[lbo-talk] Re: worker freedom of choice

jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Sat Mar 26 21:07:35 PST 2005


> Is sarcasm all that can be contributed to this issue? How many people

> on this list have been living years on miminum wage? I bet there

> aren't many. In fact, from what I'm seeing here, it looks like this

> list is plumb loaded with people making so much money that they have

> enough extra to play the money and investment markets and contribute

> even more to the mess we're in.

>

> So what's the difference between liberals and conservatives nowdays?

> Nothing?

>

> --tully

Tully's question is about people on this list investing their surplus in "money and investment markets" rather than which widgets they buy and where they buy them. When people respond with:

Carrol Cox: My consumption choices are made purely on personal grounds -- except in the case of organized and politically focused boycotts, which I not only observe, but attack those who do not observe them.

and

snitsnat: Do you have, as they say in corp-a-feelia land, a metric. Is there a theory and corresponding defintion and measurement for determining when you are effectively at the point of being able to afford to make choices that are, uh, free?

These responses seem to me to about about how we choose to consume the items we need to get by rather than what we do with our surplus. Those that have a suplus anyway.

Is this the same question? Is what we buy to get by the same choice as what we do with our surplus? It seems to me these are different questions but maybe they're not.

I have mellowed my righteous anger directed at those who make consumption choices that are extremely harmful when equally priced alternatives exist but it seems Tully is asking about something a little different.

John Thornton



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