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One can understand much of the US’s politics through the lens that fully 50% of the country sees themselves as, if not small-business owners, then having small-
by derefr 5y ago
One can understand much of the US’s politics through the lens that fully 50% of the country sees themselves as, if not small-business owners, then having small-business ownership in their career trajectory.
As such, fully 50% of the country thinks that any measure that prevents them from being fully competitive in the worker-exploitation race-to-the-bottom that is business in most commodity markets (such as minimum wages, unions, more than 2wks mandatory vacation, etc.), will mean that they’ll fail to launch that phase of their career, and have to go back to flipping burgers.
Of course, 50% of Americans will never be small business owners. It is thought by some that large corporations push this vision as propaganda, because voters who think of themselves as small business owners, vote for things that end up benefitting these large business owners.
- sam0x17 5y agoThough you do get into this weird territory where the side that hates unions also loves police unions and coal mining unions. I've seen people have a full-blown existential meltdown when you point out that their favorite police union is in fact a union in the yay socialism sense. "No that can't be, that's different...." etc.
- derefr 5y agoI don’t think it’s so strange: these people (the temporarily-embarrassed capital class, one could call them) are against unions they could see themselves managing. Not one of them wants to run a coal mine; that’s something that moustache-twirling aristocrats do, not decent bourgeoisie like themselves. And government unions aren’t a concern to them either, because this type of person also could never imagine themselves working for the government. (Few seem to have the inferential capacity to realize that they are nevertheless a shareholder of their government, and a marginal dollar saved in taxes is the same as a marginal dollar gained in dividends. One might in fact call taxes a dividend that’s usually net-negative.)
- fundad 5y agoThe temporarily-embarrassed capital class can rest assured their negative dividend will reliably go toward state violence. The police unions hold a special place because of what is known as Police Nationalism. For those people police determine that others need policing can can't imagine being on the receiving end of it. Would people object to prosecuting the Jan 6 perpetrators unless they feel police shouldn't be interfering in right wing attacks?