krebscycle

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal today contains two insightful glimpses into the minds of the Entitled Capitalists who think big fat government subsidies are the natural right of the rich. The first is a very sympathetic news story about Sheep Farmers who have a special government program that allows them to import impoverished sheep-herders from places like Peru and pay them a generous $750/month plus lodging (no benefits of course). Although their visas only permit them to labor for their masters, shockingly, these ungrateful wretches often walk off the job and find work in construction or somewhere else where even undocumented workers earn more money.  The Entitled Market Solution is of course: to have the government go after and imprison or deport the impudent serfs. So all these “conservative” Republican Congressmen are attempting to help the Sheep Lords by stepping up punishment for escaped “employees” (at taxpayer expense, of course). The idea that maybe the Sheep Lords could pay higher salaries or otherwise incentivize the sheep-herders doesn’t even come up in the Journal article.  That’s not how the Entitled Market works. Incentives are for the rich.

Which brings us to another Entitled Murdoch Capitalism editorial about how Communist Despot Barack Obama is attacking free markets by proposing to limit another tax gift to the ultra-rich. The President has proposed limiting the size of 401(k) plans to $3,000,000 so that people like Pension Fund Looter Mitt Romney can’t put hundreds of millions of dollars in those accounts tax free. The Journal is, of course, incensed that the Sharia Law Nanny State would dare to interfere with the proper function of limited government – which is, in their eyes, to transfer money from serfs to the Entitled. The theory of the 401(k) tax exemption is that tax breaks will encourage people to save for retirement. But as the Journal points out, $3 million in an IRA account may  not be enough to afford retirement summers in Nantucket.  Rich people need that tax break with no limits! Note that President Obama is not suggesting that people cannot save or accumulate more than $3,000,000, he’s just saying that after that you don’t need a tax exemption. And remember, tax breaks are not free money, they mean someone else has to pay the taxes for necessary government services like national defense, environmental protection, and even – chasing down absconding sheep herders who are not content with a generous $750/month plus! room and board.

A report released in January from Colorado Legal Services found that immigrant sheepherders from South America working in western Colorado routinely are paid low wages and live in small campers without electricity or toilet facilities. [Denver Post]

It’s enough to make one dash the martini to the floor of the Nantucket House and yell for the maid to clean it up!