Have you noticed?
- Obama won 52% of the vote—a “landslide,” according to the increasingly foolish mainstream media. California’s Proposition 8 also passed with 52% of the vote. Why is no one calling that a landslide?
- Obama is said to have won because voters were concerned about the economy. But the stock market has plummeted since he was elected although there has been little economic news. Investors evidently see that his economic policies have a lot in common with those implemented under Herbert Hoover and FDR: raise taxes, restrict trade, increase federal spending, empower unions, and regulate.
- The average UAW worker has a salary and benefits package worth almost $150,000. Two average auto workers who marry are likely to earn about $250,000 in salary between them. Shouldn’t Obama favor “spreading their wealth around”?
- Thirty years ago, the average steelworker at the Ambridge (PA) plant made over $100,000 (in 1978 dollars!), due to lax overtime rules. The plant closed shortly thereafter. Maybe workers have been resisting unions, not because companies pressure them, but because they correctly note that unions tend to destroy the source of their jobs? In short, maybe workers realize that unions do not promote their long-term interests?
- Why are those most concerned about monopolies and cartels among companies least concerned about monopolies and cartels among unions?
- The likelihood of extensive and expensive regulation of carbon emissions, including scrapping over a hundred coal-burning power plants nearing completion and devastating coal-producing regions, has gone up dramatically, even while economic woes lower energy usage and evidence accumulates that the earth is cooling on its own.
On unions, consider these words of Meghan McArdle:
First, after the unions have put companies into an untenable position, they come to the rest of us looking for a handout to continue the unsustainable levels of pay and benefits. Almost everyone I know makes less than an autoworker, and has a whole lot less job security. Why should they pay autoworkers for the privilege of making cars no one wants?
I also really loathe and despise the way the unions use work rules and featherbedding to make their companies and industries less productive than they otherwise would be.
The View from Alexandria 
“Why should they pay autoworkers for the privilege of making cars no one wants?”
Or for standing around, not making cars, and still getting paid.
“But the stock market has plummeted since he was elected although there has been little economic news.”
No, there hasn’t been much economic news lately, has there? The cause of the stock market collapse must be Obama, in the absence of any other news. It’s dismaying to think that eight years of economic prosperity have been brought to such a grinding halt by the election of a socialist president — a president who’s vowed to redistribute the wealth by undoing some tax cuts by a few percentage points. The election of a Marxist president will be the ruin of us all. Our homes will be divided into communal residences for once-wealthy entrepreneurs, industrialists and investors reduced to poverty by an onerously progressive tax system.
No, there hasn’t been much economic news lately, has there? Obama must be the cause of the stock market crash, in the absence of economic news. It’s dismaying to think that eight years of economic prosperity have been brought to a grinding halt by the election of a Marxist president — a president who has vowed to redistribute the wealth by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy by a few percentage points. It won’t be long before our homes are divided into communal housing for entrepreneurs, industrialists and investors reduced to poverty by a progressive tax system. It’s time that we considered alternatives to taxes to pay for our nation’s defense, infrastructure, entitlements, Wall Street executive retreats, etc. What about bartering?