When President Obama took to mocking Republican budget proposals (which, unlike Democrat proposals, exist) in front of a college audience by calling them “stinkburgers” and “meanwiches,” I was struck by how the media lets him get away with being as nasty and divisive as he wants to be. No Republican would be allowed to get away with insinuating that Democrats are motivated primarily by greed, lust for power, or some inhuman joy they take from watching people suffer… let alone stating it outright, with the language of a third-grader. Not only would the divisiveness and mean spirit of the rhetoric draw a firestorm of criticism, but such a hypothetical Republican would be excoriated for talking down to his audience.
Andrew Johnson at National Review made a different point about the President’s outburst, by focusing on the delicatessen anecdote he told, right before veering into talk of stinkburgers and meanwiches:
The president paid a visit to Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Mich., today as part of his push to increase the minimum wage.
Zingerman’s, he says, pays its employees “fair wages.” Whether they’re fair enough to afford the lunch the president had isn’t clear: He ordered a small Reuben for $13.99; larges go for nearly $17.
That’s much funnier than President Obama’s playground taunts about stinkburgers. Oblivious to the way anything outside of politics works, the President calls for higher minimum wages… and his example of a model retail enterprise is a deli that charges seventeen bucks for a sandwich? He’s like a conservative caricature of an ignorant left-winger: mandate a “living wage” of $15 an hour for fast-food employees, and get ready for $20 hamburgers.
The harder government tries to repeal the laws of supply and demand, the more expensive and confusing everything gets… and, as we’ve seen throughout the Obama years, the wider that dratted “income inequality” gap grows. One Percenters don’t much care if their sandwiches cost $5 or $15, but it makes a big difference to the working poor and Sainted Middle Class. If we let Democrats keep working on the economy with their sledgehammers and monkey wrenches, we’ll end up in a land of mandated “living wages” that don’t pay enough to buy anything. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and if we keep listening to the people who promise otherwise, we won’t be able to buy lunch any more, either.
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