Saturday, October 15, 2005
“You Must Be Making Millions!”
First, some random stuff
11 Iraqi War Myths is one of the best hyper-sober, no B.S. appraisals I’ve seen regarding the myths that are now accepted regularly, by so many, as facts (thanks mostly to our pals in media play-land).
A sampling; regarding the myth/claim that “they” are Insurgents, not Terrorists :
“The word “insurgent” is a loaded term that confers legitimacy since it is neutrally defined as “one who opposes authority.” It is broad enough to apply to any American who votes for the Green Party, for example, as well as the citizen who bombs a government building in Oklahoma City in the middle of the day.
Obviously, it is intellectually dishonest to categorize Ralph Nader loyalists alongside those who use violence to overthrow a democratically elected government, so narrower terminology is not just appropriate, but morally imperative.
We modestly suggest that those who commit violent acts of terror against a democratic government and its citizens be known as terrorists.”
The very cool folks at The People’s Cube have run into a lefto-hypocrite organization disguising itself as a capitalist enterprise. The initial product that The People’s Cube sought to market was witty and well-done in itself. Their response to typical leftist attempts at censorship is brilliant, entertaining, and praiseworthy on all accounts.
Some media clones from the hate Bush parade have gone off the deep end completely. I happened to read the very same article that this critique’ addresses so well (and came to the same conclusions). The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank gave a play by play poetic description of the number of times George Bush blinked (!) while answering questions recently. The journalist (this person is really a journalist?!) also notes that Bush spoke, “unprotected by the usual lectern.” This one definitely deserves an award as among the most biased and rabidly psychotic anti-Bush “news articles” I’ve seen in quite awhile. I can’t ever remember a description of any prior president where attempts to describe and interpret body language was the prime focus of a story.
I wanted to laugh when I saw the latest tribute to John Lennon (Lenin?); “Working Class Hero.” I’ve never completely understood why filthy rich ego-maniacs so often consider themselves (and are considered by others) to be experts on “the working class.” Yes, Lennon was a great musician, but his credentials for the running of modern nation-states or understanding the dynamics of a successful economy were weak at best.
I like “rock” music, for what it is. Of course some pieces are better than others but few come close to a good jazz work or a symphony.
William Grim offers some excellent insight into the issue, pointing out that the most “revolutionary” of music genres is in fact the most bourgeoisie;
“After World War II, wage increases and new musicians' union restrictions on overnight travel made the 18-piece big band increasingly less viable from an economic standpoint. Solo singers like Sinatra and Como then became the focus of popular music, but even they needed a lot of backup musicians. What became known as rock and roll was really a sanitized version of what had been termed "race music," a prototype of r&b that was marketed only to the black community. Dumbing down "race music" for white audiences was an economic godsend for the recording companies. No longer did they need to worry about employing trained musicians or even performers who could read music. In fact, what was needed was an attractive face that could lip-synch. In the 50s Milli Vanilli was called Shelley Fabares. Rock music is the least revolutionary and most overwhelmingly bourgeois music of all time. It has been brilliantly marketed to the barbaric baby boomers and their monstrous progeny who, being victims of the American educational system, confused drug use, laziness and moral turpitude with revolution. I'm sure that V.I. Lenin would have laughed John Lennon off the stage of the First Internationale.”
My essay of the week, I guess...
I used to manage restaurants, three different ones over a period of a few years. I was one of those non-college-track guys (I eventually attended college later in life) whose attendance and organization as a waiter was adequate enough to get myself promoted to assistant manager and eventually manager in a twenty-four hour breakfast restaurant chain. During my “career in the food service industry” I saw plenty of minimum wage dishwashers, waitresses, and cooks become managers along with decent paychecks, respectability, and résumé points. A lot of people in America follow a similar career-track scenario, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants. As a matter of fact, many in that famous statistical group, “the poor,” do this; being “poor” in a few year’s statistics and middle class or above a couple years later. Of course, certain political persuasions would rather you not consider this dynamic. To them, there is a static group of “oppressed” poor people forever stuck in minimum wage poverty. The actual number of people who do remain in the same economic status that they entered the work force in is a tiny fragment of the much touted “poverty” stats. Currently “those living in poverty” in the U.S. are about 13% of the population and that number barely fluctuates more than a single percentage point over decades. “Poverty” statistics are based on income (and not income from government assistance) and includes plenty of twenty-something slackers living at their parent’s home in a “destitute” lifestyle of listing to music from their CD collection. Some simply take a year off from college and go backpacking – little or no income, therefore, “in poverty.” Some of the others amongst the poor really are poor, but with half a brain and the sense to show up to work on time, will not be poor at another time in their life. There are plenty of rich people and even presidents who, earlier in their lives were poor. In any event, this ever changing population within the static statistic, “poor,” is certainly not just cause for “revolution” or any other authoritarian scheme to dismantle the distinctly positive attributes of a free economy.
…back to the restaurant.
I remember during my shifts as a waiter, when there was a line of people out the door, there was always some “regular” who’d comment that we (the restaurant) “must be making millions!” – so it had seemed. Of course I could see the same obvious reality myself. Just do the math. The average meal cost X dollars and there’s “a million” people lined up throwing money into a cash register – there ya have it, “millions of dollars” for the rich, capitalist (don’t forget “evil”) corporation.
It wasn’t until I was promoted and trained in the accounting part of management that I found out the real picture, the picture every business large and small faces. The “bottom-line” was a pathetic fragment of all that visual wealth coming through the restaurant’s doors. It hadn’t occurred to me that the restaurant was actually still paying, each month, for its original construction and equipment. It also hadn’t occurred to me that the food we were charging others for actually had to be paid for by us initially. The store was not only paying its staff as well as the manager and supervisor that hovered between individual stores, but their payroll taxes, half the “contribution” to social security, and unemployment insurance. There were utilities, “maintenance” (costly things like repairing the parking lot and cleaning the kitchen “chimney”), The usual varieties of fire and liability insurance etc., advertising, landscaping, the corporate headquarters’ accounting staff, lawyers etc. etc.
I was initially rather shocked that the clearly busy and successful restaurant I was working at was making a month-end profit barely adequate to purchase a new car! Of course this was the “bottom line” profit that would ultimately go to stock holders. Multiplied by the number of stores in the chain, the company as a whole was indeed “making millions” but, like most corporations, reinvesting a large portion of the money in other projects, or expansion. While “X” company was “making millions,” few considered the path to that end. Company wide, the restaurants were paying millions to a broad spectrum of other businesses and employees. This is something that doesn’t occur in countries that have declared war on business, profit, private ownership, and wealth, which is why those countries that have successfully defeated capitalism (always through force, since people naturally create, sell, and purchase when left unhindered) are destitute basket-cases (i.e. Cuba and North Korea) living off the charity and extorted funds of other nations. It’s bad enough that such ruthless leech states destroy human liberties like the right to self-expression, but their rulers have deliberately chosen to actually make their countries poor for no other reason than an obsession with an ideology and their envy of free people’s potential for success. There are few people working as waiters, landscapers, or advertisers when private institutions that employ such services have been outlawed or discouraged out of existence. Of course my example -- a restaurant -- isn’t the same thing as an oil company, airline, or movie production company -- wait! -- yes it is! Every company has expenses, unseen and unconsidered by those who can only decry profit as something evil and wrong. To “make millions” requires not only a much maligned, self-interest but the drive, intelligence, creativity, and organizational skill to attain such productive ends.
Every rich, successful business spends massive amounts of money. The cost of health insurance premiums alone for auto workers has threatened to bankrupt some companies. (This is not because of the high cost of a few serious, life saving treatments, but the cost of a lot of minor and simple office visits now deemed automatic rights by laborers – when you subsidize anything you get more of it).
Regarding that once successful restaurant chain I had worked for; it eventually went out of business. Like many who invest the money, risk, time, and effort into a business enterprise, it eventually failed (after decades of success). The managers and employees all moved on to other things. They could have instead just worshipped an ideology, “redistributed” wealth until it was gone and unreplenished, and lived the miserable existence that wealth envy as public policy eventually produces. Instead, they found their temporary niche and took their slice of a company’s effort “to make millions,” which is one reason that America and Americans are “rich” by any historical economic standard (and so many other countries that fail to see the virtue of freedom and individual achievement are stagnant or poor).
A single restaurant with a line out the door probably isn’t making millions, but it and its employees are likely doing better than those in a country where no such free economic conditions are even permitted.
Next time you decry the injustice of another’s success you may consider that they're maybe doing something you’re not, and that income is the result of considerable expenditure.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to make, or succeeding in making, “millions,” particularly when the collective alternative is stasis, failure, and the socialist journey to mere subsistence – or worse.
A Comic Commentary from Promethean Visions:
Finding the truth...
Promethean Quote from The Promethean Observer:
"There are three paths to peace for a Democracy:
1. Defeat the authoritarian enemy (a democracy’s adversary will never be another democracy).
2. Sit on your ass and let an authoritarian institution defeat you and establish its oppressive system of ideals over you, your family, and neighbors.
3. “Establish dialog” (See number 2)."
