Friday, October 17, 2003
(6:38 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
If you're ever in the blogosphere
CalPundit's post today about "class warfare" is very good and also very representative of a meme that's spreading lately: the idea that any "class warfare" was started by corporations. He has a nice quote from a company executive who argues that waiters in California should be paid less than minimum wage (which is the case in most other states), so that they can cut labor costs by 2%, thus raising profits and raising the value of stock. Whatever pay cut these waiters get is likely to amount to a whole lot more than 2% of their gross income. Here's a nice paragraph:
It never ceases to amaze me that businessmen are continually so outraged over the possibility that any decent paying non-executive jobs are left in our country. But they are. If you're just an ordinary schlub working in an ordinary job, you don't deserve a decent wage, you don't deserve decent healthcare, and you don't deserve any job security. And don't you forget it.
Another similar meme is the one propagated by Atrios about identity politics, where he points out every situation in which whites ruthlessly seek their own advantage to the detriment of other groups. The overarching theme of both these memes is that conservative dismissive terms for liberal activities are more accurate descriptions of conservative activities.
Can we think of any variations on the theme? For instance, if we assume that military spending counts as government spending, we could say that conservatives are "addicted to government spending" and will stop at nothing to raise government spending to the highest possible levels.
