- How The World (Really) Works

This is an interesting read from my friend Kevin Williamson. But it's even more enlightening if you read the comments. NRO has had a few professional left wing commenters who are there to try to cut the legs out from under their arguments using any rhetorical tricks they can. In this particular case, the line by line criticisms are particularly instructive in that they show what the leftist worldview is really about.

If you ask me, it's obviously a reflection of a labor movement that knows it's up against the wall. Their worldview has failed in a fantastic front page way - complete with their fellow communists rioting in Greece, and the collapse of the most left or the European leftist democracies. The very concept of a left wing social democracy is in bankruptcy - literally.

But union advocates still cling to the idea that they can get paid more while contributing less, without the cost simply being transferred elsewhere. They still feel they are 'entitled' to higher wages even without making a larger economic contribution. their idea of 'fairness' isn't market value, it's whatever they can use the government to force people to do.

The illusion that 'political reality' can trump 'actual reality' is the left's most permanent fantasy. They believe that the final arbiter of all things is the guy with the gun (government) and 'fair' is whatever he says it is. All the rest of Keynesianism is really just the rationalizations of someone who needs that fantasy to be true.

But the idea that an economy is driven by 'aggregate demand' seems fairly well taken down by Kevin if you ask me. It's productivity that drives economic growth. In fact, it's not just productivity, it's 'excess productivity'. It's making something left over after you pay everyone else, that represent the real 'wealth of a nation'.

anyway, I think Kevin makes his point well enough, and the leftist comments are transparent socialist nonsense. If you disagree - try to have some sympathy. When you've made these arguments tens of thousands of times it becomes a challenge to use new words that are as clear as the old ones. It gets pretty boring trying to teach leftists how the world works, when so much of their self imagine and self worth is wrapped up in flat out denying it.

But for the benefit of that one union guy out there who can't understand why the evil fat cat aren't paying him more simply for being him, let me explain the 'actual reality' that inevitably trumps 'political reality':

There are only two ways to make more money... do something few people can do, or do something few people want to do. That's it. That's all their is. Holding a gun to the head of management by threatening a strike will only make them move their factory to Juarez, or Beijing, or Singapore, and then you'll be out of a job. Please learn that one thing from reality at least. It will only help you.