Tag Archives: jobs

Projecting Again

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Recall the union violence threatened and inflicted in Wisconsin when Governor Scott Walker (R) was working to break union strangleholds on the state government and local school districts.

Now, in nearby Illinois, we get this.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union sent a memo to its members expressing fear that in the face of union intransigence in negotiations with the State’s government, Governor Bruce Rauner (R) might use the National Guard and retired state workers to keep the government open should the AFSCME decide to strike.

Of what is the union afraid? That the work might actually get done, despite the union’s extortion attempt strike?

Or that the Guard might inflict violence on the strikers? If this, then it seems the union is projecting.

Democrats and Unions

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Illinois’ Democrat-controlled legislature—both houses—passed a budget earlier this year that spent $4 billion more than it intended to collect in revenue: a $36 billion spending bill against a $32 billion revenue bill. Never mind the rank dishonesty of this—bankrupt Illinois has no hope of raising those $4 billion except by borrowing, and these Democrat legislaturists know that. They have no intention, then, of repaying the borrowing, and that’s the dishonesty.

But leave that aside for a moment, and consider the following.

Governor Bruce Rauner (R) vetoed the bill because of that deficit, so the State is operating without a budget. Nevertheless, Rauner said the State would keep paying its government employees; as AFSCME said in support of Rauner’s decision,

public service workers in state government are on the job despite the lack of a state budget…and they should be paid for their work on time and in full.

Well, not so fast. Illinois’ Democrat Attorney General Lisa Madigan (just by happenstance, she’s also the daughter of the State’s Democrat Speaker of the House, Michael Madigan, whose own father was a New Deal pusher), with the full backing of her Democrat legislaturists, went into Illinois’ courts to block payment for those same “public service workers.”

Strictly to make a political point for their own benefit, these legislaturist Democrats are trying to prevent their employees from being paid, and they’re using their (erstwhile?) union allies as speed cushions for their bus. The Democratic Party of Illinois is typical of the national Democratic Party.

Democrats and Regulation

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Uber is successful in competing with the established taxi industry, and New York City Mayer Bill de Blasio (D) is all upset about it. He wants to freeze Uber’s (and other ad hoc rides-for-hire companies’) growth until he can figure out how to regulate them:

[W]e support a short pause in the rapid increase of for-hire vehicles to make sure that the future growth of this industry lives up to the policies and principles we set out as a city.

“Short pause.” Sure. He supported his argument in that piece by citing other jurisdictions where Uber had resisted…being over-regulated.

Hillary Clinton is his BFF on this:

while the “gig economy” may be “exciting” and “unleashing innovation,” “it is also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”

Because. Just because. It exists; it has to be regulated.

Democrats abhor anything that’s not under their regulation, not under their control. Americans just are too stupid to see to their own affairs without Know Betters instructing us. And our Know Betters are the only ones qualified to define “what a good job will look like in the future.”

Update: de Blasio seems to have recognized the error of his ways. For now.  Clinton has not.

An Excess Profits Tax

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In 1917, Progressive icon Woodrow Wilson instigated an excess profits tax running from 20%-60% because, of course, the Progressive knew better how American business owners should spend their money than did the Americans who’d actually earned it through their businesses.

During the Great Depression, Democrat (and Progressive) icon Franklin Roosevelt instigated two excess profits taxes while openly slandering American businessmen as being on a capital strike: Roosevelt actually accused businesses of refusing to spend—at rates satisfactory to the Democrat (and Progressive)—the profits they’d earned.

Now we get the proud early 20th Century Progressive, Hillary Clinton, with her proposal for a “tax credit…to encourage more businesses to offer profit-sharing to their workers.”

Progressives still claim to Know Better what American business owners should do with their money than those business owners who did the work to earn that money. Progressives now also claim to Know Better what labor agreements are fit to be negotiated between employee and employer than those employees and employers—American citizens.

Now, the Progressive wants to foist tax credit onto us, to “encourage” businesses to spend their excess profits—her definition—because, of course, she Knows Better.

She also knows full well that with a tax credit, she’s intends to force all of us to pay a tax on a business’ “excess profits.” She knows full well where the money must come from in order to pay that “credit:” from higher taxes or more borrowing.

She closed her proposal with this bit:

I really think our corporations are missing a big bet. Because credible studies prove that profit-sharing with your employees is good for the employees, good for the businesses, good for the economy. I want to incentivize more companies to do just that.

Never mind that businesses are in the business to make money, not to serve as privately funded, government mandated jobs welfare programs. Never mind that in a competitive—that is to say, a free—market economy, businesses have to compete for employees as well as for customers. Never mind that the incentives are present in a free market economy for businesses to get the most out of their employees.

And so never mind that to the extent “credible studies” are right about the efficacy of profit sharing, in a competitive, free market economy businesses already would have profit-sharing plans.

Oh, wait, they’re just not set up in a way that suits this Progressive. The businesses are missing her bet. And so she demands that we all pay.

As an aside, some homework: crunch some numbers, and see whether a $750 credit for a $5,000 profit-sharing payout makes any sort of sense for a company laboring under the US’ highest corporate tax rate in the world—35%—on all profit, “excess” or not. See whether Clinton has any clue at all.

Anything for a Fee

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The American Law Institute periodically issues “restatements” that attempt to codify the common law—but also shift the law in the direction the institute wants it to go.

Reason enough to distrust this gang.

That’s nothing, though, compared with this:

The institute’s restatement defines the tort of battery as any contact with another person that “offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity” or—the new addition—contact that is highly offensive to another person’s “unusually sensitive sense of personal dignity, and the actor knows that the contact will be highly offensive to the other.”

Aside from the blatant assault on individual liberty this thing represents, it’s an insult to Americans everywhere: it says we’re all such special snowflakes that it’s unreasonable to expect us to suffer the bumps and bruises of human interaction without mumsy coming to the rescue. For a fee.

My sense of personal dignity is unusually sensitive to the pronouncements of the ALI—and being such highly educated and well informed persons, of course they know this.

Do I have a case? Of course not: the ALI has its own unusual sensitivity to mere plebes demurring from their pronouncements. But they’d enjoy the fee.