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> and punitive is much cheaper for those of us with high moral character. I didn't understand this assertion. Could you expand on it a bit?

• binarysolo 8y ago
  The commenter is just being sarcastic. It's easier to penalize others and self-justify than to care and help others.
  • some1else 8y ago
    https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm :-)
    • imtringued 8y ago
      I propose a technological solution to this problem: HN needs a sarcasm checkbox on each comment.
      • jessaustin 8y ago
        Yes that will really help those of us who can't read English.
• ctack 8y ago
  You could read it as “It’s cheaper for the not poor”. Parent comment mentions that in their country, being poor has come be seen as a choice and the poor as lacking in character. So being not poor means you have high moral character.
• netsharc 8y ago
  I think s/he's being sarcastic about saying that moneyed people have "high moral character". To expand in what was said, when meritocracy teaches you that hard work will always bring success (ignoring luck), then the opposite must be true: if you're poor, it must be because you're lazy. And rich trustfund kids/lucky startup bros need to believe they have moral character instead of just rich parents/luck, so they think they're righteous people when in reality maybe they're dicks.
• logfromblammo 8y ago
  It takes less energy to kick a man that's down, or to step over him, than to hoist him to his feet and keep him standing. I read "high moral character" as sarcastic equivalence to "not poor". I presume that it is very common for people who have never been poor, or even at risk for being poor, to attribute their good fortunes to an imagined causal factor within their own sense of identity, rather than being entirely due to random chance. They reason that they are rich because they are good, and then, though back-formation, also reason that poor people are, if not entirely bad, then at least less good. Thus, "people of low moral character" becomes a euphemism for poor people. It is shot through with fallacies of reasoning and circular argument, but based on the statistics, many rich people didn't get rich by being smart, either. To someone with this type of worldview, poor people deserve to be punished. And since it's less effort than helping them to be less poor anyway, everybody wins. Nobody who deserves wealth has to become less rich in order for other people who don't deserve anything to be less poor. I can't say for certain whether or not this is a real thing, but the hypothesis does fit a lot of observations.
• mynameishere 8y ago
  He's saying that he is unaware of the vast amount of social services available to the poor, and is arguing with a strawman.
  • RHSeeger 8y ago
    The amount of social services available to the poor has no impact on the fact that many people look at (and treat) the poor horribly, and act as if it is their own fault they are poor. Your statement both inaccurate and insulting.