Could this have been said any better?

[SHRED]

To the point regarding "trickle-down" economics.
Good job!
:applause:

The real triumph of conservatism is solidly implanting in the minds of some middle class and lower class people that "every penny that goes into the pockets of billionaires and corporations creates jobs!!!"
What nonsense. Statistically, rich people are far more likely to put disposable income into savings — like Swiss bank accounts. What does go to investments is just as likely to be spent building factories in China that exports American jobs.
Winning over the trailer park people of Kansas and getting them to vote against their own economic interests is a real triumph of propaganda; supported of course by gay-bashing preachers and abortion fanaticism.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=189235845

[Canuckistanian]

1. Says it all

K&R

[lunatica]

2. Yeah, if they create jobs it's on the cheap in third world countries

So no one benefits but them anyway.

[dkf]

3. Well look at your job.

Could you be doing it if someone hadn't put in capital into putting together a company?

If you are self employed and haven't used any bank loans you can make the argument that you didn't need some investors funding. For anyone who is part of a traded firm, we did need someone with capital.

[Warpy]

6. Would that person have put capital into the company

if there hadn't been poor people standing around with money in their pockets, waiting for what that company would produce?

No rich man ever handed out a job unless there were a lot of poor men able to buy what the job produced.

[dkf]

7. Poor people with money in their pockets.

Not quite so poor then.

[Warpy]

8. Excuse me?

Republicans always miss the point.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. +1

[progressoid]

9. I'm trying to think of all the businesses I do work for that needed capital from billionaires

to succeed.

None of them got any funding from the likes of Bill Gates or the Walton family.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservativatives Won the Heart of America

was written in 2004. Thomas Frank knew this back then.
Most of the Dems have done nothing to counteract this in the intervening years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F

<snip>

Frank also claims a bitter divide between 'moderate' and 'conservative' Kansas Republicans (whom he labels "Mods" and "Cons") as an archetype for the future of politics in America, in which fiscal conservatism becomes the universal norm and political war is waged over a handful of hot-button cultural issues.

Not long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers - when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists' furthest imaginings -- when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work -- you could be damned sure about what would follow.

Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower.

(Frank, T. 2004 "What's the Matter with Kansas?", pp. 67-68)


<snip>

[sasha031]

5. K/R, that says it all