Trying to Explain Why the $15/hour Wage Mandate Is Bad Economic and Social Policy

 Amici,

I have a Left aquaintance who writes me often and I sometimes try (and of course fail) to make her understand why Leftist policies don't work. The following is an example. "E" sent me a Leftist article on how evil Walmart is for opposing the proposed $15/hour minimum wage. I wrote:

Long sigh, long eye-role.

Well, E, on the one hand I have no brief to defend the Waltons, as they made their money both selling cheap Chinese junk (nicknacks, not boats:) and thereby putting Mom-Pop stores out of business all across the U.S. A nation without small shop keepers is easily dominated by authoritarians. The Kaiser disparaged the English by calling them a nation of small shop keepers. Unbeknownst to that fool, it was, in fact, a compliment.

However, only people who have NO economic sense promote a $15/hour wage, as it would put tens of thousands OUT of work because their employers simply can't afford it. (This is already happened wherever it has been employed.) Wage levels are driven by market forces, not imperial fiat.

It's an insane idea by ideologues who do not understand economics, the labor market, or anything practicable. Bernie Sanders never worked an honest day labor in his life, and was in all aspects an actual bum until he got into politics. Then he sold out to Obama and then he caved to whoever is running the Biden facade. He's a putz. Anyway, the idea is classic Marxist Academic Idealism that has never worked in "the real world".

I don't expect you to comprehend this, as one has to know economics. If employers are forced to pay more for basic labor, they'll fire the basic labor. If the employers try to pass on the artificial pay raise to their customers, their customers won't by their products, thus putting the employers out of business. Government ordering of artificial wages also helps to create inflation, where one's dollar (or Euro or whatever) is worth less than it was before.

HOWEVER, even YOU can see the validity of the following question: where is the sense of bringing in 100s of 1000s of Meso-American peasants into the U.S. who don't even have an 8th-grade education in their own countries (and no English) when artificially jacking up low-income wages via a $15/hour wage mandate? They're mostly unemployable to begin with, at least in a first-world high-tech nation, but to the extent they are possibly employable, Biden handlers seem to want to put Americas OUT of employment because the U.S. people who would lose jobs to these invaders are precisely themselves Black and Latino.

That's why Trump got more Black and Latino votes than anyone in history.

But I assume you just can't comprehend any of this.

An P

Democrat Party Moral Meltdown: Bloomberg Booed for Defending Capitalism

Amici,

There can be no question as to how former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg got on the Democrat debate stage in Las Vegas. To get there, the hyper-wealthy Finance Capitalist "oligarch" simply paid off the venal Democratic National Committee; however, there really ought to be a good number of people asking the obvious question as to how a contender for the Democrat Party's presidential nomination can be booed – as Bloomberg was – when he defended Capitalism. (And as a corollary, how the debate's moderator, MSNBC's idiot Chuck Todd, could be such a pro-Communist talking point martinet for the entire evening.)

N.B. Bloomberg is actually a variety of "Crony Capitalist", technically I suppose a J.P. Morgan-type market-manipulating "financier", and those are often closely enough related or interwound with socialism to be extremely dangerous. They certainly tend to be social "progressive" in the extreme. Finance Capitalists want "Capitalism" for themselves, no doubt, but for us hoi polloi, Socialism will be our lot. 

With that distinction in mind, then, how did the Democrat audience snigger and boo at Bloomberg's (rather weak) defense of Capitalism? The Democrats have gone full Marxist, that's how. And just how did that in turn come about? This has been a classic Commie "Long March through the Institutions" since the 1930s. A book that goes into detail about this is "In Their Own Words", by Terry Turchie and Donagh Bracken. 

Like maggots, or termites, or cancer, the Communists have been eating away at both the Democrat Party and the Catholic Church (so historically aligned with the Democrats) for ages. Bella Dodd warned about what was happening in the Church back in the 1950s, and the same was true for the Democrats.

And then there's abortion: in their support of Roe v Wade, the Dems lost all moral authority; they've been twisting themselves into moral and intellectual knots defending baby killing ever since. The result, literal madness. Those who defend an incoherent thought/philosophy end up incoherent retarded zombies, basically.

An Préachan

Happy New Year? Some Dismal Thoughts

Amici,

As the year 2019 ends, I'm tempted to try to find good things to reflect upon, but can't. Bad things seem to be multiplying insanely.

Three basic problems in the world exist, and there seems to be no way to effectively deal with them.

First: Communism, et al.

Second: Scientism

Third: Catholicism

First, Communism or the truly "Red Socialism" (as opposed to, say, the very-Capitalist-yet-Welfare-States of Scandinavia) is a religion that many, many "intellectuals" in the Western World adhere to, and also that has many followers among the ignorant classes in a host of countries. It survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, it survives in Communist China, thrives throughout Latin America, while in the West, it has morphed into "Watermelon Communism" – Green on the inside and Red on the inside.

Communism is a lot like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Think about it. JWism is a publishing house that cons many ignorant people around the world into "selling" JW's products (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society publications). The big shots of the "religion" get rich on the backs of its followers. Now, all religions, from Catholicism to Mormonism, want their adherents to contribute money, but JW's laity is its worker ants. In the same manner, Communist higher-ups live "the good life" by manipulating its masses in the same vein. 

With all such, it is that underlying "religious fervor" keeps 'em all going. (Just because Communism doesn't believe in a god, except the god of self, so what? Buddhism has no god, either.) And Communism/Red Socialism will bring down the West and reduce us all to poverty, not to mention serfdom. This is because Communism's "long march" through Western institutions – very much including all-things family related (study up on the Frankfurt School of Communism), they seem to have won. They rule Western Entertainment, Academia, a good portion of the political class and significant elements of the underclasses. And they work hand-in-condom with all the deviants to force sexual deviancy on the rest of us – the goal of that is to bring down the family. Here's a good article on how the Chinese are doing this: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/coming_backfire_chinas_family_separations_in_xinjiang_a_recipe_for_islamic_radicalism.html It has some info on how Communism has always wanted to re-order human family life (as in put it out of existence).

And notice how all of the above squeezes the Middle Classes, the people who actually work for a living, and who are benefiting from President Trump's Mainstreet-Not-Wall Street Nationalism-focused Conservatism. Here's an interesting and insightful article by Salena Zito, a "shoe-leather" journalist who takes the time to spend time getting to know people in Rust-Belt towns like Ashtabula, Ohio.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-great-revolt-enters-a-new-phase-how-the-populist-uprising-of-2016-will-reverberate-in-2020/

She's excellent. Zito, a Catholic, is probably an old-line Democrat herself, and you'll see how many "knee-jerk" pro-Trump people don't trust her if you read the Comments, but then many of them do understand where she's coming from. She's a great read. And she predicted Trump would win in 2016. She was right.

As part of Communism's break up of society, we have all the "racist" talk and Social Justice Warrior crap. These two articles below discuss the outrageous attacks on Jews in New York City, and the reasons for the Leftists who run NYC's response -- well, NON-responses. The articles are valuable "eye openers".

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/we-can-no-longer-ignore-the-attacks-on-jews-in-new-york/

and

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/identity-politics-enables-anti-semitic-violence-enough/

And that is in the "financial capital of the world", New York City. As the author of the second piece writes:

And Jews are dying because of it—namely, because identity politics demand that violence against Jews be ignored in favor of “protecting” other minority groups. This type of selectivity actually worsens racial relations rather than improving them.
The left has spent the last three years marketing itself as having seized the moral high ground on tackling Jew-hatred, which may explain why their recent anger towards Trump’s Executive Order a few weeks ago, designed exclusively to combat antisemitism on college campuses, was particularly virulent. The mask has slipped, and for the left, battling antisemitism has become a means towards eviscerating the right, rather than a noble end in and of itself. I am curious how much more Jewish blood will need to be spilled before ending violence becomes an end inherently worth pursuing.

(Highlights are my own.)

Now Communism has in common with the Vatican II Church the foundational idea that people, humanity, is basically good, so all we need to do for joy and happiness is remove the Oppressor, whether nasty Capitalists or "Pharisee" "Rigorists" in the Church. However, on the larger world scene, war (all sorts of conflict) seems to be an ever-growing threat. (And it just goes to show that "humanity is basically good" is not true, not remotely.) So if the Commies in the West "shut down" the West's ability to defend itself and global commerce, etc., via local takeovers or civil wars, then we're all going to soon be living in a post-holocaust-like "Dystopia", wherein life will truly be, as old Thomas Hobbes wrote, "Solitary and poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Scientism: But I'm almost more concerned with the blindness of "our betters" when it come to Scientism, defined as "best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values." (As Wikipedia puts it.) You can readily see the basic Scientism fallacy in economics, with so many academics apparently being economic determinists, thinking because people have feet, as Chesterton once wrote, they only walk around on them to find shoes for them. All such ideas fuel "Globalism", of course, which has both great good and also great harm, depending. Trade between nations whose first concern and focus is protecting their own citizens is fine; trade wherein national sovereignty is surrendered is not. Another aspect of Scientism in economic issues is the conceit that someone trained in a grad school, earning an MBA, is smarter in business savvy than a guy who worked his way up in a company from the mailroom. That's been the cause of a massive amount of business failure and disasters in the last 40 years.

In another aspect of Scientism, one the reasons the Catholic Church crashed and burned, was post-WWII its bishops went to psychologists and psychiatrists for all their answers, instead of to the Church Fathers and theologians of the past. It is, in fact, a mirror image of Scientism and MBAs. But I suppose today, Scientism is a problem first and foremost via Global Warming, of course. On the one hand, GW is is being successfully used as a tool by the "Watermelons" and their Luddite collaborationists, but also far, far too many average, everyday folks are taken in by it.

For example, it is easy to find article like this: https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions that shows how consistently wrong all such prognostications have been. You'd think people would "step back from the brink" and "chill out". In any event, this article linked to above is interesting because it opens with an excerpted report from 1967 that predicted "Dire Famine by 1975", followed by a hosts of newspaper articles reporting a new Ice Age descending upon us. Of course, these all eventually peter out and are replaced by dire Global Warming predictions of 20-so-years-ago. All these have hyper-dire warnings from that time about what the world would be like today have turned out bogus as well, of course. Reading the invaluable Wattsupwiththat blog https://wattsupwiththat.com/ is endlessly fascinating for anyone remotely interested in science, and how complicated and not clearly understood planetary earth science issues can be manipulated.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/11/greenland-ice-losses-rising-faster-than-expected/

For example, read this article above then the Comment section wherein a lot of questions and objections are raised, sensible ones – extremely so. For example, "spangled drongo's" news about the latest Australian Bureau of Met sea levels for a stilling pond adjacent to the broadest piece of ocean in the world. The latest mean sea level at Ft Denison tide gauge is 6 inches LOWER than the first reading taken in 1914. Wattsupwiththat is full of such astute and informative commentary.

In general, the GW alarmism kind of reminds me of all the dire lamentations that the election of Donald Trump would destroy stock markets, such as Paul Krugman used to squeal about: https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/26/paul-krugman-said-markets-would-never-recover-from-trump-the-dow-is-up-10000-points-since-2016/

Krugman was completely wrong. Utterly! (Is he fired yet? Don't hold your breath.) Yet the mainstream media would never remind you of that. (A major part of our problem today is the mainstream media is inhabited by Leftists as strongly as Academia and Entertainment.)

But in terms of science, right now the Global Warming (renamed "Climate Change") "narrative" seems to be still in control. Here's an article lamenting how the European "Green Plans" would bankrupt Europe. First, Holly Sheer on the staggering costs of Europe's Green Deal:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/27/why-the-eus-pricey-green-deal-will-hurt-workers-and-the-elderly-while-helping-nobody/

An excerpt:

Additionally, current green or renewable energy sources still come with environmental costs. They’re expensive — often exorbitantly so, with each of the 28 member countries needing some €575 billion every year to cover these costs of implementing green energy — and still have negative impacts on wildlife, habitats, and workers involved in sourcing the parts. Even implementing these energy sources doesn’t guarantee ridding emissions problems.

If the EU has all this money to throw around, perhaps it’s time to examine North Atlantic Treaty Organization spending and funding, and why the USA is responsible for “69% of overall defense spending by NATO member states.” If the EU has money to spend, it’s time to make its expenditures on its own defense more proportionate, instead of continuing to allow U.S. taxpayers to fund their security while they use their own tax revenue for unproven fantasies like the Green Deal.

Trump, roundly loathed and hated in certain circles in "Europe", has pulled the U.S. out of this GW nonsense and if re-elected (and if you read the article at Lifesite below, you'll see Obama himself intentionally hamstrung the agreements years ago, in 2009) – and what with China, the world's biggest polluter and most polluted country – only talking big about even beginning to clean up its act 'round about 2030, maybe the tide will swing against the Global Warming hoax. But I'm not betting on it. As this article

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/elephant-in-the-room-latest-un-climate-conference-was-a-joke

says, in its final paragraph, perhaps the most cogent and succinct explanation of "it all" I've ever read:

The Left has gone Green because it solves what has always been the fatal flaw in socialism; the inability to produce growth and improve people's lives. Now that the Greens have proclaimed growth to be bad and affluence to be evil, socialism is the perfect model for managing mass poverty in an "equitable" manner. Environmentalism will be pushed regardless of the state of scientific knowledge because socialism requires it. Capitalism will be condemned because it corrupts people with a destructive desire for more. And China and other rising nations will be ready to pick up the pieces if any "big country" in the West falls for this suicidal ideology. With its strong domestic growth program, its globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative, and its daring space exploration agenda, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a very different beast. Its attitude is full speed ahead. Can we afford to do any less?

(Highlights are, of course, my own.)

The whole article is good; I recommend it. The author is William R. Hawkins, "...a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor who has served on the staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee."

So, it is all about about being on the road to a real-time version of Orwell's 1984. Now I've come around to thinking that only a major, civilizational-level war will finally kill off Global Warming. A war would both give people something else to think about and end the ability of our "Betters" to control us on an International level, because a war would trash out the whole shebang. We'll see.

Catholicism:

We certainly cannot expect guidance from the Mainstream Church, as this article shows: https://wdtprs.com/2019/12/amazonian-and-pachamama-skubala-in-annual-vatican-christmas-concert-video/

An excerpt:

Marco Tosatti caught it and it is on Twitter (below). An indigenous woman from the Amazon region got up in front of the camera, had them all cross their arms over their chests (they did it) and explained about Mother Earth and vibrating.  More Pachamama crap.  On Youtube, 1:44:25 in original language. How ridiculous is this becoming? If she had told them all to strip naked and hug each other, the prelates in the front row would probably have been the first to comply.

I guess there's three categories of stupid, in ascending stupidity: Stupid, Staggeringly Stupid, and then Catholic Church Hierarchy Stupid.

There's so much going on in terms of the wretched Bergoglio that I can't remotely keep track. “Combat hatred, small-mindedness and prejudice. Do not be content with making superficial proposals or abstract synthesis: accept instead the challenge of the overflowing restlessness...” is a sample of his latest drivel.

Check out the Canon212 website for more such news: https://canon212.com/ Or OnePeterFive is a good site, too. https://onepeterfive.com/

Suffice it for me to write here that the Church, acting like a focus-group tested NGO and currying favors with all the latest breathless idiocy and deviancy, is not the way Christianity is either lived or preached, and that as an old Lutheran professor of history at OSU once told Msgr Frank Lane, "We need you guys to be Catholics!" So it is that if Catholicism goes the way of the Presbyterian Church USA (to give just one of a plethora of examples; indeed, the mainline Catholic Church is becoming more Episcopalian USA than the Episcopalian USA Church is!): Protestantism has no grounding, and there's IS no Christianity except the "Ghetto Churches" of the fissiparous and separatist xenophobic Orthodoxies, or the (truly) mindless emotional chaos of the Pentecostals, many of whom "speak in tongues" praising Satan. (A well-known and researched phenomenon, actually.)

All of these three maladies are tied together, of course. Just one example: Communism infiltrated its strongest critic, the Catholic Church, back in the 1930s, as detailed by the famous Bella Dodd, who was converted by the Holy Ghost working through Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who's cause for Beatification, you may have heard, has been "sidelined" (translated: trashed).

And so it goes. 2020. What will it bring? I've come to believe we're in Third Secret of Fatima territory right now, and nothing that happens will surprise me. It may well kill me, but surprise me -- nope, not a whit.

Happy New Year

An Préachan