I’m reading Steven Greenhouse’s article in the New York Times today entitled YES, AMERICA IS RIGGED AGAINST WORKERS. What drivel.  It would be published in the socialist New York Slimes.

Right to a lunch break, paid maternity leave, vacations, sick days.  These are trivial benefits next to the claws of the Federal Reserve Bank that erodes American workers real purchasing power via inflation.  Inflation is more crushing than any other factor that makes American workers peons.  Whatever pay raise a worker earns, the Federal Reserve taketh away.  Inflation is not the target 2% the Federal Reserve publishes, but more like 6-8% (Source: Shadowstats.com). You have to ask for a 6-8% pay increase every year to maintain your standard of living! 

Any laws that address minimum workers “rights” will simply cripple small business and give more of a market share to the large chain operations.  

The Anti-Capitalistic ... Mises, Ludwig von Best Price: $5.00 Buy New $3.95 (as of 04:45 UTC - Details) Maybe other countries do have laws that guarantee certain benefits to workers that the US doesn’t “guarantee.”  Maybe then every employer in that other country starts out on a level playing field regarding the cost of labor.  But American companies compete on a worldwide basis now and we compete against countries that DON’T have minimum wage and worker benefits.  

For entry level workers with few if any skills, giving them the same benefits as other skilled workers seems antithetical to the idea of working your way up to the top.  How many times I’ve heard people say, get a good government job and you will get all the health insurance benefits and vacations, etc.  In other words, you get these benefits regardless of your skill level.  So workers who don’t have the same benefits pay taxes so the government workers can be guaranteed (have a right) to these job benefits.  Is that equality?

The negative part of this is workers begin to look for jobs where they don’t have to compete and learn new job skills.  The mindset is to get a “cush job.”  And regardless of how good you are at your job, the pay grade for your job is already established. 

Of course, you can start your own business like others do, to see how much they are worth in the labor market.  But no, workers demand “equality.”  As Churchill once said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”

Here is what Greenhouse writes: 

“America’s workers have for decades been losing out: year after year of wage stagnation, increased insecurity on the job, waves of downsizing and offshoring, and labor’s share of national income declining to its lowest level in seven decades.”

“Numerous studies have found that an important cause of America’s soaring income inequality is the decline of labor unions — and the concomitant decline in workers’ ability to extract more of the profit and prosperity from the corporations they work for.” 

Here we go, socialist jingo.  Note the words “income inequality.” Joining a union is not going to get you anywhere as the union takes a cut of your paycheck.  Unions, plus or minus, socialize what a worker is worth.  

Businesses operate in a competitive market.  Cost of labor can doom a restaurant owner who is only working on a 10% profit margin to begin with.  Of course, we can halt competition.  Then the cost of everything rises.

We send American kids to school with no orientation on how to get a job, how to build their worth, how to develop job skills.  Students pass a few college classes that hand out true or false tests and that makes them worth more in the labor market?  Young Americans would be better off working as an understudy plumber. 

A few years ago The Wall Street Journal published a report showing plumbers make more money (six figures) than college graduates. 

And what do US kids now aim to be: Vloggers (online video experts) or “influencers” (Instagram users who have established an audience).  I’m holding my head. Economics in One Lesso... Hazlitt, Henry Best Price: $2.43 Buy New $7.43 (as of 12:35 UTC - Details)

I think of that Biblical parable where a landowner hired workers in the field and agreed pay them a denarius for a day’s work.  But later in the morning the landowner saw other laborers looking for a job and agreed to pay them “whatever is right.”  Then at midday and then again at 3 in the afternoon, the landowner found more idle workers and hired them too.  When it came time to pay all the workers at the end of the day the landowner instructed his paymaster to pay a full denarius even to the workers who weren’t hired until 5 PM.  There was grumbling by the workers who worked all day for the same wage.  The parable was about entering heaven and “the last shall be first” to enter. 

“You have made them equal to us who have worked longer,” said the workers who were hired in the morning.  Just think, workers thought the landowner was unfair when he was just being generous, knowing workers still have the same needs to survive.  In the parable the landowner asked the disgruntled workers “I am not being unfair to you… are you envious because I am generous?” 

Yes, God is unfair too.  Some of the worst sinners who repented have made it into heaven.  I can hear it now… “But I went to church every Sunday and Bible study too, and you (God) let the worst of sinners into heaven before me.”  Yes, that is the lesson.