Jack Saturday

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 72, 73, 74, 75

Senate Democrats tried unsuccessfully this week to raise the federal minimum wage, which stands at just $5.15 an hour. It has not been increased in nearly a decade, and at its current stingy level, the rate flies in the face of Americans' belief that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded. A minimum-wage worker earns just $10,700 a year, nearly $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.
from
A Look at Republican Priorities: Afflicting the Afflicted
Editorial
New York Times

Published: June 23, 2006




Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an estate-tax cut that is a repeal in everything but name. The so-called compromise would exempt more than 99.5 percent of estates from tax, slash the tax rates on the rest and cost at least $760 billion during its first full decade. Of that, $600 billion is the amount the government would have to borrow to make up for lost revenue from the cuts, which would benefit the heirs of America's wealthiest families, like the Marses of Mars bar and the Waltons of Wal-Mart Stores.
from
A Look at Republican Priorities: Comforting the Comfortable
New York Times
Opinion
Published: June 23, 2006




Formally, authoritarian ethics denies man's [sic] capacity to know what is good or bad; the norm giver is always an authority transcending the individual. Such a system is based not on reason and knowledge but on awe of the authority and on the subject's feeling of weakness and dependence; the surrender of decision making to the authority results from the latter's magic power; its decisions can not and must not be questioned. Materially, or according to content, authoritarian ethics answers the question of what is good or bad primarily in terms of the interests of the authority, not the interests of the subject; it is exploitative, although the subject may derive considerable benefits, psychic or material, from it.
Erich Fromm,
Man For Himself



The man[sic]
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men [sic], and, of the human frame,
A mechanised automaton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley




0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home