A nation of slackers

Here's Rep. Steve King asserting that the economic recession is due solely to Americans being lazy:

We can't have a nation of slackers and then have me have to sit in the Judiciary Committee listening to them argue that there's work that Americans won't do

And he's right, in a way. There are lots of jobs that have been exported overseas because Americans are unwilling to do dangerous, soul-crushing jobs for pennies an hour. Give the Republicans credit: if we enacted their program and eliminated all workplace safety regulations, minimum wages, and unions, there really would be plenty of work for everyone.

This is a great test. Anybody who thinks that creating full unemployment via the above strategy is a good thing is literally too stupid to vote. If you found yourself thinking, "Ya, maybe we should do that, and get everyone back to work" - tear up your voter registration. For your own good, you can't allow yourself to make public policy decisions, because you are retarded.

Unless you're a billionaire. Then, of course, the idea of employing people for less than 25 cents an hour, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, with absolutely no government oversight, sounds like Heaven. Or more accurately, 1930's America.

A young worker's plea

While President Franklin Roosevelt was in Bedford, Mass., campaigning for reelection, a young girl tried to pass him an envelope. But a policeman threw her back into the crowd. Roosevelt told an aide, "Get the note from the girl." Her note read,

I wish you could do something to help us girls....We have been working in a sewing factory,... and up to a few months ago we were getting our minimum pay of $11 a week... Today the 200 of us girls have been cut down to $4 and $5 and $6 a week.

This is the kind of story that warms a job creator's heart. This is the America they want to go back to. This is where the Tea Party is going, whether they know it or not.

Here is the principle that should be self-evident: as long as you embrace No work, No pay, you will always have Will Work for Food. Given an employee a choice between starvation and labor, and they will always choose labor.  Give an employer a choice between lower wages and lowest wages, and they will always choose lowest wages. They have to - the power of the free market compels them to. If they don't, their competition will undercut them and force them out of business. By allowing the free market to set the wage for labor, you guarantee that the most efficient price of labor will be set: which is to say, subsistence wages. Because efficiency is measured by corporate profits, not by social goods like psychological happiness, lower crime rates, or better health care outcomes.