” – and then point at themselves?).  Cogs to be moved around to fill the holes into their industrial complex; after all, they are the Smart People.

You see, in their heads, it is not the large corporations that should make the rules in the labor marketplace where we all get to set our own contracts, employees and employers, for mutual benefit.  Nor is it the single guy that has worked his fingers to the bones, ate Ramen noodles for a decade, and scrimped and saved to open his own shop – delayed gratification now for better things in the future for him and his family.  No, the goal is to move what is left of the Free Marketplace’s Overton Window further to the left such that the decision makers are not those that own or manage the businesses – it is to more “democratically decide” how capital is to be allocated.  Think I’m wrong?  From a post labeled “Socialists Designed Obama’s Credit Watchdog Agency” (warning – if you are a Free Market type person that believes YOU should make the decisions for yourself, it will churn your stomach):

…Booth’s heavy hand in negotiations shatters the administration’s narrative that financial legislation was designed to “protect the middle class from another financial crisis.”

Long before the crisis hit, Booth and other socialist community organizers from Chicago schemed with Harvard professor (now Sen.) Elizabeth Warren and other leftists from Boston to create what is now the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). They agreed to frame the issue in terms of helping the middle class, but it was really part of a broader socialist agenda to “eliminate the unfair separate-and-unequal financial system in America.”

…Booth and her academy have been careful not to mention their socialist ideals — namely, “reallocating wealth and power” — explicitly in public. A leaked internal academy paper, however, reveals organizers decided early on that “every social proposal that we make must be couched in terms of how it will strengthen capitalism.

And once again, we see the Standard Operating Procedure – Leftists LIE!  If they were absolutely open, transparent, and truthful, they know that the American People (at least up until now) would never vote them in.  So, they aren’t and won’t – by their own admission.  They count of the truth that most people are only halfway listening and are too busy or occupied to pay much attention (“after all, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two Parties” – except there are TRILLIONS worth of difference).  Socialists here in America are the political magicians: “please watch this hand over here….but we have lots of other hands where you can’t see them”.

And the money quote:

…”This fight against Wall Street is part of an even larger fight over who matters in the society, over our values and our priorities, over whether or not we have corporate control in banking” or state control, she added.

Government makes the rules and the decisions – the epitome of Fascism, right?  For that IS the definition, the real definition, as opposed to the faux outrage of “FASCIST!” that the Left accuses the TEA Party being.  Once again, the redefinition of the language never ceases with these Totalitarians.  Indeed, they are weaving a web such that it will almost impossible to unravel – and the economic philosophy that made this country great, capitalism, will be tied down forever by people who not only hate America but hate capitalism – because nothing says success like constraining America by forcing an economic system that has never worked anywhere ever onto it.

And oh, by the way, they hate the idea that you should ever be able to make the important decisions in your life yourself.  Ever.  Else, why do they do this?

Oh yeah, back to those Mickey D’s workers:

McDonalds recently went on a hiring binge in the U.S., adding 62,000 employees to its roster. The hiring picture doesn’t look quite so rosy for Europe, where the fast food chain is drafting 7,000 touch-screen kiosks to handle cashiering duties.

The move is designed to boost efficiency and make ordering more convenient for customers. In an interview with the Financial Times, McDonald’s Europe President Steve Easterbrook notes that the new system will also open up a goldmine of data.

I remember when McDonalds announced that they were going to hire lots of new workers – giving jobs to people that formerly didn’t have one.  I think that the SEIU knows about this as well.  If so, here’s a union that will cause lots of people to lose their jobs.

Nice.  Again, the Left says, cries, and screams “WE ARE FOR THE LITTLE GUY!” – and it turns out, like clock work, their policies and actions will HURT the Little Guy, not help.  This is what happens when these people take Choice away from you and put the marketplace into chains. And only they, the Neo-Feudalists, have the keys to those chains.  Economic slavery, folks.

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