Reply #11: It's partly exalting the idea of "risk" that's to blame

[starroute]

Risk-takers are valuable to a society. They're the people who are willing to gamble on starting new businesses, pulling up stakes and moving out to the frontier, doing things a little differently without any assurance it will work.

But not all of us are risk-takers. Most people would be happy to live in the same place throughout their lives, work at the same job, and enjoy the company of family and friends without ever cutting loose. And having extra risk piled on them willy-nilly doesn't turn them into daring entrepreneurs. It just makes their lives miserable.

The Republicans act as though a high-risk society is a more creative and innovative society, but it isn't. Even the natural risk-takers may hesitate, if leaving a job to launch their own business means losing health insurance or running up credit card debts that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy if the business fails. The kinds of risks that have been added to our society act as negative incentives, causing people to sit tight and stay with what they've got instead of taking chances on something new.

Since it goes against their own professed goals of encouraging innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit, we have to ask why the Republicans would be so in favor of loading us all up with risk to the current devastating extent. And the answer -- as suggested by the OP -- is that it removes those risks from the corporations and transfers them to ordinary citizens.

Perhaps the Republican Party is a lost cause, as many here seem to believe. But if there is any chance of redeeming the remaining sane Republicans and fiscal moderates, it may lie in pointing out that there is a vast chasm between encouraging individual enterprise and supporting the interests of the corporations -- and that they can't do both at once. I know the GOP as an institution has become accustomed to winning elections by rolling in corporate cash and is never likely to change its ways, but disaffected GOP voters might just be susceptible to a different message.