By Frank J Biga III -
Really? Despite all the angst regarding the Brexit vote and the calamitous effects that a "Leave" vote would have on the world, the worst that happened was a two-day selloff of equities? More to the point, the transformation of our cultures and societies was worth only a lousy 1000 points on the Dow?
I know. I know. The consequences haven’t been fully felt yet. George Soros is predicting serious consequences and maybe even a Depression. Maybe it will happen. The last Depression produced the Greatest Generation though. If a Depression is what is needed to chasten the globalist ruling class, so be it.
No, they’re really mad because the games of arbitrage that they have been playing are on their way out. These speculative ventures of theirs that line the fat cats’ pockets but have destroyed much of middle America are coming undone. It relied on the free flow of goods, technology, labor and capital. Now they can’t rely on this. People can have their countries back. But it will be a long struggle.
The elites keep telling us that we’ll be worse off. The British will certainly be poorer as a result. Doubtful. This reduces the nominal and speculative economy and puts a check on their rigged system. Those are the major effects. The real economy lives on.
Besides, their free markets weren’t very good at predicting this event. The elites were as clueless about this as Nicholas II was when the February Revolution occurred and the Kerensky government stopped his special bullet train heading back to St. Petersburg. So maybe the 1000 point drop was truly determinative of its value.
On the positive end, this will give some of them the ability to write books. A few tall tales from the high hats will be born out of these tomes I’m sure. Jude Wanniski’s book “The Way the World Works” spun the illusion that anticipation of a higher tariff caused the stock market crash of 1929 and then the Depression. A lot of ink has been spilled continuing that nonsense. It did provide some cover though for the real cause of the Depression – a credit bubble of immense proportions spurred by below market interest rates. Sound familiar?
Sorry, there are some things that are more important than money – like faith, family, kith and kin. The elites certainly care about their families too – they ensure their children get in to the best universities and receive six-figure starting salaries. But just as this is important to them, preserving our hometowns, religions and cultures are important to us plebeians. It looks like the tide might be turning again where social values trump economic ones. I don’t expect the globalists to give up easily though.
Man the ramparts, the battle for the future is just beginning.
Correction: the greatest generation was the Founding generation, the people born between 1730 and 1760 who guided our nation’s independence and early governance.
No other generation in history, before or after, comes close.
Certainly not the people who gave us the politics of the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s.
And by the way… just for the record… we’ve had to put up with ghastly class envy divisiveness from Barack Hussein Obama and his ilk for eight years now, let’s not have any of that stuff on the right, okay? Please?
There are good rich people and bad ones… good poor people and bad ones… good middle class people and bad ones.
It’s their ideas and actions that define whether they’re good or bad, not their social class.
Let’s leave that jabbering about ‘fat cats’ and ‘elites’ for the Mother Jones crowd.
I’m pretty sure the Reformation generation was greater than our founders. Also first and second century generation church founders were greater than our founders. What a small minded statement.
That said the founders were certainly greater than the silly socialists of the 30s and 40s. Still not greater than the Reformists or the church founders generation.
I think it’s safe to say that all the elites running this country are not “good ones”. They are “bad ones”. Exporting our jobs and importing third world peoples. I know you generally support displacing our people as a matter of principle but the vast majority of us do not.
For a more clarified perspective, please refer to
Brandon Smith’s article – Brexit aftermath, here’s
what will happen next on his blog alt-market.com
This is why the Right loses. It doesn’t fight for anything other than the barren maxims of the laissez-faire cult and then dismisses the concerns of their fellow less fortunate Americans as either xenophobia or worse. Ideas> People to the right today.
But, given today’s environment and the destruction of our middle class, it’s not just about ideas (or means) anymore, it’s about tangible results (or ends).
And what do you think the Republican Party of the 1850s through the 1870s really was? It was a party dedicated to providing opportunities for a better life for the lower middle class. It’s time it renews this purpose. See the article below:
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2016/06/biga-letat-pour-nous.html
As a big fan of forced collectivism, Biga, I am surprised you aren’t crying over Brexit.
I’m still waiting for your response on how not requiring fair share dues for those who choose not the join the union is better than allowing someone to be a free rider.
Excuse me, Chase? what kind of an attack is that?
I don’t “support displacing our people”….I’m constantly calling for reductions in the tax rates, crime levels, regulatory burden, and union mandates that drive employers away.
I want American factories to be plentiful, so that workers can again be in a seller’s market for their labor, rather than employers holding the whip hand due to massive unemployment.
Your statement that I “generally support displacing our people” couldn’t be more off base.
Huh? the church founders generation? I’ve never heard of anyone refer to them as such.
When we talk about a generation, we’re talking about a significant number of people, dominant at one place and time. That’s appropriate when talking about the Founding generation because we’re talking about the whole body of people in elective office, both at the colonial/state level and at the national level in the 1760s-1790s.
But to refer to the church founders as a generation – truly, meaning no disrespect to the saints here – is crazy.
You’re talking about the apostles (a dozen Jews from Israel, all born between 10BC and 10AD), and a few dozen other proselytizers of the following century, who became the epistle writers and bishops/patriarchs of the early church, born over a span of more than a hundred years, and located all over the middle east.
That’s not a generation. It’s a few dozen great people, wonderful people, inspired people. I’m not insulting them at all.
But they’re NOT a generation. The comparison is idiotic.
You just wanted to disagree with me for some reason, and picked a heck of a convoluted stretch with which to do so.
Sorry, Chase.
I’m confused. How does a vote for independence from an international leviathan government constitute collectivism? Was the American War for Independence collectivism?
Never mind. I missed the tongue in cheek earlier.
There is no such thing as fair share dues. An employer pays what he is willing to and an employee agrees to accept what he is willing to.
Some may want to pay dues to have purple-shirted thugs demonstrating for Democrat Party priorities. It isn’t fair to force their coworkers with common sense to do so.
So the apostles were not a generation? The thousands of people converted as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles were not a significant number of people? Absurdity. You must not be familiar with the book of the Acts of the Apostles if you say it was a couple dozen people.
No, I didn’t just want to disagree with you. I thought it was a ridiculous statement that in 5000 or so years of history these couple hundred founders can be declared, without a doubt, for all time, the greatest generation in all of history. Certainly in America’s history, but silly to say in any place, any time.
What you generally call for is Chamber of Commerce talk. I never hear anything about a protecting American workers, perhaps through a tariff. I do read that you support American businesses making some money, but it rarely helps American workers these days.
I do agree that in a better time when business owners were more patriotic that cutting regulations and corporate taxes could lead directly to helping middle class Americans. That is a bygone era. There are few if any patriotic CEOs these days.
I’ve never read a passionate article about protecting Americans through patriotic immigration reform. I’ve seen a bone here and there but nothing as passionate as cutting the capital gains tax or reducing regulation. The best way to help Americans immediately would be to strictly enforce our immigration laws, not through some minor reforms in regulations. Please.
This doesn’t answer the free rider issue question. How do you prevent those who choose not to join the union from benefiting form what the union negotiates?
Mr. Biga –
There needs to be an alternative for teachers then. Closed shops are a thing of the past – and although you’re a union rep, you need to know that what the unions offer, fewer and fewer want. It’s like forcing people to eat McDonald’s burgers and fries when they’re not satisfying, nor healthy and are actually in the long run destructive. I know you won’t want to hear that, but believe me, it’s how a growing number of young teachers think about unions.
The alternative needs to be choice. Let teachers choose whether they’d like the health care plans the union offers or whether they’d like a different one. Let them benefit from working hard and smart to get raises apart from the union. Give them freedom. There’s a will, there’s a way. It’s time to accept the fact that unions have little appeal anymore. Perhaps union officials should think long and hard about why that is.
There is no answer to the diabolical premise your ilk presents. I don’t know employment law (beyond the fact that there should be very little) so I don’t know if your ilk has it tied up neatly such that an employer cannot offer different wages and benefits than those union members receive. If it is illegal to do so, then your ilk has created a situation in which you can whine about free riders, despite the fact that your iron-fisted power-lust allows no alternative. If it is legal, then it is a non-issue. Who is to say that simply because a corrupt entity negotiated for something, it is good? Who is to say an employer shouldn’t be allowed to decide to offer all employees the same compensation package, union or not? Who is to say what the union negotiates is better than it otherwise could have been?
I know you don’t believe in freedom, but take heart in the knowledge that your ilk has succeeded in its near elimination.
Without unions and their ilk, businesses would have had no incentive to create safer working conditions let alone higher wages in place. Ever hear of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire? Or how the workers were treated building the Panama Canal? Business wants a stoop and compliant labor force. When unions got too powerful for them, they circumvented them with mass immigration and lowering tariff rates.
And the stagnant wages we have had since have most definitely contributed to the breakdown of the family and the dystopian culture we now have to live with. How has any of that advanced conservatism?
Not sure how to reply here. But I will say in the case of teachers, most of their health care plans aren’t offered by the unions but by the individual districts. The union negotiates the benefit levels in those plans as part of the collective bargaining agreement. The unions do not control these but negotiate and most definitely take member concerns in to account.
Unions have a lot of appeal. They have lost negotiating power because of immigration and off-shoring though. But there are no organizations that protect workers better than unions. I’ve seen it first hand. You can’t count on the government and certainly not the employers. They just care about the next quarterly report generally.
I want to stress though that I do not believe in prevailing wage laws or the closed shop. There is no closed shop and one does not have to join the teachers’ union.
Working conditions and safety is because of unions? I’ll bet the OSHA guys would like to talk to you … maybe we’re duplicating services with their agency?