…Somehow, cutting wages for the middle class is all part of the GOP\u2019s jobs agenda.Once again, I find it mind-boggling that conservatives tell us we need to pay CEOs for performance, but they think everyone else needs a pay cut.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Every time I put off my “Logic For Leftybloggers” series for another month, I read something like this, and think “maybe April really is the month to tee it up again’.<\/p>\n
Government employees are not “the middle class”.\u00a0 Oh, in places like Saint Anthony Park and the Midway, with their block upon block of university employees and teachers and government employees, they might be mistaken for it.\u00a0 And at the DFL caucuses and conventions and functions that seem to define the parameters of Moonbeam and Jeff’s worlds, they probably correspond pretty closely.<\/p>\n
But they’re not.\u00a0 Most of us in the\u00a0 middle class, even here in Minnesota (where three of the top five employers are the State, the Fed and the various cities) toil away in the private sector.\u00a0 We find our own jobs, we save for our own retirements, we cover our own copays.\u00a0\u00a0 And when business turns down, we work harder and produce more with less and, sometimes when worse comes to worst, take our skills and start over in different jobs and fields to pay the bills.<\/p>\n
And just as regular commenter Terry so concisely asked about pensions “Why should I be required to work until I’m 70 so you can retire at 55”, one might also ask “why must I be pay\u00a0 more taxes to make your job sacrosanct when I’m scrambling to make ends meet myself?”<\/p>\n
Because that’s what Jeff and the DFL are demanding; that we, the private sector, dig deeper to keep the government fat and happy, and just shut the hell up <\/em>about unemployment, layoffs and our own stress.<\/em><\/p>\nI\u2019ll say it again and again and again. How do we get the economy going? Consumer demand. We need money in the hands of the lower and middle classes \u2014 the people who will actually spend it. All this shortsighted, petty bill would accomplish is to increase income inequality while depressing our already struggling economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Where do we start with this?\u00a0 It’s wrong on so many levels:<\/p>\n
Picking Consumers And Victims<\/strong>:\u00a0 Jeff is focusing on a smallish sliver of consumers – government employees – and the ideal of propping up consumer spending…by taking money from all of us private-sector consumers<\/em>!\u00a0 Just like Moonbeam picking out his big-screen TV on my credit card! Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?<\/p>\nHe Who Forgets History Is Condemned To Repeat It As A DFLer<\/strong>: Did we learn nothing from the mortgage bubble?\u00a0 If you “create wealth” that has nothing underpinning it, all you get is a bubble; when that bubble deflates, it’ll cause more pain than if it’d never existed.<\/p>\nCreating “consumer spending” by taking money from the private sector – reducing the private sector’s ability to create and maintain jobs, say nothing of “consumer spending” – works, sort of.\u00a0 Until we in the private sector run out of money, anyway.<\/p>\n
The only sustainable <\/em>way to grow consumer spending is to grow jobs.\u00a0 And growing government jobs without growing the private sector enough to not only support but justify it<\/em> – creates yet another bubble, a government spending bubble.\u00a0 It’s a bubble that’s bursting in Portugal and Greece and Ireland now, and will burst across the EU, and California and Michigan soon, and that strenuous efforts may<\/em> keep from bursting in New Jersey, and which may yet blow up across the entire US…<\/p>\n…and for which we in Minnesota, right this moment, face a time for choosing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was out the other night at a local restaurant with my friend Moonbeam Birkenstock, a guy who’s out on the far-left fringe of the DFL. He’s been having financial trouble.\u00a0\u00a0 We got to talking about it. I suggested the usual stuff – cut back on\u00a0 nonessential expenses, shop at Aldi instead of the organic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18977"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19012,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18977\/revisions\/19012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4017\/4575208799_e7c6e34c94.jpg\")
<\/a>He’s been having financial trouble.\u00a0\u00a0 We got to talking about it.<\/p>\n