something I'm working on

Update:  I appreciate all the feedback here.  Please check out my response to Ollie's comments on the minimum wage.  Tonight I'll put up a post explaining why Ollie's impression of a conservative sounds, well, like an impression of a conservative.  In the meantime, this would be a great opportunity for some conservatives to defend the liberal position on minimum wages.  I know you can do it -- just be sure the word "exploit" appears in your comment. -- John Galt

Okay, so I said a few days ago that I was working on some rather philosophical stuff.  I'm kind of stuck on one, so I thought I'd throw out just the thesis, and see if you guys can contribute any of the analysis.

Since this thesis revolves around differences between liberals and conservatives, there are two possible responses.  I'll explain that in a second.

But first, my thesis is this: A good conservative can impersonate a liberal flawlessly, but a liberal cannot impersonate a conservative.  That is, I could defend liberalism perfectly, and nobody -- not even Marx himself -- would be able to tell that I am really conservative, but a liberal defending conservatism will come across as somewhere between a television evangelist and Wall Street's Gordon Gekko.

Now, if you are a conservative, you're invited to give your thoughts on why this is so.  But if you're a liberal I suspect you're likely to disagree -- so you get a different invitation.  For libs, please defend the conservative position against minimum wages.  Let's see how convincing you are.  We'll leave it to readers to decide whether you sound authentic -- or like Gordon Gekko.

I think this could be a valuable exercise for all of us.

Comments

[agustinM]

before i argue for something i like to research it, i will not talk on the offensive if i do not know the facts completely. I like to know why others think different and how will their position affect everyone. But when liberals argue with me on something, their comments are very predictable and their tone is very angry, they will often try to make me look like the angry white man (btw i happen to be hispanic).
yes there has been times when i had to argue with a ultra right wing hatefull guy, and of course i will disagree and have to take a somewhat left leaning to contrast myself with him. one example was on immigration, ha wanted to deport everyone who LOOKED illegal, and he wouldnt let me make my point. so i took the left's talking points and try to look like a compasionate liberal where i believe theyre here for the american dream, they dont get full benefits, they are hardworkers, and deporting masses of people costs a lot of money. but in the end i had to clarify my self and give my opinion that we should deport those that are commiting crimes, drop out of high school, join gangs, and that we should close the boarders, make english the official language execute many of the illegals that are in our prisons, etc.
after i said that, i felt like both sides liked me a lot less.
liberals only listen to their own kind and like to speak to their own kind. so they can be as liberal as they can. but when they want to speak to seem conservatives they will repeat the stereotypes that libs talk about conservative. for example we dont care about poor cities, public education, or womens rights. when in fact poor cities have been electing democrat public officials and they have been experimenting with their lives, which is why they are where they are; public education is dominated with liberals that are sucking up they schools money with teachers giant paycheck, which is why they have books from the bush 41 era and which is why they to fire the new teachers; and liberals keep telling all women they have reproductive rights to chose, when in fact liberals are actually using them for political gain, and we conservatives want them to be educated about their choises, that way they do have a choice.
i can be easy for me to argue with a conservative since i can probably identify holes and hit by surprise.
Maybe this is because some of us conservatives were liberals first, either early, late teens, or ealy twentys. and as in my case i tryed to figure why i used to think what i thought. but i dont think conservatives turn liberals, at least i dont see the logic other than wanting to become popular.

[PAL]

I find your thesis statement thought-provoking, to say the least. Don't know if it will hold up in practice, but imho many conservatives have enlightened, compassionate views on the major issues: taxes, family issues, etc. They are also open to ideas from others and are likely to listen. I have been amazed at the anger of the liberals, and amazed that liberals tend to label anything they disagree with as conservative.

[PJ]

The Wolf convinced Red Riding Hood that he was her grandmother and he received great benefit initially even though it was only Red Riding Hood that he fooled. The Wolf tripped up by staying on at grandmother's a bit too long after his objective was met. I think liberals read this as Red Riding Hood and grandmother are fellow liberals and victims to Wolf the rapacious conservative.
A conservative would immediately recognise that Wolf is definitely a committed liberal who is convinced he is entitled to his own fair share of dainty morsels. The real conservative in the tale is the woodcutter who gets dragged in at the last moment..and we know the rest of the story.

[jeffc]

Dear John Galt,

When I turned 18 in 1993 the first two things that I did were to register with Selective Service and register to vote as a Republican. Today I am a software engineer and provider for a family of four. I am decidedly to the right of almost everyone I meet.

I find your thesis interesting because I have inadvertently done exactly what you are asking, impersonating a liberal. Here is how it happens. Someone with whom I am acquainted and I wind up having a few minutes alone to shoot the breeze. After some inane chatter, I make a sweeping negative comment about the government. Granted this mostly happened during the last Bush administration, so I do not know if it would have the same effect today. I say inadvertent because I guess I had assumed that the other person was conservative and they obviously assumed I was liberal. I mean we had been getting along so well prior to talking about politics, I guess it is an honest mistake. I'm not sure why, other than deviousness, but then I take it in turn to see how far we can keep the conversation going without showing my hand and without lying.

Whether I mention excessive spending, failing to protect the border, or seeking power before standing for principles; they take it as excessive spending but just on the wrong things. As failing to open the border and provide social services to illegal aliens. As seeking power before standing for liberal principles.

I guess this arose because they saw Bush as a right wing fanatic. I being, an otherwise sane and polite person, thought that Bush was way too far to the left. So maybe they couldn't envision anyone being to the Right of Bush and not having swastikas tattooed on their forehead, bombing abortion clinics, or heading a doomsday cult. So my initial criticism of the government, vague as it was, was taken as a sign that I shared their views.

I see the modern liberal agenda as the latest manifestation of a political philosophy that dates back to at least 1688 with the Glorious Revolution. Sovereignty is anathema to the liberal mindset. Once the Ancien Regime was demolished, the seeds for Hope and Change were sown. The driving force through all these centuries has been the re-consolidation of absolute power under the guise of service to The People.

Ironically this opportunism has gotten some of the right answers for the wrong reasons along the way. Classical Liberalism stressed the freedom of the individual, free markets, and property rights. Most of the ideals that are ascribed to by conservatives today were once very liberal. Liberalism sees policy as a means to furthering its ends. Its true end is raw political power. Its public relations end is nothing short of a Pax Humana with everlasting peace and harmony on Earth.

Many Republicans have been seduced into playing this game. I remember cringing the first time I heard "Compassionate Conservatism" and realizing that they weren't joking. Our problem is essentially that we do not have answers that appeal to masses of unwashed voters. They might be better off under a conservative administration, but the liberals have better slogans and less compunction.

Also conservatives are perpetually allowing the liberals to rewrite the rules of the debate. Sure we can appeal to the principles of the Founding Fathers, decry the decadence of modern society, wave the flag and gin up the base. Meanwhile the facts on the ground show a steady march towards liberalism, with ground that once taken is never reclaimed. Consider the issues of a national bank, states rights vs federal power, the power of labor unions, the Federal Reserve, the 16th amendment, and the existence of social security and medicare. All huge swaths of the political landscape that isn't even contested today. Anyone fighting these battles is a kook.

Today we argue about the trend towards moral equivalence, activist judges, overzealous regulation of all kinds, and the continual encroachment into the economy by Washington. They have the endgame in sight. We are just smarting over our most recent wounds. I do not see any indication that the vast majority of liberal advances in the last 40 years, much less the last 400 will be rolled back anytime soon.

The enormity of the situation is no reason to abandon the good fight. The vast majority of conservatives are sentimentalists and nostalgic for whichever era they most emotionally connect with. For many it is the Reagan years, for those that have dug a little it may be Goldwater. The 10th amendment resolutions that percolate through State Houses resonate a little farther back, and are proportionally as feeble. What we need is an anchoring in the reality of today. Something to appeal to the newly disaffected Obamaniacs. That way we can continue the vast majority of Obama's social changes under Republican leadership and save a few token victories for the photo-ops. This will enable a new democratic demiurge to again change the ground rules and bring the fight for The People to the forefront again. Or was that what happened last time?

[Tom]

The simple reason for this is that liberals are quite literally full of shit. They absorb all the shit they see on TV or if they're a pseudo-intellectual what they read in the NYT. Then when they talk politics they simply defecate all over the place with the ridiculous crap they've heard other people say. Then of course when you logically explain why their statements are so ridiculously idiotic they respond with violent aggression by calling you fascist (ironically) or Nazi or some other insult, and discounting whatever you said and in fact erasing it from their memory. So if you were to try to ask them to argue your point, it would be impossible. Their shit absorbing brains were too full to accept any new ideas, and their anger and fear when confronted with your points prevents them from actually understanding them.

[John Green]

It seems to be that anyone who relies on the name of their social group and supposedly intellectual counter parts to represent themselves is bound to fall under (they themselves or their principles) the wheels of the non-absolute group mentality. Either because of compromised ideals or evangelism falsely catagorized under the banners of humanitarianism or patriotism, designed to appeal to the most or offend the least; this is why liberalism is as it is, for its majority it is one way of using facts to justify a mispurpose. The same can be done by conservatists because an evanglic conservatist misuses facts to justify their intended purpose - but when liberalism is right and has a sound purpose, a conservatist will of course agree because there is an intended purpose backed by real facts. Where as when an evanglic conservative isn't misfactualising a liberal will not care as the purpose has not changed and is still conservatist.

I am neither conservative, liberal, right or left. Being so would not serve me. I hope that I am a factualist, and that by only representing myself any fault with the representation of my ideals or my goals lies with me, not with a dissociable political party where I would be accepting or overlooking their flaws to meet my ends.

[jeffc]

Very well stated John Green.

Also I had intended to reference some sources in my earlier comment, but got carried away. Most of what I am spouting off about is a rehash of more salient arguments made by Mencius over at U.R..

Also back to the original thesis. Can a Conservative impersonate a Liberal more adeptly than a Liberal impersonating a Conservative?

Consider:
1) Libs who have become conservative will be at an obvious advantage.
2) Conservatives tend to argue from first principles and draw reasonably inferred conclusions. The principles are what is important and if a flaw is shown in the reasoning, the conclusions or policies are malleable to maintain logical consistency. Libs are more concerned with issues. They are likely to turn a blind eye to reason when it suites them. Thus it's easier for a reasonable person to mimic the irrational, than for an irrational person to mimic reason. If they are honest and intellectually capable enough to really mimic conservative reasoning, they might fall into item #1 above when they are done with the exercise.

Of course I am very cynical about the state of conservatism today. I think we may need to endure a total collapse of the current modern liberal system in order for us to start rebuilding on the dung heap of its remains. I pray only for the strength for myself and my family to endure the rough road ahead, that we may one day see our values and sweat contribute to a new society of order, reason, and self determinism.

--
Jeff C

[Ollie Garkey]

A Defense of the Conservative opinion of Minimum Wages:

The problem with a minimum wage, primarily, is that it creates an incentive for jobs to move elsewhere, and artificially raises the price of goods within a nation and by its very existence causes economic hardship.

The perfect example of this is in produce. Liberals loathe the destruction of family farms and agribusiness. They argue endlessly about the poor treatment of migrant workers, of rights for migrant workers. It is a fact that migrant workers are second class citizens in the united states.

The reason that migrant workers exist at all is the minimum wage structure. Farm labor - once done by college students during the summer, or by the poor who were down on their luck - is now something that americans simply cannot do because they are too expensive a labor force.

Because of the minimum wage the bum on the street costs too much to be employed by farms as their labor source. The result is that corporations willing to either use expensive automated farming practices that use a single mechanized laborer, or willing to hire migrant workers for a fraction of what american labor costs, are restabilizing market prices. If our immigration laws were enforced, and corporations were forced to pay minimum wages for their labor, then most families wouldn't be able to afford the produce they buy.

Without the migrant farmworker breaking the law and being hired at a cheaper wage, a big mac would cost $30.

A salad would cost $50.

We have a problem with our car companies because the american labor market has effectively made other countries better places to produce cars because the labor costs are so low.

Our companies are shipping jobs to india so that phones are being answered by indians rather than americans, because of the minimum wage.

If we abolish the minimum wage, americans will get off their lazy rumps, get the education they need for a higher paying job, and our entire economy will be better off for it.

A minimum wage rewards those who simply don't wish to work hard enough to get the certification and education neccesary to get a higher paying job.

Should I continue? I have more.

-Ollie Garkey, Socialist.

[John Galt]

Not necessary, Ollie. You sound like Gordon Gekko.

You didn't give the reason I would give, though you danced around it.

And you listed, as reasons, some things we don't believe and others we don't care about.

Thank you for proving my point.

[Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia]

John, can I give the answer? I've been sitting in the back of class with my hand raised for four days!

[John Galt]

LOL! Let's hear it, Frisco.

[Another John Galt]

Liberals cannot hide their emotions no matter how hard they try. They cannot hide their true "feelings" whether it is with pen or mouth.

[Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia]

Liberals do not realize the difference between equality and justice. When they make the jump to conservative, they must think in terms of justice rather than equality. Conservatives know the difference, to argue as a liberal, you have to speak in terms of "fairness" that brings equality, not fairness which brings justice.

Liberals can not take the conservative argument because they can not bring themselves to believe that conservatives actually believe that some people are better than other people - justified inequality. Take minimum wage - in this case, some people have a better ability to create wealth for employers. The argument which you are looking for that Ollie didn't hit is only one sentence, which goes back to my (FDCASaD's) money speach. When you have a minimum wage, the possibility exists that "people get paid more than what a job is worth."

Whenever someone is getting paid more than what their work is worth, all of the side effects which Ollie describes come to be: added expenses to consume or produce, shrinking of the economy, $30 big macs. These side effects are at the direct expense of everyone who gets paid what their work is worth. While a minimum wage can bring equality, it does not bring justice.

[Ollie Garkey]

Hey, I thought I was supposed to be defending the conservative viewpoint... from liberals. Of course I'll talk about things conservatives don't care about. In the assignment I'm supposed to be talking to other liberals, yeah?

And look, I may not have said it in those words, but I did say that it allows people to be paid more than a job is worth.

I said that the minimum wage causes artificial inflation of the price of certain goods within a market. The way you determine the value of labor is by measuring the value of the goods and services created.

The artificial inflation of the price of goods COMES from the artificial increase in pay caused by minimum wage: a job is worth less than what it costs under a minimum wage system.

Labor, unlike communists think, isn't intrinsically valuable. A skilled chef can take good ingredients and turn them into a gourmet meal, drastically increasing their value. A bad cook can take those same ingredients and turn them into something completely unedible.

And no amount of labor, no matter how many hours of hard work are put into it, can turn a turd into something of value.

Amount of labor does not have any affect on the value of a specific good, and this leads to all the other problems I'm talking about.

And by the way, the minumum wage does NOT lead to equality or to justice as you argue liberals want. It leads to the enslavement the laborer.

There is no incentive for the laborer to increase his skill, to make himself a more valued human resource, if a minimum wage exists. Being rational, he does not better himself when there would be no significant reward for doing so, and when the costs of NOT doing so are much lower BECAUSE of the minimum wage.

If it costs him more to stay unskilled than it would cost him to gain skills, only then will he better himself.

Because the incentive for self betterment is removed by the minimum wage structure, only those with the internal love of self that desire to better themselves do. Others must be forced by circumstance.

So the minimum wage brings neither equality nor justice.

Do I still sound like whomever this Gekko person is?

-OllieGarkey

[John Galt]

Not exactly, but you do still sound like a liberal trying to sound like a conservative.

I said your first reply merely danced around the real conservative concern, and then you came back and added more. I gather you were trying to cover whatever you missed the first time?

I ask this because this time you missed it completely. You're actually getting colder, as kids would say.

[Ollie Garkey]

Yeah, I get it. Some people are better than others. Why pay them money that they haven't earned and don't deserve?

The conservative issue is: they haven't earned it. They don't deserve it. By paying them that money, you're stealing it from the entrepreneur who earned it by devoting his life's work to a company.

You didn't ask me "Why do the conservatives dislike minimum wage."

You asked me to defend the conservative position. How else should I defend the conservative position but attack the liberal position using it's own arguments?

The reason liberals won't listen to your arguments is because they don't believe something that you have accepted as fact.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..."

That's what liberals believe. You don't. So when you tell a liberal all that stuff about who has earned what, you're speaking different languages.

Neither of you agree about what reality actually is. You think that some people are worth more than others. Liberals are more cynical. They believe that all are created equal, and the only way that someone can become wealthier and more powerful is by vilifying others.

By the by, Isn't John Galt a Scottish Novelist?

[Tangy]

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..."

There is a sound biblical basis for this argument too. I happen to concur - which isn't the same thing as saying that I don't believe certain individuals can contribute disproportionately to their equal ranking as "men".

We acknowledge that some things are more valuable than others - oysters over mince, bentleys over daewoos, monet over my three year old niece's finger paintings - and we price/pay accordingly. Why is it such a stretch to acknowledge that certain people may have more to offer, in this world, than others?

I'd like to labour the point that I see this as distinct from valuing one man's life more, or less, than another's.

[John Galt]

All men are equally born into a world which is naturally impoverished except for comforts made possible only by the actions of men.

Toward that end, men's actions are decidedly *not* all equal, and therefore neither are their shares of the comforts.

The way for an individual to increase the size of his share is to increase the value of his actions. After all, that is where his share comes from in the first place. It is the only way to increase the size of one person's share without decreasing the size of another's.

When people do not understand this, they are not lazy, they are not bums or thieves -- they are simply ignorant.

The particular problem with minimum wages is that they raise unemployment, throwing the least-skilled and least-desirable workers out of work -- usually young black males.

I have said before that the policies of liberalism are inconsistent with reality, and you can see that in the minimum wage. The reality is that low-skilled workers will not command a wage higher than their productivity. The liberal policy is that everyone who works must be paid a minimum amount, with a bizarre blindness -- a denial, even -- to the rather obvious possibility of people going jobless as a result.

In the end, some people are forced to choose between breaking man's law -- the wage -- or trying to break the laws of reality and going without work as a result. Liberalism *always* has such unintended consequences.

As for inflation, or whatever, these other effects are mostly temporary. It doesn't work like most people think.

Look at it this way: a McDonalds owner can pay seven shift workers $6/hr, or he can pay six shift workers $7/hr. If you raise the wage he will cut hours or release employees, and he will continue to do business at the same cost, more or less, by working the remaining employees harder. In the long run, he will simply hold out for better workers, and over time the new entry level standard will be something that even more government school graduates will fail to meet.

To whatever extent some employees see a bigger check as a result of a minimum wage increase, they will also be asked to work harder. Which begs the question: Why didn't they just get a harder job in the first place, instead of knocking the bottom rung off the career ladder???

Is that what you were going to say next, Ollie???

[Rearden]

"All men are created equal."

The focus is different for liberals and conservatives.

Liberals focus on the word "equal" and try to maintain equality in spite of individual behavior.

Conservatives focus on the word "created". Generally speaking, everybody is equal out of the womb. From that time on it is up to the individual to make it. Even a trust fund financed kid can put his life in the crapper, even with all the advantages.

All men are created equal, but not all men stay equal, and that is their choice, whichever way it goes.

[Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia]

John, I want to work for your blog, e-mail me.

[Mister Kurtz]

The minimum wage creates inefficiency in the marketplace. By mandating an above-equilibrium wage be paid to the workers, it creates a surplus of labor in the market. This means that people who are willing to work for a lower price cannot, hence it creates unemployment.

[TQ]

I'm not sure Jefferson's statement was so much a claim of the equality in value/character of the individual as much it as it was a statement of the natural rights of the individual. I'll leave it to those more schooled in the history and scholarship of the era to correct me, but as I read it, it sounds more like Jefferson (and by extension, all the Founders) were arguing for equality under the law, equality of rights, equality of opportunity, not so much that each person was, literally, equal. If, as Ollie claims, liberals really do believe this (and I am quite certain many of them do), their intellectual underpinnings are based upon a verifiably false premise. There is both genetic variance in all human traits (that is more or less continuous for most traits), and uncontrollable variance in the human condition (e.g. the life circumstances of the individual). We can ignore the innate genetic variation (as liberals often want to do), but that is just foolish. Clearly I am not "equal" to say, oh, Lebron James. He was born with certain physical gifts (almost unique on a planet of 6.5 odd billion people), and those physical gifts are valued by society at several hundred million dollars. We could extend this to whichever attribute--I was not born with Stephen Hawkings brain, Gisele Bundchen's face and body, Bill Gates motivation and drive... So from this starting point, we cannot really have a level playing field. Some are born with better attributes that are valued by society than others. We can merely ask that such variation not lead to preferential or discriminatory treatment of people, nor that opportunities be closed to people because of what they are alloted with at birth. I have the freedom to try out for an NFL team and an NFL player has the freedom to attempt to pursue a Ph.D. in my field of expertise. The chances are good that neither of us possess the necessary attributes to switch careers, but we have the option to try. Likewise, the Jeffersonian declaration of the natural rights of man says that the rich NFL player and myself, should we be accused of the same crime, be treated the same under the law. It says that our property rights are equal. But it doesn't say anything about equalizing our abilities.

I think the other folly liberals labor under is the idea that life circumstances can be controlled and equalized. This, of course, is the idea of equality of outcomes.
It isn't fair that the poor don't have access to: health care, education, various safety nets. It isn't fair that 'insert victim group' suffered at the hands of white males 'insert however many centuries ago' and so we need to level the playing field. But again, like genetics, we cannot micromanage (nor, I would argue, macromanage) the circumstances of people's lives. Life is random and chaotic and unfair. Not everyone will be born of means, not everyone will have a loving family, not everyone will have access to all of the perks available in their society. All we can do is allow equality of opportunity. Everyone is going to be dealt a different hand and it is up to them to play that hand to the best of their ability given their circumstances.

I think what pains liberals is their unwillingness to accept the inherent 'unfairness' of the world. They are in some sense raging against the Pareto Principle. So we can give equal opportunity to 10 poor minority individuals. Of that 10, you'll get a Clarence Thomas and a Sonia Sotomayor. 2 of the 10 will excel from their disadvanataged background and succeed amazingly. The liberal mind doesn't look at the 2 success cases as evidence that equal opportunity has worked. They look at the 8 failures as evidence that more needs to be done to bring the other 8 up to the level of the 2 successes. That such a task is impossible is besides the point. The universe itself is an injustice. And so you'll have Paul Krugman saying that application of Pareto Principle to income distribution is a fallacy and try to twist the facts to show just how unequal America is. Meanwhile, you'll have it born out in research on societies as alien to us as ant colonies. So when scientists study ant colonies, they find there is a small number of highly active ants who do a great deal of the work, another fraction that does some of the work, and then a great many slacker ants that don't do a whole hell of a lot. Most of the work is done by a few, and, in the case of humans since we don't work for colony, most of the rewards go to the hardest working individuals. Just how it is. The liberal wants to turn us into the ant colony though, wherein government is the Queen, a few people do most of the work, and the benefits accrue to the large number of slackers. It works out for ants because of the high relatedness of the workers, it won't work out for humans so much because we tend not to want to be highly altruistic towards very unrelated individuals (especially at the expense of our own families).

I think in some sense liberalism is really equivalent to asking for thermodynamic equilibrium across the entire universe. Because that is what it takes for everyone and everything to be equal--no local inequality in energy, every place has exactly the same everything. And thus, no work can be done, the universe is effectively boring and over. But it is totally fair and equal. In the real world, the fact that there is inherent inequalities, unfairness, chaos, and the like is what allow innovation, what pushes people to attempt to succeed (even if our abilities put different ceilings on our individual success), and what keeps life interesting. I stick with equal rights and an unfair world over all the alternatives, thank you very much.

[John Galt]

TQ, that's brilliant.

[Tom]

Another thing... in order for liberals to argue the conservative viewpoint on most issues, they would have to understand the reality of their policies. That reality being that they are actually hurting poor people. For all the "hope and change" for making life better for the less fortunate, most liberal policies actually hurt poor people in practice. Conservatives understand this, liberals don't, so it is impossible for a liberal to argue a conservative viewpoint because they just can't bring themselves to believe that laws don't help poor people.

Examples: Minimum wage - in practice this gives employers and excuse for not paying people more when they do better work. Why promote Johnny to $10/hr because he's such a great fry cook when you can hire Jim, Joe, Jason, Jamal, Jerome, Jane, Jill, etc, you get the idea at minimum wage? There's no reason, cooking fries just isn't that unique of a skill. Odds are that one of them will do the job for a year or so just as well as Johnny before they start complaining about low pay and then you can go hire another person at minimum wage.

Another example: Corporate Taxes - corporations are evil, so we should tax the hell out of their windfall profits - only what happens is that the prices go up because the corporations have to make their money somehow, so who ends up paying in the end: poor people.

Another Example: Stimulus cash from the printing presses - Obama and FDR are liberal legends for their progressive Keynesian spending - only the net result of inventing all of that money is that each individual dollar is now worth less than it was before... so the cost of food and shelter goes up... and who gets hurt? Poor people.

Liberals just don't get this. I don't think they ever will. It's a product of our government education system and the intentional dumbing down of our citizenry.

[John Galt]

Mister Kurtz:
"The minimum wage creates inefficiency in the marketplace...This means that people who are willing to work for a lower price cannot, hence it creates unemployment."

Is the problem with the minimum wage one of "efficiency"? And is the problem really about people "willing to work for a lower price," or people who cannot sell their labor at the state-mandated price?