Archive for July 29th, 2010

Location

Everybody knows the old restaurant joke: “the three things you need for a successful restaurant are location, location, and location, in that order.”

Everybody has HEARD of it, but nobody THINKS about it.

As usual.

When I was coming up the most obvious thing that affected wages was location. In 1960 the per capita income in India was $70 per year. It was well over 2000 in the United States, and double that in the big cities.

The one thing that was precious to workers was their largest piece of actual property, which everyone knows so well the restaurant joke is old hat: Location.

So the labor movement joined the “America is a Land of Immigrants” Movement. In terms of straight economics, it is hard to imagine a stupider move. But Labor Leaders were joining Mommy Professor and his fellow Intellectuals and Idealists in a solid front against those capitalists who had all that money and a few degrees.

In Whitakerese, labor sold out its location.

In fact the first national legislation that represented a major victory for the new lobbying forces of labor unions were the Naturalization and Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1923. That kept the immigration flood from pouring in for over forty years, and American labor unions and their members have never thrived the way they did during that period before or after.

But Labor joined Mommy Professor proudly, in its leftists solidarity with civil rights groups and the laboring masses of the world — the ones who wanted to get into those locations — in tearing up the 1921 Act and opening the floodgates.

Then the industrial labor movement died and its former members are out of work in their fifties.

Couldn’t happen to nicer guys. When Wallace offered them an alternative, most of them stayed loyal to their beloved union bosses. If you read my first book you will see that I showed the choice labor had then. They took a choice, and they will and their families will never cease to pay for it.

Union workers, who know the importance of unanimity, split between Mommy Professor Labor Leaders and Wallace. The coalition they joined got rid of those racist acts which had protected them.

People have heard that location, location, location joke a hundred times, but when you apply it to politics, they are totally clueless.

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