RUTHFULLY YOURS

Elizabeth Warren’s new book, “This Fight is Our Fight”, says that ordinary folk can do better economically if we only had more government control and less individual freedom.

As a liberal writer in the New York Times says:

She rails against the growing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a tiny elite;

Is Warren referring to the US government? Perhaps the “tiny elite” she refers to are the legislative, judicial, and executive branch which have more and more of our hard earned money, and more control over us than any corporation ever could.

She argues that this concentration of economic rewards has also undermined our political system;

Warren’s right about that, in a way; when one group of citizens can vote themselves the money of another group of citizens, our political system is undermined.

and links unequal wealth and power to the stagnating incomes, growing insecurity and diminishing opportunities facing ordinary families.

Warren’s right about that too, in an unintended way. The more government spends, the less is available to the private sector. Out of control government spending and over $200 trillion in unfunded government obligations will eventually crush the economy.

She puts a face on these stresses with capsule portraits of middle-class travails: a Walmart worker who needs to visit a food pantry, a DHL worker forced to take a huge pay cut, a millennial crushed by student debt.

Entry level jobs at Walmart are not meant to support entire families. How much do people without skills expect to be paid? Stacking a shelf or driving a van are not skills that people should expect to pay $50 an hour with benefits. As for “millennials” being “crushed” by student debts, they should blame the greedy money guzzling universities who raise tuition sky high.

Her own success story, she tells us, depended a lot on the now-vanished availability of high-quality, low-cost public universities, plus a relatively high minimum wage — “a $50-a-semester tuition changed my life.”

When Warren talks about $50 a semester, of course she means a cost of $50 to the student. The taxpayer picks up the rest of the tab. There’s no such thing as a “free” college education. Someone always pays.

Warren calls for restored financial regulation, stronger social programs and renewed investment in education, research and infrastructure.

How will regulating business help us? When did regulating a business ever create a job? Doing so destroys jobs, but can you ever think of a time when regulating a business created one?
As for “social” program, most government programs are decidedly “unsocial”; they redistribute income and destroy jobs.

And what is an “investment” in education? Don’t people invest in their own educations? What does it mean for the government to “invest” in education in the abstract? And what should the government be researching? Shouldn’t businesses be researching to find out what customers want to buy? How would the government know what customers want?

And what infrastructure is Warren referring to–the infrastructure of businesses, which create job? Almost certainly not–she wants to tax business infrastructures to create one of her own which will create zero sustainable jobs.

At the beginning of her book Warren talks about her frustration with politicians refusing to raise the minimum wage even though “study after study shows that there are no large adverse effects on jobs when the minimum wage goes up.”

On the other hand, I have seen” study after study” which show that liberals lie about the very apparent results of the minimum wage, which is that it kills jobs.

On the cover of her opus Warren is wearing her trademark red blazer with her trademark owly “Who, Who me?” expression. She looks like a barker at the circus, getting ready to introduce government economists dressed as clowns and other assorted left wing freaks who are going to tell us how to run our lives. That’s Elizabeth Warren, spouting her histrionic platitudes, right next to the exhibits of the Grady the Lobster Boy and Susi the Elephant Girl.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.