Sunday, March 28, 2010

Classic Tea Party Response

Here's a classic quote from a Tea Party member who doesn't even seem to understand what he himself is saying:
Jeff McQueen, 50, began organizing Tea Party groups in Michigan and Ohio after losing his job in auto parts sales. “Being unemployed and having some time, I realized I just couldn’t sit on the couch anymore,” he said. “I had the time to get involved....”

He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”

3 comments:

rhhardin said...

That's classic labor union.

Classic tea party absolutely favors free trade.

Question: what country has lost the most manufacturing jobs since the 90s?

Answer: China.

And as of 2008 anyway, US manufacturing output is the highest it's ever been. It's manufacturing employment that's down.

It's now more like agriculture, which has the highest output ever with the smallest employment.

Productivity is the cause. It also raises wages.

What's not to like? Union power has the problem.

Dano said...

What are people for? Certainly not to be exploited by corporations and capitalists.

Best,

D

rhhardin said...

A ditch digger with a shovel earns a lot less than a ditch digger with power eqipment.

The difference is capital.

Think of capital as seed corn not eaten, or equivalently as extra money.

Money in the hands of the rich goes in high proportion to seed corn; the systematic trick being that the rich are doing something useful with it in order to remain rich.

The idea of trickle-down isn't that the poor glean dimes that have fallen from the pockets of the rich, but that there's more capital in back of their jobs; and the wages rise.

Each side exploits the other, if you want to use "exploit."

In general, the economy works entirely on disagreement over value.

It's simple but so simple that it's hard to see.

X trades something he values less than Y does, for something Y values less than X does.

Both sides come out ahead. That's why the transaction occurs, being voluntary.

So the standard of living of both sides rises because of the trade.


Add that mutual profit up over the nation, and the standard of living of the nation rises.

Division of labor is most efficient way to produce disagreement over value.

I don't know if exploitation is the right word for it, unless you're a Marxist.

To Marxists, I'd say that on the contrasy self-sufficiency is the most efficient road to extreme poverty.

What people are for is up to the person involved. It's a free country. People disagree about it.

It strikes me this time of year, when grapes from Chile arrive in Ohio supermarkets just at ripeness, that the guys on the boat don't care about Americans and probably dislike them completely, yet here the grapes are, as if they had no other goal in life but to please the consumer.

And they come out ahead on the deal.

How nicely things work when incentives are aligned with human nature.