8 ms·

Why Do People Who Need Help from the Government Hate It So Much?

52 points by helloworld 10y ago

dkarapetyan 10y ago
“‘Let me give you a lesson in practical politics.’ Senator Burt looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. ‘It is a mistake,’ he said, ‘to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. ‘Now then, young man, don’t ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.’ Lamont said, ‘There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can’t play with it. We must stop it.’ ‘Ah, and you suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping.’ ‘We must.’ ‘In that case, you will need hard and fast proof you are right.’ ‘The best proof,’ Lamont said stiffly, ‘is to have the Sun explode.'” There is always a tension between short term gains and long term planning. I think history, economics, psychology, behavioral economics all pretty much agree that most people are terrible at long term planning and they will consistently sacrifice long term gains for short term gains in exchange for a much worse future for all involved. I'm not as optimistic as the author of that book. I don't think there is a way to crack this nut and get long term thinking to be the norm. When even people who have cancer because of the kind of environment they live in are voting to weaken the power of the EPA what hope is there?
- visarga 10y ago
  Progress comes from technology, not politics. We evolved despite our political mess, not the other way around.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  For those not familiar with it, the above quote is from "The Gods Themselves" by Isaac Asimov--a very good science fiction novel.
- bostik 10y ago
  I recognise that excerpt. The Gods Themselves, by Asimov. Of his works that I've read, "optimistic" is not the word I would associate with this particular book. It is cynical from the outset, with even the prologue making a point that scientific progress is mostly achieved out of spite. As for the solution to the problem in the book ... IIRC it happens mostly by accident. The underlying tone in the story is that despite the importance of scientific advances, the driving force is always that of a personal vendetta. After all, in the story Lamont spends his career seeking revenge, trying to find a way to shoot the messenger of the uninformed and dangerous view. Optimistic? I prefer jaded. EDIT: originally I remembered it was a Heinlein book. Changed to Asimov.
helthanatos 10y ago
I'm writing a paper about optimal government reach. Any tips?
- withdavidli 10y ago
  you need to define optimal. does it result in highest gdp relative to <x>, highest gdp growth relative to <x>, happiest citizenship, lowest incarceration rate, highest incarceration rate, lowest recidivism rate of criminals, best education, least amount of divorce, etc. good luck on the paper. things are simple on an individual level and complex when looked at as a whole (think economics / behavior / incentives).
  - visarga 10y ago
    Such an interesting topic to meditate on. It is at the same time deeply pragmatic and philosophical. In order to find the most important criteria, we have to know what is the purpose of life.
  - MarkMc 10y ago
    No metric is perfect, but "highest growth in real median income over the long term" seems like a pretty good approximation.
- ghufran_syed 10y ago
  Read "Policy Paradox" by Deborah Stone. She gives a great example, where she describes bringing in a cake to class for her students to share - all would no doubt agree that the distribution of cake should be 'fair'...but that means many different things to different people. Equal amount per student present ('unfair' to absent students)? Equal amount per student enrolled ('unfair' to those who made the effort to come vs those who didn't). Amount of cake proportional to body mass (unfair to small students)? Amount proportional to grade? Amount proportional to degree of historic injustice to a minority? And so on. The point of course being, there is no such thing as 'fair', only that policy makers (and the voters who vote for them) need to balance benefits and harms to different groups, and make a set of choices that have the most benefit and least harm, according to some set of priorities. I think it's unhelpful when the implicit criticism of the "people who need help" is that they are too stupid or too evil to know what's good for them. We might want to at least explore the possibility that they value the freedom they feel they might lose from increased welfare above the purely monetary benefits they might gain.
dotcoma 10y ago
Before even reading the article (Hey, I'm a real blogger!): Perhaps because they (rightly or not) feel they have been pushed to the borders of society and rendered unable to provide for themselves and their families by government policies, such as for example free trade agreements that have destroyed factory jobs (for example in the Rust Belt in the US and in areas of the UK that voted in favour of Brexit). How did I do?
- OJFord 10y ago
  I don't think anybody voted to leave the EU to end free trade in the UK. Trade can be freer without the EU - no slow central bureau deciding with whom we are free to trade. No central price setting. No obligation for HM Government to open tender for public projects to foreign companies - which may seem protectionist, but it's not free trade unless you're free to choose as you please.
  - visarga 10y ago
    Free trade agreements are negotiations where the countries involved make concessions in order to balance out their exchanges. When UK will go out in the world to make FTAs, it will have to make a lot of concessions, probably more than those that were previously with EU. Having to negotiate with so many countries at once will put UK in a weaker position and get worse terms than normal.
- vacri 10y ago
  If there was no government, there'd be nothing to assign protective tariffs in the first place, and the market would be even 'freer'. As it stands the government still limits transactions to some extent (eg: embargos on hostile nations) (of course, if there were no government, there wouldn't even be global trade in the first place, but I'm just talking about trade deals here)
  - stretchwithme 10y ago
    people traded before governments and international borders existed. But, yes, certainly harder to have property without governments protecting property rights.
mullen 10y ago
Look, these people have missed out. No one cheated them, they are stuck in a time that says if you are white and not a complete idiot, you can get a factory job and make a good living. But those days are over and being white is no longer the only requirement to living a good life. They look around and no longer see a world where they are naturally at the top and they start to blame others.
- hackits 10y ago
  Bit on the racist side there mullen.
  - vacri 10y ago
    It's a rephrase of the content in the article.
- xupybd 10y ago
  It seems that white privilege is drying up correct, nothing wrong with that. But at the same time white people are villainized by some in the left for that very privilege. Your race shouldn't matter full stop.
leurfete 10y ago
I come from the heart of tea-party country. My impression is that people believe government handouts destroy any illusion that one might have of self-sufficiency and instill a sense of helplessness. There could be some merit to this idea. [1] It's one reason I'm skeptical of basic income. Burying money and putting people to work "mining" it, as Keynes once suggested, might even be a better alternative. [2] :] 1.) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2202/1944-2858.1158/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2202/1944-2858.1158/ab... 2.) http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quote_657c http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quot...
- visarga 10y ago
  I agree with you. UBI will be hated by people because it is a forced equalizer and removes agency from their hands. UBI depends on tax collection, but state is corruptible and companies are greedy. This puts people in a bad position, but, if you think about it, companies are going to be in a weird position too - when people are moneyless, who's going to buy their products? Is it sane to tax companies, give free money to people in order to buy products from said companies? The solution should include breaking automation monopolies and empowering people. Instead of UBI, what we need is to spread the use of automation and AI technologies in all parts of society, with the aim of achieving self sufficiency on a country, region and community level. Research in self sufficiency should also include solar energy, water filtration, sustainable agriculture and 3D-printing - all that is required to live off-grid. I envision co-ops formed of a few thousand people, farming land, making houses, offering education and health services for its members. If we're not going to get jobs, we need to own and rely on automation instead.
  - chrischen 10y ago
    Isn't the whole point of UBI is to smooth out and provide a safety net for those displaced by advancing technology?
    - visarga 10y ago
      But in order to happen, it requires the cooperation of the state and companies. In the past, people had work. Each person was inextricably linked to his/her work power. In order for companies to function, they simply had to pay people to work, there was no other way around it. But after automation, most people will have nothing to offer any more. So people lose their self reliance ability and become dependent upon the state, at the mercy of political and economic games. A horror scenario I imagine is if the state does give UBI, but it is too small. It would feel like communism in the Eastern Europe where everyone had a "job" (mostly posing to work) and everyone got a salary, but it wasn't much. The joke going around was "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us!" What can people do if the UBI is too small? Start a revolution? I'd bet on self-reliance as a much more stable solution. Instead of collecting tax in a big pot and then doling UBI to everyone, self reliance splits the single point of failure, and allows more experimentation and ingenuity at grassroot level.
vacri 10y ago
How about: In the US where there are effectively only two parties, people don't feel like the choices on offer suit their desires? 310M people and only two parties for general elections? After all, the 'liberal' party in the US would be considered 'far conservative, but not extreme' in other western democracies. Not a lot of choice there.
- evgen 10y ago
  If you think there are only two parties then your observational skills are lacking. There are multiple factions within the parties that are ascendant/declining due to support on specific issues and the candidates of these factions compete among each other for the party nomination at all levels of government. This is why third-parties in the US are only found at the extremes and tend to burn-out quickly, the factions and interest groups which have a nominal chance of actually governing are within one of the two major parties. Free-trade proponents in the Republican party get trade deals done, Libertarian party voters whine from the sidelines. Environmentalists within the Democratic party pass pollution control laws, Green party voters speak earnestly to each other about how more should be done.
  - millstone 10y ago
    Right! The two major parties in the USA are quite flexible. We saw this when Bill Clinton broke from 70s era liberalism (i.e. "Third Way"), we saw it with the Hillary-Sanders struggle, and we're seeing it now with Trump, who has quite a different platform from Bush or even Romney. What would be a minority party run elsewhere can be accommodated by the major parties in the USA. This is a strength of American politics, not a weakness.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Oh, cool! So, how do I vote for a green-faction president? How do I vote for a federal republican faction that won't bloc-vote to strangle legislation? You know, for those conservatives out there who want actual conservative governance, not fearmongering?
    - 10y ago
gorpomon 10y ago
I was listening to Dan Savage today, and he mentioned that the racism of Trump is nothing new, we did it with Catholics, Irish, Chinese, Italians, it seems most every nationality got it's brief turn as the "other". His point was that the right will eventually look back with shame on this moment too, when they demonized Mexicans and innocent refugees from Syria. His point reinforced sort of the opposite in me, something else that I have been feeling for a long time: we need to understand that many people, now and in the future will have significant problems with immigration. Whether it's right, wrong or just illogical, we on the left do ourselves no favor by writing off their feelings as racism and not at least attempting to address them. Furthermore, this is a democracy, where they should have their viewpoint at least somewhat addressed, they certainly have the numbers to warrant it. It doesn't mean we buckle to racism, but it means we accept that wariness and fear of immigration is something that has existed in this world for a long time, and these sentiments are tied to real feelings people have to feel secure. True, the real solutions to these insecurities are based on education and economic growth, not limiting immigration, but perhaps it's time we on the left said loudly "We hear you, and we understand."
- buss 10y ago
  > but perhaps it's time we on the left said loudly "We hear you, and we understand." Yes! A friend of mine was expressing exactly this sentiment to me the other day. One good result of this election is that it's made me aware of the sense of unhappiness and despair that a large portion of the country has; a portion of the country that I never think about or really ever sympathize with. These people have real grievances with the system that didn't help them, but those grievances are being overshadowed by their overtly racist and xenophobic solutions. Everyone should take this away from this election: lots of people are unhappy for legitimate reasons and we need real solutions to help them, or the racist solutions will have a strong appeal.
  - gohrt 10y ago
    Marco Rubio tried that, everyone mocked him.
  - donw 10y ago
saosebastiao 10y ago
The most cynical government haters I know fall into two categories: they either receive handouts from the government, or they receive paychecks via the government. It turns out that in order to benefit from the government, you have to deal with it a lot. We should learn to accept that they can see problems with something that they ultimately benefit from. And such critics might actually offer some very important criticism that tends to go unheard because we're too busy making fun of their "stupidity".
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  This makes sense. Going to the DMV makes me strongly want to privatize the entire operation.
  - evgen 10y ago
    And then dealing with a large private entity that has a major public-facing requirement like Comcast makes you want to nationalize the entire operation again. Round and round we go...
    - someguydave 10y ago
      Umm, a company like Costco has a large public facing requirement and is great. You do realize that Comcast has been effectively been granted government status through its various federal and state grants of monopoly over cable infrastructure?
      - evgen 10y ago
        Costco gets to pick and choose who its customers are, Comcast and others really do not have that option. Neither does the government. There is a big difference.
        someguydave 10y ago
        Comcast can ban your account and refuse to do business with you.
gok 10y ago
The leading assumption of this book review (and many articles like it) is that it's hypocritical for poor people to both accept government assistance and be in favor of reducing it in general. What a crock of shit. Notice we never see headlines asking… - Why Do Tech Workers Who Need Software Patents Hate Them So Much? - Why Do Billionaires Who Need Tax Breaks Hate Them So Much? - Why Do Tenants Who Need Rent Control Hate It So Much? …because it goes without saying that those people are smart enough to vote outside of their short term economic interest. Anyone accepting a food stamp, though, how dare they vote for anything except more food stamps!? I consider myself pretty progressive, but come on. How would you feel about being told you "need" any law which happens to benefit your bottom line and being treated like an idiot for opposing it?
- someguydave 10y ago
  Your point is well taken. But how can the state redistribute wealth to the needy without paternalism?
  - ivcha 10y ago
    This is arguably one of the main points of UBI, which should, by construction, solve paternalism. One of the main points is changing people's view on income.
rdtsc 10y ago
There is soup of things there, but at the very bottom is really the fact that those in power always manipulate those are not to fight amongst themselves so they don't interfere with the dealings upstairs. For example people are told to the hate mythical welfare single mom queen, because she is going to drive up in her Lexus and steal all the benefits. Not to say that there aren't real issues, there are, but they are mixed in with racial rhetoric, hate for other groups, corporatist agenda and a heavy sprinkling of American Civil Religion and you get "Take your government out of my Medicare!" craziness. Sometimes I like to imagine ridiculous scenarios -- in this case I imagine that Tea party is supported and funded by ultra-liberals, because crazies like birthers and so on are really effective at demolishing the conservative agenda by making them look insane and unstable by association. To be fair, I also like to imagine that say some liberals are hidden ultra-conservatives and so they promote a steady stream of refugees to Western Europe. And there is no better way to turn people to nationalism and conservatism today that than. So in my imaginary scenario each side is actually a false flag operation for the other side.
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
Why do slaves who are dependent on their masters hate them so much?
SaasDeveloper1 10y ago
The answer is pretty simple. Most tea party members as well as most libertarians simply want the federal govt. to do what it was designed to do; no more and no less. They understand what happens when it gets too big and too powerful. It's what our Founders understood and the reason we have state legislatures and municipal govts..

52 points by helloworld 10y ago

“‘Let me give you a lesson in practical politics.’ Senator Burt looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. ‘It is a mistake,’ he said, ‘to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. ‘Now then, young man, don’t ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.’ Lamont said, ‘There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can’t play with it. We must stop it.’ ‘Ah, and you suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping.’ ‘We must.’ ‘In that case, you will need hard and fast proof you are right.’ ‘The best proof,’ Lamont said stiffly, ‘is to have the Sun explode.'” There is always a tension between short term gains and long term planning. I think history, economics, psychology, behavioral economics all pretty much agree that most people are terrible at long term planning and they will consistently sacrifice long term gains for short term gains in exchange for a much worse future for all involved. I'm not as optimistic as the author of that book. I don't think there is a way to crack this nut and get long term thinking to be the norm. When even people who have cancer because of the kind of environment they live in are voting to weaken the power of the EPA what hope is there?

visarga 10y ago
Progress comes from technology, not politics. We evolved despite our political mess, not the other way around.
snowwrestler 10y ago
For those not familiar with it, the above quote is from "The Gods Themselves" by Isaac Asimov--a very good science fiction novel.
bostik 10y ago
I recognise that excerpt. The Gods Themselves, by Asimov. Of his works that I've read, "optimistic" is not the word I would associate with this particular book. It is cynical from the outset, with even the prologue making a point that scientific progress is mostly achieved out of spite. As for the solution to the problem in the book ... IIRC it happens mostly by accident. The underlying tone in the story is that despite the importance of scientific advances, the driving force is always that of a personal vendetta. After all, in the story Lamont spends his career seeking revenge, trying to find a way to shoot the messenger of the uninformed and dangerous view. Optimistic? I prefer jaded. EDIT: originally I remembered it was a Heinlein book. Changed to Asimov.

helthanatos 10y ago

I'm writing a paper about optimal government reach. Any tips?

withdavidli 10y ago
you need to define optimal. does it result in highest gdp relative to <x>, highest gdp growth relative to <x>, happiest citizenship, lowest incarceration rate, highest incarceration rate, lowest recidivism rate of criminals, best education, least amount of divorce, etc. good luck on the paper. things are simple on an individual level and complex when looked at as a whole (think economics / behavior / incentives).
- visarga 10y ago
  Such an interesting topic to meditate on. It is at the same time deeply pragmatic and philosophical. In order to find the most important criteria, we have to know what is the purpose of life.
- MarkMc 10y ago
  No metric is perfect, but "highest growth in real median income over the long term" seems like a pretty good approximation.
ghufran_syed 10y ago
Read "Policy Paradox" by Deborah Stone. She gives a great example, where she describes bringing in a cake to class for her students to share - all would no doubt agree that the distribution of cake should be 'fair'...but that means many different things to different people. Equal amount per student present ('unfair' to absent students)? Equal amount per student enrolled ('unfair' to those who made the effort to come vs those who didn't). Amount of cake proportional to body mass (unfair to small students)? Amount proportional to grade? Amount proportional to degree of historic injustice to a minority? And so on. The point of course being, there is no such thing as 'fair', only that policy makers (and the voters who vote for them) need to balance benefits and harms to different groups, and make a set of choices that have the most benefit and least harm, according to some set of priorities. I think it's unhelpful when the implicit criticism of the "people who need help" is that they are too stupid or too evil to know what's good for them. We might want to at least explore the possibility that they value the freedom they feel they might lose from increased welfare above the purely monetary benefits they might gain.

dotcoma 10y ago

Before even reading the article (Hey, I'm a real blogger!): Perhaps because they (rightly or not) feel they have been pushed to the borders of society and rendered unable to provide for themselves and their families by government policies, such as for example free trade agreements that have destroyed factory jobs (for example in the Rust Belt in the US and in areas of the UK that voted in favour of Brexit). How did I do?

OJFord 10y ago
I don't think anybody voted to leave the EU to end free trade in the UK. Trade can be freer without the EU - no slow central bureau deciding with whom we are free to trade. No central price setting. No obligation for HM Government to open tender for public projects to foreign companies - which may seem protectionist, but it's not free trade unless you're free to choose as you please.
- visarga 10y ago
  Free trade agreements are negotiations where the countries involved make concessions in order to balance out their exchanges. When UK will go out in the world to make FTAs, it will have to make a lot of concessions, probably more than those that were previously with EU. Having to negotiate with so many countries at once will put UK in a weaker position and get worse terms than normal.
vacri 10y ago
If there was no government, there'd be nothing to assign protective tariffs in the first place, and the market would be even 'freer'. As it stands the government still limits transactions to some extent (eg: embargos on hostile nations) (of course, if there were no government, there wouldn't even be global trade in the first place, but I'm just talking about trade deals here)
- stretchwithme 10y ago
  people traded before governments and international borders existed. But, yes, certainly harder to have property without governments protecting property rights.

mullen 10y ago

Look, these people have missed out. No one cheated them, they are stuck in a time that says if you are white and not a complete idiot, you can get a factory job and make a good living. But those days are over and being white is no longer the only requirement to living a good life. They look around and no longer see a world where they are naturally at the top and they start to blame others.

hackits 10y ago
Bit on the racist side there mullen.
- vacri 10y ago
  It's a rephrase of the content in the article.
xupybd 10y ago
It seems that white privilege is drying up correct, nothing wrong with that. But at the same time white people are villainized by some in the left for that very privilege. Your race shouldn't matter full stop.

leurfete 10y ago

I come from the heart of tea-party country. My impression is that people believe government handouts destroy any illusion that one might have of self-sufficiency and instill a sense of helplessness. There could be some merit to this idea. [1] It's one reason I'm skeptical of basic income. Burying money and putting people to work "mining" it, as Keynes once suggested, might even be a better alternative. [2] :] 1.) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2202/1944-2858.1158/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2202/1944-2858.1158/ab... 2.) http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quote_657c http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quot...

visarga 10y ago
I agree with you. UBI will be hated by people because it is a forced equalizer and removes agency from their hands. UBI depends on tax collection, but state is corruptible and companies are greedy. This puts people in a bad position, but, if you think about it, companies are going to be in a weird position too - when people are moneyless, who's going to buy their products? Is it sane to tax companies, give free money to people in order to buy products from said companies? The solution should include breaking automation monopolies and empowering people. Instead of UBI, what we need is to spread the use of automation and AI technologies in all parts of society, with the aim of achieving self sufficiency on a country, region and community level. Research in self sufficiency should also include solar energy, water filtration, sustainable agriculture and 3D-printing - all that is required to live off-grid. I envision co-ops formed of a few thousand people, farming land, making houses, offering education and health services for its members. If we're not going to get jobs, we need to own and rely on automation instead.
- chrischen 10y ago
  Isn't the whole point of UBI is to smooth out and provide a safety net for those displaced by advancing technology?
  - visarga 10y ago
    But in order to happen, it requires the cooperation of the state and companies. In the past, people had work. Each person was inextricably linked to his/her work power. In order for companies to function, they simply had to pay people to work, there was no other way around it. But after automation, most people will have nothing to offer any more. So people lose their self reliance ability and become dependent upon the state, at the mercy of political and economic games. A horror scenario I imagine is if the state does give UBI, but it is too small. It would feel like communism in the Eastern Europe where everyone had a "job" (mostly posing to work) and everyone got a salary, but it wasn't much. The joke going around was "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us!" What can people do if the UBI is too small? Start a revolution? I'd bet on self-reliance as a much more stable solution. Instead of collecting tax in a big pot and then doling UBI to everyone, self reliance splits the single point of failure, and allows more experimentation and ingenuity at grassroot level.

vacri 10y ago

How about: In the US where there are effectively only two parties, people don't feel like the choices on offer suit their desires? 310M people and only two parties for general elections? After all, the 'liberal' party in the US would be considered 'far conservative, but not extreme' in other western democracies. Not a lot of choice there.

evgen 10y ago
If you think there are only two parties then your observational skills are lacking. There are multiple factions within the parties that are ascendant/declining due to support on specific issues and the candidates of these factions compete among each other for the party nomination at all levels of government. This is why third-parties in the US are only found at the extremes and tend to burn-out quickly, the factions and interest groups which have a nominal chance of actually governing are within one of the two major parties. Free-trade proponents in the Republican party get trade deals done, Libertarian party voters whine from the sidelines. Environmentalists within the Democratic party pass pollution control laws, Green party voters speak earnestly to each other about how more should be done.
- millstone 10y ago
  Right! The two major parties in the USA are quite flexible. We saw this when Bill Clinton broke from 70s era liberalism (i.e. "Third Way"), we saw it with the Hillary-Sanders struggle, and we're seeing it now with Trump, who has quite a different platform from Bush or even Romney. What would be a minority party run elsewhere can be accommodated by the major parties in the USA. This is a strength of American politics, not a weakness.
- vacri 10y ago
  Oh, cool! So, how do I vote for a green-faction president? How do I vote for a federal republican faction that won't bloc-vote to strangle legislation? You know, for those conservatives out there who want actual conservative governance, not fearmongering?
  - 10y ago

gorpomon 10y ago

I was listening to Dan Savage today, and he mentioned that the racism of Trump is nothing new, we did it with Catholics, Irish, Chinese, Italians, it seems most every nationality got it's brief turn as the "other". His point was that the right will eventually look back with shame on this moment too, when they demonized Mexicans and innocent refugees from Syria. His point reinforced sort of the opposite in me, something else that I have been feeling for a long time: we need to understand that many people, now and in the future will have significant problems with immigration. Whether it's right, wrong or just illogical, we on the left do ourselves no favor by writing off their feelings as racism and not at least attempting to address them. Furthermore, this is a democracy, where they should have their viewpoint at least somewhat addressed, they certainly have the numbers to warrant it. It doesn't mean we buckle to racism, but it means we accept that wariness and fear of immigration is something that has existed in this world for a long time, and these sentiments are tied to real feelings people have to feel secure. True, the real solutions to these insecurities are based on education and economic growth, not limiting immigration, but perhaps it's time we on the left said loudly "We hear you, and we understand."

buss 10y ago
> but perhaps it's time we on the left said loudly "We hear you, and we understand." Yes! A friend of mine was expressing exactly this sentiment to me the other day. One good result of this election is that it's made me aware of the sense of unhappiness and despair that a large portion of the country has; a portion of the country that I never think about or really ever sympathize with. These people have real grievances with the system that didn't help them, but those grievances are being overshadowed by their overtly racist and xenophobic solutions. Everyone should take this away from this election: lots of people are unhappy for legitimate reasons and we need real solutions to help them, or the racist solutions will have a strong appeal.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Marco Rubio tried that, everyone mocked him.
- donw 10y ago

saosebastiao 10y ago

The most cynical government haters I know fall into two categories: they either receive handouts from the government, or they receive paychecks via the government. It turns out that in order to benefit from the government, you have to deal with it a lot. We should learn to accept that they can see problems with something that they ultimately benefit from. And such critics might actually offer some very important criticism that tends to go unheard because we're too busy making fun of their "stupidity".

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
This makes sense. Going to the DMV makes me strongly want to privatize the entire operation.
- evgen 10y ago
  And then dealing with a large private entity that has a major public-facing requirement like Comcast makes you want to nationalize the entire operation again. Round and round we go...
  - someguydave 10y ago
    Umm, a company like Costco has a large public facing requirement and is great. You do realize that Comcast has been effectively been granted government status through its various federal and state grants of monopoly over cable infrastructure?
    - evgen 10y ago
      Costco gets to pick and choose who its customers are, Comcast and others really do not have that option. Neither does the government. There is a big difference.
      - someguydave 10y ago
        Comcast can ban your account and refuse to do business with you.

gok 10y ago

The leading assumption of this book review (and many articles like it) is that it's hypocritical for poor people to both accept government assistance and be in favor of reducing it in general. What a crock of shit. Notice we never see headlines asking… - Why Do Tech Workers Who Need Software Patents Hate Them So Much? - Why Do Billionaires Who Need Tax Breaks Hate Them So Much? - Why Do Tenants Who Need Rent Control Hate It So Much? …because it goes without saying that those people are smart enough to vote outside of their short term economic interest. Anyone accepting a food stamp, though, how dare they vote for anything except more food stamps!? I consider myself pretty progressive, but come on. How would you feel about being told you "need" any law which happens to benefit your bottom line and being treated like an idiot for opposing it?

someguydave 10y ago
Your point is well taken. But how can the state redistribute wealth to the needy without paternalism?
- ivcha 10y ago
  This is arguably one of the main points of UBI, which should, by construction, solve paternalism. One of the main points is changing people's view on income.

rdtsc 10y ago

There is soup of things there, but at the very bottom is really the fact that those in power always manipulate those are not to fight amongst themselves so they don't interfere with the dealings upstairs. For example people are told to the hate mythical welfare single mom queen, because she is going to drive up in her Lexus and steal all the benefits. Not to say that there aren't real issues, there are, but they are mixed in with racial rhetoric, hate for other groups, corporatist agenda and a heavy sprinkling of American Civil Religion and you get "Take your government out of my Medicare!" craziness. Sometimes I like to imagine ridiculous scenarios -- in this case I imagine that Tea party is supported and funded by ultra-liberals, because crazies like birthers and so on are really effective at demolishing the conservative agenda by making them look insane and unstable by association. To be fair, I also like to imagine that say some liberals are hidden ultra-conservatives and so they promote a steady stream of refugees to Western Europe. And there is no better way to turn people to nationalism and conservatism today that than. So in my imaginary scenario each side is actually a false flag operation for the other side.

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

Why do slaves who are dependent on their masters hate them so much?

SaasDeveloper1 10y ago

The answer is pretty simple. Most tea party members as well as most libertarians simply want the federal govt. to do what it was designed to do; no more and no less. They understand what happens when it gets too big and too powerful. It's what our Founders understood and the reason we have state legislatures and municipal govts..