This should get Pantaleon Florez III’s attention: you like being a “rent seeker”
Just 3 hours ago, Pantaleon Florez III left a comment on a post I put up about a month ago college grad schools complaining that because of Obamacare, the college that employed them had to cut their hours simply because of the economic realities forced upon it by Obamacare. My attitude at the time was “well, most of you voted for him, so decisions have consequences”. I’ve decided to respond here instead of in a comment. To recap:
A contingent of University of Kansas graduate students have launched a petition opposing a proposal by campus officials to slash the number of maximum weekly hours graduate student employees may work from 30 to 20 – a plan concocted by administrators to skirt Obamacare mandates. “We do not wish to see graduate employees lose employment opportunities that are crucial for paying their bills, feeding themselves and their families, and generally establishing a decent standard of living,” the petition states, according to the campus Daily Kansan.
Pantaleon responded this way (and I am attempting to show the quoting of my post so emphasis is mine with a bit of reformatting, parts separated by “*****”):
My post: “The world owes you nothing – not even a “decent standard of living”
The Comment: “All people who work hard deserve to be compensated in a way that provides them a decent standard of living. I have held a job since I was 14. I have worked hard for everything I have.”
This is part of our problem – too many people conflate compassion and economics and come up with a view that is neither. Effectively, you are demanding all employers provide for their employees some standard of living. You wish to make employees dependent upon their employer for their way of life – the idea of ‘earning a wage” disappears. That is both an entitlement mentality (“you owe me more than what you are giving me”) and a demand that “you must take care of me”. None of that is true – having signed both the front and back of payroll checks:
- You don’t have to work for me. I don’t have to employ you. Those are the bottom line attributes of this economic transaction.
- As an employee, I am owed only the amount we agreed upon for the time and talent I spend working creating profit for the company’s owners. As an owner, I pay what I what I should. Nothing more and nothing less.
- This is a voluntary free market / capitalist, economic proposition, not a morality play. I asked, you offered, I countered, and you countered what that remuneration would be. If that is not enough to support your standard of living, go elsewhere. If you do not generate a profit for me, I will let you go.
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The Comment:“It’s not so much about the “world” not owing me anything. It’s more about being a hard-working American. If anything, your lack of compassion for hard-working people is one of the most un-American statements I have heard in a long time.”
I am compassionate for hard-working people – that they would have the will to better their skills in order get better jobs to better provide for their families. THAT IS the American way – the land of opportunity. A land where a living is earned and not demanded. A land where success lays upon the sweat of the brow and not a law that demands equal outcome.
I want Government to get out of the way so that MORE “slots of opportunity” would be opened up so folks can go for that brass ring. I am not like Obama in that I want folks to only be in and reach the middle class, I want them to have opportunities to become absolutely filthy stinkin’ rich, be part of the 1%, and love what they do. But that doesn’t mean that I, or any one else, owes anyone else anything. It is NOT my responsibility, either as an owner (through higher pay) or even as a consumer (through higher prices), to “take care of you” (which is what you are demanding).
This is where you conflate two things that you should not: capitalism and morality.
- Capitalism is a financial transaction. Period. There is no “morality” involved, nor should be as that distorts it by either raising or lowering the price signaling that should drive a market. In its simplest form, you have something I want to buy. You want my money more than what you have to sell. The perfect transaction, in its purest form, is one in which:
- I perceive that the widget I purchase from you has more value than the money I give to you.
- You perceive that the value of the money I give you is higher than the widget you give to me.
- If I don’t think I am getting a better value than my money is worth, I won’t complete the deal. Either will you. It is all about value, a one dimensional transaction.
- Morality is multi-dimensional and is about what is right and wrong. It is about how we treat others as well as how we look at the issues and problems of the day. It deals with emotion and worldviews of how to approach issues. It is not about an economic transaction.
It is not my ” lack of compassion for hard-working people” that is the problem here – I’ve worked years at minimum wage when I was starting out. And then I upped my skill levels and went after jobs that would pay me more for that enhancement. I NEVER believed that my minimum wage employers should be forced to give me a wage that would provide “a decent standard of living”. I was paid “what I was worth” to my employer and if I didn’t like it, I could go somewhere else. Like it or not, you are worth as an employee what you are willing to accept for pay and what your employer is willing to pay. No more and no less at the time you start. There is no morality, and thus, no compassion involved. Instead, it seems that you are turning that basic principle on its head – your attitude is that “*I* will tell you, Mr. Employer, what I am worth AND you WILL pay me more than the job is economically worth if that is my need”.
You are trying to tell employers you MUST pay me what *I* think I’m worth. That doesn’t work as for many jobs, it is not economically viable. Your premise of “I work, you should support me” is all wrong and selfish – WHY would any employer hire someone for a job at a cost higher than what it can return to the business?
Compassion is an individual act of charity. It is what I choose to give someone else, or a group of people, on my own and out of my own pocked for whatever reason that drives me to do it. You are declaring it to be other than that.
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My post: Decisions have consequences and your decision to use your vote to put the guy into office that put this law into place that is now putting you into this place – near poverty – IS your consequence:
The Comment: My vote put a man in office who made it possible for me to get affordable healthcare for $33.90 per month. He has done his job and I appreciate the help.
So, you are a rent-seeker. Let me put it plainly even if it sounds cold-hearted: you are all too willing put someone into power that will use the force of Government to extract value from others for your own benefit. In other words, you have no problem in having Government to take from others and raise their prices simply to raise your standard of living on the fruits of their labor. As long as it benefits you, you are fine that it puts others less able to provide for their families? How is THAT moral? How is forced compassion (an oxymoron) a compassionate act?
“I appreciate the help” – well of course you do! You have aided and abetted the taking from others that which you could not earn by yourself. In the private sector, that would be called stealing, taking someone else’s private property. Or is it that since Government is doing the taking on your behalf, your hands are clean? That it is not “stealing”? How is THAT being compassionate on YOUR part, Pantaleon Florez III?
Are you that naïve to believe that healthcare really costs that little? Or just happy that other people are being forced to pay it for you? Trust me, true compassion is that I would pay it for you as a voluntary act. Being forced to pay it via my taxes is not compassionate at all – it is only having to obey the law. And if I did not pay that tax, pay that premium of your’s that I might not want to, I would end up in jail. Thus, I either am forced to pay your premium or lose my freedom. That is selfishness on your part.
It truly is sad to see you acknowledge the debasement of the Office of the President to that of merely “he gives me stuff”.
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The Comment: Additionally, in case if you are still questioning my work ethicm I can’t wait to get the job that allows me to pay into the STILL private healthcare system all on my own.
Given your gladness of demanding more than what you are worth from an employer, and happiness to have Government take what is others’ to give to you, I would not want to hire you – you have proven your morality to me: my needs come before you.
“**************************”
The Post: It will ALSO teach you to be part of the informed electorate – if you had been, you would have kicked Obama and Obamacare to the curb
The Comment: I am a very informed member of the electorate.
The grad students in the original post were not. They expected to get something for free – Obamacare. They are finding out that TANSTAAFL still holds – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If Government artificially raises the cost of having employees, the employer will have to cut costs somewhere else. They did and now those grad students are learning a very expensive lesson – the cut came out of their wages.
The Comment: So informed that I know the leaders of my state rejected Federal funds that would have supported so many of my fellow Kansans. So informed that I know the state could have helped out by setting up a state marketplace
Perhaps free to your fellow Kansans, and perhaps for three years of the offer if the Feds hold to the law (not something I am willing to bet on). TANSTAAFL again – where do you think those Federal funds come from – out of thin air? Obama-stash? Many of your fellow Kansans are Federal taxpayers – you are happy to take from their families for you and yours? Again I ask, how is that moral? How is that compassionate? Then what after those 3 years – you are willing to put that higher burden on Kansan taxpayers? Again, more from others is the answer? By force?
No, your leaders decided that protecting Kansan taxpayers was the right thing to do in this case. I agree. You see, I do not believe there is anything called ‘collective compassion’ when it is demanded by those that would manipulate Government to their own ends. Voluntarily banding together to help others,yes, that is compassion. Just as private charities used to do before Progressive driven Government drove out the private charities from the public square. But that Progressive Government has perverted
The Comment: I have voted in every election since I have been old enough to do so. I have always informed myself about actual candidates, have no party affiliation, and have voted for Democrats/Republicans/Others.
And this time you voted for someone that would “give you stuff“; that is not the attitude of an adult (ok, maybe I’m wrong – make that a greedy adult). Good to know your notion of the Proper Role of Government is no longer to protect our Liberty and Private Property, but to act like a humungous Santa Clause. A progressive one at that.
