sodderboy said:
I am forced against my will to be interacting with more interactive progressives than I wish to be, and the silver lining is that there is common ground against large organizations. They go on anti-corporatist rants where I have partial agreement and then they cannot deny the obvious wastes inherent with large government institutions like the GAO, FDA, etc. Both structures lose sight of the goal of serving the individual.
The free market polices when private business loses sight of serving their customers, by providing competition for those finite customers from other companies happy to service them. Only when business has gained monopolistic power (or special treatment that creates unfair advantages through crony capitalism) and doesn't need to worry about competition can it afford to not serve the customer.
Did you write your congressperrsson about this?
Not yet... It seems a rather small insult compared to the larger abuses. My congressman talks the good talk, FWIW.
I will include it in my ever-growing list of gripes to Steve "Dirty Oil" Israel about wasteful government. I hope I don't have my roof painted for drones given all the letters I have written.
"This morning a mysterious gas explosion rocked the bucolic North Shore. . ."
Mike
I think stealing from government programs should be handled at least as severely as stealing from your neighbors, since it actually is pretty much the same thing. In an attempt to make the punishment fit the crime, I like the idea of kicking them off the government teat, when caught cheating.
Trying to make sense of this "life-line" telephone abuse, I noticed new ads on TV for free telephones, so apparently these phone companies are profiting from this enough to promote the give aways with advertising. Maybe they are trying to make up for 270,000 cheating customers they lost. Apparently the requirements to participate are anybody already receiving food stamps or similar support programs. I wonder how these impoverished people can see the TV ads if they are too poor to have a phone number.
I appreciate the desire to help poor people, but charity only goes so far. In a perverse economic incentive against advancing to higher paying jobs, welfare recipients lose revenue support as they earn more money... This is like a very severe tax on any marginal extra income. Generally you earn more money from working harder, but with these perverse disincentives the support falls away faster than the extra income accumulates, so the logical response is to not work harder, and avoid higher paying employment opportunities .
I try to anticipate perverse unintended consequences of government helping us and we have already seen the extra debt burden on young people from all the help with college loans (debt up 60% since 2008), the next unintended consequence is a further deterioration of entry level employment as large hirers shift a larger fraction of the workforce over to part-time workers, to avoid the onerous requirements of Obama care. Unlike the existing pool of part-time workers who see their hours fluctuate with the company's needs with many converting to full time positions if they demonstrate capability, I predict a more hardline upper limit to the hours these employees are allowed to work, with even more temps and part timers hired to keep the workers under the full time worker hours worked threshold. It may be interesting to see how this interacts with desire to raise minimum wages as I expect part time workers to also be minimum wage workers. In theory it seems this would get more worker's foot on the bottom rung of the employment ladder, but that ladder may not have any next step higher, creating a sub-caste of permanent pert-time workers to avoid the expense of Obama care.
It seems an honorable thing to want to improve the circumstance of poor entry level workers, but government should have learned by now that they can't legislate final outcomes. Or how much their helping hurts the very people they claim to be helping.
[/rant]
JR
PS: Mike I wouldn't expect the government to go to that much effort to disappear isolated opposing viewpoints, the standard practice is to discredit any respected opinion leader who has a significant following with a buffoonish characterization in the friendly mainstream news. This appears to be pretty effective and the most recent example is the spin making Sen Rubio's response to the state of Union address into a water bottle story... distract and change the subject. Ignore the thoughtful speech making credible factual criticism, instead laugh along with the TV talking heads and late night comedians, poking fun at a rising young senator. This appears to be an orchestrated effort to discredit any opposition before they gain too much of a following. Laugh along if you find this amusing but hold onto your wallet with both hands.
