The Real Problem with ATMs.

First, the credits.

I saw this piece on the American Thinker blog by Clarice Feldman, a frequent contributor there.

She writes, near the end of the piece:

After all, what did we get from the last presidential debates but a president who this week adds to his string of nonsensical pronouncements by saying ATMs are responsible for unemployment.

She in turn then quotes the following from Peter Kirsanow, who writes for National Review Online:

. . . is not so much that they destroy jobs, but that in at least 50 of 57 states you can’t conduct transactions in Austrian, making it difficult to withdraw enough cash to spread the wealth around to Midwesterners, who then become bitter and cling to guns and religion and antipathy toward people who aren’t like your doctor, who you can keep (if you like him) but you probably won’t because for extra cash he unnecessarily performs tonsillectomies and amputates the feet of people from Kansas, where a while back 10,000 were killed by a tornado that also air-raided villages and killed civilians in Afghanistan, from which we need to begin withdrawing troops by July so we can use the funds to save or create jobs for people who don’t use air pressure gauges to keep the tires on their cash-for-clunkers car properly inflated, requiring them to buy more gas than they otherwise would at $3.84 a gallon and thereby reducing their disposable income and causing them not to buy consumer products, resulting in slower GDP growth that can only be jumpstarted by another round of stimulus spending so the economy won’t go into a double-dip recession that would result in layoffs and a higher unemployment rate than we had even after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that everyone knows was George Bush’s fault.

Economics is hard.

 Clarice's last observation, is IMO, is the best:

Certainly, the sort of tough debates we had in 2008  failed to save us from electing someone moronic enough to believe all these untruths.

Since I earn a living fixing the things (ATMs), I certainly can't agree with the statement that they cause unemployment.  Also, dear reader (if any), consider the fact that they have been around for at least 30 years...which makes The One's pronouncement all the more foolhardy.

As I have been repairing ATMs for the last 14 years, I have come to the conclusion that certain people shouldn't be allowed to use them.  The main thesis of Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein is that there should be more than just a warm body requirement for one to exercise the franchise.  Therefore, 2008, IMO, proved to me 3 things:  that Heinlein was right, that certain people shouldn't be allowed to vote, and, that certain people shouldn't be allowed to run for office.