By Manifesto Joe
This exchange took place on beggarscanbechoosers.com, and I felt compelled to repeat it from the comments section. It was in response to an earlier post here, and there. -- MJ
"The Angry White Male: It's Mostly About Money, But With A Spin"
Anonymous said...
"These are working-class and lower-middle-class guys, age ranging from around 25 to 55, who vote overwhelmingly Republican, against their true economic interests."
Conservatives have an ideology that rises above personal self interest. The voters you are so confused about vote for what they believe is the best for their nation in the long term, not for what they can shake down their neighbors for in the guise of government. You will never understand this because you want what you have not earned. You should be ashamed of yourself. You have a four year degree from a good college (paid for by your neighbors against their will,) you live in the richest country in the world, you have greater opportunity than 99 percent of the population of the planet, and you still whine on and on because someone makes more money than you.
With liberals it is always about the money, isn't it...someone else's money. You are no better than a thief, and you should be ashamed. You have reduced yourself to begging when you could actually be producing something of value and making yourself and your family proud.
It is a little ironic; I surfed into this blog looking for examples of liberals creating examples of class warefare that do not exist, and you actually tagged your blog with that key phrase. Thanks for making it so easy. You will be credited in my essay.
7:46 AM
Manifesto Joe said...
Hi, Anonymous, this is Manifesto Joe:
Your comment would be laughable if it weren't representative of many millions of dupes. I don't know your socio-eocnomic status; maybe I hit too close to home. Let me discuss a few points about income redistribution, which seems to be your main "argument" in rebuttal.
The rich are much, much better at redistributing income (in their direction), and well they should be. They've been at it since antiquity. It's only been the past couple of centuries or so that they've had any serious competition at it.
We'll do this dissection point by point: (1) "Conservatives have an ideology that rises above personal self interest"???? Did you go to college? Maybe you were dozing on the day the economics prof talked about Adam Smith. He's the patron saint of laissez-faire, the bedrock of modern conservative economic thought. He argued that self-interest produces unintended consquences that produce good results for the economy as a whole. I don't always agree, but we'll put that aside for a moment. The point is that this shows a rather gaping hole in your background.
(2) "The voters you are so confused about vote for what they believe is the best for their nation in the long term, not for what they can shake down their neighbors for in the guise of government." This is actually an alarming aspect of this. They voted for a government that started an expensive elective war, so now Halliburton can shake me down for tax money for their no-bid contracts. And it's against my will, neighbor.
(3) "You should be ashamed of yourself. You have a four year degree from a good college (paid for by your neighbors against their will,)"
Your arrogant presumptions aside, let me point out that I repaid my govt. loans to the penny, and that much of the help I got was from academic merit scholarships. The taxpayers were ultimately out very little on me. And since I've made my way into a higher tax bracket over the years than I might have otherwise, the investment likely paid off, and then some. Now I am paying taxes to help some kid who was like I was -- I hope. (After Halliburton takes their cut).
(4) "With liberals it is always about the money, isn't it...someone else's money. You are no better than a thief, and you should be ashamed. You have reduced yourself to begging when you could be producing something of value and making yourself and your family proud."
You are either very disingenuous or very naive. Let me discuss a few points about redistribution of income:
What is the business of lobbyists? They crowd Washington and the state capitols in search of tax shelters, depletion allowances, investment incentives, contracts, etc.
What is the business of tax lawyers? They seldom work for ordinary people. Their main job is to minimize the tax bill for big corporations and wealthy individuals, and they are extremely well-paid. And, when you examine IRS stats, it's clear that they get results.
Among the rich, opportunism is expected. Among the poor, it suddenly becomes an intolerable vice. On occasions when income is redistributed to the poor, fools like you regard it as no better than theft. But when big corporations shake down states and localities for tax abatements, seed grants and the like, a kind of legal bribery, it's called "job creation" and "incentives" and ultimately, "smart business." You people don't get worked up about any of that, it seems, even though it is probably costing many of you a lot. The taxes they don't pay, you and I do.
Your ad hominem attacks (that thar college do come in handy, even fer us po' hillbillies!) I will mostly ignore, but allow one more point. Former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, R of my home state, went to college the same way I did -- on a combination of public assistance, merit scholarships, loans, etc. He spent most of his adult life on the public payroll, first as a state college professor, and then for many years as a legislator. But he saw fit to vote repeatedly to slash funding for the kinds of programs that helped him get his degrees -- it was like, I'm at the top of the ladder now, and so I'm going to pull it up. Describing this as a double standard doesn't remotely do it justice. I'm happy to have any tax money from me go to help some smart, disadvantaged kid, because it's an investment in the future.
What is more than a "little" ironic is that you came here hunting for class "warefare" (is that something like pottery?) and found it. Let me assure you that it is very real, and you'll see more before you will see less.
Credit this in your "essay," please. And I'll leave you with a paraphrased quotation from John Stuart Mill: Not all conservatives are stupid; but most stupid people are conservatives.
If you are one of the disingenuous types who actually have a trust fund, enjoy it. If not, well, have a great time in your fool's paradise.
Postscript: You just gave me one of my next posts for my blog!
12:47 AM
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5 comments:
Good response, Joe, to an ugly, hateful post by a person that didn't have the balls to identify himself. I want to add a couple of things. Anonymous failed to mention that the wealthy contribute to the poverty in this country by outsourcing jobs to countries where wages are minimal, in order to increase their profits. And then they bring their products back to the U.S. and sell them at prices that falsely suggest they have paid American wages. The neocons fight like hell to keep the minimum wage at a level where the poor can barely survive, and then whine because staying alive means using food stamps and government subsidized housing. The middle class carries this country with their taxes since they seldom qualify for tax shelters that the rich take advantage of.
But the insult from Anonymous that really torques me is the remarks about college students who, as he claims, get their education at the expense of the elite.
My son, years ago, did four years of college on scholarships and loans. After he graduated, he spent more years paying off every cent of the money he borrowed to go to school. The only "perk" involved in that was a slightly lower interest rate than he would have had to pay if he had financed his education on regular bank loans.
Higher education is a benefit to this country since it qualifies young people for jobs that pay a living wage, and provides corporations with skilled, intelligent employees. Several years ago my son decided to go back to school and work for his master's degree. Since he also had to hold down a full-time job, he was only able to attend school part time, but this next weekend he will be awarded the degree he has worked so hard to earn. For the next year, he will work at the job he's held down for years in order to repay the student loans that got him through his graduate years. In September 2008 he will begin his Ph.D program, and by 2009 he will have earned his doctorate. His goal is to teach on the University level. His contribution to America will be to educate other young people to a level that will qualify them to also contribute to this nation.
Don't tell me that my kid has been a drain on society. Since he got his under-graduate degree, he has never been without a job, and although his employment has not been in a field he would have preferred, he has gone through several job training programs that have qualified him for management positions, which have, by the way increased his tax bracket much higher than if he'd ended his education with high school.
This anonymous jackass doesn't have a clue. The statement that Republicans vote for what is best for their country is laughable. They have voted in the most reprehensible, dishonest administration this country has ever known, an administration whose only goal is to increase the wealth of the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poor.
Whether Anonymous is part of that greedy , self absorbed group of warmongers is something we don't know, but we do know that he is too stupid to understand that the lies coming out of D.C. since Bush took office are coming from the criminal element in government, and that they impact every American, not just Democrats or liberals. If we're lucky, we'll be rid of them by January 2009 and it won't be too late for a president with the moral fortitude and honesty to correct the damage the Bushies have done.
Hard work deserves reward, and young people who are willing to go through years of working to educate themselves are a huge asset to America. It's for damn sure they contribute more to society than the spoiled brats like George Bush who never had to work for anything in his entire life, and ended up in the White House at the behest of a group of wealthy men whose plans for the future of America was to increase their own wealth and power. They came to power through the ignorance of people like Anonymous. And they'll lose it through the determination of people like you and my son and a hundred others I could name who care more about America than the morons who swallowed the lies; the poor, ignorant people who are so incapable of thinking for themselves that they believe that the escalating cost of living and declining wages of the middle class is somehow a benefit to them.
Sorry for the temper tantrum. On second thought, no, I'm not.
There is an endless amount to be said to such a person -- and so little time. Thanks for your take on it, Cranky. Your son is far more representative of those who get bachelor's degrees with meager public help, and then climb from there, than people like "anonymous" can imagine. I don't like to be mean to people, to call them fools and such, but this kind brings out the closet sadist in me.
I'm reminded of a bumper sticker that an acquaintance put on his car: "Democrats think the glass is half full. Republicans think the glass is theirs."
The GOP claims to be a "fiscally conservative" party. But in reality, they're fiscally reckless and penny-wise and pound-foolish.
They'll spend $2 trillion on the war in Iraq, claiming that it makes America safer in the War on Terror.
But then, these same people will balk about spending a tiny fraction of that to secure America's chemical plants and nuclear facilities (neither of which is any more secure today than before 9/11). They'll also balk about inspecting more of the cargo that enters the U.S. (less than 5 percent of all cargo entering America is inspected).
In Europe, the government pays your tuition if you go to college. They even pay an allowance for you to live on while going to college.
Here in the U.S., millions of Americans don't go to college simply because they can't afford it.
But don't tell that to Republicans like Tom Delay. (Delay once claimed that no adults are working for minimum wage and that the only people with minimum wage jobs are teens, who live with their parents).
That was beautiful Manifesto Joe. I was sipping coffe when I read the quotation from John Stuart Mill: Not all conservatives are stupid; but most stupid people are conservatives." I hadn't heard that before but CAN NOT WAIT to throw that out the next time I hear "Not all Muslim's are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim's" Great work here. I'm so proud of myself for discovering your blog. I'm linking ya man.
...I was sipping coffee when I read the quote and it took me so by surprise I laughed out loud and coffee came out my nose!
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