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| We're On A Mission From God |
| Help us make our 4th quarter fundraising goal in record time! |
Michael Moore Saturday October 4, 2003 The Guardian
After admitting that you're not always right, you will find your conservative friend more willing to listen. Then it's time to make the case for why he or she should consider looking at things in a different light. The most important thing is to NEVER make the "moral" argument about why the Pentagon should get less money or why a sick child deserves to see a doctor. We have tried those arguments and they don't work with conservatives, so save your breath. Begin every point with this one sentence: "I want you to make more MONEY!" Then take a stab at discussing the issues with them:
Paying workers more money makes you money!
Dear brother-in-law, when you don't pay people enough for them to take care of life's essentials, it ends up costing you and everybody else a lot of money. When you pay your employees more money, what do you think they do with it? Invest it in stocks? Hoard it in offshore accounts? No! They spend it! And what do they spend it on? The stuff you make and sell! If you pay people squat, or lay them off, they can't buy your stuff. They become a drain on the economy; some turn to crime, and when they turn to crime, it's your Mercedes they want, not some junker Oldsmobile in their poor neighbour's driveway.
Providing daycare for your employees will make you money!
Absenteeism is a huge drain on our gross national product. Estimates put its cost to our economy as high as $50bn a year. The average employer loses almost $800 a year per employee due to unscheduled absences. Forty-five per cent of the time an employee is a no-show for personal or family reasons. Which means that mom or dad has taken time off from work because the babysitter didn't show up, or the kids were sick and needed to go to the doctor, etc, etc. This, my conservative friend, costs your business money.
For the price of an on-site daycare room or facility, the company can make more money, you can make more money, and the babysitters can get real jobs with benefits.
Joining a union will make you money!
If you are a worker, and not a boss, who considers himself a conservative and hates unions, I have one question: why? If you want to make more money, "union" is the way to go. According to the US department of labour, union workers make an average of $717 a week. Non-union workers like you make an average of $573 a week. Being a conservative is about you and you making as much money as you can. So why stay non-union?
Clean air and water save you money!
Each year in the US, air pollution kills 70,000 people, equal to the combined number of deaths from breast and prostate cancer. The related healthcare costs from air pollution have been estimated by the government at between $40bn and $50bn annually. We are falling behind other industrialised nations when it comes to investment in energy efficiency. Britain, Denmark and Germany are moving increasingly to wind power, while we, with the world's fourth-longest coastline, are doing next to nothing.
If we could get mileage standards in our cars to 40 miles a gallon by 2012, by 2024 we will have saved more oil than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, where Bush is so eager to start drilling. The easiest way to be less reliant on foreign oil is to use less foreign oil! This can be easily achieved by forcing the car manufacturers to produce cars that get more miles to the gallon.
Who cares that it's a good thing for the environment? It'll save you thousands of dollars each year.
Stopping the drug war will save you money!
Rounding up drug users and putting them in prison is a huge waste of money. It costs $25,000 a year to lock up a doper; it costs only $3,000 to provide treatment. Every dollar spent on treatment will save you, the taxpayer, $3 not spent on cops, jails, and replacing that CD player stolen from your car.
Plus, keeping drugs illegal doesn't stop their sale. All it means is that you, the conservative entrepreneur and investor, are making ZERO profit from the deal. All the profits go to scumbags. You hate scumbags. Why let them take YOUR money? Legalise the stuff and think of all the money you'll make from a depressed society desperate to get hooked.
Americans spend an estimated $63 BILLION on illegal drugs each year and you've legislated yourself out of a piece of that action! Put down that martini and get with it!
Giving lots of money to the public [state] schools makes you money!
When our pathetic schools send a generation of idiots and illiterates out into the workaday world, how in God's name do you expect to make any money? Seventy-five per cent of welfare recipients are illiterate. Don't you think things might be a little different if they could read and write? It totally boggles my mind that conservatives haven't demanded, purely out of self-interest, that our schools prepare young people to contribute and even excel in the workplace.
Workers are supposed to bring you great ideas and make you filthy rich. Instead, they're sitting out there in their cubicles trying to figure out how to download the latest Weezer album. I've got a kid in my office right now who thought the UK was Russia, had never heard the name "George McGovern", and figured a legal pad was where you store legal court documents. And he's the smartest one in here! HELP!!!
By never voting for a Republican again, you will make a tonne of money!
Look, I realise that at one time being a Republican and voting for Republicans seemed like the sure way to becoming wealthy. But that is not the way it works these days. Thirty years ago, if you made the equivalent of $50,000, you were rich. You lived in a big beautiful home. And there were hundreds, if not thousands, like you in every town in America. Roosevelt's New Deal had created a massive middle class and the gaps between rich and poor had actually decreased by 7.4% from 1947 to 1968.
All it took to be a rich kid back then was to have your dad be a family physician, a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant, a realtor, the owner of a grocery store or a mid-level management guy at the auto company. But all that began to crumble starting in the 1970s when the income disparity really began to widen.
While those living it up in the top 1% have enjoyed income increases of 157% in the past 20 years, the middle class has only gotten a 10% increase. Only 10% for the mass of people who have powered the explosion in wealth we have seen in the past 20 years! The doctor is barely making ends meet, the lawyer is trying to scrounge up enough divorce cases to pay the bills, and the mid-management guy - well, now he tosses a mean tortilla down at Del Taco.
These very Republicans you say you are one of want nothing to do with you. They have either downsized you, fired you, or they've got you doing the jobs of two or three people. They have taken your money in the stock market and made it vanish. They have pushed through tax bills that truly benefit only that top 1%. They are spending your retirement money right now on boondoggle after boondoggle to make their buddies rich.
Now, this is not to say the Democrats are the answer. But, ask yourself, honestly, weren't you doing better as a conservative under Clinton? Sure, you hated his good looks and charm and how he almost got away with that blow job, but get over it! You are being taken for a ride. And you know it.
Drop all this "Republican" nonsense, declare yourself an independent, and then go shopping for a party or for people running for office who are going to try to help you make more money. Any representative who delivers on making our schools and libraries a top priority, who sees to it that everyone has healthcare, who demands that we not live in a society of illiterates, who backs any bill that increases people's wages, and who taxes the wealthy for duping an entire country into bankruptcy - well, that is who you should be working for and voting for, because, in the end, it will all benefit you.
C'mon, brother-in-law! Take a walk on the wild side. It ain't all that bad. Plus, who knows, you might just have a happier Thanksgiving dinner this year!
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| We're On A Mission From God |
| Help us make our 4th quarter fundraising goal in record time! |
I'm confused. What does Moore believe is the 'standard' Republican answer on this question -- does he thinks its 'no'? If so, maybe Moore is confusing the average Republican voter with the average senior Democratic member of the United States Senate.
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32? He's lying. I don't think even the most desperate woman would have sex with him.
Sorry, Mike, that one's a non-starter. It'd only be a lie, buckaroo.
The problem with most self-identified liberals is the "self-identified" part - the whole thing has gone tribal and it isn't conservative ideas they hate, it's conservative people. A couple of basic Marxist concepts have seeped in and taken hold, and very much to the detriment of what can only be described as "liberal" ironically anymore. One of these is that power and wealth are zero-sum games and they must be torn from their possessors and redistributed "fairly," generally meaning more in the direction of the speaker or his favorite people. It's Proudhon, it's Engels, it's Foucault, it's crap. Leave it on campus to wither and die as it deserves.
Second, the "evil corporation" mantra is nothing more than a ploy to project anxieties to a faceless, nameless boogie-man. Lose it. Your books and movies are published by evil corporations, your car is made by them and driven with gasoline they provide. If you want to affect their policies, buy their stock and fire their boards. It isn't impossible, it happens every day.
Third, the "defender of the little guy" thing should have gone out with Henry Wallace. The little guy owns a fair slice of evil corporate Amerikkka (see item 2) in the form of pension plan stock ownership. He's bourgeoisie, Mike, he's literate, comfortable, and as far from "alienated" as you are from Jack LaLanne. The "in it for me" thing? It isn't just conservatives, and there's nothing wrong with it.
Maybe both sides would benefit from a little less dependence on the comfortable lie, but I see a lot of the manipulative sort coming from the liberal side of the aisle of late. The preference for the simply-communicated, emotive, bumper-sticker approach leads us far from the path of truth, and if it can be stated in a few well-rounded slogans, chances are it's a crock.
But if I could pick one thing, it'd be the tendency of the liberals I know to incessantly insist that conservatives are stupid and mean-spirited. It wears on a fella after awhile, Mike, and it doesn't foster discourse, it kills it. I know you meant well, but the premise of the stuff above is pretty patronizing, after all. Do knock it off...but you won't, will you? Because it's just too much fun...
But then other parts of the article (at the link source) you realize he is still a raving nutter.
After admitting that you're not always right, you will find your conservative friend more willing to listen. Then it's time to make the case for why he or she should consider looking at things in a different light. The most important thing is to NEVER make the "moral" argument about why the Pentagon should get less money or why a sick child deserves to see a doctor. We have tried those arguments and they don't work with conservatives, so save your breath. Begin every point with this one sentence: "I want you to make more MONEY!" Then take a stab at discussing the issues with them:
Right, Michael... Leftists are so much more "moral" than conservatives... Because they believe in taking other peoples' money and giving it to those they believe "deserve it." Of course the pentagon should get less money in MM-Land! After all, providing for the national defense is one of the primary jobs of the federal government... And it's even codified in the Constitution... The last time I checked, paying doctors to see sick children isn't there.
And the only reason that a leftist might want you to make more money is to force you into a higher tax bracket, so they can steal more from you, to give it to "the deserving," after taking a hefty chunk for themselves...
Paying workers more money makes you money!
Dear brother-in-law, when you don't pay people enough for them to take care of life's essentials, it ends up costing you and everybody else a lot of money. When you pay your employees more money, what do you think they do with it? Invest it in stocks? Hoard it in offshore accounts? No! They spend it! And what do they spend it on? The stuff you make and sell! If you pay people squat, or lay them off, they can't buy your stuff. They become a drain on the economy; some turn to crime, and when they turn to crime, it's your Mercedes they want, not some junker Oldsmobile in their poor neighbour's driveway.
So, just how much should everyone get paid? Is $15.00 and hour OK? Nah... Let's just say $10.00/hr for the time being... Going from $6.00 an hour to $10 an hour is roughly a 66% pay raise... Not bad. But just how much is that going to increase to cost to business owners? Well, let's see... There would be increased unemployment and workmans comp insurance costs... And of course, the additional social security and medicare taxes that the employer would have to pay. Just in salary and SS/Medicare, the additional cost for a $6/hr worker to 10/hr would run $172 for a 40 hour week. I wonder just how much the employer would have to raise his prices to cover those costs: Or just how many people might have to have their jobs or hours cut? Yup... Raising pay across the board will make you more money... Of course you'll soon be paying $8.00 for a hamburger, but no big deal, right?
Providing daycare for your employees will make you money!
Absenteeism is a huge drain on our gross national product. Estimates put its cost to our economy as high as $50bn a year. The average employer loses almost $800 a year per employee due to unscheduled absences. Forty-five per cent of the time an employee is a no-show for personal or family reasons. Which means that mom or dad has taken time off from work because the babysitter didn't show up, or the kids were sick and needed to go to the doctor, etc, etc. This, my conservative friend, costs your business money.
The last time I checked, a daycare center will NOT take a sick child, for fear of having the sickness spread. So, you could have the most wonderful daycare center in the world, but unless you also provide a doctor and isolation wards, as usual, MM provides a solution that doesn't address the problem that he was talking about in the first place.
For the price of an on-site daycare room or facility, the company can make more money, you can make more money, and the babysitters can get real jobs with benefits.
Hmmm... Most "baby sitters" are not old enough to get a "real job with real benefits." Besides, Michael, due to your previous point, there won't be all that many entry level jobs any more. Do day care centers at work increase productivity and make for happier workers? Studies say "YES," however not for any of the reasons you give, you bonehead! If a company can afford to do so, they do. But it's hard for a smaller company to come up with the $$$ to do it (especially if you've jacked up the costs of the workers!)
Joining a union will make you money!
If you are a worker, and not a boss, who considers himself a conservative and hates unions, I have one question: why? If you want to make more money, "union" is the way to go. According to the US department of labour, union workers make an average of $717 a week. Non-union workers like you make an average of $573 a week. Being a conservative is about you and you making as much money as you can. So why stay non-union?
I was in a union once... I was living in NY at the time, which was NOT a "right to work" state. I was in high school, and wanted to get a job at a pharmacy. I got the job, but I found out that it was a union company. I had a part time job, and was being paid $3.35 an hour, which was minimum wage at the time. As I recall, they wanted me to pay a rather large amount of my pay into a union, and I wasn't even eligible for the benefits, being a part time worker! As I recall, the cost of being in the union was around a .45 an hour TAX! And you're right! Unions can force the employers to pay more, even if it's driving the company out of business... If I recall correctly, Eastern Airlines had a machinists union that refused to let those money grubbing, bastard "bosses" exploit their workers! They refused to give in... I wonder just how many people lost their jobs due to the union, and I wonder if their unemployment was equal to the $717 that Michael Moore touts?
You know, I can't even continue... Reading MM's garbage makes my head hurt, and makes me sick to my stomach. I can understand why MM can come up with this trash, though. He doesn't have anything in his head that can hurt!
Mark