Suck it up, snowflakes. This is not the end.
One of my Facebook friends, the wife of a former co-worker writes:
Yes, I'm disappointed that my candidate lost. But that's not it. I have a whole lot of experience losing contests before, and my feelings today aren't about being a poor sport.I voted in the election, not so much for Trump (I would've preferred Ted Cruz), but against Hillary Clinton. Trump has made some controversial statements, to be sure, but what's the saying about people in glass houses? Hillary Clinton's party contains some real creepy characters: Most notable has to be Joe Biden.
I'm devastated to learn that so many of the people around me condone (or at least don't condemn) sexual violence and hate speech against anyone who looks or acts 'different.' I'm afraid for the safety of my friends and my children. The author of this article does a beautiful job expressing what so many of us are feeling today.
Set aside that Biden has been a fixture on the Washington scene for decades, and the most sensible foreign policy an elected official can pursue is to seek the advice of Joe Biden, and then do the exact opposite. Biden's behavior as a vice president has ranked high on the creepy scale. See the following links for well-documented instances where Biden engaged in behavior that would earn him a trip to HR in most large companies:
- http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/joe-bidens-woman-touching-habit/article/2560311
- http://time.com/3713264/joe-biden-stephanie-carter-shoulder-rub/
Ok, now on to what my acquaintance writes:
I'm devastated to learn that so many of the people around me condone (or at least don't condemn) sexual violence and hate speech against anyone who looks or acts 'different.'So what are we defining as "sexual violence?" If Michelle Obama is to be considered a source, it seems to encapsulate Mr. Trump merely talking about what he'd want to do to someone of the female persuasion.
So they have on tape, making a statement that, though awkward, conveys the sentiment that a lot of "red-blooded males" may have at times in our lives: We see a sexually attractive woman, and the blood rushes from our head to a point somewhat south of the border. We revert to our primitive selves a little bit. I'm sorry that my acquaintance and the other not-Trump people out there take offense to this or will be surprised by this, but most if not all straight males will have at least one of these moments during their lives, where our inner cavemen crawls out, and we think about fulfilling a biological imperative without first wanting to talk about our feelings.
But what differentiates most of us from most of the animal kingdom is that we don't act on it, or we don't act on it without consent from our would-be partner.
Yes, what Trump said about a woman over a decade ago is despicable, and as members of society, we are right to criticize him for it. But to take the logical leap from that to my acquaintance considering the people who voted for Trump to be condoning or not condemning "sexual violence" is ridiculous. Newsflash: People can condemn Trump's statements and still vote for him.
Yesterday, the author used the example of a plumber to illustrate how wages should be set by market forces, and not by some bumbling government bureaucrats. The gist of the post was how the plumber is a skilled laborer, one whom can charge more for the service of fixing a leaky pipe than a fast-food cashier or burger-flipper.
Enter Dog Gone and her cognitive dissonance:
OK, not all plumbers are unionized. And even the ones that are, in fact, skilled laborers: They spend years learning the trade, be it from vocational schooling, apprenticeship, or some combination thereof. They have to acquire the skills somehow. When they take their licensing exams, or whatever plumbers do to get licensed, they have spent considerable time learning their trade. The licensing just says that knowledgeable people in their field have evaluated the plumber and deemed him or her as competent enough to upgrade your plumbing without flooding the basement.
So you admit that the job requirements are low. In other words, the job is a low-skill or unskilled labor. Answer me this: When an overqualified person takes a job, does the employer pay for the employee's skills, or the work product they produce?
Which is why said person should learn a marketable skill and/or gain experience so they can justify the higher wage he or she earns, in line with the quantity and quality of the work product he or she outputs.
To compare low-skill and unskilled jobs with high-skill jobs is the false equivalency.
Why do progressives always whine about unfair life is? Did they not hear or heed that lesson from their parents? Yes, it sucks that people with college degrees are flipping burgers. But I would ask what sort of degrees these people have that they can't effectively market themselves in an economic downturn. I would ask if they had a plan "B" for when their niche degree failed to land them a good-paying job. My ex-girlfriend sat for and passed the Minnesota Bar Exam in 2007, along with 600 other new lawyers. She quickly learned that in the legal business, it's not about what you know, but who. She clerked for a judge for a lot longer than is common before securing a junior prosecutor position, or associate position at a law firm. Ultimately, she moved to Texas and is working as an insurance agent now, a far cry from her goal of being an intellectual property attorney. She learned that in Minnesota, with some 500 new lawyers being admitted to the bar every six months, that supply simply outstripped demand for her skill set.
Come now, you don't get to make blanket statements and then not back them up. How are conservative policies at fault? The sub-prime mortgage fiasco is partly the responsibility of reckless lending, encouraged by a meddlesome government that thinks it's unfair that some people can't buy houses. Again, life is not fair. In its attempt to create fairness, both the government "watchdogs" and predatory/reckless lenders not only failed to help people buy houses and stay in them, but the policies resulted in a sudden dumping of real estate on the market. Great if you're a first-time home buyer with the means, lousy if you're a homeowner responsibly paying his or her mortgage, only to suddenly end up upside-down on the mortgage when your house loses a huge chunk of its value.
Who sets this adequate wage? Who defines what adequate is? The dollar value? What criteria are used to determine this value? What mathematical formula? How much emotion goes into it?
The determination of this value, I've always felt, is a contractually-negotiated number between employee and employer. That's what capitalism is. That's what free enterprise is. What makes the enterprise free is that the employer is free to decide what wage he or she is willing to pay to an employee for the work product, and the employee is free to negotiate for more or seek employment elsewhere.
Every time the minimum wage is raised, the employers operating on the thin profit margins have a couple of options: Raise their prices, which endangers the business' life expectancy; Fire employees to cushion against the increased labor cost (and likely replace the employees with automation); or close their doors. In two of the three scenarios, employees end up as beneficiaries of those same subsidies you're trying to get them off of, only now there's more of them.
Wow, quite the arrogant statement. What makes you an authority on how a specific business runs, and how many local, state, and federal laws they're required to comply with to stay in business? But I'm not surprised: Progressives are enigmatic mixture of arrogance with benevolence (in spending other people's money that is).
Other countries may be able to do that, but in this country, that's called age discrimination. If a fast-food joint has a choice between a teen and a senior citizen, which do they hire? The senior citizen who's likely to have a more business-like attitude and work ethic? Or the teenager with the energy to work the longer or harder shifts and ability to learn how to more quickly work the cash register?
The thing is they are not in direct competition. Wal-Mart and Costco cater to different groups of customers. Here is an excellent dissection of that false equivalency, courtesy of Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lauraheller/2014/06/29/walmart-and-costco-are-not-the-same/
Well, an employer who requires unskilled or low-skill labor does.
Paying people what they're actually worth, instead of what someone arbitrarily decides they're worth, is a failure?