Ben Stein is a fucking prat. In his Everybody's Business column today, Ben Stein displays some unwonted sympathy for the workin' stiff, who he thinks "we" ought to have more consideration for:

We could live a little while without a stock market. It was closed for a time after the United States entered World War I and we survived, although I personally would not have liked it. But we could not live at all without those who earn modest wages and keep the whole system going - and whose risk does not involve being fired and getting a severance package if something goes wrong, but may mean a homecoming in a box or a life with a prosthesis.

Is Stein thinking of the Times' own Pulitzer-winning investigative series on death in the workplace? Has something touched a previous unreached moral core in Stein, made him think a bit about the way his wealth and the wealth of his class is built, even in these enlightened times, on dangerous, brutal, even killing human labor? Well, not exactly. Stein's only concerned with a special category of worker:

The men and women of Wall Street and of corporate America do their very important work - and it is vital work, indeed - inside a box of security and safety created by the courage of the men and women who wear battle dress uniforms and ride down the highway of death in Iraq in armored personnel carriers handling machine guns.

The men and women in the Armani suits, who get the huge paychecks - and who, again, do work I sincerely appreciate and admire - could not exist for long if they were not being shielded by the men and women in uniforms and boots.

And I do not mean only the military. I am also talking about the police officers, the firefighters and other first responders; the Department of Homeland Security folks; the airport security people; and the people in the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency. All of them offer their time and their lives and their families' sanity to protect the country.

That means, among other things, protecting the free markets in finance - and in ideas, religions and human feelings. There would be no finance section of the newspaper without the protection of those whose job is to protect and to serve.

Yes, God bless the patriotic defenders of the Republic Capital! They fight in Iraq so terrorists can't get to the Hamptons.

What's really disgusting about this—and it's certainly the most disgusting prose I've read in the Times in an age, managing as it does to celebrate military self-sacrifice and parasitic wealth on the very same plane—is that Stein seems actually to be coming over a little misty-eyed as he writes it. Nothing like being able to swallow your own sentimentalist bullshit.

Stein recommends that maybe (he doesn't want to tread too hard on the point) military pay should be increased. As for the non-uniformed: well, hell, if the suckers want to work for pennies, they deserve whatever screwing they get, don't they, Ben?

posted by michael  1:45:10 PM  
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See? Capitalism's not that hard to understand. From a Steven Greenhouse article in today's Times, focused on Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, we learn that Wall Street analysts don't think very well of the company (even though Costco's profits rose 22% last year, and its stock performance is making Wal-Mart look sick).

Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.

"He has been too benevolent," she said. "He's right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden."

A burden which, of course, they would be lifting from the poor, stooped shoulders of the owners of capital.

posted by michael  1:14:32 PM  
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