Let em eat cake

They can't provide jobs or a way to make a living, but the French government will provide a place to fritter away the unemployment time.

A second Louvre museum is to be built in northern France in order to display some of the gallery's vast collection of unseen treasures and to improve access to the nation's cultural heritage in one of its most run-down regions.

It sounds purely frivilous, but this "Let em eat cake" attitude is shared by liberals and socialists worldwide.

Whether building sports stadiums in the slum cities of the U.S. where unemployment is chronic or erecting grandiose art projects half a block from rat-infested inner city housing and even grander government buildings, or funding multi-billion dollar Olympic facilities that are never used again in countries where lack of jobs is the norm, it's far easier to provide distractions than work and far easier than luring businesses where they might provide jobs and security for a permanent underclass.

This liberal/socialist (libsoc for short) policy looks, at face, to be a way to divert taxpayer money. When you think of it, though, it's really just a clever way to keep a permanent underclass unemployed and resentful, payoff campaign donors or potential donors, endear politicians to unions, especially construction unions, and relocate sizable elite libsoc voters to the urban core where their votes are needed. Hence, rock and roll museums in Cleveland, Ohio and Liverpool, England, and multiple multi-million dollar sports facilities in cities where there is a ten-year waiting list for pothole repair (Los Angeles.)

There are probably dozens and dozens of more examples but don't expect the Los Angeles Times to investigate anytime soon.