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{ americanthinker.com } ~ Social media entered our world with a promising offer: you can communicate here – with virtually everyone on Earth... For years, a wide range of views were tolerated, and every popular voice enriched the creators of the platforms by drawing millions of eyes and ears. These platforms fast eclipsed other means of communication specifically because they offered such an open and effective means of reaching out to others. But now social media have a near monopoly on public discourse, and the age of censorship has arrived. Ideas and messages that once were tolerable are now forbidden. Users have spent a decade or more building their audience with a consistent message – and thus filling the platform-owners' pockets – and now find themselves banned when their message hasn't changed. In no other arena of commerce would owners be considered justified in arbitrarily changing the rules to exclude certain customers, particularly if the reasons were amorphous, largely unexplained, and applied to a certain type of customer and not to others. Something sinister is afoot. Understanding and dealing with it responsibly is essential to preserving the free exchange of ideas – a bulwark of our civic culture and a foundation of American exceptionalism. The argument is made that these platforms are private firms with a right to determine their own policies. But that raises the real questions, which are these: 1. Have social media in fact become the public soapbox? The answer here is undeniably "yes," and certain facts about this reality are undeniable. First, in America, the soapbox has a uniquely revered position; it is supposed to be a level platform on which any can stand. Our right to speak freely has some limitations, but those limits are spelled out by centuries of experience and jurisprudence. The idea that anyone outside law enforcement can stand next to the soapbox with a cudgel is alien to the American experience. Second, is it remotely possible that private property rights can apply to the public soapbox? The platform-owners did an amazing job of building their businesses into the modern soapbox, but can that fact remove the right of people to use it in ways that have always been considered legal?... https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/the_broken_soapbox.html
Amazon, commie-Sanders, and the Socialist Family Feud
Most Americans likely agree that workers deserve a fair wage, and that CEOs like Amazon’s billionaire socialist Jeff Bezos (owner of The Washington Post) are paid too much money, but in a free-market system the wages and salaries of workers are determined by the value of labor within the system, not by bureaucrats or polls. And this prompts the question: Should the federal government force companies to pay higher wages?
commie-Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, thinks so. And he’s got an even bolder plan. Along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), commie-Sanders has drafted a bill called the Stop BEZOS (Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies) Act, which would tax large corporations at a rate equal to the amount of federal benefits their employees receive from the government.
(Did we mention that Sanders owns three homes, including a $600,000 lake house?)
commie-Sanders relies on bogus research that, as Investor’s Business Daily notes, lumps in with regular workers “those putting in as little as 10 hours a week, 27 weeks of the year. It’s hardly surprising that some of these part-time, transient workers rely on government benefits, but that’s not Amazon’s fault.”
Emily Stewart writes at Vox, “How the commie-Sanders/Khanna legislation would be implemented is not clear. Sanders’s office says that the IRS would have to consult with the United States Department of Agriculture, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to issue regulations to make it work. They haven’t offered more specifics.” No surprise there. The devil is always in the details.
And don’t think for a second that if this bill ever becomes law it would be the last stage in the process. Imagine if dummycrats-Democrats had the power to nationalize health care again or guarantee other government services for every citizen. Corporations would then be forced to cover the social costs of all their workers, not just those at the lower end of the economic ladder.
But this plan is pure political theater to motivate the dummycrats-Democrat base in the midterms. After all, a recent poll revealed that they now prefer socialism to capitalism. And if dummycrats-Democrats take back Congress in November, look for a bill like this to come up for a vote.
commie-Sanders’s proposal to tax corporations is yet another “feel good” progressive solution that solves nothing.
In fact, it causes other problems that we’re already seeing in certain industries. One of the side effects of the Stop BEZOS proposal includes companies replacing workers with automation or raising consumer prices in order to pay for the tax. They may also be more likely to find loopholes in order to avoid the taxes. And since there are plenty of middle-class Americans who receive government assistance in one form or another, companies may be hesitant to hire low-income workers in the first place. This is the slippery slope of socialism trying to ride on the back of capitalism, and it ends up hurting workers and consumers every time.
As for the notion raised by some on both the Left and the populist Right that we’re already subsidizing employees of these companies, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael R. Strain writes, “Walmart, Amazon and McDonald’s are not being subsidized by taxpayers because some of their employees receive assistance from safety-net programs. Instead, employers of lower-wage workers are surely reducing safety-net rolls.”
Nonetheless, dummycrats-Democrats are portraying this issue as the rich taking from the poor. And this, of course, is their go-to strategy for mobilizing working-class and poorer voters to support various progressive schemes. But the reality is far more complex, and the government is simply not capable of replicating the value of work in a free-market system.
The Stop BEZOS Act is only the first step, but instead of penalizing corporations, we need to focus on the root causes of wage stagnation and poverty. We should be looking to expand the economy and raise wages through free-market solutions rather than oppressive taxation. Doing so can help us ensure that fewer of our fellow Americans will need a social safety net in the first place.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/58117?mailing_id=3723&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3723&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
Comments
yes that was a sight to see
Sidney Powell has a real handle on what is happening via the Trump witch hunt.
I saw her on Lou dobbs program. She, Greg Jarrett; and others explain it perfectly .