Reply #53: People like this just don't get the reality.

[Mike Niendorff]

What good is a low tax rate when you're back to living in third-world conditions and the only jobs you can find only pay poverty wages?

Progressives *built* the middle class in this country, and people like her are little more than the spoiled grandchildren who think that they're just *entitled* to this great lifestyle they've inherited simply because of their own inherent goodness. The more of the progressive legacy they chop away from under themselves, the more they're in for a very rude awakening. At present, they just don't grasp either the economics or the history involved. They don't appreciate the sacrifices of the generations that went before them that built this nice comfortable middle class lifestyle that they now feel is their birthright. They just don't realize that the laissez-faire system they're being trained to promote *demolishes* the middle class, and with it their own lifestyles. They're so convinced of their own inherent superiority (be it moral, industrious, cultural, or anything else) that they actually believe that they're being *held back* by the very mechanisms that have built and sustained the middle class over three generations in this country.

They also lack any sense of perspective as to what life would be like if they were simply thrown to the wolves of the business community, without the reforms and protections of the progressive era to keep at least some of the natural predation in check. They think it's rough paying $100 in taxes? Try paying $1000 to every wannabe Ken Lay of the world when there's no regulatory agency around to stop them from raping the public at every turn. Try losing 90% of their paycheck because their boss decides that Indonesian wage-scales are lots more profitable than the nice middle class American ones that were built brick-by-brick by a century of organized labor.

Anyone with a sense of historical perspective and a basic understanding of economics can see -- plainly -- how people like this are cutting their own throats. But the right-wing propaganda channels don't talk about it, so the propagandized listeners don't think about it, and the damage continues to grow.

"If only there were no taxes, and no government regulation! If only the Ken Lays of the world were free to do whatever they wanted! Why, we'd all be millionaires by now! Well, except for all those morally inferior progressives, but who cares about them, because they're just holding me back anyway -- after all, I'm superior! Look at the nice middle class family I grew up in! We have values! And culture! And character! Rush said so, so it must be true. So, here's to the death of the New Deal! After all, what does a morally and socially superior middle-class person like me need with the public interest anyway! My own greatness and superiority will lift me up to riches! It's just the natural order of things."

(and so on, and so on, and so on)


MDN