Say Anything Blog

3- Medical Benefits
A- All (Al-Qa’eda) members can visit the medical staff and obtain medicine free of charge

What doctor would refuse free medical care to a terrorist.  I’m sure there are some incentives, such as keeping their heads, that makes doctors embrace these patients.

Perhaps we should sic the UAW on them. In 50-60 years they would be gone. Just like steel and textiles in America.

This is what bothers me so much about the lefty jihad against Wal-Mart.  We have watched unions and lefty politicians slowly burden business in America until the businesses are left with no other choice than to either raise prices and cut back on expenses (read: employees).

Then these same people complain about losing jobs and rising prices.

Do they learn from their mistakes?  Hell no.  All they want to do is push their repressive policies on businesses that are actually prospering and adding jobs to the economy.

It just doesn’t make any sense. 

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

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This is what bothers me so much about the lefty jihad against Wal-Mart.  We have watched unions and lefty politicians slowly burden business in America until the businesses are left with no other choice than to either raise prices and cut back on expenses (read: employees).

Sure, corporations are forced to ship jobs to low-wage countries because those damn unions keep insisting that US workers should be able to make a living wage and enjoy such luxuries as health care, and the prospect of not living their retirement in poverty. How dare they! Don’t they realize that everything belongs to the owners and the shareholders? It is only they that deserve a shot at owning their own home and to put their kids through college.

The schmucks that don’t own the business, and merely contribute to its existence with their time, energy and intellect deserve nothing. Don’t people realize that they were so much better off in the 1930’s before FDR fucked everything up? I say repeal the child-labor laws before it’s too late!

mcair, the problem is not about making a living wage or health care, it’s about unions and politicians telling a business owner how to run his business.  In a free market economy, everything is priced according to what it’s worth to society.  If society says that $1.50 is a reasonable price to pay for a loaf of bread, the bread salesmen need to figure out a way to sell it for $1.50.  If that means that they have to pay the bakers $6.00 an hour, then that’s what society has indirectly decided that bread bakers are worth.  If you want to open your own bread business and charge $3.00 a loaf and pay your bakers $12.00 an hour, you can do that.  You better be able to convince the consumer that your bread is twice as good as the other loaf otherwise, no one will buy it.

Now, let’s look at that $1.50 loaf again.  Suppose that the government requires you to pay 8% for health care (sound familiar?).  That means that you must raise the price of your bread to keep up with the increased costs.  Since society has determined that $1.50 is a reasonable price for bread, you have a problem.  The other option is to lower your costs to offset the government-mandated programs.  If you don’t do one of those two things, you willl be out of business and all of your employees will be out of jobs.  If you take one of the two actions, either the consumers or the employees pay for the regulation.

Everyone that screams for these types of mandates seem to believe that companies have huge piles of money that they sit on.  It’s not that way.  These days, margins in most businesses are razor-thin.  They can’t easily absorb extra costs without passing them on in one way or another.

mcair blurts, Sure, corporations are forced to ship jobs to low-wage countries because those damn unions keep insisting that US workers should be able to make a living wage and enjoy such luxuries as health care, and the prospect of not living their retirement in poverty. How dare they! Don’t they realize that everything belongs to the owners and the shareholders? It is only they that deserve a shot at owning their own home and to put their kids through college.

The schmucks that don’t own the business, and merely contribute to its existence with their time, energy and intellect deserve nothing. Don’t people realize that they were so much better off in the 1930’s before FDR fucked everything up? I say repeal the child-labor laws before it’s too late!

Your childish emotions on this matter do not negate the fact that the businesses will move to an environment where it is easier to do business.

Likwidshoe,

You could have just stopped at "McAir blurts..." 

Steve L: Great points.  One more thing:  although the lefties think this is a consumer economy, the reality is that it’s a reinvestment economy.  To stay in business, you have to reinvest a lot of your profits to keep up with your competition.  Unions and govt regulations kill the goose that lays the golden eggs: investment.

Steve,

The problem is the erosion of the middle class. You overlook the fact that those workers having pay and benefits reduced to match whatever the going rates in the low-wage country with which they are now forced to compete are also consumers of the goods they formerly produced. People don’t buy many homes and cars when they are making $10/hour. Companies that offshore are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

The race-to-the-bottom improves a company’s bottom line only in the shortterm. The social safety-net also becomes strained as more people start qualifying for welfare and medicaid etc (although most on this board would have those programs eliminated, provided it didn’t impact them or their family).

The problem is the erosion of the middle class.

The middle class is eroding from one end. People are moving into the upper class.

As far as Americans go - we earn more, spend more, and invest more than ever before. You talk as if most of us are getting poorer.

mcair: The workers are "forced to compete" with low wage countries because labor unions and govt regulations make it necessary. Home ownership is way up, so that point you try to make is just false. Trying to overtax and overregulate companies is wrong. If you then try to force them to stay here, they simply go broke. Is that what you want? Safety nets simply encourage risky behavior; watch Fear Factor sometime. The race to the bottom is a feature of socialist economies, not ours. Please read some basic econ.

Getting back to the original theme of this thread, it’s interesting to see how Al Qaeda has adopted the economic and political philosophy of the American Left.