COLUMN: "Whining, The New National Pastime"

From Stephen Jamison's "On the Green," Fall '92 I hate it when conservatives whine about how that awful Braxton family down the lane may join the club and how the estate taxes are just, oh, so high. I hate it when those moderates whine about their indecisive wafflings. And I especially hate it when liberals whine about anything. Period. A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of wandering across the Clinton/Gore rally on College Green. Everybody who was anybody was there: the pro-choice crowd with their fashionable buttons ablazing, the increasingly partisan "Rock the Vote for a Change" crowd, and celebrities of various political expertise and speaking ability. Ever since I saw "Adventures in Babysitting" back in high school, I thought Elizabeth Shue was awesome, until she came to Penn and opened her mouth: "I've been at Harvard for, like, 15 years, and it's, like like, so-ooo cool when I'm not busy off filming those ditsy bit parts or, like, getting smashed, ya know?" She went on to ramble about how this country is in terrible shape and how Bill Clinton would make such a great president. That's the problem with these actors: they live their lives in movie land. In fact, that's what is wrong with Clinton and all of his fervent supporters. They obviously picked up their Economics from watching movies. I'll name Bill's proposal "Willie Wonkanomics." He thinks that if he "puts people first" by raising taxes on business, those little oompa munchkins will do all the work and sweet, sugary chocolate will magically flow from all the factories. If he wins, the only place brown stuff will be flowing is down the sewer pipe. These Clinton people are great with the abstracts. "We need the government to create jobs and develop new industries. We need to invest in people. We need abortion rights. We need a change. We need a plan." When you really look at it, he is campaigning on a socialist platform. Government investment and planning means lots of spending and, well, I've never actually seen the government "create" jobs. The best companies in American already retrain and re-educate their workers without federal mandates. He doesn't feel that poorer children can attend the school of their choice, even though the parents may have paid for it through their taxes. He is also in favor of federally-funded abortions. While I consider myself to be generally pro-choice, subsidizing abortions via tax dollars is an outrage. Another thing that has especially bothered me is the recent trashing of "trickle-down economics." In the Vice-Presidential debate, Senator Al Gore would always end his responses with a rehearsed, mechanical line such as, "Hey Dan, when are you guys going to stop worrying about trickle-down economics and start taxing those wealthy bastards to death?" Can the Clinton campaign really be this ignorant about basic economics? Who knows, since they never get around to telling the truth. They are always too busy kissing the liberal special interest groups' and the middle classes' collective butt. When Americans put their valuable capital -- often their life savings -- at risk by investing in and starting up businesses, jobs are created in the process, with the wages "trickling down" to the employees. Is this so wrong? But no, I hear remarks around here like "we have the right to jobs when we graduate." Number one, anyone who must have a "right" to a job -- at union wages, as some demanded -- is clearly incompetent to get one otherwise. Number two, some college students are such whiners! We party, drink beer, get drunk, sleep, play Nintendo, skip class and drink beer. Then, some of us have the nerve to say that everyone has a right to a job! Young adults, who have parents and grandparents who never had the opportunity to go to college, now complain in their hungover daze that our generation's standard of living will be lower than our parents' standard of living. This is America. Where else in the world can people even dream of owning their own business, or creating a fortune, or living the Horatio Alger "rags to riches" story? You liberals are too busy engineering your "equally poor" society. Stop trying to convince the "economically challenged" to resent those who have succeeded in the quest for the American dream. This is still a country where you can be successful if you work hard. Sure, you can't go down to your local mill, as in the old days, and be hired for one of those dirty, demeaning, assembly line jobs that everyone seems to be glorifying these days. But now, just about everyone can go to college. It may not be Harvard. It may not be Penn. It may just be the local community or city school that we seem to mock in our arrogance, but it will help people achieve something better than the fry-line at McDonald's - providing that they work hard. No one is going to, nor should they, offer college students jobs on a silver platters. Nobody owes us anything. Let's start showing a little self-reliance and ambition, and stop letting the government tell us what to do. We can consider the alternatives. Perot is no longer quite the force he once was, and Bush's campaign strategy has been idiotic. Bush says, "Bill Clinton is not someone you can trust." Everybody already knows that. Everybody already knows not to trust any politician. Anyway, Bush does not deserve to be re-elected. He's made a mockery of the Reagan Revolution by raising new taxes and re-regulating by approving the Clean Air Act, the Disabilities Act, and the "Civil Rights" Act. These Acts have all increased the federally-mandated costs to businesses, resulting in fewer jobs and higher prices. He has never proposed a balanced budget to Congress, and the federal bureaucracy has grown like never before under his administration. I'm surprised the liberals won't be voting for four more years of the same. One last bit of pre-election advice. Read Ayn Rand's epic novel Atlas Shrugged. It's a 1,200 page monster, but you still have plenty of time before Tuesday. I must say nothing else has given me the same insight into what this election might mean for our country. As the economy in her fictional world turned sour due to over-regulation, the government blamed business and regulated more, thus inducing an endless cycle of depression and regulation, leading only into anarchy. Rand asks what happens when the industrialists, the true producers of the world, go on strike? This national election, like the last one, is simply a vote for the lesser of two evils. If you vote for Bush, you'll get more of the same bologna. But if you vote for Clinton, you'll be eating rotten headcheese for four years. Stephen Jamison is a senior Finance major from McKeesport, Pennsylvania. "On the Green" appears alternate Fridays.