Free Market Family Values
7/2/14 12:52![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
paft.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsStuart Varney: Why don’t you just spend more time with the family, let somebody else work, you go on Obamacare… Stay home, spend more time with the family, let somebody else pay for your healthcare…
It began as the usual Obamacare Horror Story “Bombshell” going pfffffft. We’ve seen it happen, over and over again. A supposedly dire effect of the Affordable Care Act gets cited, which, on examination, turns out to involve someone who could easily afford it paying a higher premium or (in the case of “Bette,” cited during a Republican response to the SOTU) someone who’s been “victimized” by her own refusal to use the options offered by the ACA.
The latest involves the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the impact of the ACA. “Law will reduce fulltime employment by about 2 million,” it was announced. “Healthcare Law will reduce hours worked by about 1.5% to 2% from 2017-2024”
“You wonder how they explain it,” exclaimed a Fox Anchor.
Wouldn’t you know it, CBO director Doug Elmendorf went and spoiled everything by explaining it. See, it’s not so much a matter of jobs being eliminated. It’s a matter of many workers now having the option of reducing their hours or, if they have enough savings, retiring completely from the workforce. As the report says (emphasis added),
The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor…
So what’s the next step on the right? Act outraged that many workers will actually be in a position to, not just leave jobs they dislike for jobs they prefer, but also cut back on their work hours so they can spend more time with their (get this) families.
Or worse yet, if they’ve got enough in savings, retire!
Jon Stewart puts it beautifully in his reaction in Varney’s comments, “What the Hell? You’re conservatives. I thought you guys loved the family.”…’The family must be protected from asteroids, nuclear weapons, dudes in love, they have to be protected!’”
Some of you may remember last autumn a thread on retail workers being made to work on Thanksgiving (or, as one sniveling coward of a retailer put it in its ads, “Thursday.”) Stewart remembers the issue too.
“Now that I think about it,” he observes, “When family clashes with capitalism around the holidays, conservatives throw family overboard.”
Yes, yes, I remember the arguments I encountered here. Giving an employee paid time off on that day is a dire restriction of their freedom. Demanding they come in to work on a major holiday isn’t going to seriously crimp any plans. Nobody books air tickets months in advance and endures long security lines and packed planes for the sake of traveling to see the folks on that day. And requiring someone to man the toy department on Thanksgiving Day is just the same as asking emergency and health workers, airline and telecom employees and other vital transportation and communication personnel to work on that day.
Which left me with the spooky sense the Internet is not just a revolutionary means of communication that spans the globe. It may very well enable us to interact with the inhabitants of some parallel universe where airports are all but empty in late November through December and retail workers are clamoring for the chance to work on what, (in this universe,) is a wildly popular, family oriented holiday.
I kid, of course. The people making these bizarre arguments are, in fact, inhabitants of our world, who, for the sake of defending the indefensible, are willing to feign a complete disconnection from reality. But the more I listen to free market conservatives, the more it sounds as though they believe only upper management should reproduce. In the minds of these folks, people making below a certain amount have no business bearing children or keeping in touch with aging relatives or siblings.
Apparently, a JOB is not a way for people to support themselves and their dependents while contributing to either the private or public sector. If it pays so little and takes up so much time that there is nothing left for friends and family, workers shouldn’t complain. They should just be glad they have a JOB.
A JOB after all, is a quasi-religious requirement, which establishes a firm caste system (see the arguments about whether someone who digs ditches 40 hours a week “deserves” a living wage) and trumps any other personal tie or obligation.
*
It began as the usual Obamacare Horror Story “Bombshell” going pfffffft. We’ve seen it happen, over and over again. A supposedly dire effect of the Affordable Care Act gets cited, which, on examination, turns out to involve someone who could easily afford it paying a higher premium or (in the case of “Bette,” cited during a Republican response to the SOTU) someone who’s been “victimized” by her own refusal to use the options offered by the ACA.
The latest involves the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the impact of the ACA. “Law will reduce fulltime employment by about 2 million,” it was announced. “Healthcare Law will reduce hours worked by about 1.5% to 2% from 2017-2024”
“You wonder how they explain it,” exclaimed a Fox Anchor.
Wouldn’t you know it, CBO director Doug Elmendorf went and spoiled everything by explaining it. See, it’s not so much a matter of jobs being eliminated. It’s a matter of many workers now having the option of reducing their hours or, if they have enough savings, retiring completely from the workforce. As the report says (emphasis added),
The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor…
So what’s the next step on the right? Act outraged that many workers will actually be in a position to, not just leave jobs they dislike for jobs they prefer, but also cut back on their work hours so they can spend more time with their (get this) families.
Or worse yet, if they’ve got enough in savings, retire!
Jon Stewart puts it beautifully in his reaction in Varney’s comments, “What the Hell? You’re conservatives. I thought you guys loved the family.”…’The family must be protected from asteroids, nuclear weapons, dudes in love, they have to be protected!’”
Some of you may remember last autumn a thread on retail workers being made to work on Thanksgiving (or, as one sniveling coward of a retailer put it in its ads, “Thursday.”) Stewart remembers the issue too.
“Now that I think about it,” he observes, “When family clashes with capitalism around the holidays, conservatives throw family overboard.”
Yes, yes, I remember the arguments I encountered here. Giving an employee paid time off on that day is a dire restriction of their freedom. Demanding they come in to work on a major holiday isn’t going to seriously crimp any plans. Nobody books air tickets months in advance and endures long security lines and packed planes for the sake of traveling to see the folks on that day. And requiring someone to man the toy department on Thanksgiving Day is just the same as asking emergency and health workers, airline and telecom employees and other vital transportation and communication personnel to work on that day.
Which left me with the spooky sense the Internet is not just a revolutionary means of communication that spans the globe. It may very well enable us to interact with the inhabitants of some parallel universe where airports are all but empty in late November through December and retail workers are clamoring for the chance to work on what, (in this universe,) is a wildly popular, family oriented holiday.
I kid, of course. The people making these bizarre arguments are, in fact, inhabitants of our world, who, for the sake of defending the indefensible, are willing to feign a complete disconnection from reality. But the more I listen to free market conservatives, the more it sounds as though they believe only upper management should reproduce. In the minds of these folks, people making below a certain amount have no business bearing children or keeping in touch with aging relatives or siblings.
Apparently, a JOB is not a way for people to support themselves and their dependents while contributing to either the private or public sector. If it pays so little and takes up so much time that there is nothing left for friends and family, workers shouldn’t complain. They should just be glad they have a JOB.
A JOB after all, is a quasi-religious requirement, which establishes a firm caste system (see the arguments about whether someone who digs ditches 40 hours a week “deserves” a living wage) and trumps any other personal tie or obligation.
*
(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 21:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 21:19 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 21:47 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 21:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 21:56 (UTC)"If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice."
"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.
Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative—and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egoism and altruism. Egoism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.
This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.
The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.
The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man—and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men."
Seriously, Jeff, do you read these things or just copy-paste the link? Because nothing in those statements contradicts my explicit statement that under Rand's ideas, helping other people is fundamentally evil in her particular moral calculus.
(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 22:05 (UTC)I do, and I'm familiar with her statements on the matter. Her definition of "selfishness" is not the same as yours, as she puts it closer to the ideal of, in her words, "concern with one’s own interests," as opposed to the implications inherent in your own views on the matter.
(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 22:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 22:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/2/14 22:16 (UTC)""Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.
Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative—and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egoism and altruism. Egoism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.
This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.
The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.
The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man—and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men."
"If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice."
These openly state that anyone who helps someone else out of the goodness of their own heart is aiding a parasite. Only you could see something this direct, disagree with it, and provide no basis whatsoever for this disagreement other than your obstinate tendencies to call black white and white black insofar as it suits your ability to perpetuate an Internet argument.