My friend Denis M. Bell writes that this little man’s writings are “pure common sense.” Deni denies that he is a socialist, but for this to be “common sense” one’s worldview must be based in the collective. It seems a pretty simple reality that Wal Mart is not the highest paying job. Are Wal Mart jobs supposed to be sought after career opportunities? It used to be that McDonald’s and Wal Mart jobs were considered starter jobs, a place to get some experience and earn some money while you work toward another goal. But, according to this little man (Robert Reich), we should demand that Wal Mart pay their employees $15.00 per hour. He reasons that paying a living wage will bring their employees out of poverty. While this little man is well educated and has many degrees to prove his intelligence and his grasp of economic theory, he fails to understand people, which makes all of his knowledge worthless. He fails to understand what drives and motivates people to become successful. Those he appeals to are the people that don’t have the ambition to achieve beyond their dreams and are all too willing to settle for mediocrity. Now that I have stated the obvious, it is not a condemnation of settling for less than the best. It is a condemnation of trying to force upon all of us the same standard of mediocrity. While the little man seems to be about punishing wealth by taking what he views as elitists hoarding cash when in reality he is actually rewarding the corporations he bemoans. When this little man achieves his agenda of legislating a living wage to the workers, it is the corporations that will survive and the mom and pop businesses that will close their doors unable to compete with big box retail. Mom and pop businesses will not be able to find workers as the workers will be lining up for the good paying jobs of the big box corporations. If a living wage is mandated by the government, mom and pop businesses will be forced to close as they will not make enough profit to support the wages they are forced to pay. So, how is this economic theory looking out for the average man? This little man likes to refer to those of us not on board with his agenda as regressive. Yet, it is his progressive agenda that will drive us off the proverbial cliff. As small businesses lock their doors and those former entrepreneurs go looking for work at Wal Mart. Wal Mart will get the best and the brightest minds to operate their stores as they will be in a position to hire the best and the brightest. No one else will be around to compete with them and no one will have any money as there won’t be other jobs. The use of the term progressive is a misnomer. To make progress, one has to know the destination. Those that claim the progressive label can’t define what the end looks like, they take pride in the fact they are moving forward. Who needs to know where they’re going? What could go wrong? On the surface of this little man’s theory is another factor that shows his ignorance of the human spirit. Many of us speak about the dying work ethic. Following the little man’s logic a dying work ethic will take its last breath. Everyone gets paid the same simply for showing up. There is no incentive to work harder, to achieve more responsibility when doing so means you get the same pay as the guy who shows up and sits on his tail all day. Following the little man’s logic to its conclusion, we may as well all get paid a living wage for simply getting out of bed. We’ll have a black box on our beds letting big brother know we’ve awoken to be paid for the day. In due time we’ll have figured out we can make more by gaming the system and sleeping on the couch. And then a new social conflict will erupt as big brother finds additional ways to monitor our lives to make sure we are not sleeping anywhere but our own beds. They’ll ad a nap tax for sleeping outside designated hours. The little man claims that giving people more money will solve poverty. The official war on poverty began in 1964. How are we doing? Have we made any progress? It seems rather clear to me that giving people more money doesn’t solve poverty. Look at congress. We give them more of our earnings every year and they have spent 17 trillion dollars more than they have taken in. You give someone more money and all they do is spend more money. If the little man and Deni are truly sincere about wanting to rid the world of poverty, then they’d get out of their comfort zone and get to know at least one individual in poverty. I’m not talking about surface level interaction. By getting to know them, I mean ask questions, get beyond the shallow end of life. Find out what thought patterns keep them in the chains that bind them. What habits keep the shackles locked. These men are not sincere about helping people, they are serious about imposing guilt on some because others have less stuff. They are concerned about their own wellbeing by taking from some and redistributing to others while lining their own pockets for administering compassion. If each person enacted their own compassion with one person and taught that new person anything, it will be paid forward as people will begin to actually care about one another once again. I keep posting about this little man (Reich) because he is dangerous. He is short enough to stay under the radar and has some very good friends in some very powerful places. He is exploiting the less ambitious among us to believe they are victims instead of volunteers. He is seeking a revolt among his followers. He is whipping up a frenzy in the new generation of Kamikaze soldiers who don’t know what they’re fighting for, only that they like the rhetoric. Soldiers who are dependent on others to do their thinking for them.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 09:23:49 +0000
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