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What percentage of your life have you been being inculcated with the idea that your political opponents believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed million
by cgag 7y ago
What percentage of your life have you been being inculcated with the idea that your political opponents believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
- geofft 7y agoOpponents? My political opponents are actual, non-embarrassed millionaires and billionaires from families of millionaires and billionaires. My political allies are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, from the folks accepting below-market salaries to work at a potential unicorn to the folks buying literal lotto tickets at the corner store. A few of them are no longer temporarily embarrassed, having joined the right startup, which only goes to demonstrate that the worldview is correct. Things worked out for them without unionizing, clearly things will work out for me too one day.
- parineum 7y agoIt sounds like you're counting your opponents as politicians and allies as the people whom you personally associate with politically. If you were referring to only politicians, they're basically all millionaires.
- geofft 7y agoThat seems like a decent definition, if oversimplified. What's wrong with it? (And I think you'll find that I disproportionately support the non-millionare politicians.)
- parineum 7y agoI know people personally on both the right and the left that aren't millionaires but (nearly) all of the public and influential political actors I know are at least millionaires, regardless of affiliation. You're counting your opponents as the second group and your allies as the first group. Someone on your opposing side could make the _exact_ argument by reversing the groups. It's telling that your statement does nothing to show what your actual politics are. The people I support politically are generally wealthy. I am also fairly confident that the ones who aren't probably will be if they are in politics long enough and not necessarily through corrupt means. Anyone of that stature can, at the very least, sell quite a few books on their name alone for instance. It goes hand in hand that influential people can more easily amass wealth.
- geofft 7y agoSure, politicians can become wealthy after holding office. I'm more talking about where people were situated before they entered politics, and in particular the people who are not politicians - donors, influencers (for lack of a better term), etc. And I think my politics are more accurately represented by normal people vs. career politicians than by donkey mascot vs. elephant mascot. I vote Democrat as a matter of lesser-of-two-evils, but I yearn desperately for a world in which no one who's involved in any way with DCCC can have influence in politics ever again. If you find me someone who votes Republican who says the like AOC and hate Trump, I'd probably agree with them on a lot of things.
- parineum 7y agoYour politics are mostly irrelevant although it does help with examples... What you said paints your political allies as people you know personally who are essentially "down on their luck" people who are trying to make it while your political opponents are millionaires the likes of Mitch McConnell or a Lindsay Graham. Someone with the opposite political leanings as you could say that their political allies are the steel workers in Pittsburgh and the auto workers in Detroit who's job were lost to globalization and free trade (and they vote Republican as a lesser of two evils) while their political opponents are millionaires like Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein. You're using two different categories of people as allies and opponents. If you cast your argument using the same categories, it doesn't make sense. Your allies, Pelosi and Feinstein are just as wealthy as your opponents, McConnell and Graham. Or inversely, your allies, the folks buying lotto tickets accepting below market salaries who just haven't joined the right startup are just as poor as your opponents, the factory workers and coal miners who've lost their jobs to globalization and technology. I think you're trying to say your allies are both groups from the second example and your opponents are both groups from the first example but that doesn't really work because you're actively supporting half of each and actively working against the other half. You've chosen a side that you believe will help both sides, even though they are your opponents but I don't think that's a unique position to your side.
- kazen44 7y agois this not just survivorship bias? What about the countless of people who did not make it into a successful startup, or all those people who bought lottery tickets without winning anything? becoming a millionaire is statistically highly unlikely, and why would such an unlikely event warrant anti-union sentiment?
- geofft 7y agoYeah, my point is that this isn't actually a rational way to think. That is what the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" concept is about. For the vast majority of those people, it isn't temporary at all.
- kortilla 7y agoThe “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” is a trope of the left. It constructs a strawman argument of how people on the right think to discount the reasons they actually vote against entitlements and anti-business legislature. I know of nobody on the right that has voted with that mindset.
- bsanr2 7y agoThe only convincing alternative that I've heard from someone in that world is that conservatives are so afraid of getting screwed over by the rich and powerful that they'll do whatever they can to placate them while scraping to themselves what they need to survive. A, "Pray I don't alter it any further," situation. Of course, this "TEM" thing is partly a face-saving move for our white, right neighbors by progressives who don't want to point to the racism/classism and a willingness to accept Pyhric victories that really drives a lot of anti-union sentiment. Why, not wanting the "undeserving" to receive undo benefits is the crux of several arguments on this very page.
- kortilla 7y agoNo offense, but you’ve clearly never talked to a conservative to ask them why they support policies good for business. It has nothing to do with being afraid of rich people.
- ajross 7y agoThat's a Steinbeck quote[1]. It's surely being used, just as it was originally, as a fun way to describe the somewhat banal point that people in demographics relevant to organized labor often hold opinions about public policy that are contrary to their personal interest. It's not a literal statement about what's in a republican voter's head. That said: how many posters here consider themselves just One Great Idea away from being the next Zuckerberg, and thus tend to view discussions on, I dunno, work/life balance or engineers' unions from an employer's perspective instead of their own? Seems like more than a few to me. [1] OK, I checked wikipedia, turns out that the original phrase was "temporarily embarrassed capitalists", but this is the variant that stuck.
- dx87 7y agoThat quote isn't being used how it was originally intended. It's referring to capitalists that fell on hard times, so they started supporting communism because they believed that they'd have everything they need. They're called "temporarily embarassed capitalists" because they only support communism if it benefits them and they don't have to work hard for it, not because they actually believe in it.
- cgag 7y agoI know, that it's a well known quote is essentially my point. They frame their personal politics as some well-earned enlightenment, far from the ignorant anti-union baseline, while quoting a Nobel prize winning author whose works most people are forced to read as teenagers.