What’s the Politically Correct Word for Schiffhead?

5 responses to “What’s the Politically Correct Word for Schiffhead?”

1. Erick Borling | January 30, 2014 at 3:46 am |

   I misplaced my rhyming dictionary that I hoped would give me an edge over the well-known and obvious “Schitt,” but more importantly, I noticed that Peter Schiff shares a deplorable interpersonal trait: an inability to look another person in the eye and truly connect with another person. He is clearly shown to be incapable of getting out of his unconscious reverie (trickle-down piss must have frozen over his eyes) and facing Samantha Bee. This doofus (Schiff) has earned a permanent sabbatical from the public discourse as has Limbaugh and Palin. Oh lawdy dawdy I must now fervently utter a hundred hail-marys after soiling my lips with the names of those… (humans?)

2. SteveK9 | January 30, 2014 at 1:05 pm |

   Hard to believe people like this actually exist. Maybe we should invent a new category, since he is clearly not a human being.

3. Ransome | January 30, 2014 at 6:42 pm |

   The whole issue of a living wage comes not from the Constitution but from discussions beginning in England around the time of Dickens. Basically, the Industrial Age had begun and with it the division of labor. With the division labor comes a division of wages and responsibilities as a result of labor as well as the division between earned and unearned income. Earned income depended on ones health, ability, and labor competition. Labor was satisfied to work for a subsistence and when their labors ceased, they were thrown into the streets. Rentiers could collect unearned income until their last unearned breath. Without a social safety net, like a family and land, how was ex-labor to escape the poorhouse? Economists pointed out that to maximize the value of labor, social engineering was required.

   There are three forces at play in the interview; labor needs, management needs and unearned income wants. First, Schiff is wrong about the price of a burger doubling. Management needs and speculator wants have already maximized prices within the fast food business and across the food industry. If the price rises, demand will drop. If demand is to be maximized, then the wants of unearned income will suffer. Both Barry and Peter are in the business of unearned income. Barry sees demand increasing with a wage increase, without a price rise. This demand increase will offset the increased cost of labor. Peter is trying to protect his unearned income like an 19th century coal baron.

   Regarding Peter’s comment about the worth of a “retarded” person, we go back to the fact that a worker must support himself regardless of disability. I have an autistic man-boy age 37 that mows my grass and shovels snow. His mother is elderly and soon he will be on his own. He must manage to learn to live alone before she passes. He needs a living wage in order to pay his shared rent and bills. I and a few others pay him $10 a hour. Recently, every dusting of snow finds him sweeping the driveway at 7 in the morning, whether it need it or not. My neighbor says we need to pay (asking price $5) so the man-boy can pay his winter bills which are much higher than summer; as his only option are more hours. Peter and Barry could afford to help more than a few “retarded” people on the road to independence, they are too busy amassing excess savings. Remember Paul Newman? A first class person. He found the time and the means to help others. I buy his products.

4. Erick Borling | January 31, 2014 at 12:16 am |

   I would say that the question of “living wages” is the same thing as the question of a fair price. Those issues originate in prehistory. It seems that the neolithic revolution, which enabled tribes and then larger societies to become landed (i.e. ‘settled’), agrarian, and to store foods such as grains which became their form of currency and of which a portion had to be paid (taxed) to their cheif or king, is the time of origin of wage slavery, division of labor. Ransome’s comment about a “worker must support himself regardless of disability” is morally and factually wrong.

5. Anthony Bartlett | February 4, 2014 at 2:54 pm |

   -I thought the mentally retarded already are excluded from the federal mandatory minimum wage. You can’t force employers to pay them a living wage.

   -I am well aware of welfare payments to guardians of the handicapped, surely they are entitled to similar benefits were their guardians to pass?

   -I think there is a lot of phony outrage over Schiff’s comments. As with all things we have to consider the context in which the comment was made. This is a highly edited Daily Show segment. They could make any of us look bad.

   -It is hypocritical to be outraged about a subminimum wage for the mentally retarded while putting that policy in place or refusing to address it in the first place.