Damn shame that same effort of getting the government out of business isn't also conveniently contributing to rising socio-economic inequity and an erosion of workers' rights...
On the former issue, that seems to be the natural order of things.
No, it doesn't. There's an "order" that emerges when you give preferential treatment to income in the form of capital gains, encourage the accumulation and devolution of wealth from one generation to the next, and fund public services through taxes that are conventionally described as "regressive" (though I'm sure you reject that label as too value-laden, preferring instead the totally neutral and obvious descriptor "fair"). But that's not a "natural" order any more than the order that would emerge given a more progressive tax structure.
You have zero evidence as to what constitutes the "natural order of things" when it comes to "socio-economic inequity." All that you have is an apparent order that emerges once you've decided to structure society according to certain normative principles. But even that "order" is only "apparent," insofar as it's never been demonstrated to be stable, wherever implemented - ultimately it collapses under its own top-heaviness, as long as the poor are still permitted to vote.
Which is probably why you're not much of a fan of electoral democracy, either. But I can't hope to explore your entire sociopathy in a single comment.
On the latter, we're long overdue on the pendulum swinging back a bit on that.
What's so irritating about this, Jeff, is that your views on the issue of "worker's rights" seems entirely driven by your own personal experience trying to make ends meet with a low-wage part-time job that you're worried would disappear if your co-workers in that part-time job were actually able to negotiate terms of employment that weren't just dictated by their employer.
The pendulum has been swinging away from "worker's rights" for decades, and I'm not sure how any reasonably intelligent adult who's thought about the issue can deny this. What we have, now, in lieu of actual "worker's rights," are a series of increasingly unenforceable protections against certain forms of discrimination; a national minimum wage whose level is subject to political whim; minimal protections providing for (unpaid) family and medical leave; and maybe a smattering of other laws and rules that exist only because they were implemented before Reagan. Against this backdrop, you have a whole set of practices that bend and avoid the rules, such as mis-classification of employees as "contractors" and "management"; unlawful discrimination tenuously defended as performance-driven employment decisions; off-the-clock work required by employers whose employees don't know the rules and/or feel unable to do anything about it; barely-legal (if legal at all) campaigns against unionization; a regulator given broad and exclusive authority over labor disputes whose ability to exercise that authority has been hamstrung by Republicans in the House; and on and on.
Anyone currently out there working for an hourly wage knows how bullshit your "pendulum swinging" lie is. A person working multiple part-time jobs on a just-in-time basis, without any kind of health insurance or a consistent paycheck, knows in a very direct way how little in the way of "rights" they have with respect to their employer(s), to say nothing of negotiating power. And anyone who knows the GOP playbook on this issue - what's their most recent job-creation proposal? Abolishing the weekend, wasn't it? I.e., "flex" overtime, where you can be required to work over forty hours in a single week without time-and-a-half, as long as you get compensatory time off at later time, which can be put off more-or-less indefinitely? - knows that where we are, and where the GOP wants to push us, is not some "equilibrium" of worker/employer rights, but an elimination of workers' rights altogether.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-07-27 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-27 06:57 pm (UTC)On the latter, we're long overdue on the pendulum swinging back a bit on that.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-27 07:27 pm (UTC)No, it doesn't. There's an "order" that emerges when you give preferential treatment to income in the form of capital gains, encourage the accumulation and devolution of wealth from one generation to the next, and fund public services through taxes that are conventionally described as "regressive" (though I'm sure you reject that label as too value-laden, preferring instead the totally neutral and obvious descriptor "fair"). But that's not a "natural" order any more than the order that would emerge given a more progressive tax structure.
You have zero evidence as to what constitutes the "natural order of things" when it comes to "socio-economic inequity." All that you have is an apparent order that emerges once you've decided to structure society according to certain normative principles. But even that "order" is only "apparent," insofar as it's never been demonstrated to be stable, wherever implemented - ultimately it collapses under its own top-heaviness, as long as the poor are still permitted to vote.
Which is probably why you're not much of a fan of electoral democracy, either. But I can't hope to explore your entire sociopathy in a single comment.
On the latter, we're long overdue on the pendulum swinging back a bit on that.
What's so irritating about this, Jeff, is that your views on the issue of "worker's rights" seems entirely driven by your own personal experience trying to make ends meet with a low-wage part-time job that you're worried would disappear if your co-workers in that part-time job were actually able to negotiate terms of employment that weren't just dictated by their employer.
The pendulum has been swinging away from "worker's rights" for decades, and I'm not sure how any reasonably intelligent adult who's thought about the issue can deny this. What we have, now, in lieu of actual "worker's rights," are a series of increasingly unenforceable protections against certain forms of discrimination; a national minimum wage whose level is subject to political whim; minimal protections providing for (unpaid) family and medical leave; and maybe a smattering of other laws and rules that exist only because they were implemented before Reagan. Against this backdrop, you have a whole set of practices that bend and avoid the rules, such as mis-classification of employees as "contractors" and "management"; unlawful discrimination tenuously defended as performance-driven employment decisions; off-the-clock work required by employers whose employees don't know the rules and/or feel unable to do anything about it; barely-legal (if legal at all) campaigns against unionization; a regulator given broad and exclusive authority over labor disputes whose ability to exercise that authority has been hamstrung by Republicans in the House; and on and on.
Anyone currently out there working for an hourly wage knows how bullshit your "pendulum swinging" lie is. A person working multiple part-time jobs on a just-in-time basis, without any kind of health insurance or a consistent paycheck, knows in a very direct way how little in the way of "rights" they have with respect to their employer(s), to say nothing of negotiating power. And anyone who knows the GOP playbook on this issue - what's their most recent job-creation proposal? Abolishing the weekend, wasn't it? I.e., "flex" overtime, where you can be required to work over forty hours in a single week without time-and-a-half, as long as you get compensatory time off at later time, which can be put off more-or-less indefinitely? - knows that where we are, and where the GOP wants to push us, is not some "equilibrium" of worker/employer rights, but an elimination of workers' rights altogether.