{"id":57608,"date":"2016-02-17T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57608"},"modified":"2016-10-17T21:25:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T02:25:36","slug":"never-let-it-be-said-the-left-doesnt-get-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57608","title":{"rendered":"Never Let It Be Said The Left Doesn’t Get Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is getting a cup of coffee. \u00a0Aaron ROSTON, a\u00a0writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog \u201cMinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com<\/em>\u201c, walks up behind him in the line, looking for a free refill.\u00a0\u00a0ROSTON\u00a0is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist \u2013 mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives.<\/em><\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0Merg!\u00a0The economy is doing great! \u00a0Look at all the new jobs!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a02\/3 of the new jobs are minimum wage. \u00a0 \u00a0Times are OK, so far – provided you’re a college educated professional. \u00a0If you’re poor, or black, or low-skilled, not so much.<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0So it’s time to raise the minimum wage.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Raising the minimum wage just rewards some workers by causing others to get laid off. \u00a0Prosperity is the only real minimum wage hike. \u00a0Here’s the alarming part; the best measure of an economy is how fast people move up and out of the lowest economic quintile. \u00a0We used to be among the best in the worlds. \u00a0Now, most of the Western world is better than we are.<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0Well, funny you should mention that. \u00a0Income mobility was pretty good back under the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, when the tax rates were much higher. \u00a0Hmmmmmmmmm.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Wait, what’s with the theatrical “hmmmmmmmm”?<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0It proves you have been outfoxed.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Well, no. \u00a0It’s a false correlation. \u00a0In the fifties and sixties, the US had the world’s only functional economy. \u00a0Japan and Germany were still recovering from the war; Singapore and South Korea and Taiwan were third-world hellholes; China was an Orwellian \u00a0dystopia; India was still at the bottom of its experiment with “democratic socialism”.<\/p>\n

The US was the only place where things actually could get built; it was the world’s only functional market. \u00a0We could afford high taxes, and cushy union jobs, because we were the only place actually\u00a0building\u00a0<\/em>things.<\/p>\n

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. \u00a0Ascribing mobility\u00a0to higher taxes is the same as chalking them up to the fact that\u00a0“laws against sexual harassment and racism were more lax in the fifties”; they were facts that corresponded in time, but weren’t related.<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0 What? \u00a0You’re a racist!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Um, no. \u00a0That was an illustration…<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0I will not interact with racists and sexists!<\/p>\n

(ROSTON winds up and throws his coffee cup toward BERG from a range of three feet. \u00a0And misses. \u00a0ROSTON stomps away in a huff – grabbing a handful of sugar packets from the credenza on his way out<\/em>).<\/p>\n

BERG: (Sotto voce<\/em>) Never let it be said that liberals suck at economics.<\/p>\n

And SCENE.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is getting a cup of coffee. \u00a0Aaron ROSTON, a\u00a0writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog \u201cMinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com\u201c, walks up behind him in the line, looking for a free refill.\u00a0\u00a0ROSTON\u00a0is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist \u2013 mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-57608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socialism","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57608","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=57608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57609,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57608\/revisions\/57609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}