From the Ludwig Von Mises Institute:  Employment Is Nothing Like Slavery.  Frankly, to yr. obdt. that rates a huge “no shit,” but apparently some people need reminding.  Excerpt:

What is necessary to take away a man’s freedom? For many progressives, nothing more then a bad workplace. Amazon takes ongoing heat for its work environment, with opponents like Business Insider calling it a “slave camp.”

But this comparison mistakes the fundamental nature of coercion.

Many leftists, such as left-libertarian Susan Webber at Naked Capitalism, argue that we must work in order to live, and that therefore work is coercive. If you must do X to live, then surely whoever controls your ability to do X is coercing you.

The problem with this argument is that the state of nature is not a Rousseauian paradise, but a brutal place where most die. The state of nature involves poverty and endless drudgery to catch, kill, and cook whatever food one can to stay alive. The workday is every waking moment, and the pay is little more than an occasional meal.

There’s nothing stopping people from living this way in the modern world — say, off the grid — but the beauty of capitalism is that it offers us a way out of this wretched existence. When a company offers a man a job, they are not saying, “work or die!” the way a slaver does; they are promising him that, if he helps them to succeed, they will give him money to improve his life.

In other words, the employment relationship is like any other market transaction:  A voluntary exchange, in which both parties receive a gain in value.  The employer hires because the employee’s efforts are provide more value than his/her cost of employment.  The employee accepts employment because the pay and benefits are worth more than any other use to which the employee could put his/her effort.

The comparison to slavery is pernicious twaddle; corral litter of the first order.  A slave is never free to leave his/her master; the employee in a free employment market is always free to leave their employment.

The real irony here is that this phony comparison is generally made by advocates of socialism, a system that necessarily involves coercion by government – enforced by men with guns.  In fact, you can argue that increasing trends towards socialism is actually enforcing a form of slavery:  The forceful removal of the fruits of one’s labor, involuntarily, to the gain of others who did nothing to earn it.

That’s what redistributive social policies do.  The productive are required, with the implied threat of force, to surrender a portion of their earned wealth to the unearned enrichment of others.  That may not be slavery – but it is theft.

The article concludes:  In any market-based relationship, one party can leave and the other party can do them no harm. This is a freedom that is noticeably lacking in our interactions with government.

All too true; employers can hire and fire, and expect performance in return for recompense.  But they can’t coerce.  An employee is always free to seek other opportunities.  Only government can coerce.

That’s a key distinction; one that those on the political Left all too often miss.

Well, here’s a shocker (not):  Newsflash! Bernie Sanders Fans: All That “Free Stuff” Will Break the Middle Class.  Excerpt:

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Similarly, it could be said that for liberals, how the real world works is indistinguishable from magic.

They want “free” birth control, health care, college, “Cash for Clunkers,” free housing for the poor and paid time off for women who are having a child. They want welfare with no preconditions for anyone who wants it, a $15 minimum wage and they want to open our borders to anyone who wants to come here illegally, have a child and live off the American people for the next 18 years.

Unfortunately, as Thomas Sowell has often said, “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.” Put another way, giving away “free” stuff may seem appealing, but it often has terrible consequences.

First and foremost among them, if you give too much away, you can go bankrupt. It’s not the least bit controversial to say that even with our current level of spending, we’re on pace to become Greece. You don’t have to take my word for it because even a diehard liberal socialist like Bernie Sanders admits that we can’t keep piling on debt.

“Everyone agrees that over the long-term we have got to reduce the record-breaking $13.7 trillion national debt and unsustainable federal deficit.”

Incidentally, our record-breaking debt is now up to almost $18.4 trillion and Bernie Sanders is proposing another $18 trillion in spending over the next decade on NEW programs. That’s in addition to the deficit spending we’re already doing, all of which is theoretical because at some point in the next decade or two, no one will be willing to loan us any more money and our economy will splatter like a bug on a windshield.

Let’s interject a moment of realism here:  Bernie Sanders is not going to be the Democrat nominee, and he’ll never be President.  And that, True Believers, is manifestly a Good Thing.

Bernie Sanders repeatedly reveals his economic illiteracy, but his entire economic plan – such as it is – reveals the single most glaring flaw in his reasoning:  He has no idea, none whatsoever, how wealth is created in a free society.  Even more, he is sadly ignorant of one important principle:  Wealth is not “distributed.”  It is created and earned.

Bernie Sanders thinks “wealth inequality” – an inescapable fact of the human condition – can be addressed by taking resources away from people who have earned them, and giving them to people who have not.

The article concludes:  You lose your job because the company you work for can’t make it with a $15 minimum wage, because of Obamacare costs, or if the company goes overseas because we already have the highest corporate tax rate in the free world – well, that’s too bad! Don’t worry about it though, here’s some “free” stuff for you. Sure, you’ll have to downsize your lifestyle, swallow your pride and cut back on your dreams, but at least it’s “free,” right?

We don’t need more “free” stuff in America; we need more opportunity! We also need to start putting the interests of the people who work hard, play by the rules and pay their taxes ahead of illegal aliens, refugees and the people who want something for “free.”

As the late, great Robert Heinlein said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” When someone starts promising you one, smart people put their hands over their wallets and start looking for the catch.

Every single policy Bernie Sanders has advocated is anti-growth and anti-opportunity.  That’s no way to get out of our fiscal mess; it’s how we got into it in the first place.

What’s wrong with Her Majesty Queen Hillary I’s proposed energy policy?  Well, her solar panel idea is well to the left of stupid.  Excerpt:

In a YouTube video released over the weekend, the leading Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, announced that “on day one as president,” she would set “two ambitious national goals that will test our capacities.” Said Clinton, “First, I will ensure we hit a target of having more than half a billion solar panels installed across the country by the end of my first term.” You don’t even have to wait for “ambitious national goal” number two to slap your forehead and roll your eyes at this example of top-down central planning at its worst.

Clinton assumes that man-made climate change is a risk serious enough to try to mitigate, and that America should try to mitigate it by reducing its carbon emissions. These are big “ifs,” but ones I will grant for argument’s sake. Even granting those assumptions, there is a humongous logical leap to the conclusion that the appropriate policy response is setting a national target for the number of solar panels installed.

For one thing, it’s a classic error of measuring inputs rather than outputs. If the goal is the reduction of dangerous emissions, why not set a goal for that, and support any energy method—solar, wind, algae, hydroelectric, nuclear, hydrofracturing—that gets America closer to that goal? Why privilege solar over all the other technologies, including some that may not even be invented yet?

Because it’s a reasonable talking point, if you’re trying to appeal to irrational lefties.  Half a billion solar panels?  Seriously?  At whose expense?

Oh, that’s right – the taxpayers.

So where will this subsidy come from?  A tax on coal, oil and natural gas?  Her Highness has a history of adhering to the First Law of Big Government:  If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  If it stops moving, subsidize it.   Solar isn’t moving at the moment (remember Solyndra?) so Her Highness proposes, after her coronation, to force it.

A more reasonable person would anticipate that the markets would work better; if the technology in solar power ever proves economically viable, then it will be adopted by people freely.  There’s no good argument for government to force the decision.

Reason concludes:

Failure is part of free enterprise, of course. But where’s the justice in taxing some scientist working on some other energy technology to subsidize the solar competition? If Clinton really wants to fight climate change or cut carbon emissions, there are plenty of ways to go about it. She could fund research and development for battery storage. She could set emissions goals and let utilities or states decide the cheapest and best ways to meet them. She could allow more hydrofracturing that replaces coal-fired plants with cleaner oil and natural gas. But counting solar panels? Come on, Clinton. Get serious.

Serious?  In a political campaign?  Surely you jest.

Seriously, though:  Reason somewhat misses the point.  Her Highness knows better than you do how to run your affairs – including how you get your electricity.

Look for similar liberty-crushing proposals across the economic spectrum.   The big concern is this:  Hillary Clinton is far from the only pol (in either party, for that matter) to think that she knows better than you, and that she should make economic decisions for you.  After all, it’s for your own good!

Few more chilling words were ever spoken by a politician.