My reaction to one-and-a-half answers from a presidential debate
The debate is old, but my reactions are timeless
I found this in some old notes. I think it deserves a larger audience.
I want to comment on the one-and-half answers I could stand to listen to in the presidential debate last night (September 26, 2016).
Hillary Clinton
At the end of Hillary’s first answer she promised to raise the minimum wage to $15. Now…
If sin taxes (which left-statists generally love) make sense, then the minimum wage does NOT make sense. If increasing the cost of smoking or drinking through a tax can cause less smoking and drinking, then raising the cost of hiring must also cause less hiring.
Left-statists like Hillary need to make a decision — do they want sin taxes or the minimum wage? Because, if they are right about one of those policies then they are wrong about the other one. Now…
Who will pay the cost of this minimum wage?
Left-statists assume that employers will pay it, but they are wrong, for the reason explained above. If sin taxes work then the minimum wage will impose its cost mostly on the young and the poor who need starter jobs.
The biggest impact of all will be felt by young black males. They will then be driven deeper into the underground economy, resulting in even more interactions with police, with all the bad outcomes that seems to follow in the wake of that.
Score 1 point for both stupidity and evil from Hillary Clinton.
Ms. Clinton then finished her answer by using tax dollars to bribe votes out of certain people by promising them things that other people would have to pay for. She claims the rich will pay for these benefits, but in reality, the rich already pay for most of our so-called government and can afford good lobbyists to prevent their share from rising much higher.
The truth is that the funding for Clinton’s promised tax-bribes will have to be borrowed. Clinton’s bribes are actually costs imposed on the yet-unborn, who will have no say in the matter.
These new handouts will also create new constituencies who will forever-after fight to preserve their benefits. Thus, they will perpetually add to the ever-rising levels of federal debt, interest expense, and the unfunded liabilities for other similar programs.
So Hillary scores another point for evil and stupidity.
Then comes The Donald.
I think I may have blacked out from the waves of malevolence emanating from Hillary, but I’m pretty sure I heard The Donald say he wants to do the same things as Hillary, though they might differ on the numbers. So score a quick evil-and-stupidity point for The Donald. But..
Then he really put his foot in it. He wants to curtail our trade with China, the very people who are loaning us all the money we need to pay for all the hand-outs Hillary and Trump both favor. Score another evil-and-stupidity point for The Donald. And with that, I had had enough.
Sadly, the level of evil and stupidity exhibited by the Democrats and Republicans hasn’t improved since I first wrote the above comments six freaking years ago.
Copyright © Perry Willis 2024
Perry Willis is the co-founder of Downsize DC and the Zero Aggression Project. He co-created, with Jim Babka, the Read the Bills Act, the One Subject at a Time Act, and the Write the Laws Act, all of which have been introduced in Congress. He is a past Executive Director of the national Libertarian Party and was the campaign manager for Harry Browne for President in 2000.
