Posted on 01/30/2014 5:03:37 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The central word in President Obama’s State of the Union address wasn’t equality or opportunity. It was work.
People will tell you this was a boring speech. Don’t believe them. It was a speech with a sharp edge. It distinguished the free market, represented by Republicans, from the work ethic, represented by Democrats. If that’s the debate in 2014, Democrats stand a good chance of winning.
Here’s the basic idea. Many people who vote Republican don’t really believe in the free market. What they believe in is the work ethic. These two things aren’t identical. Sometimes the free market betrays the work ethic. When employees bust their tails, but the CEO gets all the money, people don’t like that. They aren’t capitalists. They don’t want a government that punishes effort or rewards sloth. But they like a government that makes sure the economy rewards work.
The conventional view of Obama, repeated in last night’s Republican response by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), is that he “talks a lot about income inequality.” But as a description of Obama’s speech, that isn’t quite right. Obama used the words equal, equality, and inequality just eight times. He used opportunity and opportunities 14 times. He used work, workers, working, workforce, and hard-working more than 60 times. Thirty-six of those references were directly about economic labor.
The distinction is important. Most people think income inequality is fine—in fact, it’s proper—when one person works harder than another. Obama’s argument isn’t just that the economy has left incomes unequal. It’s that the economy is failing to honor work.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
More accurately, it distinguished between keeping what you make and create versus having a bunch of freeloading parasites take it from you via government confiscation.
Exactly!
But Obama is betting on the low information voter and their inability to recognize his ability to twist the truth (lie).
"For more than 30 years, Republicans prevailed in that debate because people had lost faith in government. But what happens if they lose faith in the economy? When the free market stops serving the work ethic, look out."
Obama destroys the economy (the free market) then uses his "success" at crippling capitalism to sell socialism.
Yeah, that’s pretty much Cloward-Piven, isn’t it?
I think the point still remains that the work you do has to be of some value to someone in order for it to create worth. If people value work for the sake of valuing work ethic (or vice-verse), then they delude themselves into believing all work is equal.
I’m pretty sure most of us here at least understand that not all work provides equal worth.
I completely agree with your point as well.
Then there is no reason under the sun to support dimocRATS. They do the opposite.
the Democratic Party is no longer the party of the working class. It has become the party of the shirking class.
The fallacy being promoted here is that conservatives will be attracted to obozo’s “work ethic” meme because it appeals to their sense of reward proportionate to effort expended. But this proposal also carries the inevitable fascistic baggage of government coercion to equailize that reward. Most conservatives are smart enough to recognize that the disproportionate rewards being given to the parasite classes are BECAUSE of government.
And to the degree that Democrats represent featherbedding unions and deadbeat labor collectives, they are hardly credible champions of a “work ethic.” Even their tin god spends more time on the golf course than in the office.
I suspect that If you allowed only those who are “in the work force” (i.e. those who have a job plus the 6.7% unemployed) to vote, it would be a Republican landslide.
You could even add the spouses of those who are in the work force, and it would still be a landslide.
I think he’s right too.
Otherwise these minimum wage ballot initiatives would not be passing with such large majorities.
It is the logical end-cycle to a period of extended stagnation in employment and wages.
If only those that don’t take welfare in any form (EITC, WIC, etc...that includes ‘college loans’ too??)....
There’s still far too many who have a job that believe the ‘rich’ should get soaked or that the boss is trying to screw ‘em over.
The continued existence - never mind the creation - of wealth depends on people who don’t spend everything they own or can borrow.Restraint in consumption is work in its own right. You don’t attach an hourly wage to it, but it has to be respected as work nonetheless.
Even beyond savings, investment is work, too - as anyone who has worried through a downturn in the stock market knows.
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
Democrats may pay lip service to savings, but their panaceas alway subvert incentives to save. And as for respecting the work involved in avoiding the possibility of loss and even failure in an investment is concerned, well - Democrats count on their constituents to be completely oblivious to that.
I think you just created a good tag line.
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