Archive for May, 2023

Work Requirements Offend Poor People

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

So much bad, weird stuff in the month of May. Which one single thing would be the worst?

It’s a given that the champion must emerge from matters pertaining to the “debt ceiling talks” or whatever you wanna call ’em. At this point, my affection for the mainstream media is not running terribly high. In fact, it’s bottomed out into a low nadir. “White hot rage” would be the most accurate description that comes to mind.

All across the board they’re selling the idea that brash, irresponsible recklessness would be best represented by cutting spending and/or refusing to “raise the ceiling,” and responsibility means raising said ceiling without conditions, the more the better. The exact opposite of what’s true.

I don’t know how successful this sales pitch is. But that’s what they’re selling. Stem to stern.

In a way, we’re outgrowing the ancient conflict between conservatism and liberalism. Throughout May, it’s bee more like: One school of thought says once you’ve given people the vote, and given them entitlements, you’ll never succeed in taking those things away again so you’d better just figure out how the republic can endure with criminals and other destructive individuals voting, spending out of control, interest on the debt out of control…find a way to make it work.

The other school of thought says it can’t work like that, so if you really want the republic to remain you’d better take the vote away from the criminals and the grifters, and withdraw the previous entitlements…find a way to make that work.

The first of those two is more popular. But there’s no way it can win. Math backs the other, and math won’t negotiate.

This doesn’t foretell happy times ahead.

There’s no kind way to ask the question. What the hell is the matter with these people? Do they not believe in math? I’m not going to sit here and type in words to the effect that I know exactly where the tipping point is, the hard limit only represented by these various legislative limits, where the center of gravity topples over the brink and the solvency of the republic is gone forever. But I can promise there is such a point somewhere. It’s in the laws of the universe. It’s Stein’s Law: Whatever can’t last forever, will not. It will stop.

If they knowingly concede to that most-fundamental of all rules, they must be fifth-column fighters destroying the union from within. If they don’t, then, how do I phrase it delicately. Any fair summary comes off sounding like a playground taunt. Their opinions would be relevant only because we have a negotiation process that makes them that way, and any negotiation process that makes them that way is poison.

They are children. Put their kind in charge of a household, and eventually the mortgage goes unpaid, the electricity is disconnected and there’s a panic because the freezer and fridge are full of ice cream and nothing else.

The worst out of all of it is the notion that work requirements are offensive to poor people.

After the “debt ceiling crisis” has abated — when we’ve secured, on credit, our latest two-gallon tub of I Dough, I Dough to stash in the freezer — we’re going to be ears-deep in stories about various efforts to “disenfranchise voters.” Nuh huh, folks. Negatori. we do not have a problem with making it too hard to vote in this country. We have a problem with making it too easy, with too many people doing the voting.

Because if they’re not fifth-column types trying to drive us over a cliff, the only other explanation is they’re half-blind hedonists who, as distinguished from not-believing in the tipping point, simply refuse to think about it. Or, simpler than that, are just never incentivized to start thinking about it in the first place. They’re not on the hook for the debt. It’s someone else’s problem.

This is a great nation, but it isn’t greater than math. If we’re setting it up under a set of rules that say beneficiaries of all the borrowing & spending can vote, and therefore have a shot at prevailing over those who are on the hook for it, then that’s setting up a system to challenge math. We won’t win at that. It’s the pickup truck challenging the freight train. No point in even asking the question.