March 15, 2016
Source: Bigstock
My response? Maybe if that guy had read Free to Choose (and listened to “Day by Day“ and X-Ray Spex), he”d have tried to get a better job. Plants ultimately moved to Mexico because corrupt, bullying, frequently mobbed-up unions forced manufacturers to pay “workers” $25 an hour to turn a screw on an assembly line.
I grew up in a steel town. I”m supposed to feel sorry for all those future “workers” who laughed at me for spending recess in the library, then had to sell their boats and cottages and extra cars and trucks, poor things? Who got drunk every weekend instead of, I dunno, taking courses and maybe getting out of the factory they never stopped bitching about anyhow?
Do we sincerely want those overpaid, soul-sucking manufacturing jobs to “come back” (thereby revitalizing the labor movement just when we”d almost, finally, killed it off)? Will you personally go to work in the reopened Carrier plant? Would you be thrilled if your children did? Really?
And will the rest of us happily pay five grand for a made-in-America cell phone or flat-screen TV?
Buggy whips, goddammit!
I hate to be wrong. I laugh off not being able to remember the year I met my husband; in fact, it’s simply more satisfying evidence that I”m not a typical girl. But Arnie and I disagree so infrequently that I”m left discombobulated. And it’s no fun being pushed to question one’s long-held, scorchingly libertarian, bootstrappy beliefs about how the world works, or is supposed to.
Of course, Trump is having a divisive effect on relationships everywhere. Fortunately, I know my marriage can take it. Whether or not we can survive another 20 years”okay, 18″depends more on whether or not I insist on playing Kill the Hippies! Kill Yourself! on long car rides.
