Elizabeth Warren's 11 Commandments

Elizabeth Warren, best known for being a super white lady who pretended to be Indian to fulfill an EEOC requirement, is trying to establish herself as the “Youthful” alternative to Hillary Clinton for a presidential run. This is understandable since Clinton was born in ’47 and Warren was born in ’49, and that’s like seven Prog years.

Anyways, Warren gave a speech and listed off the 11 Commandments of Progressivism.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-s-11-commandments-of-progressivism-20140718

Since I despise Progressivism to the very core of my being, let’s take this opportunity to go through these commandments together. As we’ll see, most of them sound all nice and fluffy but are actually pure evil, sort of like pulling a bunny slipper over a jackboot. Each one of these is so ridiculous that responding to it would take a thesis, so I’ll just hit the broad philosophical points.

– “We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it.”

By Wall Street, Progs don’t actually mean “Wall Street”. They mean free market capitalism, which is their ultimate enemy. Capitalism enables people to improve their lives without government. The Prog’s end game is all about central control, only since the Progs all have Gender Studies degrees instead of Business degrees they suck at it even more than the Politburo.

As for Wall Street, whenever Progs are actually in power they practice a vicious form of crony capitalism where their friends and donors get special perks and favors, and political enemy’s businesses are punished. Solyndra? Here is your sack of money. Campaign donors and unions are Too Big To Fail! You donated money to the opposition? Audit time, bitches!

– “We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.”

Think that one through for a moment. It isn’t we believe in science period. There is that second bit about “protecting the Earth” as in we believe in whatever gives us an excuse to gain more control and power.

If you believe in manmade global warming or not, you ever notice that the Prog answer is always MOAR GOVERNMENT CONTROL!?  Progs believed in science back in the 30s too, but it was all about eugenics that time. We all saw how that worked out.

– “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”

Wrap your brain around that hypocritical bullshit. We must protect the internet from evil corporations? What about the NSA reading all our stuff? What about the government deciding what can and can’t be said, and Progressive senators trying to pass “Kill Switches”? I’m not a fan of Google, but Google can’t send a SWAT team to my house to kill me.

– “We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.”

Like many Prog talking points, this commandment is based upon wishful thinking, and it appeals to the base emotions of shame and greed.

Most rational people understand that minimum wage jobs are meant for low skilled positions and people who are starting out, and once you’ve gained some skills you go get a better job. Only a fool expects to buy a house and raise a family on burger flipper wages. But not Progs, oh no, because in their world when you raise a business’ costs they’re not going to eliminate those low skilled positions, instead they’ll just get more money from their endless money tree that all business owners have in their back yards.

I’m a retired accountant who worked for everything from Fortune 500 megacorps to tiny companies. I’ve been an auditor, a financial analyst, a finance department manager, and a small business owner, so trust me when I’ve said that I’ve never talked to a Prog who had a fucking clue how business actually works.

– “We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them.”

I’m pretty sure this is the same point as before, but God only had 10 Commandments, so Elizabeth Warren is going to show him!

– “We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt.”

More recruiting by shame and greed. Got a stupid degree that is completely useless in the real world? Not your fault!

This problem is complex, but Progs love to take the complex and dumb it down into sunshine and rainbows. Yes, college is too expensive, and the fact this is coming from an Ivy League professor is highly ironic, says the guy who worked his way through state college to get an always in demand degree.

First, the more government meddles in funding, the more expensive college becomes. Prog solution? More government control (sensing a trend yet?).

Second, the time spent in college has become increasingly irrelevant, and more and more of that expensive time is wasted on things that don’t actually matter in real life. Most of us learn more in 6 months of working in our chosen field than we did in 4 years of school where we had to take lots of useless, forgettable classes designed to make us “well rounded”. I can become well rounded in ways that don’t require borrowing money, thanks.

You want to learn about Gender Studies of Left Handed Eskimos? Read some books. You want to get good at some art? Practice. Neither of those requires you to get a hundred grand in student loans. You want to make money? Get a degree in something that is actually in demand outside of college. (Pro Tip, those are usually the “hard” majors as opposed to the “fun” majors).  Pretty simple really.

– “We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.”

Because Progressives would NEVER raid those entitlement programs to pay for other stuff! Okay, except for all of the things she listed there, obviously.

Progs believe that everyone is entitled to everything, but they don’t really have any clue how to pay for any of it. All that crunchy math stuff is super hard. Social Security is fundamentally mathematically flawed because when it was passed people didn’t live as long. No amount of wishful thinking changes the fact that entitlements cost money, and somebody else has to pay for them. The Prog solution? More entitlements.

– “We believe—I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work.”

I can’t believe you’re saying it in 2014 either, because this tired old nonsense about pay inequality between men and women has been disproven over and over again. But Progs gain power by moving from crisis to crisis, and this time the War on X, the X=Women.

There are outliers, but for the most part men and women are paid the same for EQUAL work. The statistical blips occur because of lifestyle choices, and stepping away from careers for family reasons, plus some fields are predominately male and some fields are predominately female by CHOICE, and the market values those fields at different rates. Notice that Progs never throw temper tantrums that there are more male plumbers or male electricians? Yeah, those aren’t sexy.

– “We believe that equal means equal, and that’s true in marriage, it’s true in the workplace, it’s true in all of America.”

If that is the case, then why are Progs proponents of policies and programs that manipulate populations based upon sex and race? If we’re all equal, why do Progs feel the need to sort everyone into easily managed boxes?

I diverge from some of my conservative brethren on marriage, mostly because I think that is one item of many that is none of the government’s damned business, and never should have been to begin with. The difference is that us Cons can actually debate what constitutes the government’s limited responsibilities, and our biggest problem is that some of us want the government to be your dad. On the other hand, all Progs want the government to be your mom, jailer, priest, and dominatrix. To Progs, everything is the government’s business, the only question to them is at what point do they bring in the gulags and purges?

– “We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform.”

Sounds great. But as usual with Progs the devil is in the details. What is this “reform” you speak of? Oh, wait… You mean that you want to allow in millions of illegal immigrants across our nonexistent borders so you can keep them as an easily manipulated near-slave class forever dependent upon Democrat social programs, to benefit your crony capitalist allies, and to further your political agendas? Fantastic!

Personally I’m in favor of lots of legal immigration, where immigrants have rights, opportunities, and legal protections. But shucks, then the Progs wouldn’t be able to manufacture a humanitarian crisis whenever they needed one.

– “And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!”

This one is actually two different topics.

Like I said before, I’ve never met a Prog who understood how business worked, and this whole thing about corporations being people meme is an extension of that. No, a corporation isn’t a person, but it is a legal entity make up of PEOPLE. So, if an individual has rights, do they give up those rights when they go into business with other individuals? Of course not. But keep in mind that Progs don’t actually believe in rights. They think the Bill of Rights was a list of suggestions of stuff the government should allow until it becomes inconvenient.

The second bit about Right to Their Bodies is asinine. Progs are all about Choice, as long as it is choosing things they’re in favor of—like killing babies—but if you Choose to own a gun, or Choose how to run a business, or Choose how to spend your own money, or Choose to have privacy, or Choose to not let the government read your mail and tap your phones, or Choose what to do with your own property, or Choose to disagree with Prog doctrine in any way, then those are bad choices, and you’re a bad person, and need to be regulated/audited/imprisoned/shot.

As for overturning Hobby Lobby, it is hard to believe that this woman was a law professor. It won’t take long for Prog outrage to shift to the next group that doesn’t want to pay for their entitled bullshit.

So that’s the 11 commandments of Elizabeth Warren. She forgot a few Prog doctrines though.

–       You only have the right to self-defense when and how the government says so.

–       You have religious freedom only as long as it agrees with Prog dogma.

–       You have the right to property until the government wants to take it.

–       Don’t even get us started on outdated concepts like privacy and free association!

And the main tenet of conservatives’ philosophy, according to Warren? “I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.”

You left out a few parts there, Professor. Here, I fixed it for you:  I got mine, because I worked for it. The rest of you are on your own to exercise your liberty, live your life, and pursue happiness free of constant government meddling.   

Let me try to sum up Prog doctrine for you, and I don’t even need 11 commandments. Hell, I bet I can nail it in one.

The Golden Rule of Progressivism = Do, say, or promise anything—no matter how outlandish— in order to gain and constantly expand government power and control over all facets of life.

Foodmachine Houston: Gaming for Charity
Who is going to GenCon?

201 thoughts on “Elizabeth Warren's 11 Commandments”

  1. > “We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.”

    They love to merge these two things: “we believe in science” and “therefore policy X”. It lets them then use the inverse: anyone who DOESN’T believe in policy X clearly doesn’t believe in science.

    It saves them the effort of ever actually arguing for policy X ** AND ** lets them paint their enemies as too stupid to hit the “play” button on the DVD player holding Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

  2. Conflation is a favorite tactic of those who don’t want you to pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.

  3. She forgot the 12th commandment of Progs: “If we say the debate is over, then clearly it is. Any disagreement will be meant with hostility and general condescension.”

  4. Absent government involvement in marriage, there would be no “gay marriage” debate, because there’d be no legal privileges for married couples that gay couples would covet.

    1. Actually, no. There clearly still would be, as what they covet is societal approval. See, for example, California where ‘civil unions that are legally 100% the equivalent of marriage, just not called marriage’ wasn’t good enough.

      I’d still prefer government out of it, though, but that would require significantly revising laws.

      1. One does not get “societal approval” by pointing a gun at society’s head and screaming “approve of me!”.

        For most, it’s the benefits (search “legal benefits marriage” and see how many “gay marriage” websites you find). For the rest, it’s an attack on marriage and Western Civilization (ask Masha Gessen if you don’t believe me).

        Their objective is the Dolist Ghetto, where all children are bastards, all men are thugs, and all women are (Stong!, Independant!) welfare-whores. And “marriage” is a dirty word.

      2. “See, for example, California where ‘civil unions that are legally 100% the equivalent of marriage, just not called marriage’ wasn’t good enough.”

        And it wasn’t. ‘Marriage’ has long been synonymous with the legal state codified as ‘civil union,’ regardless of society’s approval or lack thereof. Same-sex couples should be free to call themselves married, and those who disagree to be free to frown their little hearts out.

        1. I don’t *care* what they call their relationships, so long as my taxes don’t go to subsidize it. Were it up to me, the only couples that would get any legal privileges for their relationships would be married couples with their own, biological children.

          Anything more amounts to subsidizing other people’s love lives, and why should the taxpayer be obligated to do that? A childless relationship (whether gay or normal) is of no more social significance than a pair of roommates or any two (or more) random strangers. Let them help perpetuate society before they claim a right to anyone else’s money.

      3. OK, I have to step in here. “civil unions that are legally 100% the equivalent of marriage” will not be treated as “100% the equivalent of marriage” in practice, at least until there has been a long series of lawsuits over it. Not because of widespread homophobia (or not because of that alone), but because of the tendency of low level bureaucrats to take great pleasure in clenching up and saying “no” just because they are sphincters. I realized this a couple of years ago when some NY state sphincter associated with an electric company made the news because he refused to recognize that a MARRIED gay couple were a couple and entitled to a joint account.

        I’m not saying that Gays aren’t ALSO demanding acceptance of society at large (and doing it badly), but they have a legitimate reason to feel that “civil unions” will not be treated as equal to marriage, no matter what the law says.

        1. There’s no reason they should be treated as legally equivalent. Marriage is about children. It’s only in the past hundred years or so that marriage has been largely divorced from reproduction, but our social structures haven’t yet adapted to that.

          The legal benefits of marriage (immunity to testifying against a spouse, shared insurance, etc.) exist to make it easier to start and support families (ie: have children and raise them together). If those benefits *don’t* exist for that reason, or no longer serve that purpose, then there’s no reason to continue to provide such benefits to *anyone*.

      4. @Achillea, Homosexual couples are already free to call themselves married. We have this fascinating thing called freedom of speech. It’s pretty nice; you should check it out some time. The rest of us are free to disagree and treat them as married or unmarried as we see fit.

        Now here’s a question for you: Are the rest of us free to disagree about these “marriages”? Are we free to run a bakery, florist, or photography business and not participate in these “weddings”?

        Or does freedom only go one way?

      5. Get the government out of marraige completely. Separation of church and state.

        Legislate a default state childrearing compact for teenage dumbasses that start having kids without an agreement in place.

        Ditch the married couple tax penalty.

        Give the people performing marraiges blank medical power of attorney contracts + a simple will, and allow him to notarize them.

        End of problem. Why is this hard?

  5. The Golden Rule of Progressivism = Do, say, or promise anything—no matter how outlandish— in order to gain and constantly expand government power and control over all facets of life.

    Yep, nailed it one.

    Now, if all the folks on the leftward side of the dial would notice this simple truth and run progressivism out of their political philosophy.

    On a rail, preferably.

    1. If they ran progressivism out of their political philosophy, they’d have nothing left.

      All politics in the US since the 1930s has been based around progressivism and opposition thereto.

  6. The problem is that there are enough people in this country who will lap this up. And their votes count.

    1. Yup. It seems like several of those ‘commandments’ are targeted specifically towards some of those demographics they like to claim under the Democrat Party’s wing. Minimum-wage? Lotta dead-end min-wagers out there who’ve never worked outside of a fast food or convenience store establishment in their lives, who’ll vote for her on that point alone. Tuition? Lotta students out there. Immigration? Targeted at the Latino vote (never mind that a lot of that target group can’t vote legally, they’ll find a way to make it happen, I’m sure). Equal Pay and the Hobby Lobby thing? Trying to get us women to vote for them.

      As for the “I’ve got mine” bit– if that’s the case, why is it that Republicans are always credited as donating more to charity than Democrats? (Course a quick google search shows a few sites trying to spin it as both sides are equally ‘generous’, despite the numbers on charitable donations).

  7. I’m one of those people who went to college to actually work, and I’ve got no sympathy for people complaining about the government not paying for their degrees. I got an engineering degree with a certificate in business from a state school. Tuition was more than fair and because I worked my butt off they paid for about 25% of it themselves. On top of that, since STEM degrees are so sought after I had three separate internships, each paying better than $20 an hour.

    People getting other value added degrees like business, medicine, and the others where recruiters don’t laugh you out of the office know what I mean. Jobs exist, but if you’re not willing to work to get one you probably won’t work if you get the position.

    1. Every time Warrenista opens her mouth, I’m reminded of exactly how much a loser Scott Walker was to have been beat by… that.
      I wonder if he ever did connect his getting whupped with his bragging on how ‘moderate’ he was and how he was being ‘mentored’ by his good buddy from across the aisle, John Kerry.

      1. 1- Yep, it was Brown and not Walker I was thinking of. My bad for getting the name wrong.
        2- Yep, how dare that fascist Governor Walker make people write their own checks for union dues, instead of allowing the unions to collect dues at gunpoint! The cad, I say!

      2. “You mean Scott Brown, the tea party darling of 2010…”

        As someone who likes to think I’m sort-of part of the Tea Party (having attended a rally or two, and even carrying a sign at one or two of them) I would have to say that Scott Brown wasn’t so much a “tea party darling” as he was “well, we’ll root for him, because he’s the best we got–after all, we’re talking about Massachusetts, what can you expect?”

  8. – “And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!”

    Might have something to do with the certificate that floated around yesterday where women could fill it out and send it to their govt rep claiming that their vaginas were corporations based out of the Bahamas and tax free – I have the image but don’t think it will let me post it here lol – Kate

    1. From an accounting perspective I’m curious how those vaginas earn their taxable revenue, but even if they are in the Bahamas they’ll still need to pay sales tax in the state they perform their business in.

      1. If they’re in Nevada, I could understand how they’d earn taxable revenue, but every other state? Yeah, I’d be curious, too! :-p

      2. Dave,

        I’m sure Larry will correct me if I’m wrong, but even if they’re outside of Nevada, they are required to report any income earned with their vaginas, even if said income were illegal gained.

        Of course, I’m for legalizing that too. Selling is legal. Sex is legal. Why is selling sex illegal? (To say nothing of the impact it could have on huma trafficking)

      3. T.L. — The meme (and current government policy) is that selling sex is _ALWAYS_ “human trafficing”, because obviously, no person would ever willingly consent to having sex for money — they must all be exploited.

      4. Besides Tom, don’t forget that all sex = rape.

        so therefore prostitution = rape for profit.

        Yet through some prog logic i cannot fathom it’s not profit for the wemynz selling the service, but for an evil corporation that’s melting icecaps with stacks of seized marijuana and gay people for the amusement of there rich 1% overlord CEO’s

        I might be wrong on that last bit, but feel pretty confident on the first 2 🙂

        Oh and just in case…

        Racist, Bush’s fault.

      5. Dave P: at this point, we’re talking assets that not only have negative value, but are positively repellent.

        Face it, would ANYONE be desperate and horny enough for, say, Nancita Pellousy or DiFi ??

      6. Illegal income is taxable, and tax forms are considered privileged testimony. If they weren’t privileged, then anyone could plead the fifth instead of filing tax.

      7. Don’t corporations have to have officers and regular meetings thereof?

        So when do these idiots get prosecuted for attempting fraud?

    2. Might be fun encouraging anyone fool enough to engage in this tripe to “protest” by sending that form in lieu of their taxes…

  9. Quote:

    – “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”

    Wrap your brain around that hypocritical bullshit. We must protect the internet from evil corporations? What about the NSA reading all our stuff? What about the government deciding what can and can’t be said, and Progressive senators trying to pass “Kill Switches”? I’m not a fan of Google, but Google can’t send a SWAT team to my house to kill me.

    -Close Quote

    Larry, I agree with everything you’ve said on all other points, but NSA spying and “kill switches” are not part of the net neutrality issue. (much as politicians would like to make it one)

    I don’t like how Warren is making Net Neutrality a progressive issue, but I also don’t like the FCC rule changes that will allow internet based companies to purchase faster speeds from ISPs, allowing them to out-compete smaller rivals.

    I don’t see how going back to the FCC’s previous policy constitutes more government regulation, since up to just recently it was a ‘hands off’ approach. Now that they are allowing ISPs to charge more to move certain types of data at high speeds, this will lead to more regulation.

    1. The problem is that net “neutrality” requires government control over the content of what’s being passed on the Internet. As for being allowed to charge more – bring it on. If Time Warner tomorrow offered me a package that guaranteed my netflix to run at 1080p super hd all the time, I’d buy it. My mom, who never does anything but facebook, email and some flash games? Doesn’t need it – why should she be subsidizing me?

      1. So, how will you be able to keep ISPs from throttling or blocking traffic they don’t like without more government interference/regulation? The only way I know of is to treat all data on the net as equal in priority, which is the policy that is now being moved away from.

        1. Competition? That’s the great thing about free markets. If there’s a demand, generally someone will step up and provide a service to satisfy it.

      2. @Pete, how? By ditching any ISP that blocks or throttles traffic I want. Look, bandwidth isn’t free, it doesn’t grow on trees, and someone’s gotta pay for it. Net Neutrality is socialism, plain and simple, where someone else pays for what you use.

        Don’t believe me? Think about it. Netflix uses up about a third of all US bandwidth, corporate and personal combined. Why in the world shouldn’t the combination of Netflix and Netflix subscribers pay for that? Right now they’re both being subsidized by others.

      3. @Skip

        I’d absolutely love it if I had a real choice in ISP’s, but short of moving to another town, or at least clear across it, my only two choices are Comcast – so incredibly sucky I have some really good customer service disaster stories I’ve experienced as a consultant – and the not quite so sucky AT&T / Uverse.

        Want 20 up/down? Hope you’re scheduled for business rather than residential, and that’s hundreds of dollars a month. As in five or more. I truly get we’re more dispersed than Hong Kong or Latvia, but while I’m not expecting gigabit for $50/month, I expect better than 10Mb sync metro-E for $500.

        Of course, the reason for this de-facto monopoly is (*ding* *ding* *ding*) government regulation.

        So if there really were four or five effective choices, I’d be glad to say “let the market sort it out”, but while we have effective mono/duopolies, I don’t think it’s too much to ask our ISP’s to give us the packets we pay for and not throttle stuff that competes with what they’re trying to offer at a higher price. It’s bad enough some people actually get faster Netflix streams through VPN connections than they get directly.

      4. …and I could care less if netflix uses a certain percentage of bandwidth. I pay for data to be delivered at a certain rate, and expect it to happen regardless of whether or not it’s my fifth linux ISO for the month or the fifth episode of Sherlock. Now if Netflix or the ISO mirror or Amazon S3 are swamped, that’s on them, but when some of the most contentious ISP’s turn down netflix prestaging delivery servers inside their network, it’s not all about bandwidth.

      5. It requires no such thing. It requires that basically nobody in the transmission process knows anything about the content being sent along.

        I have never forgiven Glenn Beck for planting the idea that Net Neutrality was some kind of Internet Fairness Doctrine. He set the internet back a good five years with that one. (Which is a long time in Internet years).

        This “Pay for Speed” plan will destroy the utility of the Internet. Imagine if Comcast (or is it Time-Warner) were to say, “Hah, good luck watching that Fox News video at 56K speeds. Why not watch our MSNBC stream at 50 megabits instead?”

        It should be “I don’t know or care what you’re watching, but we will do our best to provide it at competitive speeds and prices.”

      6. Net Neutrality boils down to this: I’d rather have the government regulate my internet connection, than have the ability to choose which provider will regulate my internet connection.

        Key differences:
        1. The market provides choices of varying quality (which historically improve over time) and you can change your mind. Government is a monopoly and good luck changing your mind.
        2. Time Warner can’t send men with guns to your home.

        Just think to yourself: I’d rather have the government version of X than the one I can get at the store. Solve for X.

        X=Food
        X=Housing
        X=Phone
        X=Package delivery
        X=Trains
        X=Internet

      7. @Dr Mauser, of course it will. It sets up a situation in which there will be no economic incentive to increase the size of the bandwidth pool, because it will be a commons. At which point it will become a scarce resource. At which point the bureaucracy will step in to manage it. Do you really think that a bureaucracy, once it’s arrogated to itself the right to regulate things will be content to not do this? There are no examples of any bureaucracy anywhere that I can think of that would fit that description.

      8. @skip, why would requireing the ISPs to act as common carriers result in no incentive to increase the bandwidth that they provide?

        If there is any competition at all, they will increase the size of their networks to support their paying customers, the way they have for decades.

        It’s only where there is no competition at all that this doesn’t work (and where there is extremely limited competition, it doesn’t work well)

        Internet bandwidth is not ‘commons’ because there every bit of it is owned and run by some company.

      9. following up on this, a very interesting document to read is http://www.frankston.com/public/?name=20140717-0146

        One point it makes is that the Internet doesn’t behave the way a commons does because the network effect (the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of endpoints) overwhelms the value of isolating yourself.

        Compuserv, Protigy, and AOL are all very visible victims of this effect, they tried to be the entire value of the Internet connection and are all effectively gone at this point.

      10. You don’t seem to understand this one. The problem is not Time Warner offering you a package that will speed up Netflix for you. The problem is your ISP offering Netflix a package that will block or slow down your access to Netflix’s competitors.

        The whole point of net neutrality is that all data should be treated the same. That’s not controlling the content, it is just the opposite.

    2. The FCC made a power grab in the first place to even rule on the internet. It’s not their responsibility until congress says so.

      Not that they care.

      1. First, the FCC actually does have jurisdiction over the Internet as it’s still considered a “wireline service” (originally the Internet moved over a phone line if you’ll recall).

        I’m no fan of big government, but this is one area where I side with regulation. By giving companies the ability to decide that traffic from certain websites has priority, they can effectively throttle traffic from certain sites and that makes me uncomfortable, since in effect it’s giving a company the power to choose what sites I can or cannot see.

        The problem with saying “let the free market” sort it out with this one is that “the free market” doesn’t really exist for ISPs. While no single company has a monopoly nationwide, in many areas of the country (particularly rural areas) there’s only a single ISP provider. There are also tacit agreements between major ISPs not to intrude into each other’s territories and the occasional backroom deal to squash a smaller competitor (Slashdot & ArsTechnica have a lot of articles documenting this). Can’t really call it a free market if they rig the game against any new players.

      2. Jon, rather than create a new “net neutrality” regulation out of thin air, wouldn’t we be better served by making it a rallying cry to reduce or eliminate regulation that prevents ISPs from being created in the first place?

        The issue isn’t just on the Federal level, either. On the local level, it’s often difficult to get the permits needed to put down utility lines, and there’s nothing stopping the frivolous lawsuits made by competitors of a company trying to establish a new ISP.

        I think too often we champion harmful regulation with the justification “it’s already regulated” rather than try to reduce the regulation that makes modern-day monopolies possible.

  10. Larry, I think there’s been a subtle but even more dangerous shift in the application of the “equal pay for equal work” commandment lately. I see it more and more applied to the clearly socialist (communist?) idea that equal EFFORT (or equal HOURS worked) should yield equal pay. The “equality of outcomes” mantra is starting to be applied to this otherwise tired old saw. I see it as a much more dangerous idea than just the equality of the sexes issue. I noticed this shift in emphasis while listening to news commentary just the other day and my radar went off immediately. (Of course, the progs will still want to “pay” those who refuse to work at all a “living wage” but they’ll have an entirely different excuse for that one.) It’s just so darned easy to give away other peoples money! And you look so darned good when you do it! They like to think of themselves as Robin Hood, but they never remember that Robin Hood stole money from the GOVERNMENT and gave it back to the people who it had been taxed (stolen, coerced) from in the first place!

    1. The whole thing is absurd. If I could get a “living wage” from some cake walk, no brainer, job, why the hell would I go work harder doing something else? Where is my incentive? Why should equality of effort mean equality of pay, when some people’s efforts are more note worthy than others? Who would go do dangerous, dirty, out in the hot sun, back breaking manual labor, jobs when you’re mandated to get the same pay as the cushy, air conditioned, push buttons on a cash register job?

      Not that cash register jobs would exist within days of the minimum wage getting raised that much because they’d get replaced with touch screens, self check outs, and card readers. Then more people would be unemployed, but that’s okay, because they’re still entitled for stuff, to be paid for by the ever shrinking number of productive people.

      Progressives are vile.

      1. And yet the dirty work still has to get done. Despite the progressive dream, we have not automated everything involving manual labor–and there aren’t enough immigrants, illegal or otherwise, to do what “Americans won’t do”. Because those poor brown people need to coddled, too. Vile doesn’t even begin to describe it, since the most likely outcome will be labor camps, as it has ever been.

      2. As a computer programmer with an interest in robotics, I fully endorse increasing the minimum wage.

      3. “As a computer programmer with an interest in robotics, I fully endorse increasing the minimum wage.”

        Seconded.

        Hell. In my career I have been personally responsible for the decimation of career fields in Fax operator, data entry clerk, and punch card operators. It wouldn’t hurt to add ‘destroyer of fast food line chef and cash register operator’ to my villainous resume. Time to go work on my mocking sneer.

        Bonus: shiny robot minions.

        *cackles with evil laughter*

      4. @andrew

        I am opposed to these minimum wage increases. Early in my working life, I had a minimum wage job. I worked and got a promotion that gave me a 20% raise. Then minimum wage was increased by 18% and I effectively ended up with more responsibilities and more work for almost the exact same pay as the people who did nothing.

        This was very annoying to say the least.

      5. I’m pretty sure you can count Economics as a science. Somewhere on the first week of a competent Econ course, they draw a Supply / Demand curve and show how when the price is set at somewhere other than where the market would set it….either Surpluses or Shortages occur.

        E.g. if you make the cost of paying for employees too high, the market demands less.

        Ivy League idiots learn just enough to get their gentlemanly Cs and then forget the whole thing.

      6. Geoff: What you are describing is sane Austrian Economics.

        The Ivy League crowd are all near socialist Keynesian retards. If you want a belly laugh, google up “Keynes Animal Spirits”.
        Bush the Elder refered to Keynesian economics as voodoo economics for good reason.

      7. @davidelang, I haven’t had an experience like that. On the other hand, I had this experience:

        After I completed my Ph.D. I was unemployed for several months; I started work as a computer programmer, working part-time at $8/hr. Now try to support a family (a wife and two daughters) on that!

        But after a couple of months, that $8/hr became $11/hr, then I moved on to another company (again, part-time) for $14/hr, and over the course of several years I’ve worked up to about $30/hr. For the first time in my life, I’m not only supporting my family, but I’m paying off debt!

        I’m not sure if I’d be in the position I am today, if it weren’t for an employer willing to pay me a wage that was far lower than what I needed for my family. He took a risk on me, and that risk was initially worth $8/hr.

        (Admittedly, I’m not doing what I love to do, and I’m still not sure about what to do with that…but at least I’ve been able to take steps to grow to the point where I could provide for my family! The minimum wagers forget that (1) the True Minimum Wage will always be $0/hr, and (2) when you’re looking for work, every little bit can help!)

      8. Oh, and (3) if someone wanted to offer me $3/hr for a position, I could unilaterally decide that such a position isn’t worth my time, and ignore it completely. No employer is forcing me to work, after all! ($3/hr might be perfect for a twelve-year old working 12 hrs a week, though, but we can’t have that, because Child Labor/Living Wage/We Can’t Be Teaching Work Ethic, Lest Where Will We Be In 100 Years?!?)

  11. Commandant number 4 has always bothered me?

    Liberals MUST believe in the tooth-fairy, because they also believe that the evil corporations have some magic money-vault filled with all their evil corporate profits. And when we raise the minimum wage, well those evil corporations are just going to have to open up that secret vault and pay for everyone’s raise from their own secret stash….and not from pass those costs on to every single customer (you and me).

    Here in North Carolina, the evil energy mega-conglomerate, Duke Energy, was recently cited for leaking coal-ash into the river. And part of their penalty is they must immediately remove all that nasty pollution (maybe by shipping it into the fourth dimension) and must do so without charging the costs to the customer. See, all they have to do is reach into that magic secret money vault and pay to remove tons of waste without making you or me pay for it. Because that’s what nasty capitalist corporations need to be forced to do instead of providing a service with a profit margin that makes it worthwhile to remain in business.

    1. That’s the really insidious point of this minimum wage garbage. Mandate a higher minimum wage and ALL other wages will rise (if a roughneck commands a 600% premium over minimum wage, he isn’t going to head out to the oil fields for 300% over minimum wage, he’ll find an easier job with the same premium – until the market stabilizes and roughnecks are getting 600% again) which will cause the costs of ALL goods to increase, which will put upward pressure on wages, which will cause costs to increase, which will…. Once everything settles back out the minimum wage worker is no better off than they were, there are just larger numbers on the receipts and pay stubs.

      1. Jeff Gauch said: ” Once everything settles back out the minimum wage worker is no better off than they were, there are just larger numbers on the receipts and pay stubs.”

        No, its actually worse than that. Because they are -worse- off. Because now any money they had saved up is worth -less- than it was before the inflation kicked in.

        Its the invisible tax governments use to steal the value out of your investments in a way that you can’t see and can’t defend against. It is however the main reason Baby Boomers are going into retirement with zero savings. Inflation ate their savings through their whole lives.

        Proving once again that liberals are a pack of innumerate idiots, otherwise they wouldn’t support these policies.

  12. “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”

    This needs to be added to the Book of Standard Progressive Tropes, indicating how they just don’t grok reality.

    On the face of it, this is an excellent bullet-point. Corporations should not be allowed to instate a tiered pipe to the net based on preferred membership status. Or rather, they should, but there should be Consequence.

    Generally my conversations with the Prog goes like this:

    I agree with that. Unfortunately the problem isn’t really bandwidth throttling, or tiered usage plans. The problem is that the providers exist at regional monopolies at worst, duopolies at best due to Federal Regulation and manipulation of the businesses in order to fulfill FCC regulations on broadcast frequency usage (you know how broadcast frequencies are only leased to providers via auction, right?).

    In short, I agree, but the solution is not more regulation. It’s doing away with the Government enforced monopolies allowing for increased competition with the net result of any asshat company tying to compel use gates or throttling or having ComCastic style user-service would GO Out Of Business!

    Somewhere in the middle there the Prog either stops listening because BAD THINK! or their head explodes. Alas.

  13. Really liked your books but now I realize you are a complete retard. I’m just glad I havent paid your a nickle for the books. Thanks for the free entertainment fundie moron.

      1. Ya I’m so sure he has read any of your books. How much do you want to bet that the doofus doesn’t know what puff stands for without googling it.

      2. Wipe the tears from your eyes with the royalty statements expressing the people who did pay good money to read your books, Larry.

    1. *sniff sniff*

      I smell Butthurt Prog. Smells like….. patchouli and Vaseline.

      Don’t worry, Butthurt Prog, Larry probably can’t detect it over the aroma of his fat royalty checks.

    2. Am I the only one who gets tickled seeing someone called a “complete retard” (more of that “tolerance” thing) by someone who can’t manage to competently use the English language?

      Look into when you should use commas, apostrophes, and it’s “paid you a nickle”, not “your”.

      And, well, the term “fundie” is short for fundamentalist. Maybe if you actually looked into it, you’d see that Larry isn’t actually part of any fundamentalist denomination (since “Mormon fundamentalist” is a an actual thing).

      So, in just three sentences, you’ve managed to show us that you fail on spelling, grammar, and basic research. Care to come back and bring up something of substance so we can show you how you fail in that too?

      1. I couldn’t take him seriously past his name. He would have been more respectable if he had simply called himself ‘annonymous’ and had done.

    3. Ah…Poor widdle Boo Boo! It MAD!!!

      Is there anything in your life that you HAVE paid for?

      1. T.L. Knighton, on July 22, 2014 at 2:07 am said:
        “I’m willing to bet any sex he’s actually had required payment first.”

        But was it with a Cayman Islands flagged tax exempt partner?

    4. Oh, come now, people. “Fakus Namus”? What more does he have to do to make clear that this is a joke, call himself himself “Biggus Dickus” and claim that he’s married to Incontinentia Buttox?

      1. The issue is, in my observation, many of the trolls come in with names like that, not to be funny, but with the serious intent to troll and the notion they’re being clever. Now, I’m relatively new here so I can’t speak for how long this trend has been going on, but it is common enough I’m inclined to believe the post was not in jest.

        ~Heather

  14. Make all telecom infrastructure (wired and wireless) fall under Common Carrier rules (like POTS used to be/still is), and let content providers compete for eyeballs over common-access infrastructure

    1. That’s fine, until you need more infrastructure. Well, it’s not, really, but that’s the innate flaw. Let’s say that I come up with the netflix killer, fullly virtual 4d, whiz-bang. But it uses 10x or 100x the bandwidth. How can that service ever get started if I cannot pay, as a provider for it to be carried at that rate, and/or pay for it as a user? Answer? It won’t.

      1. Monetary barriers to entry exist in all business ventures. The solution does not lie with subsidization, as new entrants have no inherent “right” to the market.

        The existence of an idea is insufficient. Demand equivalent to capital resources must exist or be reasonably anticipated. In the presence of such demand, capital resources can be attained, in it’s absence there’s no need for the capital expenditure.

      2. Annnd — going back over the thread in detail I note I misread your argument.

        Do please disregard, I’ll just go mutter to myself in the corner…

      3. If you come up with your new service, you shold pay your ISP for the bandwidth that you use, and any customers who want to connect to you should have to pay their ISP for the bandwidth that they use. This is the way the Internet has wored for decades.

        If you think that it’s right for your customer’s ISPs around the world to all be able to bill you directly for the bandwidth that their customers want to use to talk to you, you aren’t thinking the issue through.

        The issue isn’t over having the Netflix like service pay for it’s bandwidth, they already do that today when they hire an ISP

        what the debate is about is that your ISP wants to make Netflix pay them as well as paying their own ISP to give you the data that you requested.

        and of course, your ISP also is a media giant, and so they run a service that competes (unsuccessfully so far) with Netflix, and there is no double-charging for bandwith for this service.

        Give ISPs the choice of being common carriers or not.

        If they are a common carrier (like voice lines, overnight shipping companies, etc), they cannot must offer the same rates to everyone, do not filter traffic over their network (except at the request of the customer), but have no liability over the data that goes over their network

        If they do not want to be Common Carriers, then they have the right and responsibility to control what data goes over their networks, which means that they are also liable for any illegal data that goes over their networks.

        Faced with this choice, I expect that the vast majority of ISPs would opt for common carrier status.

        Today, the ISPs try to play it both ways, they claim common carrier privileges, but avoid common carrier responsibilities.

      4. @David, no, that’s not it. Netflix, very explicitly, does not want to pay the peering agreements that content providers have always paid, and that’s exactly what the issue is. Netflix does not want to ‘pay for their bandwidth’. They’ve complained ‘wah, wah, wah, Net Neutrality’ every time they’ve ended up signing a peering agreement with another ISP.

        Packet of video comes from Netflix, enter’s my ISP’s network, reaches my device. Two parties need to pay for that. the backbone that sent the packet to my ISP, and me. Ny agreement with my ISP gives me certain maximums which are not guaranteed. Netflix’s agreement with my ISP, if they’re connected directly to it will probably have much more in the way of guarantees.

        I can pretty much guarantee you that if the FCC is successful in their power grab that the internet’s usability will be much worse, very soon, and, as always, the folks that clamored for this will fail to recognize that this is what they were asking for.

      5. @skip

        Well, it depends who you believe. Netflix is not willing to pay direct bandwidth charges as if they were buying bandwidth directly from Verizon, and I don’t blame them because they are not buying the band width from Verizon

        However, from everything I’ve heard where people are believable and hot talking in hystercs, the Netflix ISP has been willing to pay reasonble fees as they have in the past.

        Have you been seeing the blog posts from Level 3 where they outline the details of this mess, backing it with numbers and showing how it’s not a problem overall, only a problem with a handful of ISPs in markets where there is no competition?

        In case you haven’t here’s several of them

        http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-played-child-isps-internet/
        http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-internet-middleman/
        http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/when-the-middleman-and-isp-are-aligned/
        http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/heads-isps-win-tails-you-lose/

        And then Verizon tries to blame things on Level 3

        http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/why-is-netflix-buffering-dispelling-the-congestion-myth

        and it backfires with people who actually give details (which don’t contradict any of the internal network claims that Verizon makes by the way)

        http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/

        There are other posts, but this series does a good job of laying out details.

        Historically Peering between major ISPs (and Level 3 is a tier 1 ISP) has not involved large transfers of money, each side has been paid by their customers and peering has been anything from a handshake to a bit-mile comparison.

        all this has historically been based on the recognition that both the sender and the receiver have an interest in the date getting through.

        The idea that the ISPs are trying to push, that Evil Netflix is bombarding their poor networks with unwanted traffic ignores the fact that everthing that Netflix sends is in response to requests from the subscribers of the ISP, who are using the service that they have paid for below the bandwith and cap limits that the ISP imposes

        If this were a industry without government regulations and the government was trying to get their foot in the door, I would be in agreement that the best thing would probably be to keep them out. But the ISP industry is already heavily regulated, and many of the ISPs have been paid Millions (if not Billions) by the government to subsadize the cost of upgrading their networks to provide capabilities that they mostly don’t manage to actually provide, even years later. Along with government imposed monopolies to protect them from competition (on the theory that if there is competition they won’t get enough of a return on their investment to make it worth building the network)

        With all of this, the ISPs need to either play nice, or they need to be smacked when their behavior gets too horrible. These ISPs have earned a smackdown.

      6. This topic is kind of weird to be honest. I haven’t thought about that in a while, until it was brought up (was it last year?).
        I understand, that USA population is more dispersed than population in my country and I gathered from discussions and so on, that you have rather monopolistic ISPs. How’s that even possible? I was taught in my school years (after communism fell, so it was probably rather distorted), that USA is a bastion of FREE HAND OF MARKET, noone can even think of making a monopoly in some product. We had some problems with monopolies in Czech Republic in transportation (Ceske drahy – Czech State Railroads, Ceska autobusova doprava – Czech State Bus Company), in telecomunications and other key industries, that belonged to the state. They were privatized during the wild years just after Velvet Revolution and lot of them ended in hands of ex-Party members, who have their big stockpiles of money, their contacts to bussinessmen in the West and mobsters from the East.
        But it is getting better, badly lead bussiness fails, corruption gets uncovered (some of it at least) and there are lot of new companies contesting or even overtaking the previous monopolies.
        Using your internet connection example. If someone in whole Czech Republic would try to use some limits for your bandwith, he would go out of bussiness pretty fast. He wouldn’t even start it. In anything resembling a town (5000+ inhabitants) there is at least three ISPs who compete with each other. Who will have better coverage? Who will have better prices? Who will have better up/dl speeds? And every one of them is without limits on bandwith.
        I was kind of suprised when someone on video gaming site was complaining about size of modern games. I haven’t seen it as issue in last ten years I think. It was in 2002 when I had sucky wi-fi connection with 2,5 gigs limit. After some infrastucture build-up and three major ISPs and I don’t know how many little one man firms in my town (50.000 inhabitants approx) I have 100 Mb/s download speed, without any limits. So I can torrent all those TV series from USA (we still don’t have NetFlix here and no amount of money throwing on the screen can fix that :/ ) or download all those games I got in Summer Steam Sale without any problem.
        What’s the problem for any new ISP to enter the market?

        1. Hi Blain. The problem with the USA (and Canada!) that Europeans don’t understand is the sheer size of the place. It is REALLY FAR from one place to another. Cities sprawl out here too.

          So what ISPs here have is called the “last mile” problem, where distribution to the customers from the data backbone is the most expensive part of the job. Except in a lot of the USA and Canada its the last 40 miles, because thats how far customers are from the nearest sub-sub-sub-backbone tendril.

          In my case, I’m stuck with DSL because no cable company is going to spend money running a line down my road for five miles to pick up maybe three or four new customers. We have DSL because the telephone company was forced by government to run twisted pair down all these back roads. At enormous expense. Lots of crooked money changed hands, but everybody has a phone who wants one.

          Wireless is the way most rural families in Canada get internet. Either WiMAX or satellite. DSL is for the fortunate few who live within one kilometer of a twisted pair substation. I lucked out.

          Cable and cellphone service is restricted to the busy corridors and cities where companies can make a buck. There you have choices of cell provider. ISPs however are restricted to which company paid to run those coaxial cables. Because they -own- the cable, so they also have a “monopoly” on their use.

          Now, if somebody else wanted to run new cable, they could compete. But there’s no way they could do that unless they had unlimited money and no profit motive.

      7. Blaine: Infrastructure mainly. Because we’re so spread out, there may be only two or three ways to get data to a house. Cable, Phone lines, or Radio (Satellite or 4G). Cable and Phone are becoming indistinguishable, since many systems are upgrading to fiber optic (but only where the population makes the infrastructure expenditure profitable). Radio is low bandwidth, and Satellite is particularly expensive, and Hughes (the main satellite provider) will stomp on your bandwidth if you use too much during the month (Which makes no sense, unless they think they’re saving money by making people go slower at the end of the month).

        Dave Lang: The problem the ISPs are having is they want to conflate their capacity with the usage. If they have the bandwidth to provide you with 10 megabits per second at any given moment, unless you’re running a major BitTorrent operation, you’re not going to use that capacity. you might for an hour or two watching Netflix, but you’re not doing it 24/7. But they’re providing you that capability, supposedly. Now billing you for Usage, well, that’s gone the way of the Dodo (Except for the aforementioned Hughes).

        Using the Bandwidth you’re paying for doesn’t cost the company any more, since the infrastructure is there and powered up whether you’re using it or not. Unless of course your ISP is lying about the capacity they have, and are depending on the average of all the users in a pool not saturating their routers. When they talk about the “Problem” of heavy users, that means their bandwidth isn’t up to the promises they make.

      8. @Blaine

        The problem is that back in the day before people really believed that cable systems would make money, local governments gave cable companies exclusive rights to service an area.

        Phone companies have similar exclusive areas (it doesn’t make sense for multiple phone companies to try to run their own wires into your house). There are rules in place that the phone companies have to let other ISPs use their lines, but this always gets into ‘interesting’ fingerpointing where the ISP determines that the problem is in the wiring and the local telco says that it’s not, but if you just switch to their service, everything will be great.

        wiring a city, especially a spread out suburb is expensive, and it requires either a lot of digging to put things underground, or putting new wires (or fiber) on the existing telephone poles. Getting permission to do this sort of thing is very hard, and one of the big things that holds up Google Fiber services.

        There have also been many cases where local cities have decided that they wanted to run their own ISP (because the local options were so poor) and the ISPs have taken them to court and blocked it on the basis that governments aren’t allowed to compete with private companies like that.

        a quick google search found this article that raises a lot of good points

        http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/

        @Dr Mauser

        It’s good business to oversubscribe their service (sell more capacity than they have), because people don’t all use the service at max capacity at the same time, and people like big numbers

        The issue is the degree that they oversubscribe. If they get it right, their customers never know about it. If they get it wrong, performance suffers. A good company will try to keep ahead of demand and build out their network continually as usage changes. A bad company will instead go after their customers to try and prevent them from using the service. When there isn’t any real competition, the second is a very tempting trap.

        I have a radio-based ISP that guarantees me 4Mb, but the speed will go up to 25Mb if other people aren’t using all of their bandwidth. This is a very unusual way of advertising and provisioning networks.

        1. I have a radio-based ISP that guarantees me 4Mb, but the speed will go up to 25Mb if other people aren’t using all of their bandwidth.

          Do they have a name and URL that you could share with us? I use AT&T, and never hit 4Mb, regardless of traffic.

      9. Thanks for answers. I guess it boils down to me not being able to imagine distances involved.
        You can drive across my country in few hours.
        My family’s company works in the field. We build infrastructure for optic cables and we just finished one bigger project – 30 kilometeres of fiber between two municipal buildings.

        https://www.google.cz/maps/dir/M%C4%9Bstsk%C3%BD+%C3%BA%C5%99ad+Havl%C3%AD%C4%8Dk%C5%AFv+Brod/Z%C3%A1kladn%C3%AD+%C5%A0kola+Chot%C4%9Bbo%C5%99,+Buttulova+74,+583+01+Chot%C4%9Bbo%C5%99/@49.6086251,15.5792452,12z/data=!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0x3a5497e8c539b755!2m2!1d15.578637!2d49.606621!1m5!1m1!1s0x470dac23fd5a0119:0x882e03163439b456!2m2!1d15.669408!2d49.721133

        The whole point of it was, that our county seat (I guess you can call it that) wanted to spread faster internet connection, but the money needed for private ISPs to build up the infrastructure was too much, so they came up with the plan. In the core it was to get someone to build cable connection between several towns in the county, the local goverment will get two fibers between them and the rest of the cable belongs to the company who built it.
        The competition for this job was rather hard and we won because we undercut everyone else (not in every job, but only in those where we already had some infrastructure in place, in this case we had 1 kilometer of cable ready to use in the first town). We sold two fibers to the local goverment for 8.000.000 Czech crowns, that is something like 400.000 dollars. We still broke even in this case and already my colleague had some meetings with local ISPs, who want to buy capacities from us.
        Would it be possible to do something like this in USA? Or at least in some states?

        1. You’d have to see it, Blaine. Nothing in Europe comes close except maybe the Russian Steppes.

          Example, when I lived in Phoenix Arizona I used to drive 60 miles to work every day. That’s 100km, still in the city. One way. The greater Phoenix area is about 80 miles across from Sun City West to Apache Junction in the east. It has mountains in the middle of it.

          Toronto in Canada is likewise gigantic, it takes an hour and a half to drive all the way across from one side to the other. Three major rivers and an escarpment.

          Those are the -cities-. Couple hundred miles of rural farms between cities, usually.

          Just imagine trying to run fiber optic someplace like that. Expensive? Oh yeah.

      10. Blaine, for some reference, that 40km, wouldn’t get you out of the city I live in. There are a lot of places, especially west of the Mississippi river (roughly 2/3rds of the country), where you can drive 30-40km or 100km, or 200 km and not come to a town at all. Alaska’s worst, but too much Texas is almost as bad. Go north to places like Colorado the distances may be shorter but you have some substantial mountains in the way. My state is at least reasonably flat, but it’s a huge amount of ground to cover, especially when you hit dirt road territory. My state is only modestly sized… it’s half the size of Germany. We are just shy of 4 million people in the entire state, and better than 1/4th of those are centered around two cities. You start getting down into the Arbuckles (we call them mountains, the people from the Rockies and Appalacians laugh at us) or out away from the main highways and things start getting a great deal harder. So to answer your question: some of that yes. You want empty go up to Alaska or the north parts of Canada! (Think Siberia only nicer, for relative values of ‘nice’.)

      11. @Blaine: It occurred to me a more direct frame of reference might be useful. The city I live in (and it’s really too big for my comfort but… job.) has roughly half the population of Prague, with 3-4 times the land area. There are working farms and ranches inside the city limits.

      12. Thing is, for those blaming Netflix, last I heard they’re running their system on Amazon’s infrastructure. Yeah, even Wikipedia says so: “In 2010, Netflix migrated its infrastructure to Amazon EC2.”

        So Netflix’s bandwidth costs are indirect (they may have a special contract with Amazon; I don’t know).

    2. That was tried in 2010, IIRC, and the lobbyists went on a full offensive to crush that (Ars Technica has a pretty good write-up of the sordid affair in their archives).

  15. Nuns. Too much money. Cruel, and humorous. I think the measure she weilds might just sometimes rebel.

  16. Liberals claim to love science, but they don’t, really. Mostly because science is all about cold, hard, facts and is not subject to opinions polls and doesn’t care about your ‘feels,’ What liberals love are the social sciences, which isn’t science so much as it is wishful thinking with pie charts.

    1. Saying “X% of scientists believe humans are warming the planet” is logically equivalent to saying “X% of scientists believe in transubstantiation.” In both cases the correct value for X is zero, because neither is a scientific statement. There can be plenty of people who are trained in science, even ones that do excellent work in the field, but when it comes to that belief they aren’t using the science part of their brain.

      1. Well Al Gore told us that science reached a consensus and that is that right?
        Oh wait…
        “In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
        Galileo Galilei

      2. I wonder just how many Leftist politicians could coherently explain basic scientific principles (thermodynamics, for instance) dead cold, with no prep time?

      3. This, this right here. This is an excellent comment that illustrates one of those extremely important distinctions that too many people gloss over.

        In the sciences we do not “believe in” ANYTHING. We provisionally accept a mathematical model of some aspect of the universe–pending empirical disproof.

        I’m now going to quote from a guy named Alan Schwartz, who is funnier and more quotable than I am.

        “Science is mathematical modeling of reality, empirically constrained. Science strives for spareness of form with maximum generality. Science discards models which make predictions not borne out by reality.”

        Anyone telling you that scientists “believe in” something is trying to sell something. Anyone telling you that “the science is settled” is trying to sell something.

  17. “And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!”
    Get your filthy masculinist morality out of my bedroom!
    … but leave your wallet. Women can never be free if they’re on their own dime.

  18. A while back, someone suggested to me that the push to give fast food workers a “living wage” might be connected to the sorry state of the economy. Jobs like that are supposed to be starter jobs. You get them when you first start looking for work, and put them on your resume and job apps to prove that yes, you do understand the basics of working for someone else. But the sorry state of the economy has meant that some of the people who should have moved on from those kinds of jobs have been unable to do so, which means that they’ve been unable to improve their financial situation. So essentially, Prog screw-ups resulting in the continued lousy state of the economy are being used to push another issue that will screw the economy up even further.

    1. “Create a crisis, then take advantage of it”. Kinda like how the total lack of border enforcement is being used to push amnesty.

  19. In the old days something for nothing might be something like being a pirate. Now we have a new con where people who produce nothing board the middle class ship and get their “fair share.” People like Warren are as lawless and brutal as pirates and her crew are merry men who take from the rich and give to the poor. Fun in movies – the extinction of culture in real life. “Progressives” are anything but that. They are the history of the United States in reverse.

  20. I have a few other points I want to make, but right now I’ve only got time for the one big one:

    One should never “believe in science.” One should be convinced by science. If you ever find yourself believing in science, then you’re doing science wrong.

    1. *snerk* In one sentence you’ve managed to diss all the atheist-poseurs who use the sentence “I believe in evolution” and use it as ‘proof’ that they’re immediately better and smarter than every single person who has some kind of religious belief.

  21. Actually they still believe in eugenics; what do you think abortion is? I figure it’s the longest running eugenic experiment in history.

    1. Listen to them long enough, and you’ll hear them argue in terms of eugenics. Time has shifted who they consider “inferior”, but their “superior” groups are still centered around Ivy League Twits.

    1. Well obviously no woman has a right to her body if some man somewhere has a right to his wallet.

      1. Hobby Lobby had in their insurance and the employee agreement everyone signs to work there, that they would not pay for 4 of the 20 kinds of contraceptive. Rather like insurance doesn’t cover some medical procedures. They were sued (as I understand it by people who weren’t even their employees) saying that their policy was discriminatory. I wish I could find the links. 🙁

        One political faction and the media spun it strictly as a religious issue and has been playing the ‘war on women’ card remorselessly.

      2. Hobby Lobby didn’t want to cover abortificants, while covering the rest. Therefore; War On Women! Racism! Sexism! ISMNESS!

        In other words, they are guilty of Heresy and must be Shunned from the Village of Goodthink lest the little people become uncomfortable.

  22. I’m going to push the envelope a bit here, but feel I am among people who will appreciate the humor in the question: Should Elizabeth Warren be known by A) Lieawatha; B) She-who-Sioux; or C) Fauxcahontas?

    If she runs against Hillary (and this seems a foregone conclusion although she insists she will not) it will be a race to the most leftist agenda either of them can do. I can’t wait for the debates because one or the other of them will get enthusiastic, slip up, and say what they really intend to do.

    1. Everytime I see Elizabeth Warren, all I can think of is Mary Ann Warren who was one of the vocal accusers in the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials. Guess I have been delving into history too much 🙂

  23. Government-imposed gun control doesn’t necessarily have to be all bad. Perhaps in a world with less guns we could finally focus on other important stuff, like learning how to headbutt through stone walls or exploding a man’s innards with a single punch. Food for thought is all I’m saying.

  24. The “Corporations are NOT People” insanity needs to be confronted from a different direction. They’re already vilified to the point that the argument “But they’re -made- of people” won’t wash with the emos. They’ve already decided those people involved are -evil- anyway.

    The front to fight on is:
    “No corps are people. But they -have- to be treated as if they’re -almost- people or the ENTIRE Bill of Rights gets gutted.”

    Do corporations deserve due process?
    Do corporations deserve protection from double jeopardy?
    Do corporations deserve ‘No quartering troops’ or ‘recompense for eminent domain’?

    If you wander down the REST of the Bill of Rights, you get complete insanities if you don’t grant Corporations (and Unions, Churches, and ever-other-plausible Free Assembly of Citizens) exactly (or as darn near as possible) the same rights.

    Unless you want the complete destruction of Capitalism. Because seizing Boeing, or demanding that McDonalds quarter all of our troops without recompense would do that mighty fast. Capitalism means very little when you can only ever put forth your PERSONAL capital, and not ever use the first amendment’s “Freedom of Assembly” to act cooperatively.

    1. The problem is that corporate personhood is one of those legal fictions that allow corporations to do things like purchase goods and services (like, say, health insurance for their employees) and be party to lawsuits.

    2. The ground I fight on is…
      “Gee, I’m glad you agree with me that dirty Union money and unaccountable nonprofits should be kept out of politics!”

  25. “We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!”

    Whaddaya mean ‘we,’ white eyes? I’m genuinely pro-choice, which is why I cheered outright when the Hobby Lobby verdict came down. Hobby Lobby employees have still have sixteen contraceptives to choose from, or they can choose to purchase one of the four that isn’t covered out of their own pockets, or they can choose to find another employer. Progs like Warren aren’t champions of choice, they’re all about denying it to other people.

  26. Everybody is talking about net neutrality and bandwidth, and I’m just over here like, ” I know how to turn on the Facebook.”

  27. Gotta ask Larry, just how many times have you been audited? I mean, DAMN! The IRS must have you on speed dial or something by now.

    1. What a bunch of crock from this Author. Sounds like you got your education from a coloring book with pretty pictures and even dotted lines to show you where to color in. I like your anecdotal evidence backing up your harsh remarks about pro-choice and the war on women, when you yourself probably wouldn’t know the difference between mitosis and meiosis you belly-itching redneck.

      1. Yes because we all know that knowledge of different types of cellular division is the mark of a morally superior person, oh wait it’s just a pointless non sequitur

      2. Hm. Two rather clumsy trolls. That’s it?

        The progs must have a malfunction in their cloning vats.

      3. I may not be able to describe the differences in different types of cellular division, but I can tell you that capitalizing the word “author” shows that you lack knowledge on a far more elementary level. Why don’t you go back to first grade and learn the basic differences before you begin to try and act superior you sanctimonious dipshit.

  28. According to the order of operations don’t you combine like terms?Since commandments 4 and 5 are the same thing she only has 10 commandments. Oh wait that was expecting a lib-prog to know math, silly me.

    1. It’s magical math, the kind that leads people to believe minimum wage can be increased without any problems.

  29. I won’t address Sen. Warren’s points as I have nothing to add to the instructive and often humorous discussion in previous comments. I just want to address one assertion people in the American left often make when talking about social issues, namely that the US should be more like Europe in such matters.

    What may be unknown to many Americans is that European nations (many, if not all) are in the process of cutting back on social benefits. In The Netherlands, for example, the government has declared an end to the welfare state. I know from relatives in Sweden (been there since the 1930s) that they get much less from the state than they used to. In Britain, Spain, Greece, etc. there are austerity measures.

    Progressives may get their wish, because Europe is marching toward the US on welfare issues.

  30. Highest cheekbones wins is close to the default orthodoxy of liberalism today. It’s nice in a way cuz it requires no actual thought. All you need is a race and a gender and you’re good to go.

    You can win elections, ignore immigration law, get Nobel Peace Prizes, win literary awards, the whole nine yards. Hell, you can even do a pitch perfect imitation of a racial supremacist, use hate-speech 24/7 and get applause for being an anti-racist. Now what’s keener than that? It’s like having the power of invisibility, which is very useful.

  31. “We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt.”

    Lieawhata the Indian Princess Harvard Graduate knows all about this!

  32. The thing about colleges and college loans is that so few people realize that what a Humanities degree principally qualifies you for is to study for the next degree.

    My Father was a PhD in the History of Science and Technology. He got there with scholarship and hustling, and loved the work, but he recognized that he was a luxury good and was somewhat puzzled that he was paid as much as he was.

    The poor fool of a Occupy Wall Street stooge who was complaining about his student loan to cover a Masters in Puppetry has been extensively discussed, but somehow nobody seems to be asking the question that immediately occurred to me;

    When did Puppetry become something one learned in College? As opposed to, say, riding the rails to LA, getting a gofer job at Jim Henson Studios and hustling for your Big Break? The Occupy Idiot was only doing what society told him, so the question is why did society tell him something so stupid?

    Colleges have always been patronized by the Privileged Classes, as a sign of their Superior Education and a handy place to send their spawn in the irritating early 20’s. Colleges have also always been handy places to stash people whose theories please, where they will be paid and petted. This is besides the scholarship that is the actual worthwhile good that colleges produce.

    I don’t know how to fix colleges, but I am sure that they way to start is to spread the idea that not every insignificant skill or craft required a degree. Want to be an Actor? Go to Hollywood and hustle. Want to be a painter? Find another painter you like and sit at his (her) feet.

    Go to college to be a scholar.

    1. …… Masters in *PUPPETRY* ?!?!? …………

      *blank stare*

      I got nothing for that except some half-formed joke about him being a Metallica fan. SMDH

      1. As near as I can figure, this poor schmoo just swallowed the whole ‘ya gotta get a degree’ narrative hook, line, sinker, rod, and waders. I’m not mocking HIM. I’m MAD at the pricks who SOLD him the degree.

        1. As I remember the story (if I’m remembering the same story, but “Masters in puppetry,” how many could there be?) the fellow quit a good paying job as a teacher at a school in NYC to get his puppetry Masters. And was disappointed when no one would pay him oodles for his puppetry skills. It was his dream, see?

          I’m not mad at him for pursuing his dream. I was a little irritated he was OWS’ing about it.

      2. What gets me isn’t that this guy wanted to pursue a career in puppetry. I can get behind that. Maybe he’d have crashed and ended up on the street, but them’s the breaks. What gets me is that things have gotten to the point where he went to a college and paid them to give him a degree. I’m not that old, dammit. I remember when the script would have been hitchhike across the country, get a job running coffee to Jim Henson Studios (or some such outfit), make friends, watch and learn, and then go in as an understudy when somebody is too hung over to work.

        When did this become something that a serious college GAVE DEGREES IN!?!?!?

        Who sold him this degree program, and can they be found, tarred, and feathered?

  33. I worked in a very large (top 5 internationally) investment bank – my role was on identifying, qualifying and communicating certain risk factors so that the bank wouldn’t make bad bets in the area that I was responsible for. This put me at the table when additional folks from compliance and audit delivered their risk reports to the regional board. From this position (seeing first hand how the sausage was made) I will state that it is most definitely in the nation’s interest to have greater visibility into and understanding of how large financial services firms are operated, as well as emplacing controls to prevent another liquidity crisis.

    Wall Street bets affect everyone, and expecting the banks to make decisions that are good for their host nation is silly – especially when they can make a relatively risk free bet with the precedent that sovereign polities will cover the betting pool, rather than let them fail. The banks’ first fiduciary duty is to their stockholders, not to the public. A banker’s first priority is the ramp to bonus week and making his/her #, not providing a social good.

    Warren’s first rule is therefor defensible, depending upon how you parse it. If you narrowly define it as financial services firms (Banks, Insurance, FS Consulting etc.) then it makes sense. If you broaden it as LC has done, then not so much… but her words are ‘Wall Street’.

    The real question on this topic is whether or not the Rs or the TP agree with her. If they do, then there is no controversy. In practice, both national parties hire senior executives from banks for roles in Treasury. Their works reflects this.

    1. Facts do not make good Lib-Prog talking points. Condensing your details into a sound bite would require a neutronium press, I think. 🙂

      I’d sum up these 11 points with.”What is my money doing in your wallet?”. It’s is either a book about strippers, or a government mission statement.

      1. If the former, what I want to know is whether the opening song of the set is a power ballad such as the Scorpion’s ‘Winds of Change’ or a topical anthem such as the Motley Crue’s ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’.

  34. Problem #1: all her solutions involve more government
    Problem #2: Government pretty much sucks at everything
    Conclusion: all the proposed items would make the problems worse

    1. Government don’t suck at EVERYTHING. They are reasonably good at brute force and bean-counting, both of which have their uses. Governments are bad at anything requiring subtlety, finesse, or taste. Got an outbreak of violent thuggery? Send in the government; they did OK in WWII, and only screwed up in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East when they went beyond “bring down the government that annoyed us” and tried something complicated. Want a whole lot of Liberty Ships built? Give the job to the government. They won’t be great ships, but they’ll get the job done. Want to run electric wires into every corner of the land, so that people who can’t afford to pay a company to run the cable have light, etc.? .

      Want to end poverty? That requires fine judgement. Keep the government the hell out of it. Want to foster The Arts? Get the government involved and you will get the most godsawful tripe … as the NEA has demonstrated again and again.

      Governments do OK at delivering mail (bean-counting), building roads (brute force), and keeping the kind of prick who ran for Student Council away from the private sector, where he could only gum up the works.

      Oh, and while government run militaries are frequently troublesome, free mercenary companies have a history of being as bad or worse.

      1. Regarding the government’s proficiency in war, this is a matter of perspective: whose or which government are we talking about?

        For instance, the governments of France, Belgium, and Norway were pretty bad at this task, which is why their nations easily succumbed to the Germans, and had to be rescued at great expenditure of blood and treasure by Americans, Brits, Canadians, and other allied nations.

        On the other hand, Titu’s para-military forces in Yugoslavia remained a prickly thorn in the German Army’s side until the end of the war.

        Japan’s government obviously did a bad job at managing the war, which is why they suffered horrible casualties and widespread destruction.

        The reason why governments are given a monopoly on war is that giving advanced weaponry to everyone will lead to chaos. Most people, in addition, cannot afford to build and field divisions of tanks. In sum, it’s a matter of necessity, not government proficiency.

  35. There is another prog commandment you forgot – at least an implied one: “Thou shalt not be required to abide by the laws, rules and regulations you make for everyone else.” That’s why, for example, you see progs jetting around the world lecturing people on carbon emissions. If progs had any thought that they would have to follow the same rules they make for everyone else – they wouldn’t make 90% of them.

  36. TL;DR: Either minimum wage needs to climb, or prices have to be capped. Since price caps can be demonstrated through basic research as harmful to business, trade, and peoples basic right to make some freaking cash- I support a minimum wage that is tied to cost of living in your state.
    So…This is my first post on your site Larry. Love your site, and pretty much generally agree with this list. My only problem is one that is admittedly a personal one, and this will almost certainly ramble a bit. Sorry. The minimum wage issue is completely out of hand, at least in some states. I live in C.A, and our minimum wage went up to $9/hr this month. I can say from personal experience that this simply isn’t enough money. I’m in my mid 20’s and until last year I could not find work. Any work. And not from a lack of trying, things have simply been that bad for my age bracket. I know that there are plenty of people in my age group who have jobs, but not livable ones. As an example, I work for a small catering company as a dishwasher. Before that, I worked for the state of CA as a minimum wage member of the california concentration cam-er, california conservation corps. Because I have room-mates, I have been able to survive, but rent is climbing and we can’t maintain.

    The reason for this is, to my mind, two fold. First: Wages for unskilled labor are too damn low. Second: Prices for necessities are too damn high. I can’t afford to move because I lack the income. I (so far) have been unable to find better paying work because of a lack of experience. Lack of experience is pretty simple. Seven years unemployed and unable to afford school means most employers won’t touch me with a stick. Now I’m stuck in a job where my boss, while cool, will not pay me more (it’s entry level work right?), and does not build usable skills. I still can’t afford any training or education to improve my employable skills, and without that I fear my prospects. I do not want to be in my 30’s and in poverty. My health has declined due to a cheap diet. I can’t afford new glasses. Car got stolen, no credit rating and minimum wage means that dealers want 50% up front, my bank won’t give me a loan, and I dont have the cash for a private sale. Just a few decades ago, minimum wage could be shown to make people enough money to be able to be independent. With the rise in cost of living however…my age bracket in the 3 surrounding counties (with lots of industry, high end business, and looooots of millionaires) is largely in poverty. Not, “Oh, you’re just starting out, things get better” but rather 52% unemployment, and most of us who are employed now officially make too much to get freaking food stamps. SNAP has a monthly income limit of about $75 below what I make a month. So….If I can’t maintain rent (about to lose my apartment in “low income” housing) with room-mates, can’t afford food ( I do eat. Once a day or so, and it’s really bad for me), and can’t re-train or move-then clearly there is an issue.

    Do you have any ideas? Im sorry for the rant but this is a serious freaking issue. And, frankly, it’s killing our economy. In just a few years my age bracket will be the all important 30’s -50’s that trade relies on. And if nothing changes….we will not have any money to spend. I fear the effects on our economy and the ensuing backlash.

    1. I understand your problem, but I don’t agree with a lot of your premises, so I reach different conclusions. I’ve been where you are and survived.

      1. I don’t believe that minimum wage has ever been enough for someone to live independently. It may be enough to move out of your parent’s house to share a place with other people, but to have your own place? when and where was this ever enough.

      2. Education/training look at your local community college, adult school, or other public training options. They aren’t that expensive and if you take the right classes it will help. Look at the things you do for fun and see if there is any way to turn those into a job.

      3. the reason why wages are low is that the work being done isn’t that much. If your work as a dishwasher were to cost your employer too much, they would replace you with a machine. The business just doesn’t have money to pay people more than their value to the business.

      4. As minimum wage goes up, all the businesses that need to pay people more now have less money for everything else, so there end up being fewer jobs above minimum wage (back when I was in your shoes, I worked and got a raise to a new position with more work, only to see almost all of my raise rendered moot by a hike in the minimum wage

      5. California is seriously messed up, the state government here is so in love with their power that they forget that the goose needs to be healthy to lay the golden eggs that they want to harvest. Part of the solution may be that you need to go job hunting outside of the state.

      I was around your age and in a similar situation when I had a medical issue that generated hospital bills equal to about 150% of my annual income.

      By the way, it’s possible to each cheap but still healthy, but it requires that someone in the household cook. The more people you are cooking for, the cheaper it is per-person.

      1. All of this, but especially #2. Jared, the hard reality is that unskilled labor is always going to be dirt cheap. Always. And with massive numbers of illegal immigrants in that pool (especially in CA) and zero political will to do anything about that (also especially in CA), right now it’s even cheaper than dirt cheap. If you want to earn a sustainable income, you need to learn a marketable skill. davidelang’s made some good suggestions on how to do that, and I’ll add a few of my own:

        You mention working for a catering company. Dishwashing is a dead-end job, but they know you there, so you already have your foot in the door. See if anyone there is willing to teach you. Cooking, ideally, but driving, waiting tables, bartending (if they do alcohol) are also possibilities. If they won’t do it out of kindness or friendship, and you can’t afford to pay them, maybe they’ll do it in exchange for getting an unpaid assistant. Also on that note — volunteer work can pay big dividends in both networking (who you know) and skills (what you know), for the investment of a few hours here and there.

        On a different, but related-to-finances note: economizing. If you already know and do this, my apologies, I’m just constantly struck by how many people don’t know how to be frugal. Make a budget (your roommates, too). Anything that costs you money, figure out how to spend less on it, use less of it, or if you can do away with it entirely. Turn off lights. Take short showers. Use the internet at the public library. Don’t pay for a bus fare if you can walk. Clothing and most housewares can be acquired at thrift stores and yard sales. Etc.

        For food, forget McDonalds even exists, and never go into a grocery store without an attack plan. Figure out how much you can afford to spend on food each week. Go through the store ads for what’s on sale and what has coupons. Make a week’s worth of menus based on that, then make a list based on the menus and total it up. If the list is more than your budget, trim it down until it fits. Then clip the coupons and go shop from the list, substituting only if you can find a cheaper alternative (day-old bread, dented cans in the remainder cart, etc.). Any money you have left, put aside and buy yourself a treat at the end of the month.

        Is all of this fun? No. It’s a lot of time and effort. But, unlike raising the minimum wage, it actually works.

    2. In CA, the big problem is the taxes (Well, and the regulations.) your taxes make your relatively high minimum wage worth less, while the taxes also make your subsistence level goods more expensive, and your landlord’s property taxes make your living space more expensive.

      Taxing the rich to subsidize you won’t work, since the rich can take their ball and go home, and they have been leaving California for the last couple of decades.

      Basically, all these government programs that are supposed to be benefiting the poor (but not you because of government sponsored racism and sexism) are actually making your situation worse.

      Ask your employer to cut your hours just enough to take care of that $75 limit if you must game the system.

      1. Raise the minimum wage, you will raise the cost of stuff. Raise the cost of stuff, and the minimum wage buys less and less. When the minimum wage buys less and less, people want it raised. Rinse, repeat.

        1. And that is exactly how Inflation works. Note that the value of the labor, and the value of the stuff doesn’t actually change, but the value of the dollars gets smaller, so it takes more of them to pay for either.

          The only place Inflation helps is if your debts you’ve already incurred are denominated in Dollars, and the fixed number doesn’t change, thus you can pay them off with “Smaller” dollars. But on the other hand, new debt will try to take this into account and will cost a lot more.

  37. So…whats funny is I tend to agree with what has been said in reply to my post. And I still think there is a problem related to minimum wage. I am quite aware that unskilled labor shouldn’t pay much, and historically never has. But the only job I ever had that I was able to build any reserves at all with was when I was required to live at site (and pay rent but it was low and covered food). It scares me to consider that we seem to be moving back to company camps, and that our unskilled work seems to be limiting itself to careers where you cannot learn a skill. Or, you can, but even that dead-ends after just a short time. Admittedly this is from reading, not experience, but there seems to have been a time in which an unskilled laborer could be trained on the job to learn more skilled work, and I don’t see that anymore. I know that my personal circumstances will change and improve, but I fear for my generation. I do appreciate the feedback, and I appreciate it. I just still feel pretty down about this issue, and I’m not sure the old answers work anymore. Or, realistically, that industrial age answers work anymore. On that note, gotta get ready for work. Night y’all

    1. Want to raise what people make for unskilled labor?

      Reduce the labor pool and increase the amount of economic activity happening.

      “Admittedly this is from reading, not experience, but there seems to have been a time in which an unskilled laborer could be trained on the job to learn more skilled work, and I don’t see that anymore.”

      Sorry, but, BS. There isn’t a job out there that doesn’t offer advancement, if you TRY. I work for a retail chain in which one of the senior executives started as a part-time checkout clerk; it’s almost a strike against you to not have started in the store.

Leave a Reply to Jared Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *