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income inequality debate

Anything below all is a massive failure in a country as wealthy as ours
 
wsc8521s said:
Anything below all is a massive failure in a country as wealthy as ours
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"hard working" is subjective as hell. Typically for conservatives, "hard working" just means financially successful, or any manual laborer they see outdoors sweating.

Not to mention how fucking dehumanizing it is for a person to believe they should decide who suffers and dies based on a classist (often racist) critique of their life. When I see a panhandler on the street I don't think about downeastdeac and whether or not he would consider that person "hardworking". I don't see a fucking fucking dead dog on the road and wonder whether it was a "good boy".
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
"hard working" is subjective as hell. Typically for conservatives, "hard working" just means financially successful, or any manual laborer they see outdoors sweating.

Not to mention how fucking dehumanizing it is for a person to believe they should decide who suffers and dies based on a classist (often racist) critique of their life. When I see a panhandler on the street I don't think about downeastdeac and whether or not he would consider that person "hardworking". I don't see a fucking fucking dead dog on the road and wonder whether it was a "good boy".
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Don't know what a panhandler has to do with this, b/c obviously unless he's a scam artist he doesn't have the ability to be a "hard worker". He deserves our sympathy and concern, and regardless of the circumstances that prevents him from being a "hard worker" I'm all in favor of a safety net, which most likely is provided for by taxes from those of us who do have the privilege of being able to work hard and provide for our own needs. And yes, this country needs to do a lot more to look out for those folks.
 
We used to understand the safety net as people pay into it with their tax dollars when they’re working and use the safety net when they fall on hard times.

Thanks to income inequality we think of a permanent group of haves funding a safety net for a permanent group of have nots.
 
DownEastDeac said:
Don't know what a panhandler has to do with this, b/c obviously unless he's a scam artist he doesn't have the ability to be a "hard worker". He deserves our sympathy and concern, and regardless of the circumstances that prevents him from being a "hard worker" I'm all in favor of a safety net, which most likely is provided for by taxes from those of us who do have the privilege of being able to work hard and provide for our own needs. And yes, this country needs to do a lot more to look out for those folks.
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If you weren't bisecting our populace into hardworkers vs not hardworkers, then why would you be measuring the health of our economy based on how "hardworkers" are doing? Rather than go round with you about that, ill say this

1. Many "hardworkers" are not doing well. They are struggling to survive in debt and poverty with low wages, abusive work condition, and no alternatives.

2. People you don't consider "hardworking" still deserve human dignity, and their conditions are a drag on our society as a whole, no matter that we might believe they deserve those conditions.
 
It is a condition of capitalism that our society determines human value based on an individuals relationship with capital, just as in another thread where catamount attempted to dismiss my political argument simply by demeaning my previous job with T-Mobile. As if retail employees can't hold valid political opinions. When we dehumanize the poor, "lazy", working class, we lose the motivation to help them and seek equality for all.
 
palmab03 said:
ITT: People posting at work about hard workers
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I didn’t give this enough props last week. Nice work, Palma. This board is a bunch of folks who can post at work talking about hard working Americans who don’t work on a computer or with the luxury to use their phone but make a whole lot less.

Lots of good pieces out there explaining how inequality contributes to the low birth rate.
 
PhDeac said:
I didn’t give this enough props last week. Nice work, Palma. This board is a bunch of folks who can post at work talking about hard working Americans who don’t work on a computer or with the luxury to use their phone but make a whole lot less.

Lots of good pieces out there explaining how inequality contributes to the low birth rate.
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I thought Palma was trolling. Phone use at work is kind of an arbitrary distinction in regards to "hard work", and even that is a pointless distinction only meant for means testing. Do you really want conservatives or anyone else dividing people based on who works "hard"? And for the millionth damn time, you don't have to be poor or be a manual laborer to have an empathetic perspective about poor peoples needs.
 
Sitting around at some finincial firm gambling over peoples money on derivatives and taking huge fees sure as fuck isn’t hard work I know that.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
I thought Palma was trolling. Phone use at work is kind of an arbitrary distinction in regards to "hard work", and even that is a pointless distinction only meant for means testing. Do you really want conservatives or anyone else dividing people based on who works "hard"? And for the millionth damn time, you don't have to be poor or be a manual laborer to have an empathetic perspective about poor peoples needs.
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He was trolling but there’s truth in his joke. A lot of us have the luxury to follow the news and talk about it during work. Many hard working American don’t and it’s fine to admit that. I wouldn’t dare claim that I work harder than the average teacher.
 
PhDeac said:
He was trolling but there’s truth in his joke. A lot of us have the luxury to follow the news and talk about it during work. Many hard working American don’t and it’s fine to admit that. I wouldn’t dare claim that I work harder than the average teacher.
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On a personal level I agree, some people work harder than others, some people have harder jobs than others, but in regards to discussing policy, we shouldn't even consider the distinction. The only purpose in discussing it politically is so that fiscal conservatives can pare down assistance funding based on who's most deserving (in their opinion).
 
Let’s pare down assistance to banks based on how little work they do, eh? Lord knows they are the beneficiaries plenty of government assistance.
 
The Strange Failure of the Educated Elite

David Brooks (NYT).

Best to read there and to read through the comments.

His too brief missive seems to me to not exactly miss the mark invariably, but doesn’t exactly hit it either. Still...enough pointing in the right direction, or at least tangentially some of the time, to be worth considering, IMO.

I’ve said for a long time we need a renewed civic education. This piece hits on that theme.

It’s hard to read and get past the inclination to point the finger largely at the failings of Pubs. Fair enough.

Harder still to figure a constructive way forward.

Doesn’t exactly go on this thread, but close enough—and I don’t think worth a new thread.
 
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