4 ms·
Who exactly is blaming the poor for their poverty?
by thdxr 7y ago
Who exactly is blaming the poor for their poverty?
- noicebrewery 7y agoLibertarians and conservatives, are we pretending otherwise?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 7y agoPlenty of liberals, too. I say that as a liberal.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- m0llusk 7y agoThat is pretty shallow. There is a loud subset of the Libertarian party that mostly focuses on the desire for minimal taxation. There is also a substantial subset of Libertarians who advocate for a Universal Basic Income in order to make society itself more fair. This does not necessarily change the idea that slackers choose and deserve their fate, but merely provides people with more opportunity to live for themselves.
- gurkendoktor 7y agoI've also met pro-establishment "liberals" who look down on poor people as long as they're white. This sentiment started the whole "learn to code" backlash meme on Twitter, although to be fair I've never seen any journalist directly make that suggestion.
- kadendogthing 7y agoYes. Queue inevitable responses that nitpick very small exceptions to the rule, or allude to some higher level ideal while completely ignoring practical reality and voting history of these representatives belonging to either faction/party.
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoHave you read the first paragraph of the linked article?
- tumetab1 7y agoThis article is a political comment so... the author opponents is always the guess.
- m0llusk 7y agoOpponents of aiding the poor in ways that might cost money assert this kind of thing. There are multiple issues woven in here, but one of the most basic is the concept of moral or metric based economics in which money flows toward those who are virtuous and work hard. To tax them or use some of that money is seen as stealing from the virtuous and limiting the total virtue of society. This belief is in stark contrast to the verifiable function of aid as social stimulus. First of all, when the virtuous rich get incrementally more money they tend to save it because they don't really need it. This takes the money out of circulation, at least for a time. On the other hand the poor and middle class tend to immediately spend most of their money on strategic goods like education for their children. This not only puts the money back into circulation but also enables elites to capture a small amount of every transaction. The important thing to take away is that social constructions like money and economies are not inherently connected to morality or reasonable metrics and really need to be thoroughly inspected and managed in order to get results that may correspond to some moral or metric projections.