To Conservatives, the Only Real Workers Are Owners

Steve M. makes an excellent point about the conservative veneration of "free labor"

Teabaggers and other Rand-addled idiots seriously believe that, in the absence of liberal government intervention, all American workers would have absolute "control over their labor." I suspect they believe that in the reddest of states, workers actually do have full "control over their labor."

Do these folks know anyone who actually works for a living?

America is full of low-wage workers who never know from one week to the next how many hours they're going to work or to which shifts they're going to be assigned; employers don't care if employees can't arrange child care because of a sudden change of shift or can't get by on suddenly reduced hours -- those are the conditions of the job, take 'em or leave 'em.

SNIP

Controlling one's own labor? That's a fairy tale for most workers. But for the deluded Randians, it's reality -- they don't even acknowledge that the huge power inequity between employers and employees, so they advance the ludicrous notion that we're equal partners in contracts freely entered into.

To answer Steve's question, No, they don't know anyone who actually works for a living. Or rather, those who actually work for a living don't register with them as "people."


Wage slaves - whether blue- or white-collar - are just exactly that to conservatives: slaves. Sub-human and unworthy of consideration. Only plantation business owners are real "workers," whose comfort and convenience must be accommodated at all costs.


At the repug congressional retreat a few weeks ago, Eric Cantor tried to introduce his colleagues to the idea that the vast majority of Americans - even the vast majority of repugs - don't own their own businesses, but work for paychecks. Nobody believed him.


Repug rhetoric, policy and politics make much more sense when you realize that when they say "workers," they're talking about management, not labor. 


The bosses. Not you.