Bomb Throwing Pacifist
If you took that happy, smiling guy from the box of Quaker Oats, handed him a bottle of gin and a rifle, and pissed him off to a point where he decided he wasn't going to take it anymore, you'd get a little something like this.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Bring Out Your Dead!
Today for your viewing pleasure, we bring to you something truely special. While I know that personally I've become pretty jaded over the last few months, it is rare that I find an editorial piece so deliciously, succulently, and densely wingnutty that it receives a de facto quantum singularity score of 11 on the Neutronic Degeneracy Pressure scale. This, my friends, is the stuff of which entire galaxies are made (although it should be noted that a singularity of this type and scale would exist on a parallel plane to our own and would most likely be so badly warped by thepowers of bad logic, poor reasoning, and just plain idiocy that it would result in a twisted, grotesque perversion of the dimension we know and love). So, without further ado, I bring you...
The Imps of the Impoverished!!!
A Paul Jacob Adventure
A gripping tale of money, power, greed, and fat bastards.
Hoo boy. Better get out the dramamine kiddies, because I know this one is going to be rougher than a nun's burlap corset and string thong.
Ah, the good old days! When the word "poverty" really meant something!
In the Middle Ages, thousands of city dwellers might starve to death during a drought. "The poor" were people who walked around without clothing. To be destitute meant eating tree bark to survive.
Wow. That's just...it's just so...just....WOW. After all folks, you can say what you want about nutty columns, but I think we can all recognize the brilliant, spectacularly wingnuttiness of someone who actually laments the fact that poor people no longer have to eat tree bark to avoid starving to death.
On the other hand, he doesn't mention the fact that every few years a couple frozen homeless guys are scraped off the benches of Lafayette Park, but hey, that could have happened anywhere. Besides, they didn't starve to death, so that doesn't count.
Today, obesity is a bigger problem for the poor than is hunger.
Um...dude. Obesity is one of the biggest health problems facing all Americans today. CDC estimates that over 30% of all Americans over age 20 are clinically obese. It's more or less because of the extremely cheap, fatty substances passing for food these days. If you see a well-fed or even (dare I say it?) fat person pandandling, it's just because he can't afford to have the lard liposuctioned out his ass like the corporate suit sauntering past. Poor people aren't exactly like the epinonymous Oliver from Dickens anymore, subsisting on water and gruel. Good thing, too. Otherwise they might end up devouring the cherry blossoms and ruiningthe Jacobs' family vacation to D.C.
It was recently found that in the area of Washington state surrounding Microsoft's HQ, 40 percent of the workers don't earn a living wage. So, in an area that was hailed a few years back as the central focus of the future, a huge chunk of the populace lives like paupers?
Who'd have thunk it? You see, Mr. Jacob thinks that this simply cannot be true, because it's seemingly contradictory. In an area once hailed as "the central focus of the future" (whatever that is), 40% of an employer's employees were making under a livng wage. Inconceivable!
On a side note, Mr. Jacob may have in fact stumbled on a little nugget of wisdom all by himself without even realizing it (although since it contradicts his simple, pre-determined worldview, it's doubtful it will sink in though): perhaps Microsoft really is the "centeral focus of the future" and that its low wages are no fluke. I mean, it's not like real wages have been falling since the Clinton years (and have been in decline since the 1970's) or anything.
Everybody wants a higher wage, of course. That's why many people actually go to college, vo-tech, or find some other way to increase their skills. That's also why most people, over time, move up from scullery maid or fast-food cook: to get more money. The sub-sub-living wage is merely a stage on the journey of life, for many; a permanent condition, for a few.
Everyone wants a higher wage of course. That's why for a few years they take their already pathetically low wages and blow them on a college education instead of eating. And that tiny percentage of the population that can't afford the average $11,000-$27,000 a year tuition rate that most universities charge find other ways to move up in society: like becoming a short order cook for the stars or an Iron Chef. Now that's gumption.
One would guess that those not earning a living wage would be easy to spot — they're the dead people. But the living wage is not about living, but about living in comfort. The TV sets and DVD players and cell phones are a given in modern life, and for many below this new poverty line, so is a car and its insurance.
Tee-hee! It's funny because since noone's dropping from hunger, that means that you don't need a "living" wage because your current wages are enough. Seriously though, again, what's with the whole "life was better when poor people were dead" crap? I seriously am starting to think that Jacob is the kind of guy who would resent a homeless person for having the nerve to bleed all over the place when embedded in the front of his white BMW as he lies dying in the garage so Jacob can sober up enough to call 911.
The living wage is the new-and-improved "poverty line," the theoretical wage that would allow a worker to live in middle-class comfort, paying the bills and accepting no special subsidies.
Because only a lunatic would go so far as to assert that a single-parent family whose provider puts in 60 hours a week deserves anything more than just barely being able to biy food and heat the tenement. Just because you work full-time doesn't mean you deserve anything, motherfuckers!!
On a side note, why is it that people like Jacobs who spend their lives banging the drum of the American Dream(tm), patriotism, and hard work suddenly turn around and accuse workers of being lazy and ungrateful when they pount that that even with a full-time job they can't meet their basic needs or live to a certain standard of comfort?
The minimum wage, on the other hand, is a legal barrier to trade in labor. It's not theoretical at all. It's the law. It prevents employers from hiring at wage rates below the minimum set. Though we like to think of it as "raising wages," it is, in point of actual fact, a prohibition to hire at some rates. As such it decreases employment.
And there you have it folks! The crowning acheivement in the field of wingnuttery. Because as our good friend Mr. Jacob has pointed out here, being forced to actually pay people for doing a hard day's work is a drain on employers and slows the economy. The only solution available to us is to abolish the minimum wage, and then gradually reintroduce slavery- first by making it voluntary, and then compulsary for all non-white, non-Christians with a net worth of under $100,000. It's the wingnut-approved solution(tm)!
As our good friend and butler, Mr. E. Blackader, once pointed out: "According to the latest word on the street, his passions include flogging servants, shooting poor people, and the extension of slavery to anyone who hasn't got a knighthood." While in that particular episode he was referring to Sir Talbot Buxomley, MP for Danny-on-the-World, it wasn't until that latest paragraph that he could also have been said to be referring to Mr. Paul Jacob.
Marc with a C, 12:04 PM
