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The Left, in a Nutshell
I had to comment on this before I exploded. From a Washington Post article:
The regulation actually would have cost relatively few mining jobs and would have created nearly as many new jobs on the regulatory side, according to a government report — an example of the frequent distance between Trump’s rhetoric, which many of his supporters wholeheartedly believe, and verifiable facts.
This requires a little setup. The article was about the Trump supporters who attended his rally in Florida this weekend, and how differently they see the world from the media portrayal of the Trump administration. Specifically, here the article was quoting a supporter who’d been disappointed that there hadn’t been more coverage of the law Trump signed rolling back last-minute Obama administration regulations, some of which would have put more coal miners out of work.
So rather than acknowledge the jobs saved, what does WaPo do? It says hey, the government says those regulations would have created almost as many jobs for regulators as it would have cost for coal miners?
Whaaaa? Stop, read that again.
Jobs gained for regulators are being equated to jobs lost for coal miners. In what world do these people live?
Coal miners produce … wait for it … coal — a useful substance that is burned to produce electricity that powers everything from vacuum cleaners to printing presses to hybrid cars, all things that people want.
Regulators produce … still waiting … still waiting … Oh, I remember now, they produce interference for people who are trying to do useful things that other people want.
Is this WaPo, or The Onion? Why don’t we just give everybody a job as a regulator if there’s so much demand for regulation? I’m sure some of those coal miners would be happy to sit in an office eight hours a day. Mining coal is actually hard work. That’ll be great (until the power goes out in the offices).
It reminds me of a Facebook post I saw a while ago that said “California makes technology, Texas makes energy, Iowa makes food, Washington makes it difficult.”
This WaPo sentiment is the same mindset that counts a dollar of government spending as a dollar of GDP just as a dollar of private industry spending — as though a dollar paid to someone providing a good or service by someone who wanted that good or service represents no more value than a dollar earned providing a good or service that someone was compelled to pay for at gunpoint through a tax.
This is the same mindset as the apocryphal(?) Chinese bureaucrat who told Milton Friedman that a canal was being dug with shovels instead of heavy machinery because it “was a jobs project,” as though the value of the canal depended on the amount of labor that went into it. (Friedman purportedly quipped, “then why don’t you give them spoons.”)
This is the same mindset as the guy who thinks the way to grow the economy is to break windows, because it will keep glaziers busy replacing them.
This is why we get Trump.
Published in General
Yeah, they really aren’t doing themselves any favors.
“The Left in a Nutshell” – an appropriate receptacle.
With you, @catorand…Can’t wait to see how all this settles down, shakes out, and gets moving.
Nice post. This is really how some on the left think.
This must be what was meant by “jobs created or saved”.
Also? The electricity necessary for those regulators to do their jobs. If nothing else, I would get a lot of schadenfreude from seeing bureaucrats who regulated those jobs out of existence not having the electricity to do their jobs.
Good catch, Cato. Yep, it’s a sign of how even a decent education can’t prevent idiocy.
In the Fifties, Vauxhall, the British General Motors car, had a one-day walkout because the company transferred color-blind workers off the assembly line for wiring harnesses, which depend on color-coded wires. The reason was the transfer would put a team of inspectors out of work who’d had to be hired to ensure that the screwed-up wiring didn’t start fires.
To be sure, there’s sometimes a touch of this on the Right. I’ve seen defenses of Pentagon spending, good, bad or indifferent as justified because it’s “a job program for heroes”.
So, creating a new batch of parasites…er, I mean, greedy self-interested bureaucrats who couldn’t do an honest day’s work if their lives depended on it…I mean Democrats…oh, darn it, I do mean parasites…is seen as equivalent of creating new jobs for people who produce real wealth. Wow. That’s …psychotic.
Thanks for the post!
Yes, that’s what it boils down to. Kind of just makes you shake your head, doesn’t it? Like some of these people have never really thought hard about anything? Where did they go to school?
A friend of mine told me a story of man she knew who had no job during the Depression. The government finally gave him a job digging holes . . . and then filling them back in. He told her he was just so glad to have a job. He probably thought FDR was god incarnate.
I wonder, between the government regulators themselves and all of the compliance officers companies need to hire to make sure they are meeting all of the regulations, how much money is spent on not actually producing anything of value?
I can understand that from his perspective. Ya gotta eat. But lets not pretend that job was useful. And let’s not pretend the world would have been a better place if he’d been unemployed in the first place because the government regulated his employer out of existence and then gave him this useless and “fake” job as a substitute.
That’s what the robots are for! :)
I agree. He did have to eat. But he also knew that he wasn’t doing anything productive or meaningful. Where’s the real compassion to be creative and assist the man in being genuinely useful??
Robot bureaucrats? I’d wager that’s the one field we never see automation in.
It’s amazing how the party that sees itself as the protector of the working class is so eager to use government regulations to kill off blue-collar jobs.
Dream on. The bureaucrats would be the last ones to lose access to electricity. We’d be freezing in the dark before Washington lost power since their jobs are the most important.
Same number of jobs gained on the regulation side as lost from the mine? Maybe. But at twice the cost of what the coal miner received. I’m sure.
A relevant video (since you won’t find it on the lame-stream media):
Almost anywhere, Cato, after 1970, (at every level). No more being taught how to think. It became being taught what to think – and how to regurgitate it on exams. Now, thinking doesn’t come into it. It’s personal truths, feelings, and confirmation bias safe spaces and ‘participation trophies’, isn’t it?
Since you mentioned participation trophies…
Ugh! I’d like to think somebody learned something after 1970. I started first grade in 1970.
LOL
You’re the exception that proves the assertion, Cato.
Well, there are winners and losers. All of those mining jobs are in the coal fields. Those might as well be foreign countries to the Washington Post.
At least half of those regulatory jobs would be in Washington, where the journalists live; they are very concerned about their local economy.
They are just like Trump, who is concerned about where jobs are.
I got the same impression. I was more bothered by the relative values they implicitly assigned to the two jobs, but it’s hard not to notice their preference for the geographic and demographic distribution of them as well.
Government schools.
It obviously didn’t work in your case. You rebel you.
Did they give them spoons?
Better still: they gave them chopsticks.
Maybe we could get regulators to regulate regulators which would make making regulations more difficult. Then, while they’re regulating each other, the rest of use could actually get some work done.