During an interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton earlier this week, Ivanka Trump was asked about the Green New Deal. Hilton said to Ivanka, “You’ve got people who will see that offer from the Democrats, from the progressive Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Here’s the Green New Deal, here’s the guarantee of a job,’ and think, ‘yeah, that’s what I want, it’s that simple.’ What do you say to those people?”
Ivanka responded, “I don’t think most Americans, in their hearts, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get. So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want.”
She added, “They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where there’s the potential for upward mobility.”
The First Daughter’s expressed sentiments are certainly commendable from the standpoint of morality, limited government, and economic principles.
But is true that most Americans do not want to be given something?
Predictably, Trump opponents on the Left seized upon her remarks as an opportunity to cast her as out-of-touch, at best, and heartless, at worst. Trevor Noah of The Daily Show, for example, said her remarks were hypocritical, coming from an heir to her father’s wealth. Noah is of the current crop of “comedians” whose act is devoid of anything funny, but filled with anti-conservative and profanity-laced “jokes.”
He showed his audience a clip of the interview, then said, “Ivanka Trump says the thing she’s learned in life is that people want to work for what they get? Really? The woman whose resume just says, ‘Daddy, I need a job now.’ Really? That woman?”
Noah wasn’t finished: “And, for the record, I’m gonna call BS on this.” Using a profanity, he said that people love getting free stuff. “Have you ever been to a basketball game when they bring out the T-shirt cannon? Parents will trample their own kids for a free shirt that they will never wear, all right?”
He added that rich people like free handouts, too, recalling how wealthy millionaires “rushed to the table” at the recent Academy Awards to pick up free stuff. One could add other examples to Noah’s contention — such as wealthy professional sports team owners demanding that cities build them free stadiums, or other corporations insisting they receive “incentives” not enjoyed by small businesses, in order to relocate to a particular city or state.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an avowed democratic socialist, also took umbrage at Ivanka’s assertion. “As a person who actually worked for tips and hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it second-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live,” she tweeted on Tuesday. “A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right.”
After the media reported that she was in opposition to the minimum wage, Ivanka denied it. “I support a minimum wage. I do not however believe in a minimum for people ‘unwilling to work’ which was the question asked of me.”
The truth is that, despite her optimistic statement, “I don’t think most Americans, in their hearts, want to be given something,” Ivanka Trump herself is willing to have the government force business to pay its employees a certain wage, in this case, the minimum wage. If the minimum wage is the market wage, then no one is being given anything. But if the wage is higher than what a worker could get in a free market arrangement, then, yes, the employee is being “given something.”
For that matter, Ivanka Trump is among those who have publicly advocated giving hundreds of thousands of Americans paid family leave, arguing at the Republican National Convention, and since, that it is “essential and long overdue.” I was a delegate at the Cleveland convention, and as a I sat among the crowd, I was disheartened that I did not see anyone around me disturbed by her remarks — which seemed more appropriate at the other party’s convention. In fact, a century ago, the only place that a person could have made a speech like that, and be taken seriously, would have been at a meeting for a party such as the Socialist Party.
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, is supportive of her plan to have the government force businesses to give their employees paid family leave, saying the government needed to “help working families.” Actually, the money will come from other “working families,” as is the case with all such government programs. Where else would it come from? The tooth fairy?
Even the supposedly conservative National Review backs paid family leave, even publishing an article recently that concluded, “Washington [the taxpayers] needs to help lighten their overburdensome loads so they can do some of their most important work as the incubator of all the virtues we need for a reawakening of hope.”
It is another example of what liberal Republican Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania said back during the days of the Nixon Administration — the conservatives get the rhetoric, but the liberals get the action.
Photo: AP Images
