Political Memes

Worse than that, it's the mindset of the short-sighted. These fucking morons wouldn't acknowledge the concept of government spending with a positive ROI even if you waterboarded them with Tang.

They'd rather create a shithole country where they have to cower inside gated communities to protect themselves from the impoverished masses instead of one where everybody is educated and prosperous, even though they themselves would be wealthier in the second case, just because they think everything is a zero-sum game and they can't win unless everybody else loses.

The worst part of their mentality is that their wealth is based on taking advantage of others around them. They and their wealth wouldn't exist if not for the work and effort or coercion or abuse of others around them. They believe that they deserve their wealth because it came to them through their own personal effort alone. It's bad enough that they took advantage of others .... it's far worse to never acknowledge your role in having taken advantage of others.

It's just myopic emotions. "Does this feel good for me right now?" If it's actually good, if it's good long term, if it contradicts a past stance - none of that matters.

In my experience, these personal responsibility types just don't care. The children die, the parents go to jail, and this is justice because the slothful get their just desserts or something.

They fail at empathy as well

This is the "public vs private healthcare" debate all over again. You can draw a diagram with crayons proving without a doubt that free public healthcare is cheaper than having to pay higher premiums because poor people use the ER as their primary care and then skip out on the bills, and they still won't get it, because they've been so propagandized by late-stage Capitalism that they actually believe "what's good for the billionaire is good for me."

I've had these arguments countless times with people. Here's how it goes every single time:

Them: "Why should I have to pay an extra $X a year to provide [SERVICE] for other people?"
Me: "Because the data shows that this will lead to better outcomes overall, which in turn leads to fewer people on public assistance, saving you far more than $X a year, resulting in a net gain on your part. Here's the data, look for yourself."
Them: "Fuck that. I don't want poor people getting free shit!"

As long as half of the working class has billionaire Stockholm syndrome, this will not change.

I always try to remind people of that fact of life

Whenever you see people in need in society .... everyone pays for their misfortune no matter what you do or what you believe

You can be a cold hearted conservative and you'll pay for what happens to these people in the form of higher taxes that go on to pay for increased policing, emergency medical, judiciary, general lawlessness and devaluing of your community as crime increases

You could be a liberal or socially minded and you'll pay for taxes that go on to help these unfortunate people in the form of social programs to try to help or mitigate their lives

However, the long term results of both these mentalities are what make the difference

Cold hearted conservatism to poverty only makes poverty much much worse and eventually leads to a break down of society as people's lives becomes worse and worse and civilization just becomes an expensive police state governed by violence

Socially minded supports foster young people and give them a chance to make a better future for themselves and go on to build a better society. Once you do that for a few generations, the benefits only increase with time not just for the individual but everyone in general.

That is the strange part .... she grew up in the 50/60s in northern Ontario from an immigrant Italian family. They had enough to get by in their childhood but they were on edge of being poor ... like everyone else in northern mining/forestry towns back then.

They were part of the post war boom years where everyone had a chance and the rich were held down with enough taxes to fund everything the government did to build a more equitable country.

They got theirs because they thought that it was all done just through their effort and goodness alone and never acknowledging that it was more social government that made it all possible. Now that all those government supports and checks and balances on the rich are removed, no one has a chance and these old boomers still believe that it's all up to individual effort to get by in life.