Friday, December 26, 2003
Stinking of rot and smelling of gin
Woe begotten thoughts that I can’t win.
But all this CNN has made my mind all mush,
Let’s all get in line now - let’s hate Bush.
I spent Christmas this year with my girlfriend’s family in upstate Illinois, for the second consecutive year. It was a nice Christmas – she doesn’t have a lot of family – a sister & parents, an aunt and a grandmother. And she loves the Christmas get-together, so I don’t mind going.
Last year, it was kind of fun. I got to meet her infamous Aunt Marge. Aunt Marge is a former superintendent for the Chicago schools – no small position. She turned the schools around, and even had a city street named for her. Since then, she has gone on to become a professor at DePaul University.
The woman, an Irish immigrant who has spent all of her adult life in the United States, is a staunch Irish-Catholic Liberal. I looked forward to this. I had heard she was a bit confrontational, and this creates excitement with many libertarians simply in the fact they get the opportunity to argue with a liberal, an easy pot-shot for anyone with the weapon of reason. And being who I am, I was excited, but not without reservation. This is a woman in her eighth decade on the planet, a successful, intelligent & educated person with a full armory of details with which to fight. She had accumulated 70 years of liberal arguments, whilst I had only 10 or so years of actual knowledge.
I knew it wasn’t fair, but I fought anyway. It’s not my fault I have 400 years of reason & logic on my side. It’s there for anyone who wants to use it.
Quickly into Christmas dinner, we found our topic. The exportation of labor in the U.S. We went back and forth. She had the best of me for quite a while, with more statistics and specific facts than I could have dreamed of myself. But in a manner true to a liberal mindset, these facts were not tied together, no pattern was sought or established. I attempted to do so for her, and found myself on top – there was no pattern.
She was arguing how terrible the working conditions in these countries were, about how terrible working for 50 cents an hour must be. I would counter with questions such as: What is the average wage in Country Z? What did these people earn prior to accepting the position with Company X? How was their living situation before? What can you buy with 50 cents in Country Z? And so on and so forth.
The tide shifted to talks of minimum wage. This began because I brought up the fact that it wouldn’t be as necessary to export jobs if we didn’t create a price floor on wages in this country. Well, she quickly brought up the pseudo-socialist ideas of a living wage. She gave me great arguments that $5.50/hour just isn’t enough to get by in this country. How, pray thee, can those people seriously get cable, drink Coca-Cola and shop at Banana Republic on $5.50/hour? Impossible.
I could only agree. And we went round and round on the argument of living wage. The arguments for logic are all too easy here. I won’t get into them, I have respect for my reader(s).
It was simple to tie together the two topics, but it was another thing to get her to admit I was correct. The idea is simple:
With any product, in economics there is an equilibrium price. It can be determined by a supply-demand curve. The price of a product is dependant on it’s supply and demand. The more supply a product has, the less it is worth – a negative relationship. There are very few diamonds in the world, and they are consequently valuable. There are very many peanuts in the world, so consequently they are not as valuable. The second variable, demand, dictates that the more a product is desired by the marketplace, the more it is worth – a positive relationship. Diamonds are highly-sought, and thus are worth more. Peanuts are commonplace, and highly substitutable, and thus not of any great value. The true value (or equilibrium) of the diamond or peanut is defined as the place where the supply curve meets the demand curve.
Labor is a product for which there is supply and demand. The laws are the same, the more supply of labor, the less demand, and thus a lower price established. Or vice-versa. Both situations have existed and continue to exist for higher-skill level jobs. In low-skill positions, however, we do not let the market work naturally. We set a price floor, called a minimum wage. This creates an artificial price as to what one person must pay another for his labor.
On the surface, in market conditions with a large supply of labor, if the equilibrium price for labor is low (remember, equilibrium price in this situation is what a person is willing to receive for his services versus what an employer is willing to pay for a job to be completed), the worker will receive more for his services than he would in normal market conditions.
On the other side of the coin there is very little effect on the surface. If the equilibrium price for labor is higher than the minimum wage, then there is no effect - the wage would rise to the equilibrium. This is the nature of a price floor.
As I said, on the surface it works. But there are many more variables other than simply a price. Money is a resource, and it is limited. Employers can only pay so much. And in this country, supply is not limited. There is a supply of labor in other countries that competes.
So the answer is simple: if there are people in other countries willing to work for less than the minimum wage, and the costs associated with exporting manufacturing are less than what they would be merely paying minimum wage in this country, the logical course of action for any company is to export the labor.
It was this simple logic which led me to victory. I was pleased, but not too much. It wasn’t my intelligence or debate tactic, it was simply logic. I cannot take credit for that.
~~~~~~~~~
I have since come to find that argument as one of the few times Aunt Marge has erred in her logic. She has not faltered in such a manner since the fateful eve she lost a debate. I have also come to understand her beliefs, and in a way, respect them.
It works like this: We operate from two different assumptions. (It should be noted that there is no absolute thought from which we can derive our logic – we must begin on a philosophical idea we believe to be true, and let all logic flow from that thought. Consistency is achieved by being true to the logic associated with that thought.)
Aunt Marge believes that people aren’t smart enough to take care of themselves, and it is the job of the smart & competent to take care of the people for them. (She wholeheartedly admits to this.)
I believe in the human being. I believe people can arise to any occasion, arise to a responsibility as necessary. Natural Selection is a core part of my belief here.
While I do not agree with her assumption (and find it to be very insulting), since I have come to understand her assumption, I have never found her to be in error again. I cannot argue with anything she says.
~~~~~~~~~
This Christmas I expected another good debate with Marge, but it was not to be. Marge doesn’t screw up; there are no flaws in her logic, no points on which to argue. However, I was not to be disappointed…I soon found myself embroiled with the girlfriend’s father on the topic of George W. Bush. And now, almost three pages into the article, I hit my main topic: Bush-hating.
Bush-hating has become a popular pastime in this country, and indeed, around the world. Bush-hating should be defined, for the purpose of this piece, as: Irrational dislike of the current president due to the mixture of facts true and false.
There are many, many reasons to dislike this president. He has displayed no fiscal control. While campaigning on the premise of a smaller government, he has eliminated exactly zero bureaucracies, while creating several. He destroyed the history of this country’s foreign policy by initiating a pre-emptive strike – for the first time ever we were an attacker and not a defender. In short, there are sound arguments which exist to prove that he has not been a good president. Bush-haters, however, draw arguments which have no bearing on the *job* of being president. Some examples:
He pronounces the word nuclear NU-CU-LAR instead of NU-CLEE-AR.
He’s a good-ol-boy.
And some of my favorites: a few “Reasons why Bush sucks” on babesagainstbush.com, a local Bush-hating website:
88. Rush Limbaugh likes him.
99. Forced troops in Baghdad to eat Thanksgiving “dinner” at 6:00 a.m. (although no evidence is given that anyone was “forced” to eat anything.
86. Changed headline on White House website to rewrite history: “End of combat operations” became “end of major combat operations.” (even though the above reason #99 was changed from “Didn’t bother to visit injured troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving.”
What, I ask you, humble reader, affect do any of the above have on the job of being president?
The problem is that many people dislike the way Bush carries himself, and when combined to their disagreement with his administration on their policies, it leads to an irrational hatred which has polarized the country. It has forced people like yours truly into defending a president they do not like nor will they support in the election. I am not alone here.
I explained all of this with father Mike. I brought up the failings in the Bush-haters arguments. The best one and most widely used by Bush supporters has to do with the war, since the war tends to be the biggest thorn in the side of the world. Basically, I call upon my opponent to list the differences between the war in Kosovo with the war in Iraq. The differences (objective - and disregarding world views) are these:
- Milosevic massacred approximately 3,000 ethnic Albanians, while we were told that he had killed upward of 30,000 or even 100,000.
- Hussein massacred between 50,000 – 150,000 Kurds (estimated based on Human Rights watch numbers cross-referenced with US State Dept.), in addition to assassinating political enemies
- The Kosovo war was described as a “Humanitarian Mission”
- The Iraq war was justified in that they “posed threats to national security”
- Iraq supported terrorism in Israel which was responsible for killing thousands of Israeli civilians
- Intelligence determined that development of weapons of mass-destruction existed in Iraq (although this has not been confirmed; yet the statement was a fact at the time of war)
Which situation seems to be worst? Consider it strictly from a “humanitarian” point of view, from the policy used by past rulers. In which country do the worst atrocities seem to be happening? Where does the "humanitarian mission" seem to be needed the most? Fairly apparent, I would think.
Now, Bush-hating has skewed things so that the haters are blinded to such facts. Father Mike offered arguments that:
- Milosevic was killing them at the moment
- Saddam hadn’t massacred anyone for a long time
This is akin to suggesting, hypothetically, if Hitler hadn’t been beaten and remained in power for several years after the Holocaust, that it would be unjust to remove him from power because “he hadn’t killed anyone in a long time.”
I’m not trying to question the justification of war in either situation. Make your own opinions. However, there is no way to support Kosovo on the basis of a humanitarian mission, and then not support Iraq. It is also a very disturbing precedent to set if a murderous dictator can be forgiven so long as “he hasn’t killed anyone in a long time.”
~~~~~~
The arguments go on and on. Since Kennedy, every singe president has added at least 20 species to the endangered species list. Bush has not added any. I asked that isn’t it possible there aren’t any more species under threat of extinction? Isn’t it possible that we have been doing such a good job in the past 40 years of protecting our animals that we’ve protected all that are necessary? He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know specifics. He didn’t know of any animals under immediate threat that needed to be added. But he was pissed at Bush for not having added them.
When pressed, some Bush-haters I've known have actually said they would do no differently than Bush has done himself in many matters. Then why do they hate the man? ‘I just do’ is the response given.
By the end of tirade, Mr. Harrigan had told me that Saddam Hussein was indeed a victim here, and that Bush can be likened to Hitler. “What?” I said. “You mean Saddam can be compared to Hitler, for favoring Sunni muslims over Shiites and Kurds, killing his own people.”
No, he responded. George W. Bush and Hitler are two of a kind. Bush-hating led him to that conclusion.
Whatever. I’m just your average Bush-hater-hater.
Woe begotten thoughts that I can’t win.
But all this CNN has made my mind all mush,
Let’s all get in line now - let’s hate Bush.
I spent Christmas this year with my girlfriend’s family in upstate Illinois, for the second consecutive year. It was a nice Christmas – she doesn’t have a lot of family – a sister & parents, an aunt and a grandmother. And she loves the Christmas get-together, so I don’t mind going.
Last year, it was kind of fun. I got to meet her infamous Aunt Marge. Aunt Marge is a former superintendent for the Chicago schools – no small position. She turned the schools around, and even had a city street named for her. Since then, she has gone on to become a professor at DePaul University.
The woman, an Irish immigrant who has spent all of her adult life in the United States, is a staunch Irish-Catholic Liberal. I looked forward to this. I had heard she was a bit confrontational, and this creates excitement with many libertarians simply in the fact they get the opportunity to argue with a liberal, an easy pot-shot for anyone with the weapon of reason. And being who I am, I was excited, but not without reservation. This is a woman in her eighth decade on the planet, a successful, intelligent & educated person with a full armory of details with which to fight. She had accumulated 70 years of liberal arguments, whilst I had only 10 or so years of actual knowledge.
I knew it wasn’t fair, but I fought anyway. It’s not my fault I have 400 years of reason & logic on my side. It’s there for anyone who wants to use it.
Quickly into Christmas dinner, we found our topic. The exportation of labor in the U.S. We went back and forth. She had the best of me for quite a while, with more statistics and specific facts than I could have dreamed of myself. But in a manner true to a liberal mindset, these facts were not tied together, no pattern was sought or established. I attempted to do so for her, and found myself on top – there was no pattern.
She was arguing how terrible the working conditions in these countries were, about how terrible working for 50 cents an hour must be. I would counter with questions such as: What is the average wage in Country Z? What did these people earn prior to accepting the position with Company X? How was their living situation before? What can you buy with 50 cents in Country Z? And so on and so forth.
The tide shifted to talks of minimum wage. This began because I brought up the fact that it wouldn’t be as necessary to export jobs if we didn’t create a price floor on wages in this country. Well, she quickly brought up the pseudo-socialist ideas of a living wage. She gave me great arguments that $5.50/hour just isn’t enough to get by in this country. How, pray thee, can those people seriously get cable, drink Coca-Cola and shop at Banana Republic on $5.50/hour? Impossible.
I could only agree. And we went round and round on the argument of living wage. The arguments for logic are all too easy here. I won’t get into them, I have respect for my reader(s).
It was simple to tie together the two topics, but it was another thing to get her to admit I was correct. The idea is simple:
With any product, in economics there is an equilibrium price. It can be determined by a supply-demand curve. The price of a product is dependant on it’s supply and demand. The more supply a product has, the less it is worth – a negative relationship. There are very few diamonds in the world, and they are consequently valuable. There are very many peanuts in the world, so consequently they are not as valuable. The second variable, demand, dictates that the more a product is desired by the marketplace, the more it is worth – a positive relationship. Diamonds are highly-sought, and thus are worth more. Peanuts are commonplace, and highly substitutable, and thus not of any great value. The true value (or equilibrium) of the diamond or peanut is defined as the place where the supply curve meets the demand curve.
Labor is a product for which there is supply and demand. The laws are the same, the more supply of labor, the less demand, and thus a lower price established. Or vice-versa. Both situations have existed and continue to exist for higher-skill level jobs. In low-skill positions, however, we do not let the market work naturally. We set a price floor, called a minimum wage. This creates an artificial price as to what one person must pay another for his labor.
On the surface, in market conditions with a large supply of labor, if the equilibrium price for labor is low (remember, equilibrium price in this situation is what a person is willing to receive for his services versus what an employer is willing to pay for a job to be completed), the worker will receive more for his services than he would in normal market conditions.
On the other side of the coin there is very little effect on the surface. If the equilibrium price for labor is higher than the minimum wage, then there is no effect - the wage would rise to the equilibrium. This is the nature of a price floor.
As I said, on the surface it works. But there are many more variables other than simply a price. Money is a resource, and it is limited. Employers can only pay so much. And in this country, supply is not limited. There is a supply of labor in other countries that competes.
So the answer is simple: if there are people in other countries willing to work for less than the minimum wage, and the costs associated with exporting manufacturing are less than what they would be merely paying minimum wage in this country, the logical course of action for any company is to export the labor.
It was this simple logic which led me to victory. I was pleased, but not too much. It wasn’t my intelligence or debate tactic, it was simply logic. I cannot take credit for that.
~~~~~~~~~
I have since come to find that argument as one of the few times Aunt Marge has erred in her logic. She has not faltered in such a manner since the fateful eve she lost a debate. I have also come to understand her beliefs, and in a way, respect them.
It works like this: We operate from two different assumptions. (It should be noted that there is no absolute thought from which we can derive our logic – we must begin on a philosophical idea we believe to be true, and let all logic flow from that thought. Consistency is achieved by being true to the logic associated with that thought.)
Aunt Marge believes that people aren’t smart enough to take care of themselves, and it is the job of the smart & competent to take care of the people for them. (She wholeheartedly admits to this.)
I believe in the human being. I believe people can arise to any occasion, arise to a responsibility as necessary. Natural Selection is a core part of my belief here.
While I do not agree with her assumption (and find it to be very insulting), since I have come to understand her assumption, I have never found her to be in error again. I cannot argue with anything she says.
~~~~~~~~~
This Christmas I expected another good debate with Marge, but it was not to be. Marge doesn’t screw up; there are no flaws in her logic, no points on which to argue. However, I was not to be disappointed…I soon found myself embroiled with the girlfriend’s father on the topic of George W. Bush. And now, almost three pages into the article, I hit my main topic: Bush-hating.
Bush-hating has become a popular pastime in this country, and indeed, around the world. Bush-hating should be defined, for the purpose of this piece, as: Irrational dislike of the current president due to the mixture of facts true and false.
There are many, many reasons to dislike this president. He has displayed no fiscal control. While campaigning on the premise of a smaller government, he has eliminated exactly zero bureaucracies, while creating several. He destroyed the history of this country’s foreign policy by initiating a pre-emptive strike – for the first time ever we were an attacker and not a defender. In short, there are sound arguments which exist to prove that he has not been a good president. Bush-haters, however, draw arguments which have no bearing on the *job* of being president. Some examples:
He pronounces the word nuclear NU-CU-LAR instead of NU-CLEE-AR.
He’s a good-ol-boy.
And some of my favorites: a few “Reasons why Bush sucks” on babesagainstbush.com, a local Bush-hating website:
88. Rush Limbaugh likes him.
99. Forced troops in Baghdad to eat Thanksgiving “dinner” at 6:00 a.m. (although no evidence is given that anyone was “forced” to eat anything.
86. Changed headline on White House website to rewrite history: “End of combat operations” became “end of major combat operations.” (even though the above reason #99 was changed from “Didn’t bother to visit injured troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving.”
What, I ask you, humble reader, affect do any of the above have on the job of being president?
The problem is that many people dislike the way Bush carries himself, and when combined to their disagreement with his administration on their policies, it leads to an irrational hatred which has polarized the country. It has forced people like yours truly into defending a president they do not like nor will they support in the election. I am not alone here.
I explained all of this with father Mike. I brought up the failings in the Bush-haters arguments. The best one and most widely used by Bush supporters has to do with the war, since the war tends to be the biggest thorn in the side of the world. Basically, I call upon my opponent to list the differences between the war in Kosovo with the war in Iraq. The differences (objective - and disregarding world views) are these:
- Milosevic massacred approximately 3,000 ethnic Albanians, while we were told that he had killed upward of 30,000 or even 100,000.
- Hussein massacred between 50,000 – 150,000 Kurds (estimated based on Human Rights watch numbers cross-referenced with US State Dept.), in addition to assassinating political enemies
- The Kosovo war was described as a “Humanitarian Mission”
- The Iraq war was justified in that they “posed threats to national security”
- Iraq supported terrorism in Israel which was responsible for killing thousands of Israeli civilians
- Intelligence determined that development of weapons of mass-destruction existed in Iraq (although this has not been confirmed; yet the statement was a fact at the time of war)
Which situation seems to be worst? Consider it strictly from a “humanitarian” point of view, from the policy used by past rulers. In which country do the worst atrocities seem to be happening? Where does the "humanitarian mission" seem to be needed the most? Fairly apparent, I would think.
Now, Bush-hating has skewed things so that the haters are blinded to such facts. Father Mike offered arguments that:
- Milosevic was killing them at the moment
- Saddam hadn’t massacred anyone for a long time
This is akin to suggesting, hypothetically, if Hitler hadn’t been beaten and remained in power for several years after the Holocaust, that it would be unjust to remove him from power because “he hadn’t killed anyone in a long time.”
I’m not trying to question the justification of war in either situation. Make your own opinions. However, there is no way to support Kosovo on the basis of a humanitarian mission, and then not support Iraq. It is also a very disturbing precedent to set if a murderous dictator can be forgiven so long as “he hasn’t killed anyone in a long time.”
~~~~~~
The arguments go on and on. Since Kennedy, every singe president has added at least 20 species to the endangered species list. Bush has not added any. I asked that isn’t it possible there aren’t any more species under threat of extinction? Isn’t it possible that we have been doing such a good job in the past 40 years of protecting our animals that we’ve protected all that are necessary? He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know specifics. He didn’t know of any animals under immediate threat that needed to be added. But he was pissed at Bush for not having added them.
When pressed, some Bush-haters I've known have actually said they would do no differently than Bush has done himself in many matters. Then why do they hate the man? ‘I just do’ is the response given.
By the end of tirade, Mr. Harrigan had told me that Saddam Hussein was indeed a victim here, and that Bush can be likened to Hitler. “What?” I said. “You mean Saddam can be compared to Hitler, for favoring Sunni muslims over Shiites and Kurds, killing his own people.”
No, he responded. George W. Bush and Hitler are two of a kind. Bush-hating led him to that conclusion.
Whatever. I’m just your average Bush-hater-hater.
