April 8, 2017

Reverend Oliver Williams, C.S.C.

Mendoza School of Business

University of Notre Dame

South Bend, IN 46556

Father Williams,

Concupiscence, one of the convenient crutches that Uncle Screwtape provides to all Wormwood wanabees, is the only reason – not an excuse – for not writing sooner. May I add, somewhat belatedly, that I greatly enjoyed your Saturday morning part homily, part seminar, part tutorial on Ethics? And, just think, nobody mentioned Aristotle!

When old guys, particularly those with a curmudgeonly streak, think of the Permanent Things, they think more of their grandchildren than of the not quite black, not quite white choices on which polemicists pounce. 

I was in McDonald’s today at 5:30AM. The pre-6:00AM staff has been cut by 2/3 positions to reflect higher wage rates.  [Unless you have done a payroll the reality of cost above income is alien. I did my first one for Tino DeAngelis of the Soybean oil scam in Bayonne a very long time ago.] Would you rather be employed at $X an hour or unemployed at $X+x% an hour is a question seldom asked of – forgive the euphemism –  inner city youths of limited skills save the desire to work. It should be.

In my other life, I brought 255 out of work coal miners back to work out of a bankruptcy court. 3 days after they went back on the clock they went on strike over a uniform allowance. My mom was right. “Eaten bread is soon forgotten.” I hasten to add that it covers dough kneaded by an invisible hand.

Bill Belicheck says his best pep talk consists of 3 words: “Do your job”. He was updating Alexander Pope who said, ”Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part. There all honor lies.”

For your next plane ride, I suggest “Property and Freedom” by Richard Pipes.

I am in your debt for breakfast for a second time, the first was in South Bend in 1994 and the second was 3 weeks ago.

Kevin Smith

PS – I enclose the web address of my blog-site for your edification and/or enjoyment. I am most proud that a sovereign nation, the Republic of South Africa, banned my writings as “offensive’. Also, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, yes, that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, sent the police to my house because of something that I wrote. One more thing, as Columbo would say. It may be time to bring back defenestration. If there is a window in the Golden Dome lure the football coach to it. Use a 19-year-old football [layer who wants to be insulted on national TV as the bait. When he gets there fling him as violently as possible through it. Gravity will do the rest.

Jimmy just sent me a Facebook entry saying that Seattle’s unemployment rate has declined since its minimum wage was raised. He is too good a friend and host for me to point out the 25-century old Logical fallacy of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. Modern American Liberals constantly and confusingly conflate causation with correlation. If it weren’t for tautologies the poor buggers would never use their brains at all. Also, if $15 an hour is good wouldn’t $26 an hour be better.? Is $38 an hour too much of a stretch? Bernie Sanders, who never earned a paycheck until he was 40, would be able to buy an additional set of drawers, this time silk, so he could fart through them. The next time we get together I will tell you of my Damascus moment in re economics when I was a lay missionary in Mexico