Oh, For Dumbest

Long-time commentator John Rove alerts us to Matthew Yglesias condemnation of laws limiting shops operating hours in France.This situation is wrong, Yglesias intones with all the seriousness of a neoliberal intent on destroying human happiness, because

[t]he problem with leisure. . . is that you can’t tax it to pay off accumulated debt or to finance pensions for your senior citizens. The good news is that the much lower hours worked in places like France shows that a determined set of policymakers could push official GDP a lot a higher without the TFP fairy showing up.

First lets hope the poor adle-pated dope doesn't find out that Germany closes most of its shops at 12 on Saturday and doesn't reopen them till Monday. 2nd, really? The economy is a mess because of unregulated financial shenanigans and  neoliberal policies more generally. Yglesias' response? Work harder peons.Third "determined set of policy makers" is short hand for technocratic defeat of democracy. He knows that democracy, as Salvador Allende pointed out in his speech to the UN,means that democratic polities lead to social democratic societies and the only way the 1%ers can win is by recourse to anti-democratic means to oligarchic ends. What horrid little man.