Posted on 12/06/2013 11:52:37 PM PST by Rummyfan
One consequence of the botched launch of Obamacare is that it has, judging from his plummeting numbers with “Millennials,” diminished Barack Obama’s cool. It’s not merely that the website isn’t state-of-the-art but that the art it’s flailing to be state of is that of the mid-20th-century social program. The emperor has hipster garb, but underneath he’s just another Commissar Squaresville. So, health care being an irredeemable downer for the foreseeable future, this week the president pivoted (as they say) to “economic inequality,” which will be, he assures us, his principal focus for the rest of his term. And what’s his big idea for this new priority? Stand well back: He wants to increase the minimum wage!
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (a non-government website) is musing about delivering his products to customers across the country (and the planet) within hours by using drones.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
The image that came to mind was the humans in the movie Wall-E. While many have tried to impose some bigger message into that movie, I think a real one is beware of "state-run dependency". No work means no dignity. Welfare equals inner unhappiness and it "drains too much of the life from life." It will end in a populace that is fat, drunk and lazy ... no way to go through life young man.
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping Slings and Arrows.
Zing!
I've always been struck by that especially idiotic remark by SanFran Nan. Worry about health insurance isn't what keeps me from those noble ventures. Lack of talent and being firm in the knowledge that I'd starve to death keeps me from them. IOW, it isn't the insurance, it's the money.
To a commie like her, they're the same thing.
Most of us don’t have Inert and Epic Fail Lawn Service. ;^)
” But it’s hard to be visionary if you’re pointing in the wrong direction. Which is why the signature achievement of Obama’s “hope and change” combines 1940s British public-health theories with 1970s Soviet supermarket delivery systems. But don’t worry: Maybe one day soon, your needle-exchange clinic will be able to deliver by drone. Look out below.”
BINGO!
Steyn and Greenfield have that knack...
Steyn's amazing...
Guatemalans would do a better job.
That’s because the Guatemalans send their byos out to graze in the lawn like goats....
It will also lead to a shrinking population. Only a sadist would father children into such a future.
It is hard to take someone seriously on these things after they praise Mandela to the hilt
Is it true Steyn will get in the race for Senator from New Hampshire?! That would be very incredibly excellent, if NH has the sense to send him!!
Steyn is a US legal resident Canadian citizen. He is thus not constitutionally eligible to be a US senator.
Though since we've been constantly told asking questions about someone's eligibility is horrible and racist, perhaps the issue is just moot.
In any case, he can always run in the sense Pat Paulsen used to always run for President.
As usual, excellent article by Steyn.
He largely misses, however, the most critical point.
The primary factors driving the disappearance of jobs, possibly without replacement, are impeccably free-market and technological in nature.
Government is, as usual, making things worse, but the problem is above and beyond government. In fact, it is difficult to think of a fix for the disappearing job issue that would not involve massive government intervention in the economy.
For 200 years, technology has improved productivity, making society constantly wealthier while providing, overall and over time, better lives for the vast majority of humans. Conservatives, not unreasonably, point to this record to deride modern-day Luddites. But is also not unreasonable to consider the possibility that today’s cyber-tech if qualitatively different and that past performance many not predict future performance.
But continue the productivity curve indefinitely, and at some point infinite goods and services are produced with zero human input. At which point Steyn’s observations about the apparent human psychological need for “work” kicks in for everybody.
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