The Forgotten Underclass: The Self-Employed

Yesterday's Fran O'Sullivan column in The Herald argued on behalf of The Forgotten Underclass: The Self-Employed, and it had the arguments to fit the promise. The full heading, which I've rearranged slightly, was 'The forgotten underclass: The self-employed, particularly sole traders, are losers the headlines ignore.'

Please feel free to go read it. It's worth it.

But I note it here not so much to recommend Fran's excellent column. I quote it because it's so close to a rhetorical point that Ayn Rand once made in the title of a speech to a hostile liberal audience: 'America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business.' There too, the promise fit the bill. It begins thus:

If a small group of men were always regarded as guilty, in any clash with any other group, regardless of the issues involved, would you call it persecution? ... If this group had to live under ... special laws, from which all other people were immune, laws which the accuser could interpret in any way he pleased -- would you call that persecution? If this group were penalized, not for its faults, but for its virtues, not for its incompetence, but for its ability, not for its failures, but for its achievements, and the greater the achievement, the greater the penalty -- would you call that persecution? ... That group is the businessmen.

I commend the piece to your attention. You can find it in this book, in between Alan Greenspan's article berating 'Antitrust,' and Rand on 'The Roots of War.'

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