The way of George Will

It was George Will on the other side of Stephen Colbert's desk Tuesday night and while Will played his usual acerbic role, he also was candid on a few issues. For example, he acknowledged he is an agnostic.

How will that play in ultra-conservative circles?

But perhaps the most interesting part came as Colbert asked Will the difference between conservatives and liberals. Will reflected on the "crooked timber of humanity," and said the difference is that liberals are willing to sacrifice freedoms for equality of outcome while conservatives value freedom and are willing to live with unequal outcomes.

Will claims to never be wrong, but he missed this one. Conservatives depend on unequal outcomes.

The freedom he wants encourages those with power -- political, financial or otherwise -- to thrive at the expense of those with lesser means. It's the natural way, according to Will and the conservative conscience.

They will never push wages too low, for they need workers, but just low enough that they can attract labor at the lowest possible cost. They will not transfer too much wealth into their purses from the pockets of the consumer because that would destroy future profits. They will leave just enough to sustain the market.

Unequal outcomes make it possible for the conservative power structure to survive.

Social issues are not their concern. Good schools are only an issue as it relates to the workforce. Health care is only an issue when it affects corporate profits.

Where liberals want government to help provide those services, Will says government should "deliver the mail, protect the shores and get out of the way."

Will sees the difference between conservatives and liberals as the difference between "truth and confusion."

How lucky Will is to be among those with power who can look down upon the less fortunate. It's easy to favor a philosophy that makes you rich and comfortable.

Had fate (after all, he's an agnostic) not smiled upon him, he might have a different view on the benefits of having equal outcomes.

    -- Jim Grinstead

Comments

[Mary]

"[A]t the expense of those with lesser means"?
What expense? Workers wouldn't work for him, as you here acknowledge, if he didn't make it worth their while. And why should he pay them more than they're worth to him? He's not running a charity. That's like saying you're a bad person for paying $5 for a T-shirt when you COULD pay $20. Ok, maybe you could, but why should you when it's only worth $5?

[Jim Grinstead]

That's sound conservative thinking.

Now let's say the worker has a family and he or she would like to send the children to college.

But with limited skills, the job market is limited. And those offering the jobs know they can pay minimum wage and still hire workers. A sound business decision is to hire labor at the cheapest possible price.

But that low price impacts the worker and his/her family. College may not be possible.

However, if the employers made 12 percent profit instead of 18 percent, a higher wage might be possible.

As Will puts it, conservatives can live with unequal outcomes. It doesn't bother them if the workers' children don't get a college education. In fact, it's a good thing because it creates another generation of workers who will punch a clock for low wages.

It doesn't have to be a win/lose equation, but it should be a more equal one.

[Mary]

Conservative as charged.

Are you suggesting George Will pay this worker more in spite of him having limited skills? The employee made a poor decision: Having children he couldn't afford. That's sad for the kids, but it's not George Will's fault, nor is it his obligation to take care of those kids.

What if this employee was a low-skilled worker and had TEN children? Or fifteen? (This would not be unheard-of in my town.) And each of them wanted to go to college. Would it then be George Will's job to pay his low-skilled employee ten times, or fifteen times, as much because you feel sorry for those kids?

Now you say conservatives WANT his kids to fail, and I don't think that's true. There will always be low-skill workers because people, even people with great opportunities, always find ways to make terrible decisions and end up needing undesirable jobs. (Which, however undesirable they might be, must be worthwhile or people wouldn't accept them.) And people like my father, who was born with nothing and paid his own way through college, will find a way to get education and a good job if they deserve it.

That's what America is all about: Fairness. Not equality, but fairness. All men are CREATED equal, and based on their work, intelligence, ambition, risks, and creativity, they will be awarded fair - and by nature unequal - outcomes.

The alternative is to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, which punishes intelligence, hard work, and so on, and rewards laziness and irresponsibility.

[Jim Grinstead]

The real question in this discussion is priorities.

Yes, I would suggest paying more despite limited skills. The legal minimum wage is $5.85 an hour which works out to $234 a week or $12,168 a year. Even without rising gas prices, no person can live on that wage, especially when employers are increasingly shifting the costs of health care and retirement on to workers. Even if both parents work, it would be difficult for a family of three or four to live on that money.

And poor decisions are often made by those without sufficient education. If we don't have families that can adequately feed, clothe and support healthy children, they won't get the education they need so we avoid future generations of poor decisions.

Plus, do we really want to tell people they shouldn't have children if they are poor?

You suggest conservatives are about fairness, but I don't think that's the case. It's not fairness that sets low wages, then lambasts unions for supporting workers who want to improve their wages. In many ways, that's a very conservative value -- working to create a better life. Instead the conservative argument tends to center on the value of the individuals.

And, yes, that does require redistributing some wealth from the rich to the poor. But that doesn't mean there can't be wealthy individuals as well as poor ones.

It's not all smart, hard-working people on one side and poor, stupid ones on the other. It's a continuum.

Taking a little more from the people at the top has a huge benefit for those at the bottom. If a small business owner earning $4 million a year gets a 15 percent wage cut, he or she will still have $3.4 million a year. They'll still have a pretty good life.

But if someone making $234 a week gets a 15 percent boost, they're making $269 a week. That's not much money to the business owner, but it's huge to the minimum wage worker.

There is room to level the playing field without significant "punishment" of the wealthy. Likewise, just because someone is poor doesn't mean they are lazy or irresponsible.

Our priorities should be a decent quality of life for everyone -- not just for those who have the good fortune to be able to take advantage of available resources.

Thanks for the discussion.

[Mary]

Thank you for the discussion.

I can see we're not going to agree. Just as one example, that business man who earns - EARNS - $4 million a year already has, or let's say had, a third of it disappear in income taxes. He'll pay more in property taxes, business taxes, and 8% of everything he buys. Fifteen percent more makes him lose, total, more than half his income to taxes for what is essentially a charity law. I don't know if I'd see the point in working from June to December to support people I've never met. And let's not forget he's already helping out lots of people by supplying jobs at all, and buying materials for his business, and providing his product at a reasonable price to people who need it.

And I guess I'm harsh...I think encouraging people not to have children they can't afford is a good idea. I mean, I'm waiting till after grad school to have kids, and it isn't rocket science. Birth control is available for free. There's no shortage of available information about sex in this country, even to the poor.

But it's the old argument: Freedom vs equality, and what each side is willing to live with to achieve its goal. It's easy for people who, like me, believe decisions determine your achievements in life to live with unequal incomes. A person like you, who believes fate and luck have more to do with it, think the "lucky" should give up some freedom and share.

My personal experience has taught me that luck has very little to do with it. I can't think of the last time I met an adult who wasn't just about where their work ethic, talent, and general decision making would logically put them.