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Attention Democrats: People Have Value. Even Poor Black People.
Over at National Review, Dominic Pino examines Janet Yellen’s rationalization of abortion from an economic perspective. Remarkably, Ms. Yellen said the following to Sen. Tim Scott:
…one aspect of a satisfying life is being able to feel that you have the financial resources to raise a child, that the children you bring into the world are wanted and that you have the ability to take care of them. In many cases abortions are of teenage women, particularly low-income and often black, who aren’t in a position to be able to care for children…
As you might imagine, Sen. Scott was unpersuaded by this argument: “I’ll just simply say that as a guy raised by a black woman in abject poverty, I’m thankful to be here as a United States Senator,” Scott told Yellen.
Mr. Pino goes on to eloquently explain the roots of this perspective of modern leftists:
More fundamentally, Yellen’s view of human beings is incorrect: She views them as macroeconomic liabilities rather than macroeconomic assets. In her view, they take up space, consume resources, and impose burdens on those who care for them. And of course, they do those things. But they don’t just do those things. They also come up with new ideas, produce resources, and care for other people. On balance, they are assets, not liabilities.
This is a point that progressives have failed to understand for years. From the eugenics proponents of the early 20th century to the environmentalists of today, progressives have never believed that human beings are, as economist Julian Simon called them, the ultimate resource. They’re forever stuck in the zero-sum world of Malthus, where people are problematic mouths to feed, instead of the positive-sum world we actually live in, where people are a creative force to invest in.
I often hear leftists rationalize their support of abortion by saying, “Look, I’m just being practical here. We’ve got to deal with realities, right?”
Mr. Pino explains why leftists’ economic arguments are even more absurd than their ethical rationalizations. No, killing babies does not make sense. Even if the mother is going through financial difficulties at the time of her pregnancy. Even if the mother is black. Even then, Ms. Yellen.
People have value. They have value from an ethical and spiritual perspective. We’re all God’s children, for Heaven’s sake.
But even if you don’t believe that, surely you can see that they also have economic value. Perhaps you might think they are limited economic value today. But what about some years from now? Could it be that they might improve themselves someday? People can do that, you know. Even if they are black and poor, Ms. Yellen. Even those people.
I’m struggling to get past the elitism and racism oozing from Ms. Yellen’s statement about poor black mothers like Sen. Scott’s Mom (pictured above). But even if I could get past that, I would point out to Ms. Yellen, “People have value, you idiot. Even poor black people, you racist snob. Who on earth are YOU to suggest that some people should be killed because they are currently of insufficient economic value? You’re a government bureaucrat, for Pete’s sake. What is your economic value to society? Should we vote you out of office, or take you out back and shoot you? Are you listening to what you’re saying? Do you want ME deciding if your life is worth living? Do you want anybody deciding that, other than yourself? Do your words make sense to you? Honestly?“
Every rationalization for abortion sounds absurd to me.
But some of them sound like pure evil.
I can’t believe Democrats are saying stuff like this out loud. To a black man, no less. In public. On national TV. Oh my God.
They can’t recognize evil, even when they say it themselves.
But at least they are helping others recognize evil. Make evil this obvious, and anyone can see it. Anyone who has eyes to see.
Just writing about Ms. Yellen’s statement makes me feel unclean. I feel like I need a long hot bath. And all I did was copy and paste it. She said it out loud. In public.
How do these people sleep at night?
Published in General
Well done, Doc. The old “what if a conservative had said it” game is a cliche, but maybe because it’s so often appropriate. This is old eugenics in new bottles.
Yellen should be fired, but, of course, will not be.
On the pillow of their narcissistic moral vanity.
They start out killing their own inconvenient children, and end up killing other peoples’.
Creepy enough that our Treasury Secretary turns out to be a Bond villain…but did she have to look like my grandmother?
In addition, I *highly* recommend Lawrence Jones’ response today:
I watched a 4 or 5 minute video of Senator Scott and Treasury Secretary Yellen. I was surprised that he let her speak as much as she did. Good for Senator Scott – Yellen buried herself in her own stupidity and bigotry. Goodness these people are evil.
No, she won’t be fired.
Nothing she said was out of line. For a Democrat.
Which is what makes this so horrifying…
I think Janet Yellen thought she was actually appealing to Tim Scott as a black man because how could anyone not see that abortion is saving the lives of pregnant black teenagers and the black population generally. Obviously he would see how right she is. But I think it’s worse than seeing people as macroeconomic liabilities, and I don’t think that the proper response should be that people are macroeconomic assets. The proper response is that which you state, which is that we are all God’s children. It is that understanding which the pro-abortionists deny and which has led them to support the killing of 20 million black babies since Roe.
In a recent post I cited a link to Jan’s credentials:
Here I will also adapt the sentiment I made there: What you cite here “is the kind of stuff that flushes sterling resumes down the toilet…or maybe just exposes the hollow credentials for what they are. I, for one, am not really impressed with any of it. You shouldn’t be either…”
The amazing part is this is the general sentiment from the left on almost everything. Its all too much ‘Freedom’ and needs to be ‘controlled’. ‘How dare we take away the caprice and the $$$ of abortion.
Abortion- helps control the population, and specifically certain ‘kinds of people’.
School Boards- control the parents.
Teachers- control the children and help them ‘right-think’.
‘Ministry of Truth’- control the speech of those you don’t like, which is everyone except us.
DOJ- ‘Climate Justice’ pretty much anything we want to control.
IRS- your personal income or really the control of your lives.
CDC-all freedoms can be taken away for the ‘reasons’ we decide.
CRT- control the population with the reeducation of guilt.
Big Government- ‘you want some of that big DC slush money? Just do as we say and don’t worry about the guy behind you with a gun to your head.
And finally… if you disagree you are obviously a racist Nazi and should be doxed, fired, ostracized and made as destitute as any prisoner in a war camp… that will be the example to the rest to not cross us, EVER.
Tim Scott’s existence should a be shining example of what people are capable of, instead she talks to him like he just doesn’t get the ‘big picture’… a ‘simple man’… and I’m sure she sleeps just fine… but so did Margaret Sanger.
Is it bigoted? I doubt anybody that votes Democrat thinks so. It is ok if one Democrat says it. It is only bigoted if the GOP says it.
In listening to Dr. Yellen, I was mildly surprised that she did not whip out a copy of Freakonomics and read aloud the chapter which had the “thesis” that abortion led to lower crime.
My employer–an academic medical center–subscribes all of the staff to Medpage Today. We get it in our email box every day. Sometimes several times a day. Every one in the past week or two since the leak has had an article about how tragic losing Roe will be and how docs (whoops, I mean “providers”) need to band together to figure out how to keep abortions coming. The articles are bad enough, but the comments are appalling and hateful and full of a combination of Yellen’s sort of logic and an incredibly selfish idea of how upwardly mobile women shouldn’t have to delay their professional gratification because of inconvenient pregnancies. They even talk about the rate of abortions among medical students and how these poor, pitiful doctors-to-be shouldn’t have to have the babies they make. No one talks about how those babies got there. No one, BTW, suggests they delay their sexual gratification while pursuing their professions–that would be too much to ask. No one talks about being responsible. No one talks about birth control. Abortion is their form of birth control. That is truly and completely evil. The hatefulness, BTW, is aimed at pro-lifers, at religious people, and at Republicans. All are caricatures and so over the top insane that I can’t help wondering if any of them have actually met one.
Yup, she’s a dead ringer for that sweet German grandma (in Goldfinger) that turned out to be toting a machine gun.
Yellen is no different from Pocahontas or Pelosi or any other grizzled feminist of a certain generation. She assumes that abortion will allow that sweet young thing to finish her education, or space her family in a certain way, or go for that fantastic job opportunity. What abortion does is kill children, allow for Planned Parenthood to sell baby parts for humanized mice, cover up human trafficking and abuse and kill women. As a jobs program, it does provide employment for men like Kermit Gosnell, LeRoy Carhart and Ulrich Klopfer.
Jennifer Morbelli, Tonya Reeves and millions of children unavailable for comment.
Yellen’s message to poor black people, “the country would be better off if you were all dead.”
She was just expressing the official Democrat policy position since the days of the antebellum South.
It is evil.
Moloch loves it when people sacrifice children.
Here’s the point you missed, @drbastiat – her viewpoint makes a lot of sense when you consider the welfare state. I know, because I used to have a similar level of disdain for welfare moms firing out babies like a machine gun. (I still think it is terrible, I just don’t want them dead) Because of the perverse incentives from the Great Society programs, having a baby is a benefit regardless of whether you can care for the kid. Because of ghetto culture, the most likely result for those kids is to end up dead or in prison, possibly after killing someone I care about.
The problem is that we have set up a system that rewards and glorifies the ghetto culture for minorities, as well as making families almost a luxury good. Abortion and gun control are partly justified by the Left as protection for urban centers from demons of their own making. The Left can’t demand responsibility, so it manages the poor like animals.
Of course it is racist and dehumanizing. When you take away moral responsibility, religion, and the family there’s not much human that is left.
I got involved in a FB discussion years ago that has unfortunately left a permanent tree ring in my family. Son #2 (USMC at the time) posted on FB a link to an article that Iceland had had a year with zero Down Syndrome births. Son #2, having half a brain, was appalled by this statistic as it meant that all the Down Syndrome babies had been killed before they were born.
They he went off into the field for 10 days, missing the firestorm that he created.
A niece and a few millennials got involved; a sister texted me until the wee hours; proof that nothing good happens on FB.
But a (very non controversial) daughter in law commented at some point; that maybe the very people that could help solve the world’s problems (pandering to the crowd, she mentioned climate change) had simply never been born. Because they’d been murdered before they were born.
I like to tell people that I’m just a greedy old white lady who sees value in people, and I want to exploit the hell out of every one of them. Imagine if Steve Jobs’ mother had chosen abortion instead of adoption? Same with my boss, who found out at 70 he was not only a father, but a grandfather? (I tease him relentlessly that he got to skip the potty training years, the teenage years, the paying for college years …)
Please do not mistakenly insult Pocahontas thusly, the person you are referring to is more properly Fauxcahontas- you know the squaw whose contribution to the Pow Wow Chow Cookbook were plagiarized from the NYT:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146628/Elizabeth-Warrens-Pow-Wow-Chow-Cherokee-recipes-word-word-COPIES-famous-FRENCH-chefs-techniques.html
the real irony is
1)she tried to pass off a recipe including crab with mayonnaise in it as a meal from the traditions of an Oklahoma Indian tribe
2) the name of the book is incredibly offensive and cultural appropriation to any wokester.
I don’t believe Yellen is necessarily backing Planned Unparenthood or the selling of baby parts as much as she is operating as homo econumus- she views the point of life as maximizing GDP. Man exists to serve the economy- to lubricate the wheels of commerce. It is the materialistic mindset on steroids. It also explains why she wouldn’t have problems with open borders etc ( it probably will maximize economic growth while simultaneously impoverishing the lower class and benefiting the upper class almost exclusively).
of course any proper view is that the economy is to serve people and the quality of our lives is more important than marginal gains in aggregate GDP. Technocrats – who have the managerial mindset-also frequently fail to see that the most valuable resource we have is the minds of our people (writ large-they only see the minds of the elite technocrats as of significant value- the rest are virtually automatons to be ordered & lead).
Such mindsets also will see euthanasia as worthwhile- end burdensome lives and reallocate the money to a preferred program. They will not see the value of beauty in public buildings- why waste the money? (hence atrocities like the Hoover building). They will see private transportation as inefficient- neglecting its role in enhancing freedom and enrichment of peoples private lives. One could go on for a long time….
the fact is the things we value most in our lives have no price (ie no economic value)- family & faith. Such views should be rebutted even when not promoting the killing of unborn children.
addendum-
1)this mindset also leads to freedom of worship as opposed to freedom of religion(a recent shift by the left that is ominous)
2) the overly technocratic mindset leads to longterm lockdowns b/c they rely on too narrow a field of expertise (ie just the CDC) and therefore fail to properly gauge the totality of effect on peoples lives and miss the true cost of interventions in the lives of people-particularly the undue burden placed on non-information workers who can’t work remotely.
It’s part and parcel of the Left’s disregard of what would otherwise be genocide – crimes against humanity – in pursuit of of their ‘progressive’ goals. For instance, since the ban on DDT, about 50,000,000 people (mostly black and brown) have died of malaria which was a disease on the verge of eradication in many places in the 60’s.
This will complicate things when it comes to National Healthcare. When the government controls your health they will need abortions to control health costs. Just another way of saying death panels.
If you want the original recipe it can be found on pages 308-309 in Pierre Franey’s 60 Minute Gourmet, published (of course) by The New York Times (back when newspapers had actual food writers).
And why is the Treasury Secretary even talking about abortion? That is a topic I would think that HHS folks would handle. Of course, they are too busy trying to figure out what a woman is so . . .
If life is strictly a financial issue, then I wonder if Yellen could explain how well funded Social Security would be if we had an extra 30-40 million people paying into it.
Dude. Totally.
And not just abortions. He who pays the piper calls the tune, so if you want them to pay for your health care, then you are giving them a say in what you can and cannot do, to be a “good citizen”.
My favorite Senator . . .