Tag Archives: freedom

Minimum Wage Revisited

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Kevin Williamson, at National Review, had a thought that’s only now percolating to the surface of thinking Americans and that still is avoided by the American Left.

Properly understood, raising the minimum wage—and having a minimum wage at all—is camouflage, something to talk about and fight about while we’re not talking about and fighting about the more important underlying issue.  Declaring that all American workers shall be paid at least $15 an hour is not the same as ensuring that all American workers produce $15 an hour worth of value, and, eventually, the disconnect between those two considerations must make itself felt.

That part is well understood, and that’s a part that is deliberately ignored by the Left.  But there’s this, too.

Krugman, Clinton, Sanders, et al., have a backward and primitive view of government.  For them and for their fellow Hobbesians, the Middle Ages never really ended, and the role of the sovereign is to distribute benefices and issue decrees.  Unhappy with your wages?  Petition the prince to decree that they shall be otherwise, and dare any gimlet-eyed economist to point out that the imperial tailor is skimping on the ermine.

Yeah.  Minimum wage mandates are just an excuse for governing by fiat, for substituting rule by law for rule of law.

Williamson took a more gentle position on that; he suggested that it’s a lack of understanding by minimum wage proponents of the facts of economics and of human complexity.

I don’t think the leadership of the Left is that ignorant, or that naïve.  They know full well the facts of economics and of human complexity.  That’s why they carefully elide those things enroute to their rule by (Left’s) law: minimum wage mandates are a tool, not a goal.

The Situation in Ukraine

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This is a YouTube video showing the front lines in Ukraine over the last two years.  The title translates as Two Years ATO [Anti-terrorist Operation] in Two Minutes; the text in the lower right names the months as they pass.

The description below the video translates, roughly, as

TSN.ua [a Ukrainian news agency] assembled in one video map all hostilities in the Donbass, distributed in Ukrainian media in the last two years.  The first of them began to appear on the network in June 2014 and since July [has been] updated almost daily.  After reviewing a two-minute infographic, you can see how over time the front line changed, and in that period as long as ATO occurred relative lull.

Notice how the front, after some time, stabilized in the north, and then then in the west: by October (ЖОВТЕНЬ) 2014.  What might the Ukrainians have been able to accomplish against this Russian invasion had they been permitted by the Obama administration and/or the Europeans to have actual weapons with which to defend themselves?

No Stone Unturned

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And they’ll regulate how to turn the stones, too [emphasis added].

The European Union could require Internet search engines, such as Alphabet Inc’s Google, to provide more transparency about advertising systems and conditions of use as part of new rules to regulate Web platforms.

Just gotta fill that regulatory vacuum.  Just gotta.  ‘Cos the people can’t be left to their own devices; they can’t handle not being told what to do and not do.

Here’s European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip on the matter:

We have to deal with all those problems, but separately.

Notice that.  We have to deal, not the people should be left to deal.  They’d just be no good at it.  Besides, the more…targeted…the more regulations the Regulatory State gets to write.

Pseudo-Science and Democrat Suppression of Dissent

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Attorneys General from California, Connecticut, District Of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington State, and the US Virgin Islands are banding together to push their witch hunt against science that refutes their lucrative climatista industry.  Now they’re planning on criminal and civil charges against companies that impudently disagree with the Party Line, cynically likening their case to the

Justice Department’s landmark case against “Big Tobacco[.]”

The truth of their cynicism, though, is exposed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey:

Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be held accountable.  That’s why we have joined in investigating ExxonMobil[.]

Healey’s own words demonstrate that these Democrats already have determined the outcome; they’re just after carefully selected data to support her claim.  This isn’t an investigation; it’s a dishonest witch hunt, designed to protect Democrat votes and crony pseudo-science funding streams.

Full stop.

This Bears Close Watching

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Especially in light of this administration’s—and its hoped-for Progressive successor’s—penchant for surrendering apologetically our sovereignty to extra-national entities like the United Nations.

The United Nations has launched a far-reaching initiative that could give UN-sponsored authorities sway over the biological resources of the high seas—all the waters that lie outside national territories and economic zones.

The potential shift in power involves multi-trillion-dollar issues, such as whether large areas—conceivably, as much as 30%—of the world’s international waters should be designated as no-go areas to protect biological diversity….

Because national sovereignty is so 19th century.  And the UN does such a wonderful job managing its existing tasks.