One controversy that affects this debate is the purpose of corporations. Do they exist to make its shareholders money or to make money and serve other purposes for society? Simplyfying wildly, the conservative argument is that Hobby Lobby exists to provide society with knitting materials and by doing so it serves society in the best way possible. The Liberal view is that Hobby Lobby exists also to provide good paying jobs for its employees, money for charity, other various causes, and then knitting materials.
This is relflected in the Walmart vs Costco debates in which conservatives argue that Walmart helps the poor by selling them cheap stuff so they can afford more things and the left argue that Costco helps the poor by employing them at above market wages to sell things to the upper middle class.
The article points out that the Hobby Lobby is using its money to pay higher wages which is something liberals wants companies to do. The religous angle is that while most Christians fall on the right side of the political landscape there is no consensus in America among the religous about the proper role of a corporation. Worldwide, the Catholic church has been more on the liberal side of this particular controversy.
What all this ignores is that Hobby Lobby could be paying an efficiency wage which would make more money for its stockholders while paying its workers more than market wages. What some miss about this in the general sense is that since efficiency wages are by definition above average, most firms will not be able to pay an efficiency wage.
This is further complicated in the case of HL because it is not a publicly owned corporation. It is a closely held, family owned business. The “interest of the shareholders” is a much more fluid concept for HL than it might be for, say, GE.
I’d say your confusion stems from thinking that an epithet applied to a political enemy has to be logical, rational, and literal. It will never be any of those things. Nor can you ever expect that the self-interest of people and groups to be entirely free of hypocrisy between what they say and what they do. That applies to you as well: I don’t believe for a second that you’re ignorant of “the ways of corruption of the human being.” You post here, so you presumably read here. Look to your own hypocrisy first.
Speaking of reading here, how about this?
You should notice that it took about three posts for the topic to shift to the rightness of Hobby Lobby’s position, with the left and the right looking at it through totally different lenses. The political world is axiom-based, with two major sets of axioms thoroughly predominant. That doesn’t mean there aren’t or can’t be others but for the time being this is simply a fact. Why would you claim that it isn’t? Some sort of superiority for your position? You can see how much good that is doing you.
So Hobby Lobby pays more than minimum wage which should more than make up the disparity should its employees seek birth control outside of the 16 approved forms.
And why is it that female HL employees are perfectly free to purchase and use these contraceptives? Is it because HL’s owners are totally OK with baby murdering pills, just as long as they’re not paying for it? Or is it because HL’s owners are not given the power to deny their employees the ability to purchase legal medication?
I believe that if HL and others who have the same religious objection to these contraceptives were allowed to have the power, they would happily deny women, all women, the ability to choose those contraceptives, regardless of who paid for it, and regardless of whether or not those women worship a particular version of God.
Yes, the anti-abortion movement wants abortion to be illegal. In the same way, anti-slavery advocates wanted slavery to be illegal no matter what God you worshiped or who pays for the slave.
It should be remembered that the HL case was not about contraception per se, but about particular forms that HL considers the same as abortion, which they abhor.
Sure, because we all know that minimum wage is all it takes to live on, so making $1 above minimum wage is a free-money gravy train! :rolleyes:
Don’t you mean that the anti-abortion movement “wants to enforce the authority of the government over that of any private actor”?
In any case, you appear to agree with his point, then: if HL and others who have the same religious objection to these contraceptives were allowed to have the power, they would happily deny all women the ability to choose those contraceptives, regardless of who paid for it and regardless of the women’s religion.
I’ll also say that I disagree with the OP that there’s any liberal/conservative inconsistency here. HL pays their employees above minimum wage most likely because they believe it’s a good business investment to do so. That has nothing to do with ideology. But challenging the law based on some religious nutcase belief, and taking it all the way to the Supreme Court – now that’s ideology in spades!
My point is that in contemporary American politics, wages are not generally seen as a religious issue. It’s like gun control. There’s a liberal/conservative divide on the issue but not a religious/secular divide. So while religious people might join with conservatives on some issues (like abortion) they might not join with conservatives on other issues (like gun control).
I don’t recall anyone saying this - do you have a cite?
Yes, in this instance they do. As mentioned, it’s like slavery - protecting human rights is an essential part of government action. Indeed, according to the Declaration of Independence, that is the whole purpose of government.
Yes, my cite is Stringbean saying “So Hobby Lobby pays more than minimum wage which should more than make up the disparity” which implies that the balance above minimum wage is pure discretionary income available for such purchases as contraceptives. It also falsely implies an either-or exclusion, that if the employee got birth control she’d have to be paid minimum wage.
I don’t want to digress into an abortion debate here, but since there’s a great deal of disagreement about whether abortion violates any “human rights” – and indeed a very persuasive case to be made that abortion prohibitions violate actual human rights – this issue is, at the very least, clearly a complex and contentious one. So what you’re saying, if you think about it fairly and clearly, is that government may freely intrude into all kinds of personal issues as long as you agree with them. This is more or less the unsupportable logic-defying mantra of social conservatism.
The point still stands. Hobby Lobby’s deal is still better for an employee.
Company A=pays $7.25/hr but health insurance provides free contraception
Hobby Lobby=pays $13/hr but employee must pay for contraception out of pocket.
What is a birth control script? Around $40/month? Even if it was $180/month, that comes to about a dollar an hour in wages. So if we take Hobby Lobby’s deal, we make $13/hr-$1/hr contraception and that employee still has paid for contraception plus a full $4.75 per hour MORE than the Obamacare compliant corporation.
Yet what Hobby Lobby does is bad, but what Company A does is just fine. That’s the reason why such a regulation makes no sense and conservatives feel it was done purely to score political points. It’s not good enough that Hobby Lobby provides its employees actual money to pay for whatever in the hell they want: contraception, liquor, gambling, prostitution, tithing, charitable donations, skee-ball, or a steak dinner.
No sir! They MUST provide free morning after pills, no exceptions! Surely you understand how ridiculous that is.
Imagine if you were morally opposed to nude dancing but for whatever reason you owed me a free lap dance (not you personally dancing, but you must provide it ). Let’s say the going price was $50. What would you think if I told you that handing me a $50 bill was not good enough, but you had to personally go with me to the strip club and hand the $50 to the dancer? You would probably think that I was being petulant and doing it just to force you to confront your moral dilemma.
This is nice of you to bring up, thanks. The trouble is that, if we prevent government from solving problems the way conservatives would like, and if we strip corporations of any responsibility, that leaves no institutions to address problems at all. If you want the public to be screwed I guess that’s great.
Thanks for introducing me to the concept of the efficiency wage. No comment at this point, but the thread is educational for me at least.
Well, I’m at the meanings of “liberal” and “conservative” in this context, the “bleeding heart” thing is more on the side. Frankly I didn’t know the background of that phrase or whether to regard it as an epithet at all. But the word “liberal” itself seems to get used as an epithet these days, doesn’t it? It has been turned into such a straw man that it can be hard to sort out what the true meaning of it is.
I am looking to my own hypocrisy- I can do more than one thing at once. I suppose if you remain as articulate and informative as you’ve been, I’ll endure your scolding. I do think I’m fairly not-corrupt though, even if it is probably more because of my lack of acquaintance with power than my personal virtue.
I don’t really consider myself a liberal or a conservative. Not being ‘so Euclidean’ about it means one can observe the various ideologies and the conclusions that flow from them without being locked into them. Because, yanno, ideology doesn’t always give very good answers. I suppose my position is superior in some instances- rather than ideology, I’d try to look at the math. Climate change? The math tells the story and the problem needs to be addressed, no need to waste time screaming about Socialism or debating irrelevant subsections of religions. Isn’t that so much more tidy? Obviously this approach doesn’t work with every issue though.
Speaking of sets of axioms though, do you think that is the way to frame an understanding of the meanings of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’? Do you thing Shodan has it roughly correct, that conservatives view government solutions as suspect for various reasons like intruding on freedom, while liberals see government as a great tool for addressing certain issues? Can you make explicit what you think the axioms are, or point me toward it?
Right, and they couldn’t apply the religious view to this issue without stumbling into colossal inconsistency. Religion is handy with an issue like abortion since it that issue won’t result in doing anything for anybody, kind of like sacrificing everything to address the national debt won’t actually help anybody. The ideology has to come and go, which makes me think it is insincere or leaves me not understanding what people stand for.
This is not even remotely true. If you want to provide poor women with IUDs there are plenty of ways to do it. Start a charity, start a company, hold a bake sale, do a kickstarter campaign. The great thing about all those things is they do not require you to force people who disagree with you to contribute. To a liberal the government is a magical force that does everything well, it can fight wars, it can cure poverty, it can raise kids, it can build roads, it can provide cheap education, it can run a health care system, it can run restaurants, it can plan cities, it can provide birth control to everyone who wants it, etc. The only way it ever fails is because of the wreckers, who are evil people who hate government. To a conservative government should do government things, the miltary, the courts, and police, and keep its nose out of everything else.
). Let’s say the going price was $50. What would you think if I told you that handing me a $50 bill was not good enough, but you had to personally go with me to the strip club and hand the $50 to the dancer? You would probably think that I was being petulant and doing it just to force you to confront your moral dilemma.