The Parasite Class
By Mitch Berg
Last March, I sat in the studio at AM1280 and announced, along with Ed, that we were celebrating our eight anniversary on the air.
As I was making the announcement, a round-faced man in a green jacked barged into the studio. “I was part of that!”
I turned off the mike and had Tommy throw to a commercial. “Who are you?”
“I’m Fred Pankey. I’m the manager at the Rainbow Foods on University that you’ve been shopping at for most of the past 20 odd years”.
He stood there.
“And…”
“And this anniversary is partly ours, too.”
“How do you figure”, I asked.
“You ate in the last eight years, right?”
“Right”
“And you bought your food at Rainbow?”
“A lot of it, yes…”
“So the Northern Alliance owes part of its credit to us at Rainbow. Without groceries, there’d be no radio show.
“In other words, what you’re saying is…”
“You didn’t do this”.
“Ah”
To be fair, it was no dumber a display than Nick Kristoff’s bit on the NYTimes the other day.
I’m not going to quote from it – go ahead and read it if you want – but it’s the standard lefty strawman on the subject; “Look! We found a businesswoman who says “Yes, I did build it!”, but who actually got a government loan! She is TEH HEPPOCREET!”
Like government wants a cookie for doing stuff we – including all of us who aren’t entrepreneurs – already paid it to do including all of the things we’d rather not have paid for it to do!
And as if the businesswoman whom Kristoff mocks wouldn’t have been an entrepreneur, wouldn’t have found a way, without the government programs she promoted to other businesspeople.
It’s like the lefty nutslap who tried to call me “teh heppocrete” for riding the Ventura Trolley, a light rail line I opposed (and oppose). I paid for, then and now, at tax time and at the fare box. Or for riding on a bike path that I thought was a needless budgetary frippery at a time when the city and county it ran through were whinging about their budgets.
It’s my property. By your leave, I’ll ride ’em both, and exercise my First Amendment.
By the way? You didn’t make that.
August 31st, 2012 at 5:54 am
…..Bill Kristol’s bit on the NYTimes ….
Uhh….that would be Nicholas Kristof. Huuuuuge difference. 😀
August 31st, 2012 at 8:29 am
If you have ever read John Steele Gordon’s “An Empire of Wealth”, you get an understanding that the government via the taxpayers (and bond buyers, FWIW) did build things (or at least create easements) that helped create enormous wealth. From the Erie Canal to the Continental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, etc. these were projects that lead to enormous wealth of many who had the “animal spirits” to start businesses to harness the benefits of these projects. Many businesses failed but enough succeeded to give us what we have today – the wealthiest nation on earth.
I think years ago, Mitch, you had a post talking about how lucky Minnesota and in particular the Twin Cities were to be at the confluence of so many different things that made it successful enough to be a leading city in the world; Proximity to very productive farmland, ability to process and add value to agricultural products using hydropower, ability to transport those value added goods via river then later rail. But none of this would have happened had individuals not thrown their stake at making a go of river/rail transport (Cargill, Hill), Agri-processing (Washburn, Pillsbury) or farming (numerous sod busters and implement makers). This is what is so offensive about Barry and a long line of collectivists claiming “you didn’t build that”.
August 31st, 2012 at 10:12 am
You didn’t build this blog, Berg. Where would you be without WordPress? Microsoft? Thomas Edison? God?
August 31st, 2012 at 1:29 pm
Kristof’s signature is using the technique of arguing from the specific to the general. It _can_ work, like this:
“When Cpl Bill Johnson lost his legs to an IED in Iraq, he thought his government would be there to take care of him . . .”
Unfortunately a typical Kristof piece goes like this:
“If this country valued its teachers and its public education system, Bill Johnson would have learned not to blow his multi-million-dollar inheritance at Indian casinos, and he would have been able to pay for the sinus medication his HMO cruelly denied him”.