Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Constants In A Changing World

Complaints through the ages:

Whichever side of the political spectrum you live on, the general thinking is if the Other Guy wins, civilization will come to an end.

But think about it. We got the minimum wage and life went on. (There's even a good argument that it improved for many.) The Wagner Act -- enshrining labor rights -- passed in the 1930s and America survived. (Prospered, even.)

The progressive income tax was installed in 1913 after the Taft Administration pushed through a Constitutional Amendment, and a century later we still have plumbing, electric lights and all-tile bathrooms. (Who would have thought?)

As I get older, I get less agitated about the predictions of imminent destruction than I did when younger. (That goes for Leftie prophecies of disasters as well. If President Romney gets rid of Medicare and Social Security, life will be crappier for wide swaths of the population, but the world will not end.)

I recall the wailing about Impending Doom when Bill Clinton pushed through a tax hike in 1993. ("The economy will implode! You can't tax the Successful!" etc.) But funny thing. Everybody survived paying a few percent more. How could that have happened?

h/t "The Big Picture."

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't we hear this stuff from Visual Effects Houses now?

"We unionize, we'll have to CLOSE! ... It'll all go overseas!"

Yada yada.

Anonymous said...

Forgotten Facts of American Labor History
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods135.html

hahaha.... said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A4UGtM4hDQ&feature=player_embedded

Read the description.

Anonymous said...

That ought to be labeled "Forgotten Fantasies of American Labor History" as they are not, in fact, facts. Facts are called facts because they are facts. Those are not facts. They're random cherry picked bits of misappropriated history from a fringe right wing nut.

Quite funny, though. Just not reality.

Anonymous said...

"Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University" That´s not the definition of your average Right wing nuts...Tom Woods is a libertarian not a right wing warmonger nor a left-wing Obamaniac. I will like to listen how well you would hold in a debate with him...

Anonymous said...

lew rockwell, ron paul, timothy mcveigh, and ted kaczynski have much in common--besides just being ignorant.

Anonymous said...

rockwell and woods also are mentally unstable. Reality doesn't occur to them.

Anonymous said...

To Compare Rockwell, Paul and woods with terrorist killers and calling them mentally unstable does not add up and discredits you completely...Enjoy the wars of your Nobel Peace prize president and the weapons smuggle operations to drug cartels in Mexico.

Anonymous said...

Enjoy the wars of your Nobel Peace prize president and the weapons smuggle operations to drug cartels in Mexico.

You are discredited as an obvious partisan shill, and thus dismissed out of hand.

Anonymous said...

And that´s something we both agree on. I don´t like Obama, or bush I´m a political atheist...

Anonymous said...

I hope you don't wear aluminum foil hats like ron paul...

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