Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has a post about Erick Erickson saying what conservatives in general believe about low-income workers. Here is Erickson, version one:
“What’s going on here — by the way, more than 90% of Americans make more than minimum wage. The minimum wage is mostly people who have failed at life, and high school kids. I don’t mean to be ugly with you people, but…If you’re a thirty-something-year-old person, and you’re making minimum wage, you’ve probably failed at life. It is not that life has dealt you a bad hand. Life does not deal you cards. It is that you’ve failed at life.”In respectable circles, conservatives can usually keep their discipline together and ensure that they only heap disdain on the lazy, non-working poor. But sometimes they slip up and tell you what they really think. It’s not idleness that they think makes you a garbage failure of a person. Working a hard job preparing food for people to eat, a rather important social function, does not save you from their scorn. All low-income people, whether they are working or not, are regarded as inferior trash people.
It turns out that saying food service workers who are trying to pull down some of that sacred market income are categorical failures at life is generally regarded as quite heinous. So Erickson, version two, was forced to pretend that this is not what he meant:Matt Bruenig — Politics“If you are working your tail off and doing the best you can and, perhaps you have to rely on family, friends, charity, or government to get by, as I said on Rush’s show, that’s not failing. That’s working. And work is rewarding. But if you are in your thirties, making minimum wage in a career, and standing on the street demanding the government do something about it, yes, yes you have failed at life…In fact, the people most upset with me missed the part about me specifically saying more than once that I was referring to 30 year old minimum wage workers who are blocking traffic demanding the government force their employers to pay them more. Those people have failed at life.”For starters, surely nobody believes Erickson had any such distinction in his mind initially. The first quote is unmistakably clear. By the time people are 30, they should have gotten into a better job than food service. If they haven’t, that means they are failures. They are not failures because they are protesting. They are failures because they are not doing as well economically as they should be.…
“Force” arguments continue to be the rhetorical backwater of idiots
Matt Bruenig
I just came across this kind of rank ugliness on Facebook. When it comes down to brass tacks, a lot of these "libertarians" aren't really about liberty, the work ethic, struggle. There are just certain people they despise, and who they think need to be kept in their place.
ReplyDeleteThey have really got to get their stories straight.
ReplyDeleteI thought 47% of Americans are takers; doing nothing but sucking off the rest of us. Now, over 90% of people make more than the minimum wage.
Its amazing how they choose which statistics to quote (misquote)based on the scorn they wish to heap
"It is not that life has dealt you a bad hand. Life does not deal you cards."
ReplyDeleteWhat universe is this guy living in?
"I am enduring all because of those who are chosen, that they also may be happening upon the salvation..." 2 Tim 2:10
Even the form of all of we of mankind's eternal keeping is described as a happenstance...why should we think that this life in flesh and blood is any different?
rsp,
MB: "It pushes money through the holiest of income distribution channels, the paycheck. "
ReplyDeleteBusinesses have no authority to "push money" so this misses the whole point...
Business looks at these minimum wage increase laws as "changing the rules in the middle of the game..." so hence rails against it...
Some of these businesses have long term fixed price contracts and their business models assume a future static wage level
Then govt (ie the institution that actually DOES have the authority to "push money") comes in and in the usual libertarian broke-dick way tries to sluff off this authority onto business via a moron mid-game rule change and the business people are like "WTF?????"
So these minimum wage increasing laws are also coming from the usual very weak, sub-human, stupid, libertarian pov that misses the whole point about which institution is really the one that possesses the monetary authority...
We should have a test to determine if a person is a libertarian and if they are, then they should not be allowed anywhere near positions in government... we can find other things for them to do instead...
ReplyDeleteMatt, I would put it exactly opposite, If a person tests positive for authoritarianism, they should not be allowed anywhere near government. Think Stalin and Pinochet, for instance.
ReplyDeleteThe ironic thing is the symbiosis between libertarian Marx, and authoritarian Lenin and Stalin, and libertarians Hayek and Friedman, and authoritarian Pinochet, which may suggest that at libertarianism and authoritarianism are not linear but circular, and that the apparently opposite extremes meet at a point when the political process runs full circle. But it's been the authoritarians that did the real damage.
Those people are tyrants Tom....
ReplyDeleteNo judgement can ever be implemented except thru authority. ...
Krisis or "judgement" ie "to set right" is via authority not liberty....
There can be no justice except for authority..... how else can we impose judgement or justice? libertarianism? we see how that is working right now... not good at all imo.. we are trapped in a libertarian nightmare these days..
Rsp
Requires striking a balance between liberty and law & order. Germans call it Ordoliberalism
ReplyDelete