Weekend open thread
Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you.
What will you shout at the storm this weekend?
December 29, 2012 - 12:01 AM
As a follow up to my comments yesterday concerning the possible Longshormen’s strike, I see at the NY Times the following story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/business/shutdown-averted-for-ports-on-east-and-gulf-coasts.html?_r=0
Which includes this gem:
…Mr. Shay’s federation and more than 100 other business groups wrote to President Obama last week, urging him to invoke his emergency powers under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to prevent a strike. Labor experts said Mr. Obama would have been caught between fears that a strike would damage the already-fragile economy and worries that blocking it would anger allies in the labor movement. …
Matthew Shay is president of the National Retail Federation.
According to Wikipedia, “The Act [Taft-Harley] also authorized the President to intervene in strikes or potential strikes that create a national emergency, a reaction to the national coal miners’ strikes called by the United Mine Workers of America in the 1940s.”
There are a few items of note here.
1) According to Mr. Shay of the National Retail Federation, not being able to sell an iPad is equivalent to your children freezing in their home because heating coal is unavailable.
2) The Emergency part of the Act, to the best of my understanding, applies ONLY to the laborers and not the owners. In other words, the president could “force” the workers to continue to work but couldn’t force the owners to meet the worker’s demands. That seems a bit unfair and lopsided doesn’t it?
3) Mr. Shay’s federation and 100 business groups wrote to the president asking him to impose restrictions on the workers but not to impose restrictions on the owners.
Yes my friends, there is a class-struggle going on (Marx never used the expression class-war even though it sounds more exciting). In this case, the owners want to keep more profits at the expense of the worker’s wages. The struggle comes about because the incentives the workers have aren’t aligned with that of the owners. This is a consequence of capitalism and in fact, is the very definition of capitalism.
It’s funny because we think of capitalism as being efficient and the best economic system in the world but this situation lays bare the self contradictory nature of it and provides a prime example of why we need to be rid of this exploitative system.
Here’s an idea! Perhaps the RT editorial staff could write an opinion piece encouraging the American Bar Assoc. or the Virginia Bar Assoc. to demand of all practicing attorney that when making out a Will for a client, they expressly ask and encourage those clients to make provisions for the destruction of their guns.
My recent experience as an executor has given me some insight into the process. If the Will says it must be so, then it must be so!
What do you think?
I think, Mr. Scott, that you are a bleeding heart liberal, pure and simple. Destroy your guns if you wish but leave mine alone!!!
@3 ancient bobcat, I’m guilty as charged. You say it like it’s a bad thing though.