Deconstructing "Progressive " thought

[a_majoor]

Mark Steyn nails it as usual:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/11/mark-steyn-pink-is-now-the-colour-of-conformity/

Mark Steyn: Pink is now the colour of conformity

National Post | Apr 11, 2012 8:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Apr 10, 2012 5:12 PM ET
More from National Post
On "The Day of Pink," nothing says "celebrate diversity" like forcing everyone to dress exactly the same.

By Mark Steyn

You go away for 10 minutes, and come back to find there’s a new acronym in town. “Duelling Queen’s Park Protests Planned Over GSAs,” reports Xtra. “OECTA Comes Out In Favour Of GSAs,” reports The Catholic Register. “Obama Blames Bush For GSA Scandal,” reports Fox News.

Honestly. Is there anything that isn’t Bush’s fault? No, wait. That last one turns out to be an American GSA — the Government Services Administration, the government agency that picks out the office furniture for the other government agencies and is currently under fire for flying itself to Vegas and throwing itself a lavish party with clowns (professional clowns, not just government bureaucrats) and a fortune teller, who curiously enough failed to foretell that the head of the agency would shortly thereafter lose her job. By contrast, Canada’s GSA is the Gay-Straight Alliance. The GSA is all over the GTA (the Gayer Toronto Area), but in a few remote upcountry redoubts north of Timmins intolerant knuckle-dragging fundamentalist school boards declined to get with the beat. So the Ontario Government has determined to afflict them with the “Accepting Schools Act.”
Related

    Joe O’Connor: Confessions of a former bully

    Scott Stinson: Ontario’s publicly funded intolerance

    George Jonas: A simpler cure for bullying

    Chris Selley: Zero-tolerance policies for bullies never works

    Kelly McParland: In praise of anti-bullying legislation

“Accepting?” One would regard the very name of this bill as an exquisite parody of the way statist strong-arming masquerades as limp-wristed passivity were it not for the fact that the province’s Catholic schools, reluctant to accept government-mandated GSAs, are proposing instead that they should be called “Respecting Differences” groups. Good grief, this is the best a bigoted theocrat can come up with?

Bullying is as old as the schoolhouse. Dr Thomas Arnold, one of the great reforming headmasters of 19th century England, is captured in the most famous novel ever written about bullying, Tom Brown’s Schooldays in what, by all accounts, is an accurate summation of his approach to the matter: “‘You see, I do not know anything of the case officially, and if I take any notice of it at all, I must publicly expel the boy. I don’t wish to do that, for I think there is some good in him. There’s nothing for it but a good sound thrashing.’ He paused to shake hands with the master … ‘Remember,’ added the Doctor, emphasizing the words, ‘a good sound thrashing before the whole house.’ ”

These days, a Thrashing Schools Act mandating Thrashing Out Differences groups across the province would be the biggest windfall for Chief Commissar Barbara Hall and her Ontario “Human Rights” Commission since the transsexual labiaplasty case went belly up. Teachers are not permitted, in any meaningful sense, to deal with the problem of bullying. And, when you can’t deal with a problem, the easiest option is to institutionalize it. Thus, today is the Day of Pink, “the international day against bullying, discrimination, homophobia and transphobia.” Don’t know how big it is in Yemen or Waziristan, but the Minister of Education for the Northwest Territories is on board, and the Ontario MPP Peggy Nash has issued her own video greeting for the day, just like the Queen’s Christmas message: “Today’s the day we can unite in celebrating diversity and in raising awareness …”

So it’s just like every other bloody boring day in the Ontario school system then?

Meanwhile, Cable 14 in Hamilton, Ont., has been Tweeting up a storm: “National Day of Pink/Anti-Bullying Day is tomorrow. What will you be wearing?” Er, I don’t think I have a lot of choice on that front, do I? “For schools holding Anti-Bullying events in April, you still have time to order shirts at a discount.”

That’s great news! Nothing says “celebrate diversity” like forcing everyone to dress exactly the same, like a bunch of Maoists who threw their workers’ garb in the washer but forgot to take the red flag out. If you’re thinking, “Hang on. Day of Pink? Didn’t we just have that?” No, that was Pink Shirt Day, the last Wednesday in February. This is Day of Pink, second Wednesday in April. Like the King streetcar, there’ll be another one along in a minute, enthusiastically sponsored by Scotiabank, Royal Bank, ViaRail and all the other corporate bigwigs.

If you’re thinking, “Hang on. Pink awareness-raising? Isn’t that something to do with breast cancer?” No, that’s pink ribbons. Unfortunately, all the hues for awareness-raising ribbons are taken: not just white for bone cancer and yellow for adenosarcoma, but also (my current favourite) periwinkle for acid reflux. We need to raise awareness of how all the awareness-raising ribbons have been taken, so anti-bullying groups have been obliged to move on from ribbons to shirts.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it is. P.G. Wodehouse, The Code Of The Woosters (1938): “Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts …”

“By the way, when you say ‘shorts’, you mean ‘shirts’, of course.”

“No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.”

“Footer bags, you mean?”

Pink Shorts Day is the second Wednesday in October in the Northwest Territories.

Yes, there have been a small number of bullied teens driven to suicide, and these particular deaths are tragedies for the families involved that blow a great big hole in their lives that can never be repaired. But they are not a cause for wrongheaded public policy. Hard cases make bad law, and hard cases hijacked by social engineers, backed by state bureaucracies and bankrolled by dimwit boardroom patsies make bad law on a catastrophic scale.

According to the Toronto District School Board’s own survey, the most common type of bullying is for “body image” — the reason given by 27% of high school students, 38% of Grades 7 and 8, and yea, back through the generations. Yet there are no proposals for mandatory Fat-Svelte Alliances, or Homely-Smokin’ Alliances. The second biggest reason in Toronto schools is “cultural or racial background.” “Cultural,” eh? Yet there seems no urge to install Infidel-Believer Alliances in Valley Park Middle School’s celebrated mosqueteria, although they could probably fit it in the back behind the menstruating girls. So the pressure for GSAs in every school would seem to be a solution entirely unrelated to the problem. Indeed, it would seem to be a gay hijacking of the issue. Queer Eye For The Fat Chick: “But enough about you, let’s talk about me.”

What about if you’re the last non-sexualized tween schoolgirl in Ontario? You’re still into ponies and unicorns and have no great interest in the opposite sex except when nice Prince William visits to cut the ribbon at the new Transgendered Studies Department. What if the other girls are beginning to mock you for wanting to see Anne Of Green Gables instead of Anne Does Avonlea? Is there any room for the sexual-developmentally challenged in the GSAs?

Why, of course! GSAs are officially welcoming of gays, straights, and even those freaky weirdy types who aren’t yet into sexual identity but could use a helpful nudge in the right direction. “Advisors Say GSA Also For Straight Students,” as the headline to a poignant story in yesterday’s edition of the Pembroke Academy newspaper in New Hampshire puts it. The school-approved GSA began five years ago with an ambitious platform of exciting gay activities. “They had plans for group events, like bake sales and car washes, but they never came to pass,” explained Ms Yackanin, the social studies teacher who served as the GSA’s first advisor.

From a lack of gay bake sales and gay car washes, the GSA has now advanced to a lack of gays. “The students just stopped coming,” said Mrs McCrum, the new Spanish teacher who took over the GSA at the start of this school year. This is the homophobic reality of our education system: a school gay group that has everything it needs except gays. Mrs Yackanin is reported by the Pembroke Academy paper as “saying to heterosexuals that the GSA is a resource for the entire school community.” C’mon, you guys, what’s wrong with you? No penetrative sex with other boys is required, or even heavy petting. It’s all about getting together in the old school spirit and organizing a gay car wash.

And now the model that has proved so successful at Pembroke Academy will be enthralling school-children from Thunder Bay to Moosonee. In Thomas Arnold’s day, the object was to punish bullies, and teach their victims to stand up to them. Now a defensive and enfeebled educational establishment lets the bullies get on with it, and Dalton McGuinty’s ministry has decided everyone else should be taught how to be victims — or, at any rate, members of approved victimological identity groups. Gays? Sure. Muslims? You betcha. Gay Muslims? We’ll cross that Rainbow Bridge when we get to it. For the moment, let’s stay focused: Bullying is merely the sharp end of “heterosexism,” as the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission calls it. Chief Commissar Hall defines heterosexism as “the assumption that heterosexuality is superior and preferable,” which will come as news to anyone who’s had sex with me.

When you shrink from punishing the bullies (as our schools do), when you pursue phantom enemies (as our “human rights” nomenklatura do), when you use the victims as a pretext for ideological advancement (as the Ontario government is doing), all that’s left is the creepy, soft totalitarian, collectivized, state-enforced, glassy-eyed homogeneity of “uniting to celebrate diversity” (in Peggy Nash’s words). So Canada will have GSAs from Niagara to Nunavut; and for the lonely and unsocial, the lumpy and awkward, real bullying will proceed undisturbed in the shadows; and ideologically-compliant faux-bullying will explode, as a generation of children is conscripted into a youth corps of eternal victimhood, alert to every slight, however footling. In New York, where children are bullied with gay abandon, the school board recently proposed banning from its tests 50 hurtful, discriminatory words such as “religious holidays,” “birthdays” and “cigarettes.” From such an environment come a cowed, pliant herd and a cadre of professional grievance-mongers, but not a lot of functioning, freeborn citizens.

“Awareness-raising”? I think we need to raise awareness that, unless you’ve got the T-shirt concession, all these Pink Days are worthless crap that do nothing for the problem they claim to be addressing. If you’ve chanced to see me in person, you’ll know I often wear a pink shirt (I may even wear one on stage in Toronto later this month). Like the country song says, “I Was Pink Shirt When Pink Shirt Wasn’t Cool — Er, Mandatory.” But, on Pink Shirt Day, I would wear mauve or turquoise or chartreuse or anything but pink, because, when the state is committed to coercing a ruthless conformity, that’s the time to show that a flickering flame of the contrarian, iconoclastic spirit still flickers in the Canadian schoolhouse. You may get bullied for not wearing pink on the Day of Pink, but you’ll feel better for it.

National Post

Tickets to see Mark Steyn perform at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on April 24 are available at steynamite.com or by calling 1-888-816-1577.

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting example of how the Legacy media uses misdirection to shape narratives, rather than reporting news. Considering the way the Tides foundation intrudes on Canadian politics without much comment by ourt legacy media (noted in various threads here, but you can also check the work of researcher Vivian Krause), this is more than just an oversight:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-do-the-koch-brothers-get-all-the-sunshine/article/2523869

Why do the Koch Brothers get all the sunshine?

March 10, 2013 | 9:08 pm



Mark Tapscott
Executive Editor
The Washington Examiner
Email Author @mtapscott Mark on FB

Here's a couple of data points that bear serious thought this week by transparency advocates celebrating Sunshine Week and by everybody else who cares about protecting and preserving a free and independent press:

1,130 - Number of results for search term "Koch Brothers" on The New York Times web site.

64 - Number of results for search term "The Tides Foundation" on The New York Times web site.

For the few stray souls out there who don't know, the Koch Brothers are Charles and David, principals of the Koch corporate conglomerate and chief bete noirs of President Obama, liberal journalists covering national politics and Citizens United obsessives everywhere.

It's equally certain that few reading this post know anything at all about the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, even though its roots go deep into the radical student movement of the 1960s and it has helped fund or startup virtually every significant liberal, progressive and radical cause in the years since.

Similar results appear from the same searches on The Washington Post web site, which turns up 277 links to the Koch Brothers and 11 for Tides. And on the New Yorker web site, Koch Brothers generated 35 links and none for Tides.

The contrast was even more dramatic on the Common Cause site, where the Koch Brothers were linked 4,560 times versus one for Tides.

What do these search results tell us? Only that it appears the Koch Brothers are of vastly heightened interest to two of America's greatest daily newspapers and to the dean of campaign finance reform advocacy organizations than is the Tides Foundation.

Which is curious, considering that it is all but certain nobody in these two August newsrooms or among the leadership of Common Cause would reject the proposition that "the rich" have far too much influence in American politics, thanks to their wealth.

Consider these numbers, derived from multiple searches of foundation grant databases, IRS Form 990s and other public records:

Three Koch foundations made a total of 181 grants worth $25,405,525 in 2010 (most recent available records). The one Tides Foundation made a total of 2,627 grants worth $143,529,590 in 2010.

Put otherwise, for every one grant made by a Koch foundation, Tides made more than five grants.

There are important qualifications to these numbers, including that the two Koch brothers also contributed to numerous political candidates, there may be other Koch-controlled foundations that didn't surface in this study, not all of the grants included here went to political or ideological groups or causes, and the two men may have significant influence on yet other foundations not under their direction.

What is crystal clear is this: The Koch Brothers get vastly more attention from two of the nation's elite media outlets and the grand sire of the "too much money corrupts" school of campaign finance reform than an obscure foundation that bankrolls multiple legions of leftist political groups and causes.

Might we conclude then that, like the collectivized creatures of Animal Farm, some of the rich money in American politics is more equal than others?

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.

 

[a_majoor]

Terrance corcan gets down to brass tacks. The attempted siezure of Cypriot bank accounts isn't just an emergency response to a situation (although that may have been the immediate source of the action) but rather a deeper symptom of the world view of the political class. The comments section is also illuminating:

Terence Corcoran: We are all Cypriot savers
Terence Corcoran | 13/03/18 | Last Updated: 13/03/18 9:27 PM ET
More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran

Tax shows how far governments can go when broke

It was the bank tax heard round the world, a blundering blast of dumb policy that rocked global financial markets, at least temporarily. Under the guidance of power brokers in the European Union, the tiny Mediterranean island Republic of Cyprus agreed to impose a €5.8-billion tax on bank deposits to bail the country out of a financial crisis.

The tax would hit everybody, from rich to poor, from fat-cat Russian oligarchs to local Cypriots supposedly covered by deposit insurance. The rate was 9.9% on deposits above €100,000 and 6.75% on amounts below €100,000, a cutoff equal to about $130,000.

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Welcome to Cyprus: A sunny place for shady people

When Cypriots got wind of the looming tax on Saturday they headed to bank machines. The tax is essentially a negative interest rate of 6.75% or about $8,500 on the full deposit-insured amount. Needless to say, the banks of Cyprus never opened Monday morning and the government — seeing a crisis in the making — ordered the island’s banking industry closed until Thursday.

The banks would have been wiped out and the delayed opening buys time to rethink the plan. But the global damage had been done. News of the panic-inducing money grab soon spread to bank depositors around the world; “The Great EU Bank Robbery,” said a Daily Mail headline Monday morning.

The global shock and horror rippled through financial and currency markets, knocking points off stock market indexes and giving rise to talk of bank runs elsewhere. And it prompted a universal question: If EU financial authorities can blatantly seize bank deposits in Cyprus, what’s to stop them from moving in on bank deposits in Spain, Italy, France or any other country whose government has dug a big fiscal hole?

Could the U.S. or Canadian governments do the same, if worst came to worst? You bet.

The very idea of governments engaging in such blatant seizures of money may have stunned markets and depositors around the world, but it was a non-event to one group. The only class not shocked was the brain-dead brain trust that concocted the Cyprus bailout and saw the bank tax as perfectly reasonable fiscal restructuring and — as they call it —“burden sharing.”

On Saturday, Christine Legarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said she welcomed the agreement. In IMF bureaucratize, she said the Cyprus bailout agreement meets IMF objectives and “appropriately allocates the burden sharing.” Otherwise, she was totally clueless as to the possible fallout.

The Eurogroup, the official voice of the 17 EU finance ministers, including the German minister who is said to have championed the bank tax, issued a statement backing the bailout plan. It, too, failed to even acknowledge that there might just be a bit of resistance, perhaps even a risk of a bank run in Cyprus. The bank tax was coyly described by the Eurogroup as “an upfront one-off stability levy applicable to resident and non resident depositors.”

The European Central Bank and other EU officials are said to have pushed Cyprus to accept the deal. Why were they not attuned to possible fallout within Cyprus and beyond to such a precedent-setting outright expropriation of bank deposits? Here’s the answer: The bank tax is what governments do. The bureaucrats and politicians who run these empires of spending cannot really see what the difference is between one tax and another.

And why should they? They tax for a living, and when their fiscal backs are against the wall they tax some more. Income is taxed, real estate holdings are taxed, consumption spending is taxed, transportation is taxed. They’d tax carbon if they could. And if they can tax the interest earned on bank deposits, what’s to stop them from taxing deposits themselves? Nothing if they can get away with it.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the Cyprus bank tax a “fair” distribution of the burden of bailing Cyprus out of a €7-billion fiscal hole. The tax would provide €5.8-billion, with the rest to come from EU nations and international agencies such as the IMF.

According to credit rating reports, Cyprus arrived at this fiscal crisis initially because its banks carried a lot of Greek debt as approved by international bank rules. Cyprus also became something of a global banking conduit, and prospered during the pre-2008 financial crisis. As a banking centre, Cypriot banks attracted a lot of foreign capital, especially from Russia.

Last week, Moody’s Investors Service, the rating agency, said Russian banks that have exposure to Cyprus face “moderate credit losses.” The main risk, said Moody’s, is up to US$40-billion in Russian bank lending to Russian businesses based in Cyprus.

Another risk, said Moody’s, is Russian corporate deposits held in Cypriot banks that totalled US$19-billion last September. “In case of bank defaults, deposit freeze or burden sharing … these companies could take losses on their deposits.” Individual Russians are said to have another $10-billion on deposit in Cyprus banks, their deposits mingled with those of people from across Europe, including the United Kingdom.

If the Russian banks, corporations and other depositors didn’t see something like a bank tax coming, maybe they should have. The warnings have been everywhere. Still, Russian president Vladimir Putin is right when he said the bank tax decision “if it’s adopted, will be unfair, unprofessional and dangerous.”

Although perhaps the unfairness is not as great for Russian corporations as it is for the average Cyprus citizen nominally covered by deposit insurance that has now been wiped out.

But this is government, after all. Cypriot and EU officials are now said to be reviewing the plan, but there’s a lesson to be learned from the EU bank tax debacle, and from the fiscal crisis across Europe and elsewhere. In the final analysis governments have no money of their own. The only money they will ever get their hands on is yours, no matter where it is.

 

[a_majoor]

This piece by George Jonas is perhaps the culmination of several reports in the NP of Universities attacking the rights of Free Speech and attempting to indictrinate students rather than educate them. USing the power of the State to impose a point of view and supress others is not the hallmark of a free and democratic society, yet Canadian Universities are becoming nests of thought controll and anti semitism. I, personally, would suggest removing universities from te pblic purse, so people who do not support these activities do not have to spport them with tax dollars, and Universities would have to cpmpete for tuition and donation dollars. IF a University chooses to compete on the basis of how well they indoctrinate students, and can actually survive then fine (although I would be questioning the actual worth of that universities credentials, which is my right):

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/06/george-jonas-when-it-comes-to-free-speech-winners-win-losers-try-to-shut-you-up/

George Jonas: When it comes to free speech, winners win. Losers try to shut you up

George Jonas | 13/04/06 | Last Updated: 13/04/05 1:48 PM ET
More from George Jonas

Earlier this week, following the instructions of Queen’s University administration authorities (hereinafter, the Sheriff of Nottingham), Campus Security removed part of a student-created installation called the Free Speech Wall. The offending section apparently had been used by students for the exercise of what they thought was free speech during a campaign organized by Queen’s Students for Liberty (QSL), many of whom think of themselves as Robin Hood and his merry men, for the support and celebration of freedom.

I’ve no idea what was in the confiscated sections, but recall an old-time editor saying that once the writer of an opinion piece designates the villain of a story, he must bend over backwards to be fair to him. Therefore, in fairness to Doug Johnson, the Queen’s Student Affairs satrap who ordered the installation removed, I’ll assume the QSL graffiti did consist of, or at least included, remarks and other material that reasonable Canadians would regard as rude, offensive, mean-spirited, sophomoric, juvenile, insulting and stupid. In other words, free speech, since that’s what the QSL campaign was celebrating rather than sweet reasonableness or the rule of Mary Poppins. Liberty by definition embraces a range of sentiments and habits of mind that at the margins are capable of making people sick. Some are right to be sick, some are wrong. All are entitled. It’s their stomach, and being sick to it is a human right.

Are universities different? Are they subject to higher standards? Higher pretensions, maybe, higher standards, no. Never in history has it been unusual to muzzle comment or stifle inquiry in universities. Are our own times a cut above the past? I doubt it.

As the scandal escalated instead of playing itself out this week, Johnson explained to the press that the installations removed were in violation of Queen’s Code of Conduct. This document, which in Johnson’s mind appeared to outweigh or supersede Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, on Queen’s Campus grounds anyway, sounded like other insipid manuals of political correctness. It defined unwanted “isms” – racism, sexism – as “negative valuing, stereotyping, and discriminatory treatment of individuals and groups on the basis of their race” and prohibited their expression in the form of “hate literature, graffiti, racial slurs and jokes, derogatory remarks and gestures, and physical attacks.”

Racial jokes, eh, and, in the same breath, physical attacks? Is that so? It seems I survived the Holocaust without really knowing what racism was until Queen’s Code of Conduct came along.

There’s a smug sense of discovery in academic definitions that I can only describe as galling. Its pride of authorship in parroting shopworn clichés and mixing them with arrant nonsense is a way of throwing down a gauntlet. It may induce some people (myself included) to consider violating Queen’s Code a service to logic, accuracy, human understanding and the English language.

But what if I’m wrong? (“I suggest you read Mr. Johnson’s letter on the previous page. Maybe you’ll be persuaded by it. I wasn’t.”) What gives me the right to deny other folk their codes? Aren’t politically correct people entitled to their self-definition as much as anyone? Can the uptight and humourless not have a code of conduct? No one is obliged to attend Queen’s University. Those who do agree to abide by a code, mindless as it may be. Don’t the politically petit bourgeois have a right to their own tastes?

There’s another test.

“Assume you come upon a bitter dispute,” I remember saying to my father many years ago, “with the two sides ready to kill each other.”

“Okay,” my father said, “so far it’s easy.”

“Assume further,” I continued, “that you have no inkling what the dispute is all about, and the more people try to explain it to you, the less you understand it. How can you tell who is right?”

Father thought you couldn’t, not for sure, anyway, without understanding the issues, but you could still take a pretty shrewd guess. “See which side is trying to stop the other from speaking,” he said. “That’s the side that’s likely to be wrong.”

“Wrong to do it or wrong on the merits?”

“Both,” father said. I still remember it. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb. Show me someone who silences or censors another, and I’ll show you someone with a losing argument. Winners win, losers suppress — that’s how the game plays out most of the time. Except, of course, if the losers suppress successfully, the winners lose.

That’s the period we seem to be entering in our courts, in our universities, in our societies today. The censor looms, no longer on the horizon but at the gate. He asks for our voluntary signatures on his codes of conduct. It’s immaterial who has the better argument. When losers suppress, winners lose. We had better remember it.

National Post

 

[a_majoor]

Progressives claim ownership of our children. The brazen manner in which this person declares or children are "community" property is quite interesting really; not only does it speak to the depth of belief, but also displays an attitude that roughly says "we will start making this happen" (see embedded video). This is also quite at odds with the "libertarian as a social movement" approach to home, private and charter schools that is growing across America, although you might say this is the Progressive response to the movement to take children away from State schools and other Progressive institutions. Many of the comments noted how similar this is to the programs of the National Socialists and Mao's Communist Party:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2013/04/04/msnbcs-harris-perry-americas-kids-belong-their-communities

MSNBC's Harris-Perry: America's 'Kids Belong to Their Communities'
By Ken Shepherd | April 04, 2013 | 18:33

On March 23, my colleague Mark Finkelstein noted how MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry considers the unborn child a "thing" which takes a "lot of money" to "turn into a human," costing thousands of dollars to care for each year of his/her life. Now it appears that Harris-Perry thinks that, after they're born, children fundamentally belong to the state.

Narrating a new MSNBC "Lean Forward" spot, the Tulane professor laments that we in America  "haven't had a very collective notion that these are our children." "[W]e have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities," Harris-Perry argued.

"Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the households, then we start making better investments." By "investments," of course, Harris-Perry means things like spending "as much in public education as we should have."

Of course, if as Harris-Perry holds,"[t]he cost to raise a child [is] $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year," and if children should be viewed as collectively "owned" by "society," then taken to its logical extension, a woman's choices about having a child should be informed by the economic considerations of the "community," would it not? But of course, that logic would take someone to justify, for example, the "one-child" policy in Communist China.

What's more, the notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry "Lean Forward" spot contains a reference to a "great leap forward," which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s.

About the Author
Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters. Click here to follow Ken Shepherd on Twitter.


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2013/04/04/msnbcs-harris-perry-americas-kids-belong-their-communities#ixzz2PohfmAvG

 

[Fishbone Jones]

These people that believe it is their God given right to control, restrict or condone every minutiae of my personal life, and that of my family, are in for a shock when they step foot on my property with their percieved mandate and try to make me, or my family, accept it.

The idea that it 'takes a villiage to raise a child' falls apart when you realise the villiage is controlled, and largely populated, by idiots, synchophants and criminals.

 

[Kirkhill]

Not to worry .... they are not really people anyway, your kids.  I wonder what the acceptable end date for an "after-birth abortion" is?  18? 65?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2013/03/planned-parenthoods-after-birth-abortion-advocate-has-ties-to-childrens-centers/

 

[Brad Sallows]

If kids do not "belong" to their parents, then kids certainly do not "belong" to communities (strangers).  Kids are not a resource to be shaped and exploited.

 

[a_majoor]

How the Classical Liberal and Progressive sides view debate and free speech. George Jonas tells us it is about the content of the debate, while Dana Wagner shows us the Progressive "equalities of outcomes" argument. Since debating is part of the classical  educatrion, I will let the readers judge for themselves:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/25/jonas-2/

George Jonas: Promoting liberty, not parity, at the Munk Debates
George Jonas | 13/04/25 | Last Updated: 13/04/24 4:47 PM ET
More from George Jonas

I’ll risk trying my readers’ patience. Equality of opportunity between individuals is a liberal goal; parity of result between groups isn’t. Parity may have much to recommend it, depending on circumstances, but it’s a goal of social engineering, corporatism, not liberalism.

As a policy, equality of opportunity for individuals may, and often does, lead to greater parity of result between groups over time. Parity of result between groups as a policy, however, invariably and by definition, leads to a denial of equality of opportunity for individuals.

This doesn’t bother some people; it bothers other people a lot. It bothers me.

I often speak to the Munk Debates, but I don’t speak for them. The semi-annual series, brilliantly organized by Rudyard Griffiths and his team, is a project of the Aurea Foundation, one of Peter and Melanie Munk’s minor philanthropies.  I call it “minor” because the millions Aurea spends on projects of public policy is a fraction of the scores of millions that Munk, 85, a Toronto businessman, and his wife donate to hospitals and universities.

In an age when people are preoccupied with their entitlements, the founder of Barrick, the world’s largest gold mine, is thinking mainly about his obligations. Far from complaining that Canada didn’t accommodate him enough as an immigrant, Munk is always looking for ways to repay what he considers his debt for the opportunities the country gave him.

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Tasha Kheiriddin: Students want your money, not Peter Munk’s
Peter Foster: Woody Allen versus John Maynard Keynes

I’ve some proprietary sentiments about Munk’s philanthropies. I came up with the name “Aurea” (from the Latin “Golden age”) for his new charity in 2006, after he and his philanthropic affairs chief, Allan Gotlieb, Canada’s man in Washington in the 1980s, asked me to serve as adviser to Aurea’s Board of Directors. Subsequently I suggested, among other things, a public debate series as one of Aurea’s signature projects. After two years of tossing the idea back and forth, with input from many eminent people (of both sexes) the Munk Debates debuted in the foyer of the Royal Ontario Museum on May 6, 2008.

Organized by Griffiths, the first episode was moderated by the BBC’s Lyse Doucet. She was all right, and the event was a success. Advancing the bold resolution that “The world is a safer place with a Republican in the White House,” the tag-team of Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Pulitzer Prize-winning pundit Charles Krauthammer obliterated their valiant opposition, the late U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. foreign policy maven Samantha Power. Thirty four percent of the audience who opposed the resolution before the debate, endorsed it by the end.

It always seemed to me that no-holds-barred discussions between world-class debaters about sharply formulated questions would have an audience, but I didn’t think they could fill Roy Thomson Hall. I was wrong. Aurea’s first three events saturated the relatively modest space at the Royal Ontario Museum to overflow; the next two debates sold out the much bigger Royal Conservatory of Music; and the last five filled the 2,800-seat Roy Thomson Hall. When tickets went on sale the other day for the next Munk Debate (“Be it resolved, tax the rich more”), the box office sold 891 tickets in the first 10 minutes. The rest was gone by the end of the day. (On May 30th former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou of the Socialist International and President Clinton’s ex-Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, will support the resolution; former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and economist Arthur Laffer will oppose it.)

There are many reasons for the success of the Munk Debates, but I think respect for the audience’s intelligence is one. Our Orwellian times of doublespeak offer a market for plain talk. Audiences discern hidden agendas in a flash, and they don’t like them. People attend debates for a clearer picture of the world, not for one obscured by shibboleths of identity-politics masquerading as “inclusiveness” or “diversity.”

On most issues of public policy a debater’s sex is about as important as his blood type. If you expect sophisticated urbanites to sit still for two hours, without as much as fidgeting or clearing their throats, while keeping their eyes fixed on four human beings on an elevated platform talking over their heads — and not only that, but pay $25-$90 after-tax dollars for the privilege — you had better give them something to write home about. The Munk Debates has offered resolutions as pithy and unambiguous as “Be it resolved, foreign aid does more harm than good” or “The 21st century will belong to China,” inviting figures as familiar as Dr. Henry Kissinger (old, white, male) and as novel as Prof. Dambisa Moyo (young, black, female) to challenge or defend them. Debates in the auditorium are conducted from the waist up, so it’s quite immaterial whether the participants wear their reproductive organs neatly folded or prefer to let them dangle.

A charity like Aurea could have set up a signature project to promote the participation of women in the art of public speaking and debating. It didn’t. The Munk Debates promote the art of debating itself. They provide a forum for leading thinkers to confront key contemporary issues, with organizers mixing and matching available participants as they see fit. Will they be men and women in equal numbers over the long haul? I don’t know. Maybe there will be more women. Who cares?

Pursuing equality as a goal is compatible with liberty; pursuing parity isn’t. Pursuing parity is compatible only with the coercive state of identity-politics. I take a dim view of such a world, but it’s one that Dana Wagner appears to prefer and she isn’t alone. Although I’ve no sympathy, I wouldn’t raise the slightest objection if she wanted to create such an environment for herself and like-minded devotees of identity, but Ms. Wagner isn’t proposing to start a debate series based on her own notions. No, she wants the Munk Debates to abandon its own criteria and embrace hers; to switch from classical liberalism to identity politics.

Will the Munk Debates do so? Unlikely, but it’s up to Aurea’s Board of Directors. They may decide it would make a good debate.

National Post

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/25/wagner-munk-debate/

Dana Wagner: Without women, the debate is always one-sided
Dana Wagner, National Post | 13/04/25 | Last Updated: 13/04/24 4:44 PM ET
More from National Post

The next installment of the Munk Debates series is already a sub-prime conversation.

“Be it resolved that the rich should be taxed, more,” will be argued from two sides by four men.

If an unprecedented blip, the gender-skewed debate would be silly though not disgraceful. But the biannual Debates, eponymously named for founders Peter and Melanie Munk, have not hosted a woman debater since 2009. The upcoming round in May will bring the tally to 26 consecutive guests who are men, for a total of seven men-only events.

The Debates, which regularly sell out Toronto’s immense Roy Thomson Hall, are pitched as a “forum for leading thinkers” to tackle “the major issues facing the world and Canada.” In such an eminent show, the gender gap is a big problem.

First, the failure by organizers to locate a single woman expert over seven debates either signals that women have nothing interesting to say, or there are no competent women with a profile to rival past guests. That club includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former American ambassador John Bolton, CNN host Fareed Zakaria, and the late, prolific writer Christopher Hitchens.

Related
Peter Foster: Woody Allen versus John Maynard Keynes
Tasha Kheiriddin: Students want your money, not Peter Munk’s

The signal is doubtless unintentional because it is too easy to find women counterparts to such men: Christiane Amanpour, Mary Robinson and Catherine Ashton are a handful of countless candidates to spar on the Iranian nuclear threat, humanitarian intervention, and the life of the eurozone, respectively (and in the case of these formidable women, probably all three).

Even taking the false assumption there is no woman best fit, the Debates are an excellent forum to raise the profile of less well-known guests, which would seem a natural priority if organizers noted a shortage of top-tier women.

Second, the Debates are heavy on foreign policy and the global economy, and excluding women to tackle these issues reinforces the perception that “hard” topics are a male domain.

And when women are on stage, expert roles are not necessarily balanced. Organizers soundly slated women into the “soft” sphere with their decision to pit actress and activist Mia Farrow against Bolton and retired General Rick Hillier in the 2008 debate on humanitarian intervention. At times, Farrow seemed to be batting in a separate cage for saving the children, while the three men talked rough on competing military and political objectives and the limits of national interest in a foreign conflict.

The clear and inexplicable mismatch of expertise reinforced false gender domains, and neatly channelled patronizing airs to the sole woman debater.

Finally, substance takes a hit. The deficit of gender representation in foreign policy recently became a hot topic after a high-ranking official in the U.S. State Department stepped down to spend more time being a mom. In an article on workplace disincentives to promoting women and keeping them in leadership positions that went viral online after publication, Anne-Marie Slaughter highlighted the fault lines in good decision-making that excluding women creates. Without women, she argues, the conversation changes and is made poorer by omitting their different perspectives and approaches to global challenges. Following Slaughter’s logic, women are likely to hold distinct views on the upcoming tax debate.

Or, a woman may simply approach the problem differently. She may favour compromise, or a more nuanced, perhaps long-term solution
For one, globally, the super-rich are overwhelmingly men. Women are therefore the relative have-nots, and would by definition differ from men in their views on redistributing wealth.

A woman may also have a stronger sense of duty to her co-nationals, or her local community, again altering the perspective on how wealth ought to be spread. In notable contrast is the super-rich, mostly male, class that reports feeling stronger ties to foreign counterparts among the global elite than to less wealthy co-nationals, as recently detailed by reporter (and incidentally, a woman) Chrystia Freeland.

Or, a woman may simply approach the problem differently. She may favour compromise, or a more nuanced, perhaps long-term solution.

This logic does not take sides on whether certain characteristics are innate to men or women, but rather assumes differences because of current, distinct gender roles both at home and in the workplace.

So expect an interesting show, but don’t be fooled that the sides are fairly represented. Four debaters may argue for and against, but until women share the floor, it can only be a one-sided debate.

National Post

Dana Wagner is a consultant with the International Organization for Migration.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Sadly for Dana Wagner, Margaret Thatcher is not - and would not have been, in any event - available.

 

[a_majoor]

More regulatory failure. Stepping into the market with incentives, then having to impose extra fees and taxes to make up for the efffect of people following the incentives (then wondering how people will react to the new incentives)...

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/13/classic-states-debate-taxing-green-cars-to-recover-lost-gas-tax-revenue/

Classic: States debate taxing green cars to recover lost gas tax revenue
posted at 9:21 pm on June 13, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham

So, the government interferes in the market by incentivizing its citizens to buy hybrid and electric with big ol’ tax credits. It’ll be great for consumers and the environment, they say! You’ll save money and the air, it will be sweet with good intentions. But then people actually bought those electric and hybrid cars, car manufacturers responded to government mandates and consumer pushes for increased gas mileage, and the economy and gas prices dictated that a bunch of people start watching how much they drive. And, now you’ve got a revenue problem, what with far less money coming in the form of gas taxes.

What’s a state government to do? Well, certainly not remove its grimy hands from the mix for half a second to see what the natural state of the market might bring. Certainly not start making rational decisions about how to use this declining revenue as efficiently as possible. Certainly not stop raiding infrastructure funds for whatever they damn well please before coming to citizens for more taxes (Hi, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley). No, no, no, now they gotta tax those green cars that they got you to buy with those tax incentives in the first place! Sorry, suckahs! Shoulda known any deal with the devil was bound to burn up:

    SAN FRANCISCO (Bloomberg) — Hybrid and electric cars are sparing the environment. Critics say they’re hurting the roads.

    The popularity of these fuel-efficient vehicles is being blamed for a drop in gasoline taxes that pay for local highway and bridge maintenance, with three states enacting rules to make up the losses with added fees on the cars and at least five others weighing similar legislation.

    “The intent is that people who use the roads pay for them,” said Arizona state Senator Steve Farley, a Democrat from Tucson who wrote a bill to tax electric cars. “Just because we have somebody who is getting out of doing it because they have an alternative form of fuel, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t pay for the roads.”

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the notion that, because gas taxes pay for roads, it’s unfair for those who aren’t buying gas to get what critics call a literal free ride. This problem is more pronounced with bike riders who argue for reconfiguration of entire cities’ roads without throwing a whole bunch in the pot. But the larger point is how elaborately stupid, counterproductive, and at odds with itself idiotic governments become in using our money to push for one policy with subsidized products, only to turn around and complain that all those subsidies are costing them money. Um, yes, that’s what we were saying years ago when you started subsidizing these cars with thousands of our dollars and lecturing us about how awesome it was going to be. STEP AWAY FROM THE RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINES IN YOUR MINDS. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.

Here’s what the tax structure looks like at the moment in states trying this. The prices are low-ish now, but please don’t be silly enough to think they’re not going up:

    In Washington state, electric-car owners this year began paying a $100 annual fee. Virginia in April approved a $64 annual fee on hybrid and electric cars.

    In New Jersey, Senator Jim Whelan, a Democrat from Atlantic City, has proposed a $50 annual fee on electric and compressed natural-gas cars that would be deposited into a state fund for road and bridge maintenance…

    In Arizona, Farley’s measure, which has stalled, would impose a tax on electric cars of 1 cent per mile driven on the state’s highways, amounting to about $120 annually per car, he said. Texas lawmakers considered a similar bill this year.

    In Indiana, lawmakers created a committee to study a local road impact fee on electric and hybrid cars to be paid at registration.

    North Carolina’s Senate on May 23 approved a budget plan that includes a $100 fee for electric cars and $50 for hybrid cars, said Amy Auth, deputy chief of staff for Phil Berger, Senate president pro tempore. The plan has gone to the House for review, she said.

I look forward to the taxing of non-smokers to make up for all that lost tobacco tax revenue, too.

Or the rational response would be to dump the taxes and fees and charge a toll for the use of the road.

 

[Good2Golf]

There probably isn't a jurisdiction in North America where 100% of road/fuel taxes actually goes to maintain road infrastructure...

 

[a_majoor]

This could also go in the Global Warming Sperthread, but since the underlying motivation is power over others, it properly belongs here:

http://www.barrelstrength.com/2013/07/14/the-charning-young-man-in-the-bow-tie/

The charning young man in the bow tie

I was talking to a charming young man last night, who was dressed in a bow tie at the dinner-dance. He was working for some sort of leftist-progressive think tank in the Harvard area. He explained his group’s opinions. It all seemed rather reasonable to a Canadian, like higher minimum wages, or easier rights for unions to organize. I nodded politely. (I do not agree, I merely think this is the stuff of political life). Thus encouraged, my young friend continued in the confident tones of one who knows where the world is going, that his group was seeking to generate a more carbon-neutral energy policy. I nodded sagely.

I keep wondering why young people of high intelligence can continue to believe this massive error, and of course I know the answer. Carbon dioxide emission is the equivalent of Marx’s labour theory of value. Let me explain. Key to the capitalist system, thought Marx, was exploitation of an evil kind. Since, according to Marx, labour input determines the value of anything, then if a capitalist sells a product for more than the costs of the labour and capital inputs, the profit was, by definition, “exploitation”, a form of evil.

By contrast, the market idea of value is that a thing is worth what a willing buyer will pay for it. And that price can vary enormously depending on the circumstances.  In a town under siege, a pound of butter commands more than a diamond necklace, whereas in normal times a pound of butter competes against a large variety of delicious foodstuffs, and thus its price is kept reasonable – in the minds of a set of buyers.

The labour theory of value, which guaranteed that “capitalism” would always be “exploitative”, was the undergirding of the Marxist abhorrence of free markets. Move the camera forward a hundred years. Marxism is in tatters, its revolutions have been abandoned, and the apparatus of Marxist claptrap is finally seen for what it is.

Capitalism surges on unchecked, improving, destroying, transforming. Yet the impulse to control the outcomes continues, and will always be felt by confident young men in bow ties, and their spiritual successors. Capitalism is always trying to be out of control. And charming young men in bow ties are trying to tame it.

How to tame the beast? The one truly clever idea that the political Left has had in the past fifty years is that carbon dioxide, being the inevitable end product of combustion, along with water, is the perfect scapegoat. Leftism cannot beat capitalism in the race to improve people’s lives. That much has been learned. Nevertheless, the leftist impulse is eternal, because it is a spiritual disease, a sin if you will. If you can attach blame to all this improvement you see everywhere from Brazil to Bangladesh to Botswana, you may have discovered  a powerful theory for restoring the power of a secular leftist elite. How so?

The claim of the political left is that capitalism is destroying the planet, not accidentally, but essentially. Not through the generation of polluting by-products, but in the basic processes of burning carbon fuels: oil, coal, natural gas. All this prosperity is fraught with the sin of producing  CO2, which is warming the planet, which is leading to eco-catastrophe.

The arguments against this new secular leftist elite come down to:

the earth is not actually warming, or
if it is warming, we are not causing it.

The arguments for the new secular leftist elite always come down to the notion that every climate or weather event has an underlying cause, the production of CO2 in the process of increasing prosperity. Increased CO2 leads to more warmth which leads to wilder weather.

Behind all the arguments for this or that absurd measure to mitigate the production of carbon dioxide lies the essentially fraudulent assertion that capitalism is warming the planet, and we have to do something. So we sort or garbage into three bins, we reduce our carbon footprint (sin less), and try to live lives more pleasing to our new masters, including the charming young man in the bow tie.

For those of us who have followed the anthropogenic global warming fraud for ten years or more, the miracle is that the global warming zombie marches forward on the moving walkway provided by the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. In truth, the moving walkway is provided by the young men in bow ties, who confidently assert utter twaddle. Marxism had its day, but killed millions upon millions before the experiment was abandoned.

I fear the global warming policy zombie will also result in the deaths of millions, the immiseration of millions more, before it is stopped. I hope I am wrong.

Matt Ridley has a useful article on the climate alarmists, where he says, in part:

Anyway, by “unprecedented”, the WMO meant since 1850, which is a micro-second of history to a paleo-climatologist like Carter. He takes a long-term perspective, pointing out that the world has been warming since 17,000 years ago, cooling since 8000 years ago, cooling since 2000 years ago, warming since 1850 and is little changed since 1997. Consequently, “the answer to the question ‘is global warming occurring’ depends fundamentally on the length of the piece of climate string that you wish to consider”. He goes on: “Is today’s temperature unusually warm? No – and no ifs or buts.”

I have been saying the same for years. Look at the map of eastern North America. Long Island, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are moraines left by the last major glaciation, which started retreating hereabouts between 11,000 to 9,000 years ago.

I wish our young men in bow ties were aware of the basic facts concerning  recent glaciations. I write this sweating on one of the hottest days of the Canadian summer, imagining what it would have been like to be here 13,000 years ago, under two vertical miles of ice sheet. Rather more like Greenland’s ice cap than the green hills of the Eastern Townships.

 

[Nemo888]

Since, according to Marx, labour input determines the value of anything, then if a capitalist sells a product for more than the costs of the labour and capital inputs, the profit was, by definition, “exploitation”, a form of evil.

What a strange and completely uninformed take on Karl Marx. Marx thought markets determined the value of things. He saw some innate weaknesses to the system and critiqued them. Capitalism produces efficiencies that take people away from sustainable independent lives, like farming. Large labour pools form. Over time going back to sustainable self sufficient lives is no longer possible. Then those who have accumulated capital can demand to pay less for labour. There is no longer "perfect competition" in the labour market as workers have no alternative. Once this happens employers dictate terms. What made North America great was a shortage of labour. We are now seeing that happens when workers become surplus.

Even Marx doubted Communism would work, but his critique of capitalism's flaws is excellent. It is rather dated now. It did not forsee ecological limits to production or  third world exploitation where you can pay less for labour than it costs to support a community(cancer villages in China and such). Marxism has never been tried either. Marx wanted workers to own and control the means of production. Russian and China only had the state take over the means of production. They just used Marx as window dressing.

Currently 22% of our production capacity is sitting unused and the real unemployment rate is at least 13%. This is not free market capitalist efficiency. Marx clearly pointed out the near inevitable process where if capitalism if left unregulated it leads to monopolies and obscene wealth for a few. Crony capitalism is inevitable in Marx's view.

 

[a_majoor]

Frankly Nemo, the real reason large amounts of capital and labour are idle is because of regulatory failure; various levels of Government have made it simply to difficult and expensive to put capital and labour into service in the *West*, and it is no wonder that capital has migrated to where it can reach higher rates of return in Asia.

Want a micro scale example?

I recently discovered that the city council in London ON. (my home town) took the applications for business licences from potential food truck operators and sent them to committee (to report back in September). On of the issue committee was to look at was the "diversity" of the menus on offer.

Consider that London's unemployment rate is a rather dismal 9.6%, yet City Council and the bureaucracy can block about a half dozen small business people from starting a business (food trucks make their money in the summer time), as well as denying perhaps a dozen to twenty spin off jobs as vendors, mechanics and sign painters and other people are engaged by the food truck operators to support their business. I can only wonder at the amount of taxpayer dollars were spent on the wages of the people "studying" the menus, compared to the amount of money the truck owners could have potentially made. It would probably take a huge truck fleet to replicate the amount of money wasted on this travesty. Now multiply this across hundreds of industries and across thousands of municipal, provincial, state and Federal jurisdictions...

This is the critique of the "charming man in the bow tie's" true motivation: power over others

As for critiquing labour value theory, Robert A Heinlein did it best in the novel "Starship Troopers":

Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

and

"Value" has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human - "market value" is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible.

 

[Nemo888]

Kind of a weird critique that hits none of the vital points. Marx's point was that labour becomes a commodity like any other. For most people their labour is the only commodity they have to barter. I know what people become when I have all the money and they have none.

Capital has migrated to Asia. I loved it because I could be a rich asshole, ignore laws and pay bribes for special treatment.  I had so much more that the average that I could make people do almost anything for the cost of a decent pizza here. The pollution is unbelievable and most are so poor they will do anything for money. Even try to sell their own daughters. If only we could have less regulation like them  > (As long as I get to be the rich asshole I am all for it.)

 

[Inquisitor]

various levels of Government have made it simply to difficult and expensive to put capital and labour into service in the *West*,

Soooo, it seems by implication that that nefarious and totally irresistible force  force called "Government" is to blame ???? Tsk Tsk.

It's not actually invisible, all we have to do is look in the mirror

Funny, in some parts of the world when this nefarious force gets too far out of line, places like Egypt or Brazil for example, people actually do something about it.

To use the cliche, become the change you want to see.

BTW the London Example, I agree totally. 

Until there are greater negative results for gross incompetance on the part of Politicians then things are unlikely to change.

One of the few areas that Recceguy and I are likely to agree is that Dalton Mcguinty's head would look most suitable  mounted on a pike at the entrance to the Ontario Legislature.

Ford Nation has a lot of valid points, I totally believe that Rob Ford is wasted at city hall and would be the greatest MND ever.  Take Lock-Mart  and some of the others out behind the wood shed and really do a number on them. Same on some of those at Fort Fumble.

Though with his present levels of empathy, tolerance and Persuasion I doubt that he could sell beer on a troop ship.  at least enough to make a prophet  I mean  profit.

 

[a_majoor]

Heinlein's point is labour is not a commodity. It is not fungible (a kilo of copper from Chile has the same properties as a kilo of copper from a mine in Africa) and varies in value according to factors like time, place level of experience and skill, in addition to the normal dictates of supply and demand.

Capital has migrated to Asis because currently there are opportunities for far higher ROI's on investments there than here. This is only partially due to labour costs, access to resources, the size of the local markets and so on also have a lot to do with this. Change the conditions and you change the outcomes; Chinese business is looking to build new factories in places like Viet Nam for many of the same reasons North American business moved.

AS well, labour regulations have a tremendous effect on employment. France has a huge youth unemployment problem because a half century or more of labour laws makes it effectively impossible to fire underperforming workers and unattractive to hire new workers; French business have collectively decided to do without (i.e. not hire more people) and invest in automation rather than outsource, but the end results are effectively the same. Obamacare in the United States has already changed the shape of the labour market for small and medium business: '49ers is the slang term for business which stops hiring at 49 pers because a larger headcount triggers Obamacare costs and penalties; the vast growth in part time emoployment is due to the fact that anyone under 30hr/week is exampt from Obamacare penalties and costs, go over and the business is now liable.

 

[Nemo888]

How is labour not a commodity? It has a market price called a wage and a seamstress in Bangladesh is not much different than one in Detroit. The coal too dirty to be burnt in Canada being mined in BC by Chinese guest workers also indicates that labour and environmantal costs are relevant to a commodities cost.

Rare earth metals are a better example. Rare earths are almost exclusively mined from China. But not because they have the richest deposits. They have the cheapest labour and laxest environmental regulations of countries with known deposits. It takes labour and environmental capital to create fungibles. If you can externalize costs you can maximize profits. In some places I can pay 30 cents a day for labour because the locals will work for a bowl of rice. As a bonus I can pour my toxic sludge straight into the river. My fungible is now cheaper than any that comes  from the regulated first world nations. But I am destroying the place where my factory is located and giving almost nothing back to the locals. I can exhaust the environmental wealth from that particular location and when it is exhausted leave to more fertile grounds.  Fungibles have little value in a wasteland toxic to human life. These are becoming the so called "sacrifice zones" of economic development. I would rather be a basket case of regulation than destroy my children's ability to live a happy, healthy life.

Randian economics only works for a single generation. We may be remembered as the most profitable generation in history, but it won't be a compliment.

 

[a_majoor]

Perhaps you should sit down and re read Heinlein's quotes. A skilled seamstress in Bangladesh can be worth much more than an untrained one in Quebec. And value to the consumer is relative, not absolute.

You get the same mechanical properties from a material, or the same energy content from a kilogram of coal regardless of where it is mined (don't quibble, you know exactly what I mean), which is why commodity goods are fungible.