On Halloween night, a Downtown Eastsider found a $100 dollar bill on the floor as he left the Regent Hotel. It was in the exit corridor. "It was crumpled up like trash", he said. So he picked it up and opened it. "It was a crisp new bill".
It was a nice bonus for the guy who has recently gotten off welfare and taken a job in a warehouse in Richmond for $11 an hour.
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5 comments:
Some times things just work out perfectly!
But, but, but...! What about "fairness?" It's not fair tht a guy with a job and a steady income finds money for nothing. He should, in fairness, give it to someone who's poor. Is this heartless bastard sharing with the community? Why isn't he giving it to the Povertarians so they can feed the poor? This is an outrage. I want fairness. Where's my new hundred?
Joe, give me $100.00. I was someone's child, you know. It's not fair that I didn't find $100.00. The oil companies must have found it instead. It's so unfair. Joe, give me money.
I'd like to thank Hair Farmer Joe for providing me with this chance to write a bit about ordinary economics at a basic level, using his comment as a starting point to make some simple points. If not for Joe here I might not have had this opportunity.
Joe wrote above about how cool it is to have a bit of good luck in finding money. Well, it is good luck, at least for the winner. For the other guy, one we can call the loser, it's really bad luck. In neither case is it "fair."
Fair would be if we all found a hundred bucks on the ground all at once, and that no one lost a hundred bucks. No, that isn't even science fiction. It' just silly. In reality, if someone finds money, it's because someone else lost it. There's complete gain and complete loss. There's no mutual benefit. Somebody has to lose.
Working for eleven bucks an hour means that there is no loser. That might not be fair to the guy who makes such a small amount of money. But he is making something and so is someone else, the one who figures it's worth paying the worker in the first place. And those who get part of the eleven bucks an hour win too, when worker buys something. In a tiny and mundane way, everybody wins when somebody has eleven bucks per hour from working.
Joe gives me a chance to write here about a "closed economy." Assuming there is a "limited pie" of a hundred bucks in the tavern, if one guy has it, no one else has anything at all. The one who has must share his wealth with all others or all others will die. That's fine in a Medieval commune wherein all work the same field and try to live from season to season without starving to death. But last time I checked my calendar, this isn't the Middle Ages. Still, many people don't get it. They continue to think in feudal terms and ways. We live in an open economy wherein if you have a hundred bucks and I don't., I can go out and benefit someone else who will give me a hundred bucks as well. No one loses. Everyone gains.
Yes, there are the neo-feudalists who will pull out the stinking red herring of "global warming" to divert the argument back to magic and spirits. Not here. Those who wish us all to live in poverty, Povertarians, like poverty as a moral concept, because they are religious fanatics who live in a phantasy of sentimental day-dreams and delusion. Listen to them: they talk like Sunday-school teachers talking to children. They talk about "the poor" as if there is some group of people who actually are "the poor." There are no such people here, only folks who don't have money for now. The povertarians will insist that the people should all be poor, as a moral obligation, as a way of "saving the planet." It's all bullshit. These religious fanatics want to rule over everyone, rule them as children under the control of stern and moralistic mommys. They infantalise the nation.
Who needs these people? No one, and they know it. They freak out and go crazy when one mentions that the Povertarians are parasites who twist people not helpless creatures who can't survive without the handouts the Povertarians give them.Score a hundred bucks from a Povertarian? Where does it come from? Not from them. Some one has to lose. And the gain of a hundred isn't going to last more than a day or two anyway.
Better for all to win a bit than to win for a moment and then be back in the clutches of the Povertarians.
Make your own hundred and tell the povertarians to go fu--nd themselves with money on the street.
Joe, thanks for that.
WELFARE BUM SHOULD BE SHOT. PEOPLE SLEEPING ON THE STREET AND HE'S WORKING AND COLLECTING WELFARE. SHAME ON HIM.
No doubt some people on welfare are likely working as well, but as I understand it, this particular guy is not on welfare. How you jumped to that conclusion is beyond me. We have to look at people in objective ways rather than assuming the worst of them. A man in a tavern isn't necessarily on the dole. Think a little.
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