Catastrophe - Dick Morris [30]
Follow Rifkin’s list, and you will see Obama’s program as it takes shape:
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OBAMA’S EUROPEAN DREAM
“Community relationships over individual autonomy”
Obama wants to require businesses to offer health insurance.
He wants to include labor and environmental standards in international trade agreements.
He would require businesses to enroll all workers automatically in any 401(k) program they offer.
“Cultural diversity over assimilation”
He supports bilingual education and opposes designating English as the official language.
“Quality of life over the accumulation of wealth”
He would increase taxes on capital gains and income taxes on the rich.
He would expand family and medical leave to smaller businesses.
He included $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts in the stimulus package.
“Deep play over unrelenting toil”
He supports check cards for union elections, making it easier to form unions.
He believes that taxes on high income deter “toil.”
“Universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights”
He supports a cap-and-trade carbon tax.
He opposes the use of enhanced interrogation techniques for terror suspects.
He advocates stronger government regulation of business.
He has mandated unemployment benefits—normally available only for those laid off—for anyone who willingly quits his job for “family-related” reasons.
“Global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power”
He opposed the Iraq War unless it got UN approval.
He supports global standards on financial industry regulation.
He backs global cap-and-trade taxes on carbon emissions.
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By raising taxes on the wealthy and using the money to fund government spending and tax reductions for the middle class and the poor, Obama is leading the United States very close to the European model of social democracy.
His goals belie the power of the markets and undercut our work ethic. The individual drive to work hard, make money, and move up is not the European ideal—and it is not Obama’s either.
To understand where the European philosophy leads, consider the reduction in the work week. Led by the Socialist Party, France cut its work-week to thirty-five hours in order to share job opportunities and reduce unemployment. Rifkin noted that “the French experiment is particularly interesting because it defies the American logic that hard work and long hours on the job are indispensable to achieving productivity gains and a better quality of life for working people.”100
It’s all well and good for labor unions to win shorter workweeks. Most Americans figure that this means that you get overtime faster and get more of it. Not in France. There, it is illegal for an employee to work more than 180 extra hours per year (that’s about 3.5 hours per week) without a collective bargaining agreement. Illegal! Not only don’t you get rewarded for doing extra work in France, you can actually be punished for it!
This is socialism at its worst.
Has it ever occurred to the European socialists that some people like to work? That “deep play” is not preferable to hard work? That taking a vacation may be well and good but that the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that comes from creating something with our hands and brains affords a more lasting pleasure?
And in this universal society of human rights, don’t we have a right to work, to create, to apply ourselves—even if it drags on for more than 180 extra hours a year?
The dumbing down and mediocrity that underscore this kind of socialism are hard to take. They run counter to every fiber of the American spirit. But they are the logical extension of where