Who’s Got the Sense?

During the last two weeks of my fall semester, my sociology professor posed some political/social questions to the class.  One such question was; “should the government mandate a minimum yearly wage of $23,000 to full time workers?  Some money would be demanded from the places of employment, and the rest would come from increased taxes on businesses.”

Thankfully, everyone in my class disagreed with this theoretical proposition.  People were worried that the businesses would suffer too much from the mandate.  In order to pay some employees more, many people would be laid off.  This is of course an unintended consequence, but a very predictable one.  If only governmental officials had this kind of sense!  Instead, they think that we can spend our way to prosperity; that we can consume without first producing.  In fact, a 1.1 trillion dollar spending bill has just been passed through Congress and is on President Obama’s desk. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091214/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_spending

I think Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks for all the big-spenders when he says, “Every bill that is passed, every project that is funded and every job that is created helps America take another step forward on the road of economic recovery.”  Is he listening to what he’s saying?  Every bill passed?  It doesn’t matter what it is?  According to this logic, Congress should spend 100% of the GDP.  They should take every single dollar that the people of the U.S. have earned and spend it on whichever cause suits their fancy.

But back to the original question…Unfortunately, quite a few members of my class added on an interesting opinion to their responses; they had no problem taxing the super rich and giving it to the poor.  Yikes!  This attitude is scary.  Their argument is; “they can afford it, so why not decrease the gap between incomes?”  And the answer is simple; “the wealth is theirs!”  Whether you think they deserve their money or not, no one has the right to take it from them.  This undermines the establishment of a moral society.  In the words of Francisco d’Anconia, “Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it.  Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune.  Money is a living power that dies without its root.”  If only government bureaucrats read Ayn Rand…

Affirmative Action

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, affirmative action is defined as “positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded.” The concept behind affirmative action is that because a person’s ancestors were wronged in the past, something must be done in the present to make sure that the same treatment does not take place. However, everyone is an individual; no one is who his forefather was. Therefore, it is irrational to treat someone differently because of his last name, physical features, or ethnicity.

Some supporters of affirmative action state that it is needed because minorities have suffered more in the past, and are likely to suffer more in the future. Ayn Rand once said “The smallest minority on Earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” When universities and businesses implement affirmative action, they are declaring themselves to be racist (racism is defined as a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement).

It is a horrible misfortune that minorities have been treated as inferior in the past, but that does not mean that they must be treated as any different than other people today. It is strange that many supporters of affirmative action cry out for equality among the people, and then say that minorities should receive preferential treatment.