That Elusive Fairness

TW: The bloviation emanating from DC relative to the auto "bailout" has been as usual truly inspirational. And it is all about "fairness"...right...not so much.

From Gail Collins at NYT:
"...let’s turn our attention to the U.S. Senate where a plan to bail out the auto industry went down the drain Thursday night. It was a stopgap measure, not necessarily the best bill in the world — although it did pass my own personal quality-control test, which is to find out what Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama thinks and go the other way[TW: EX-F'ing-ACTLY].

“We’re going to have riots. There are already people rioting because they’re losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out,” said Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

Some Democrats denounced the bill because they said that it was unfair that the union workers were getting dumped on while a lot of the Wall Street fat cats got to keep their golden parachutes. Republicans complained that it was unfair that General Motors paid its workers more than Toyota or Honda does. Many senators took the DeMint line and wanted to know what made the autoworkers’ jobs more important than the home builders or waitresses who were getting laid off, too...Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri threatened to vote against the bill because somebody had stuck in a provision giving federal judges a cost-of-living raise while other Americans were going without Christmas presents...

If you took the long view of the pay raise for judges, you’d have to say that: 1) they deserve it; 2) now isn’t the best time; and 3) making a statement on the timing is not quite as important as saving several hundred thousand auto-related jobs...

It’s just too easy for lawmakers to dodge the tough vote by reminding their constituents that somebody else is getting more breaks than they are.
Which somebody always is. If Senator DeMint’s constituents are going to riot over a bailout for the auto industry, they’ll wind up being met by tool-and-die makers waving torches and yelling about soybean subsidies. If the lawmakers from Alabama say their constituents do not want their tax money going to bail out Michigan, the people in Michigan are going to say that they never really enjoyed paying more taxes to the federal government than their state received in aid, while Alabama got a return of $1.61 on the dollar. And anytime a representative from the Great Plains opens his mouth, the people from New York are going to point out that while every state gets the same number of senators, there are more people waiting for a subway in Brooklyn in rush hour than inhabit all of Wyoming.

We can really get tiresome on the subject. You don’t want to go there.

Any mammal can obsess about fairness. (Did I mention how ticked off monkeys get if they find out they’re getting cucumbers while somebody in the next cage has a grape?) The real human trick is to get past the quid pro quo and try to focus on the common good..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/opinion/13collins.html?_r=1