I have noticed a definite pattern emerging ever since before the 2008 election of BHO: many voters have given up thinking and have decided to vote for the popular shills of humanism, otherwise known as the educated elite.
BHO, the POTUS, is surrounded by Harvard grads, each of whom has been steeped in liberal mores taught by educators who have risen to the level of their incompetence (the Peter Principle). I like what Tomas Sowell, economist, said about these professors:
“Too often what are called “educated” people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.”[1]
“People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existedhas had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”
In my estimation the American voter, though often degreed, has become less educated and intellectually apathetic. This voter has become a stage-one thinker – someone who finds some humanist value in a policy, votes for the person promoting it and doesn’t want to think any further about it, believing that they have done their good deed for the day. Yet, the policy does not operate in isolation and, typically, havoc and damage control ensues when the policy is implemented. Our nation is left ever more crippled. The Minimum Wage Law (MWL) is one prime example of this stage one thinking implemented and voted for by people who let others do their thinking.
Thomas Sowell in his excellent book the Thomas Sowell Reader, a compendium of his many newspaper articles and essays, wrote an article titled Minimum Wage Laws. Here are some of his thoughts from that article to ponder deeply before the next election:
“By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when process are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market.”[2]
“The unemployed are made idle by wage rates artificially set above the level of their productivity. Those who are idled in their youth are of course delayed in acquiring the job skills and experience which could make them more productive – therefore higher earner – later on.”[3]
“Although most industrial societies have minimum wage laws, not all do. Switzerland and Hong Kong have been among the exceptions – and both have had very low unemployment rates.”[4]
“Higher costs for a given quantity and quality of labor tend to produce less employment, just as higher prices for other things tend to produce fewer sales. Moreover, higher costs in the form of mandated benefits have the same economic effect as higher costs in the form of minimum wage laws. The explicit minimum wage rate understates the labor costs imposed by European governments, which also mandates various employer contributions to pension plans and health benefits, among other things. Europe’s unemployment rates shot up when such government-mandated benefits to be for by employers grew sharply during the 1980 and 1990s.”[5]
Average hourly compensation in Europe of manufacturing employees in the European Union countries in general is higher than in the United States or Japan. So is unemployment.”[6]
“Labor unions also benefit from minimum wage laws, are among the strongest proponents of such laws, even though their members typically make much more than minimum wage rate.”[7]
“Just as businesses seek to have government impose tariffs on imported goods that compete with their products, so labor unions use minimum wage laws as tariffs to force up the price of non-union labor that competes with their members for jobs.”[8]
“…when all is said and done, most empirical studies indicate that minimum wage laws reduce employment in general, and especially the employment of younger less skilled, and minority workers.”[9] (emphasis mine)
Thomas Sowell’s article is chock full of empirical information and common sense economics. I could continue to quote many of his insightful words. I’ll provide one more series of quotes about minorities and the implementation of MWLs the past century:
“Again, it is necessary to note how price is a factor even in racial discrimination…It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers.”[10] (emphasis mine)
Stage-one voting creates unemployment. Obama, the educated One, Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus should know the facts. But in ignoring the economic data they choose “navel-gazing, hand-wringing or self-dramatization” to preach a Liberal Utopia that will never arrive on this earth. MWLs produce the opposite effect, in fact!
Don’t ignore the data. Read. Understand. Think beyond stage-one. Uncle Sam needs You more than ever.
Again, Thomas Sowell:
“People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.”[11]
[1] Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader, p. 401
Note: Mitt Romney has come out in favor of auto-increasing the MWL. I am voting Newt Gingrich in the Illinois GOP primary.
Update: In a 02/07/2012 RCP article regarding Mitt Romney’s faux conservatism, Thomas Sowell said:
“Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more “advanced” than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20 percent or higher.
The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don’t get hired. It is not rocket science.
Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, “Capitalism and Freedom.” So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself “conservative” has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to. “
We must de-centralize government and return the power to the states and more importantly to the individual. Obama, his czars and the entrenched government bureaucracies do NOT know what is best for you and me or for our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The video below is Herman Cain endorsing Newt Gingrich to be the Republican nominee for President.
Newt, after noting the differences between himself other nominee candidates and Barack Hussein Obama and after speaking about his first week’s agenda in the White House, speaks about “the spirit of Pioneering…the New Age of Exploration…big people and dreams…our problems are not the people, they are…
Obama and the Dems want to bring everyone down to the same “bottom-feeder” level called “fair”. In lieu of a good record to extol, Obama’s campaign plea is take more money from the so-called 1% and then to redistribute the money according to some vague notion of fairness to the 99%. Obama is not about wealth creation. Obama is about wealth redistribution. Obama doesn’t want to make the pie bigger. Obama wants to slice the pie into smaller slices. Obama and the Dems don’t create wealth, they syphon off wealth by all manner of taxation. The Dems also build casinos or as I call them, shell games, to gain revenue money from the fools who happily play their life away hoping to “Win the Future” (a Obama campaign mantra). And with no money yet in hand Obama, the snake-oil salesman he is, makes financial promises to his base (e.g., college kids, unions, banks, etc.) and does so without regard for the taxpayer who would foot the bill.
After destroying America’s financial future his first term with bailouts to his cronies and the passing of Obamacare, Obama now seeks a second term to continue the pillaging process. Obama is hell-bent on wiping the American slate clean with a rag he calls “Hope” and then spray painting his own perverse ideological graffiti, “Change”, on the walls of history. For Obama and his posse the U.S. Constitution is just another authority to hold in contempt. This is Obama as Ludicrous, a political class gangsta member from Chicago with the same old denigrating street rap – “I’m for me and my crew. The rest can go to f___ themselves.
Think about this. Do you really want someone defining fairness? Do you really want someone to pick and chose who wins and who loses? Do you really think that government will stop private property encroachment (taxes) with the 1%? Once you give government the rights to your pocketbook (healthcare included) you lose complete control of it regardless of your democratic representation.
Now for social gospel junkies, this type of ideology is nowhere near Christianity – robbing Peter to pay Paul. For the voter, this socialist ideology is nothing other than giving him a false hope of security wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. It certainly smells like day-old fish.
True conservatives like myself want everyone to have an opportunity to succeed, to rise up to a new level called “personal success.” Think about this: if your money is being taxed away to feed a socialist’s irrational vision than you have less money to provide for your family, less money to build a successful business, less money for charity. Government becomes the focus of your life – not God, family, friends or the needy.
A vote for Obama will bring you and your family down to a new low and will suck the life out of our nation. His re-election would move our country from constitutionalism to despotism. If you vote for that you deserve it.
This next presidential election we must not put our votes out to the “hope and change” pasture. We must think and choose wisely. Just say “No” to the stupor inducing drug called socialism and its street-corner salesman Obama.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
At the age of thirteen I began working as a clerk in a store. I have since been able to provide for myself and my kids through the lessons learned at that early age. Work ethic update: Jan. 16th, 2012 SC debate:
While the talking and tweeting heads split hairs over differences in GOP candidates I thought I might throw together the perfect Amalgamated Candidate, a conservative lingua franca Candidate made up of the salutary features of the current nominee field and a personally favored write-in. The Amalgamated Candidate, synthesized with the DNA of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan, categorically rejects Obamic progressivism, Carter Malaise-ism, Soros Europeanization-ism, the Left’s Holier-than-thou-ism, etc. and has…
…the looks and hair of Mitt Romney (this Mad Men ad model coupled with George W. Bush–ian business experience are the “electabilty factors so desirable to a Washington insider and puppeteer like Karl Rove);
…Newt Gingrich’s intellectual prowess, his track record which is proven and his savvy in the political realm;
…Rick Santorum’s heart for family values;
…Jon Huntsman’s knowledge of the Chinese born of his ambassadorship and his ability to speak Chinese;
…Ron Paul’s unequivocal passion for the Constitution and for smaller unobtrusive government;
…Rick Perry’s devotion to God and to civic duty.
All of the above embodied with Sarah Palin’s moxy and love for America.
WLS-890 AM, Sunday afternoon: On my way to the grocery store I turned on the car radio. Phil Ponce, a Chicago television journalist for WTTW, was filling in for one of his sons, either Anthony or Dan, during their Sunday afternoon radio broadcast. I believe the Ponce Brother’s program was also substituting for Bob Brinker’s Money Talk (a favorite program of mine) that afternoon. As I tuned in Anthony or Dan was mentioning how that most of the callers were favoring Newt Gingrich as the GOP nominee.
The Ponces, father and son, then took another call, a female caller who mentioned her age of 59. She talked (I’ll paraphrase) about how the country needs to be taken back. Phil Ponce mentioned that many callers had said the same thing. He then asked her what she meant by that. In brief she said that many of the laws and the Constitution itself that we as a nation have in place are simply disregarded by the people in power, especially by President Obama and his administration.
In talking about her childhood she recalled how that we as a nation knew what the laws were and that they were not subject to arbitrary change by those in power as they are now. She said no country is perfect or has it easy but our nation was a light shining on a hill (a Reagan reference) but is now it is dimming in that capacity.
That is what I heard. Her exact words…if the show’s podcast or transcript becomes available I will post it.
Also, as I found out later, during the same broadcast and prior to my turning the radio on, Illinois Senator Mark Kirk surprised the Ponces by calling in. Phil Ponce recounted how he had jokingly suggested that the illinois Senator call in to talk about his choice for a GOP candidate. Senator Kirk did call in and said that he was backing Romney. This is too bad.
About two weeks ago I wrote an e-mail to Senator Kirk asking him to back Newt Gingrich. I did this when I heard that Kirk was coming out for Romney. Romney, I believe, will be in over his head. But if Romney becomes the GOP nominee Romney would still be a much better choice than Obama, Obama and his multiple czars who are responsible to no one but the president.
By bypassing our elected representatives in Congress and appointing these czars Obama showed flagrant disrespect for America, her Constitution and our elected representatives. Also, Obama’s appointment of Eric Holder as AG was meant as a slap in the face of the American system of justice (e.g., Holder’s ignoring the Black Panther’s intimidation of voters).
In a recent web-column for The Detroit News economist Thomas Sowell talks about the need for a man of action to lead this country:
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster. …
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich’s candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years — followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it “the Clinton surplus” but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.…
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama — and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don’t accomplish much, you don’t ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Illinois must vote for Newt in the Illinois primary on March 24, 2012. We need a man of action who has a sincere appreciation of American history, the Constitution, American values and actual success with the political process. I encourage you to vote for the Statesman Newt Gingrich to be the GOP nominee for president. Let’s stop the pious baloney.
“Precisely because Gingrich is right about the moral crisis the country is facing — millions of lives and entire communities destroyed by drugs, alcohol, gangs, and violence — there is a moral imperative for him to fill the leadership vacuum and address the growing devastation.” Arianna Huffington, Why Newt Must Run, The Weekly Standard, 1995 (h/t Legal Insurrection)
The video below provides a great opportunity to become familiar with Newt Gingrich. I suggest watching the complete video. Of special interest to me is the segment starting at 27:51 regarding his moral character, his family background, his promotion of wisdom, his Christianity and his discovery of the power of the Eucharist.
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
Minimum Wage Or The Price We Pay For Stupid
February 4, 2012 Leave a comment
I have noticed a definite pattern emerging ever since before the 2008 election of BHO: many voters have given up thinking and have decided to vote for the popular shills of humanism, otherwise known as the educated elite.
BHO, the POTUS, is surrounded by Harvard grads, each of whom has been steeped in liberal mores taught by educators who have risen to the level of their incompetence (the Peter Principle). I like what Tomas Sowell, economist, said about these professors:
And, Walter E. Williams:
In my estimation the American voter, though often degreed, has become less educated and intellectually apathetic. This voter has become a stage-one thinker – someone who finds some humanist value in a policy, votes for the person promoting it and doesn’t want to think any further about it, believing that they have done their good deed for the day. Yet, the policy does not operate in isolation and, typically, havoc and damage control ensues when the policy is implemented. Our nation is left ever more crippled. The Minimum Wage Law (MWL) is one prime example of this stage one thinking implemented and voted for by people who let others do their thinking.
Thomas Sowell in his excellent book the Thomas Sowell Reader, a compendium of his many newspaper articles and essays, wrote an article titled Minimum Wage Laws. Here are some of his thoughts from that article to ponder deeply before the next election:
Thomas Sowell’s article is chock full of empirical information and common sense economics. I could continue to quote many of his insightful words. I’ll provide one more series of quotes about minorities and the implementation of MWLs the past century:
Stage-one voting creates unemployment. Obama, the educated One, Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus should know the facts. But in ignoring the economic data they choose “navel-gazing, hand-wringing or self-dramatization” to preach a Liberal Utopia that will never arrive on this earth. MWLs produce the opposite effect, in fact!
Don’t ignore the data. Read. Understand. Think beyond stage-one. Uncle Sam needs You more than ever.
Again, Thomas Sowell:
“People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.”[11]
[1] Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader, p. 401
[2] Ibid., p. 108
[3] Ibid., p. 108
[4] Ibid., p. 109
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., p.110
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p.111
[10] Ibid., p. 115 & 117
[11] Ibid., p.397
Note: Mitt Romney has come out in favor of auto-increasing the MWL. I am voting Newt Gingrich in the Illinois GOP primary.
Update: In a 02/07/2012 RCP article regarding Mitt Romney’s faux conservatism, Thomas Sowell said:
Thoughts from Uncle Miltie:
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Filed under 2012 election, Economics, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with 2012 Presidential campaign, Economics, harvard grads, Milton Friedman, minimum wage law, Minimum Wage Laws, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Obama, peter principle, politics, progressivism, The Left, The Thomas Sowell Reader, The voter, Thomas Sowell, tomas sowell, Walter E. Williams