Friday, February 18, 2011

Egypt = Wisconsin?

Judging by my lefty friends on Facebook, the meme of the day is the equation of Wisconsin's new republican governor with deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. The idea seems to be that the following two things are roughly equivalent:

1. Duly elected governor and state legislature propose to reduce (not eliminate) the ability of state workers to form labor cartels with the purpose of raising their compensation above the value of their marginal product by exploiting the government's soft budget constraint.

2. Brutal, unelected dictator runs a repressive regime with a vast secret police apparatus and loots his country's wealth for three decades.

Here's a relatively calm example from the American Prospect.

This is Glenn Beck level stuff, the lefty equivalent of calling Obama a socialist.

It is also really insulting to the Egyptians.

Sigh. Would that we had a better left (and a better right).

No comments: