The Anger of Compassion

Henry Hazlitt, call your office...

...and get Frederic Bastiat on that conference call.

Via Hit & Run, I found this horrible poll, at MSNBC.com.

To the question, "Do you think oil companies are price gouging?" The responses were as follows (at the time I read it):

3% answered that they weren't sure

6% responded, "No, that's the way a free market economy works"

and a whopping 92% cast a vote for "Yes, Big Oil is taking advantage of energy consumers."

To the question, "Do that many Americans really have no idea at all where their pharmaceuticals, cable television, Tommy Hilfiger gear, and iPods come from?" must come the answer: "No, they do not. All necessities and luxuries alike drop down from the sky while Big Bad Business is ripping off the American consumer."

Diana Hsieh wrote about The Poor Poor a few days back, and I had occasion to meditate upon an item she quoted from the Christian Science Monitor:

"In terms of the items people have ... it amazes me the number of people who are at or near the poverty line that have color TVs, cable, washer, dryer, microwave," says Michael Cosgrove, an economist at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. That's not to ignore the hardships of poverty, he adds, "but the conveniences they have are in fact pretty good."

And just what brought it to mind? Well, in Texas, you understand, we no longer have food stamps. It's not that we no longer subsidize groceries for the needy. We do. It's just that we no longer have the food stamps themselves. Instead, we have these white credit card lookalikes with a red, white, and blue silhouette map of Texas on 'em: swipe it through the machine and you, the user, are good to go as your "Lone Star Card" is read. If the machine reads it properly the first time, that is. Otherwise I get to stand behind you and wait while the cashier enters your info manually. Ultimately, of course, I also get to pay for your groceries with my Texas taxes.

What chapped my ass even beyond the basics, though, was the behavior of the last woman I saw using one of these cards: while the cashier was industriously entering the necessary information manually, the Lone Star Card user was happily chatting away to someone I couldn't see, chatting merrily away on her cell phone.

That's your American poor. That's who Big Oil is "gouging."

Posted by Craig Ceely at January 30, 2006 12:43 PM