Discussion for article #222557
This is a straight-up recapitulation of social Darwinism, formulated 130 years ago.
Of course - today’s Republicans deny essentially all science, and evolutionary science most of all, so they cannot use Darwinism as the foundation of their argument - so they cast it in moralistic terms.
If people are poor it is because they are immoral - lazy, wasteful, and willfully refusing to take “personal responsibility and care for their lives”. If you are rich it is because you are bursting with virtues of every sort, and for no other reason.
But back then, as now, it was all just white-wash to justify policies to enthrone the oligarchy of the rich over the economy and society as a whole.
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As Eric Alterman notes in his review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty’s book on the politics of inequality:
"The chances that significant national action will be undertaken to improve the lives of the vast majority of our citizens have fallen to nearly zero, should such action be perceived to conflict with the interests of any subset of the super-rich, regardless of how small their number or how trivial its cost. The ability of money to win what it wants is the defining characteristic of our politics.
[…]
[D]emonstrable bullshit is able to dominate our political discourse and thereby mask all of the above behind ideological assertion and meaningless cliché."
And rest assured that demonstrable bullshit, ideological assertion, and meaningless cliché are more addictive than crack to the villagers.
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It’s a damn shame but the fact is Tillis is appealing to the worse natures of some (not all) North Carolinians by breaking down which group of poors deserves help and which does not. It makes some of those citizens feel secure and righteous that they helped the "right ones."It makes no difference whatsoever that there’s no evidence that there’s a substantial group of poors that are undeserving of help. This is a concept that some people “just know.”
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Poster Boy For The New Politics of Inequality
“Politics of Inequality” presume we are all equal but all equal we are not.
The capitalist version of “Might Makes Right”
By this very thinking, the national IQ dropped significantly in the “Greatest Generation”. Income inequality would have been much greater had not an entire generation of Americans not been such a mediocre bunch that seemed to lack the ability to distinguish themselves in any significant way economically. If it weren’t for the rest of the world economy being in the shambles following the Great Depression and WWII, then the US would have essentially continued to be viewed as a Third World country, or a minor power at best. Assuming, of course, that the increase in income inequality can be tied to actual merit.
“Politics of Inequality” presume we are all equal but all equal we are not.<
True. Some of us are beneath contempt. Tillis, Cantor and you, for instance.
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I beg your pardon?
Poster boy for Neo-Mithraism.
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Tillis knows that NC can’t continue to pay more out in benefits than NC takes in in revenues. A simple math fact that liberals struggle with. Income redistribution is theft! Inequality is a fact of nature, grow up and accept it!
I’m sorry, which Declaration of Independence asserts that?
Oh, never mind. Just more troll drool.
Thillis’ argument is more insidious than just Social Darwinism or the Gospel of Prosperity mythology that financial outcomes are indicators of value. His comments go to a conception of the poor as comprised of the worthy and unworthy, something very common around the time of the Industrial Revolution and a running theme in the works of Dickens, as well as a regular theme of conservative opposition to broad-based welfare programs. The worthy poor - typically defined as those who come closest to the industrialist’s view of a good citizen (ie a compliant factory worker back then, or a Wal-Mart associate today) deserve our help, but the unworthy (basically anyone who is unemployed for any reason) deserve only scorn. As used by Thomas it is classic wedge politics, and as recently as the 90s it worked well enough to drive us as a nation to converting welfare into state bloc grants for programs carrying work requirements that are bad to begin with but that become impossible to meet when the economy craters (as it tends to do when you allow rampant inequality).
This view is particularly nasty in a racially diverse society with persistent poverty associated with race, because it becomes a non-racial justification for majorities to impose policies that have massively disparate impacts on minority populations. They aren’t punishing Latino or African Americans, just the lazy good for nothings who happen to be Latino or African American. It serves exactly the same function as the “racial bribe” of favoring whites over minorities that was at the heart of both slavery and Jim Crow, it just doesn’t overtly say it is about race. Like those policies, it is a divide and conquer strategy no matter how Tillis would rephrase it today - by splitting the poor, their ability to band together to demand change is crushed.
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let me see hmmmmmmmmUI actually helps people and helps the economy by people being able to buy food which helps people have enough energy to go out and find a job tax cuts for the wealthyy dont do that they just go into bank accouints that may be shipped overseas to avoid taxes or be able to have another lexis or trophy wife…he wants to know how to pay for UI hey I got it dont give tax bearks to the wealthy and stop subsidies to big oil gas big agro and for comanies that ship jobs and equipment over seas…hot diggity i think i solved the problem of payin for UI