It seems like we should be looking for ways to make sure that everyone has a pony, rather than taking away the ponies that some, albeit too few, have already.

Agricultural output is several times higher today, both in absolute amount and in yield-per-acre. Available supplies of nearly all minerals continue to increase. Americans of all income levels are much better fed, much better clothed, much better housed, and much better cared for medically. The automobile cleaned America’s streets of the dung and flies that once cursed denizens of cities and towns. Electricity and petroleum have replaced far-filthier coal and wood as major sources of household energy. Perhaps most significantly, life expectancy in 2010 is 30 years longer than it was in 1910.

Do you want to be the one to tell them that they’re going to have to pay higher taxes for the same, or lower levels of services? I’ve been trying to tell them that for years now, and believe me, on the fun scale it’s somewhere between a root canal, and seeing Neil Diamond live … at the kind of venue that doesn’t serve alcohol. But if we’re going to avoid a real, ugly fiscal crisis, the sort that ends up immiserating a bunch of people, someone is going to have to tell them. Someone in Congress, I mean. The deficit commission is not going to accomplish anything if congress isn’t willing to assess its priorities and make some hard choices. You may think that Paul Ryan is too hopeful about some areas of his plan; you may think that it won’t work. All fair enough, and that’s why any starter plan like this has to go through a lot of refining before it’s ready to become legislation. But at least Paul Ryan has a plan, no matter how incomplete or unworkable you think it may be. That’s more than the rest of us can say.

Not surprisingly, therefore, black leader Booker T. Washington opposed unions all his life, and W. E. B. DuBois called unions the greatest enemy of the black working class. Another interesting fact: the “union label” was started in the 1880s to proclaim that a product was made by white rather than yellow (Chinese) hands. More generally, union wage rates, union-backed requirements for a license to practice various occupations, and union-backed labor regulations such as the minimum wage law and the Davis-Bacon Act continue to reduce opportunities for black youths, females, and other minorities.