Working Life

The smell test. You know corruption when you see it — and you know bullshit excuses when you hear them. Here’s a doozy.

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There is so much stupidity in the debate over the phony debt and deficit “crisis”, and its little “sibling, the “fiscal cliff”. Here is one very stupid thing: whether the tax cuts for the very wealthy should be extended. The tax cuts were a bad idea — immoral actually — when they first were proposed by George W. Bush. Which still makes the tax cuts — legalized robbery — a bad idea today.

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A lot of people are squirming and screeching, demanding that Congress take action. Do something about that damn “fiscal cliff” — a phony elite construction by the way. My view is: don’t do anything and the country will be better off.

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Whenever I read drivel based on phony arguments, I always wonder: is this just because the people putting out nonsense or false information are actually stupid? Or is it because the people are actually vile and behaving in a morally reprehensible, criminal way? Charitable fellow that I am, I hope and want to believe it’s just stupidity — from which people can’t be saved perhaps but they can be excused. Which brings us to the Third Way.

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The pastry of my childhood might still survive. That’s good for the workers — if not for general good health.

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Cheap. Low prices. Bargains. It’s the American way of recent decades–a promise we’ve been given by everyone from politicians to corporate marketing campaigns. And most people find it hard to see the devastating cost to us as a society. But, sometimes things happen at once that can give a very clear picture, if you look. For your consideration.

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If a company promotes an environment that endorses attacking its workers, violates the law and thrives on the poverty of its workers and its consumers, it’s an easy step from that to bribe someone to advance the agenda of the company. So, why would anyone be surprised by the growing scandal at Wal-Mart?

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This will be, for some, a tough one. But, if we are really to change the system, we have to be unsparing to people, no matter what political persuasion they come from.

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There is a public sham underway, disguised by the sides taken by both sides in the phony obsession over the debt and deficit crisis. The shame is not simply that there is no actual economic crisis, only a political crisis created by the stupidity of a mutual “death pact” on spending and taxes. It is that taxes on the rich are far too low — even if the Bush tax cuts expire.

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This is no great shakes, which I will point out in an upcoming post. But, ok, it’s better than nothing.

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