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Making liberals feel good

To the editor:

Happy 2014, America -three years to go. Hope we make it.

On New Year’s Day, I picked up my wife’s prescription, and it cost almost three times what it did before. The older guy in front of me had a similar complaint – he was given the total of $255. You could see that he was thunderstruck; he asked if that was with his insurance, because it was “a lot more than before,” and was told that it was. He actually had to wait, because he didn’t have enough money on him, or possibly even in the bank, to get what he needed. Welcome to affordable health care.

But, it makes liberals feel good.

Do those who favor a $15-an-hour minimum wage understand what they’re supporting? If it happens, I hope they’re ready for $7 loaves of bread and $10 gallons of milk and gasoline.

Logic dictates that the money to pay for it must come from somewhere, so prices will increase, because the “greedy” business owners will be unable to afford to simply eat the costs and stay in business. Unemployment will increase, because some employers will downsize in an effort to meet the cost increase without drastically raising prices. This will affect service, to complaints from many, even including, no doubt, liberals. Other businesses will simply close.

These are not frivolous claims, these things happen every time the minimum wage increases. Throw in the added strain of Obamacare, and you have the makings of another major economic setback.

The people who make minimum wage will find themselves making $15 an hour and still be no better off, because no matter how much they’re paid, they are making, after all, minimum wage. Low-skilled workers would, yet again, have their so-called “living wage,” despite these broader negative consequences outweighing any benefits.

But, it makes liberals feel good.

Something we’ll be saying goodbye to, in 2014 – incandescent light bulbs are being phased-out in favor of the leftie, liberal environmentalist-approved compact fluorescent light. CFLs are supposedly more energy-efficient, and thus better for the environment which, as we all know, is paramount to any decision we must make. The problem with CFLs is that, not unlike liberals themselves, they’re not as bright as you’d think, and don’t work like they should.

I personally find their light to be stark and cold. Also, they’re expensive – one CFL costs more than a four-pack of incandescents. Liberals aren’t good at big-picture thinking, you see – CFLs contain mercury, like all fluorescents. In the short term, they might save energy, but what about 50 or 100 years from now, when landfills are laced with millions of used-up CFLs, some of which will break every time a layer of garbage is added. That small amount of mercury they’re OK with today will be filtering into the soil and their precious ground water tomorrow, damaging the environment far more insidiously than the evil practice of fracking ever did.

But, it makes liberals feel good. That’s what’s important.

Rob Denham

Weirton

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