Tax Collectors And Prostitutes

“Tax collectors and prostitutes” is New Testament phrase that is used to describe the least esteemed people in First Century Israel.

Like today, the prostitutes of old provided valued services to a cadre of satisfied and loyal clients.  Nonetheless, said clients were typically unable to discuss services received with impunity in polite company or at the family dinner table.  Thus as in most times, the prostitutes lived a shadowy life of adulation in private and scorn in public.

Not so with the tax collectors of the era.  They were thoroughly despised by everybody.  The tax collectors of Jesus’ time were fellow Jews who worked for the occupying Romans.  They were thugs who brutally extorted tribute for the foreign oppressors and typically took a bit extra than the law required for themselves.

Although they maintain a veneer of professionalism and decorum, today’s tax collectors are no better than those of ancient times.  They are still the shakedown artists for the ruling classes in far away capital cities.  Sadly, today’s tax collectors enjoy far more social prestige than today’s sex workers.  After all, you are far more likely to hear someone say something like, “My son has a nice job at the IRS”, than, “My daughter makes big money hooking Wall Streeters and Hollywood big shots”.

Why should this be so? Let’s compare the two vocations.

 

	Tax Collectors		Prostitutes
Services	The Internal Revenue Service provides no service at all.  They just collect payments and make change if you fill out all their forms correctly.		All about getting serviced.
Legalities	Police will arrest you if you avoid tax collectors.		Police will arrest you if you visit the prostitutes
Protection	Angry people often want to strangle tax collectors.  If they do, they will be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law.		Crazy people often attack prostitutes.  Because their occupation is illegal they cannot go to the police and must suffer in silence.
Health Benefits	Government employees enjoy some of the finest healthcare benefits in the world.		Sex workers receive no employer based healthcare benefits.  Because of the underground nature of their work, they and their clients are at high risk for communicable diseases.
Retirement	Fully funded government pension.  Ability to retire early and start another career and get additional benefits.		Old and worn out.  No employer sponsored 401K plan, no contributions made to Social Security.
Compulsion	Must pay taxes and file returns under penalty of law.		Totally voluntary.  You have problem with paying for sex.  Fine.  Don't do it.

 

Most readers of this blog will concur that taxation is theft.  Likewise, prostitution is commerce.

Theft depletes wealth and prosperity.  It engenders hatred, suspicion and hostility among people.  It destroys community and the trust necessary to build a free society.

Commerce stimulates production, encourages cooperation among people and maximizes society’s utility – another word for happiness.

One must wonder, what kind of world rewards thieves while punishing the producers of pleasure.

Related Posts:

Getting F***ed By Statists (Literally)
The Hook Up Truck

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."  - Paul Simon

The Laborers in The Vineyard - An Austrian Reading

This week’s Gospel reading was the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.  Let’s take a look:

“A landowner went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’

So they went off. [And] he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise.  Going out about five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’  

When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. 

So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’  

He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you.  Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?  Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?’ "

The knee jerk reaction is to sympathize with the workers. But let’s look at this from the owner’s point of view.

The landowner needs a job done.  Let’s assume that he is under time constraints to get his grapes to the winepress or the fruit market.  So, he makes an estimate as how many workers at a given price are needed to get the work done.  He goes into the labor market and hires the necessary help. After a few hours he sees that work is lagging behind schedule and so he goes back into the market and hires more help.  This continues throughout the day as he sees time slipping away and the job nowhere near completion.  Therefore, he hires more workers and then more workers hoping to meet his deadline.  Only the owner can decide if the incremental labor investment is justified for his business.

Now let’s consider this from the worker’s perspective.

The first group hired are probably those most eager to work.  They might be the youngest, least experienced and least productive.  Therefore the boss was able hire them at the cheapest day rate.  They may also have been those in the most immediate need of cash and therefore eager to hire themselves out for the cheapest rate.

As the day wears on and the owner gets nervous he begins to hire more skilled / more productive workers who command higher wages.  Workers who are more financially well off may sign on later in the day as they prefer to have and can afford to a bit more leisure as opposed to work.

By day’s end, only the most skilled, most productive elite grape pickers are left on the market.  The owner, desperate to get his fruit to market, hires on the top dollar pros.  This final crew may also include those who least need to work and therefore may demand the most compensation for their time may sign on for a short shift.

As previously mentioned, the average observer will feel that it grossly unfair that first crop of workers who worked all got the same paycheck as those who put in only a couple of hours.  This is because most people subscribe the Labor Theory of Value which holds that value of good or service is reflective of the time and effort that goes into producing it.  This is obviously untrue.  Take for instance bad and ugly artwork.  In many cases the artist put in lots of hard work.  But if the work is ugly and stupid, who will pay for it?  Value is conferred by the markets, by whatever consumers or even a consumer will pay for it.

On the other hand, the price of labor is determined by its marginal contribution to a firm’s output and income. 

Obviously this story does not provide cost and productivity data for the various workers so we must surmise some things.

1.       The landowner tried to save a buck by hiring the cheapest labor on the market.

2.       The cheapest workers were not getting the job done fast enough.

3.       As the day wears on, the owner’s need for production intensified and he felt compelled to bid more for workers who were unwilling to accept his original offer for a whole day’s work

It may well be the case that the late hires picked as many or more grapes as those who worked all day.  If so their marginal contribution was as great or perhaps greater than whole day crew.  It is the employer’s job to crunch the numbers and to decide what he is willing and able to pay and what is best for his enterprise.

As the vineyard owner asks, “Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?”

For labor unions, minimum wage advocates, executive compensation objectors and government regulators, the answer is, “no”.  Apparently they know best what is most valuable to consumers and what is best for business.

God help us.

Related Posts:

Burgers And Bullets
Papal Fallibility
The Wisdom Of The Ancients

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."  - Paul Simon

No Joke

A man goes to the doctor and says. “Doc, it hurts when I do this”.  “Then stop doing that,” says the doctor.

BA-BOOM!

 A journalist goes into a hostile combat zone and is brutally murdered.  Then a second goes in and he is also murdered.  A third tries as well with the same outcome.  “Stop doing that!”

The murders of American and British journalists are no joke.  My prayers and sympathies go out to their families and loved ones.  Still, they are grown-ups freely and knowingly engaged in risky business just like mercenaries and gun runners.

A nation does not go to war over adventurous risk takers who also happen to be its citizens.  It does not risk the lives of its young men and women because a remote foreign nation is cruel to its own minorities and dissenters.  If that were the case, America should be at war with about half of the nations on Earth.

A nation goes to war when faced when with an existential threat.  Short of that, a nation commits to war only when its vital national interests are in jeopardy.

Since ISIS presents no existential threat to the United States, Americans must ask, what vital interest is it that we are defending?  The default answer is always, “oil”.

Middle East oil is no longer a vital concern for America. 

Time Magazine reports that U.S. oil imports are falling.  This is attributable to increased energy production driven by  fracking as well as to more fuel efficient vehicles.   Forbes Magazine goes as far to project that the U.S. will be able to fully meet its energy needs by the end of this decade. 

In the meantime as we move towards energy independence, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the preponderance of U.S. oil imports come from within the Western Hemisphere, not the Middle East.

 

 

So once again we ask, what vital interest are we defending if not oil?

Not only is it foolish to go to war without a clear interest to defend, it is criminally irresponsible to do so without definitive objective or a strategy for achieving it. 

Destroying ISIS will not solve the problem that the U.S. is held in low esteem throughout the Islamic world.  Bombing will not win the win hearts and minds let alone the war.  It will only kill innocents and invite blowback terrorism making life in America less safe. 

Boots on the ground can only lead to another decade long quagmire as in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Like Whack-a-Mole, America will “crush” one enemy only to see two or three or four more pop up.  Patrick Buchanan breaks down the futility in recent blog, The Forever War.

Unlike Whack-a-Mole, sending young Americans to die for no good reason is no game.  Wasting a decade’s worth of time, talent and treasure with no clear objective or realistic plan for victory is no joke.

 

Related Posts:

Poking Holes In The “Anti-War” Let
Fighting For Democracy? For Real?

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."  - Paul Simon

Are Goofy Ideas Racist?

Back in the previous century, New York’s Catskill resort area was affectionately known as the Borsht Belt.  Per Wikipedia:

“Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s up to the 1970s.  The name comes from borscht, a beet-based soup that was brought by Jewish immigrants to the United States” United States.”

If you’ve seen Dirty Dancing, you’ve seen the Borscht Belt. 

It would entirely understandable if one of the resort owners were to have said to his colleagues, “You know, we’re doing OK with the Jewish market, but how about the other 90% of New Yorkers?  What’s keeping them away?  Do you think we have to change the food or the entertainment?”

A businessman in Atlanta recently had this sort of conversation with his staff.  He wondered out loud why he wasn’t attracting a representative share of white consumers to his enterprise.  He speculated that the user experience might be appealing to this market segment.  Obviously, if his operation is not a attracting a desired consumer segment, there must be one or more reasons.

For musing out loud as to what those reasons might be, Bruce Levinson is deemed to no longer worthy of owing or operating his business, the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks.

In nearly 40 years (yikes!) of advertising and marketing, I’ve been in countless meetings where we have questioned why a particular brand was not getting its share of male consumers or female consumers, or young people or other various and sundry consumer segments.  It’s what happens in a business.

We like to say that, when searching for a solution, “there are no bad ideas”.  Let’s get everything out on the table and then test it with data, logic and research.

This Atlanta businessman’s diagnosis may be right or it may be wrong.  The best way to kill a bad idea is to air it.  Expose it to debate and see if it stands the test of reason and critical analysis.  Chewing gum magnate, William Wrigley, Jr., was famous for saying, “When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”   Successful management demands that all ideas be heard, weighed and judged.  If bad ideas make it out of the boardroom and into the marketplace, the consumer will be final judge.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar agrees.  In an opinion piece in Time he expresses plain common sense:  “I read Levenson’s email. Here’s what I concluded: Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats.”

And you never know, an idea that others think is “bad” may be hit a la Airbnb.

Back in the ‘70’s a raucous sit-com, All InThe Family, rocketed to the top of the ratings.  American viewers were sometimes shocked and mostly amused by the lead character’s relentless tirades of ethnic stereotypes.  In the end, Archie unveiled the elephant in the room and Americans confronted their stupid prejudices.

But if you really think any of the outrage about Levinson or two-time NAACP Award Winner, Donald Sterling is about racism, you are sadly mistaken.  It’s about thought control, about political correctness gone wild.  It’s about making people afraid to be themselves and speak their minds in private, even to the business colleagues or lovers.  Nothing is safe.  The PC Police are listening.

Meanwhile, in a not unrelated story, Harry Reid and the Democrat Party are trying to push through SJR 19, a bill that would allow Congress to selectively control political speech.  It’s nothing new, Lincoln did it in the War Between the States, and Federalists jailed dissenters using the Sedition Bill over 200 years ago. 

The people in control simply cannot tolerate free thinking and will stop at nothing to quash it.

As they would say back in the Catskills, “Oy gevalt!” 

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Hillary, Benghazi and Trayvon
Cliven Bundy – Sorting Through The Rubble
Campaign Finance Limits Hurt The Little Guy

Subscribe to the 2 Percenter blog by going to http://feedage.com  and entering 2percentpov into the Search box on top -choose your favorite reader.

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 Connect through:

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OnFire Radio Show

Streaming  on Hamiltonradio.net

  Podcast at Blogspot, iTunes, Stitcher, Podomatic & YouTube

"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon