Steyn ping.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
—”The Gods of the Copybook Headings”, Rudyard Kipling, http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
bump
Oh, snap!
Come on Freepers! Careful reading calls for closer inspection, more thoughtful thinking, and a call to action! As the job market shrinks, we must be careful to cultivate those areas that present themselves as holding the potential for American recovery and success! Steyn is dancing all around the idea that there’s an entire wave of job opportunities being threatened here. It used to be street bums would push shopping carts around the city to collect empty bottles to bring in for the nickels and dimes. Maybe one day, they can do the same with used needles left behind by mind-numbed junkies!
Bezos and his fat cat cronies need to be stopped...and stopped now!
I figured the Death Panels would be fully armed. :)
Bttt
Pelosi is channeling Marx here nearly word for word. Substitute "wage slavery" for health insurance and it's a match. It's all about living a life you don't have to earn.
And, if you’re wondering why every Big Government program assumes you’re a feeble child, that’s because a citizenry without “work and purpose” is ultimately incompatible with liberty.
You don't need liberty, just do as you're told. One day they'll tell you, "you have liberty" and you'll believe it.
Depressing stuff. Even the more articulate proponents of Big Government appear not to grasp just how very big that is likely to be, and what will happen to it when no one it purports to serve is capable of producing the wealth necessary to sustain it.
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.
” 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's amazing...
It is hard to take someone seriously on these things after they praise Mandela to the hilt
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.