He delivers a righteous rant on the absurd way that most Americans have this incredibly unrealistic sense of optimism about their future economic prospects and thus actually support the things that keep them poor, breed income inequality, and feed the greed of the rich. He notes how American politicians, including president Obama shy away from the idea that they are promoting class warfare. I personally am in favor of it and promote it every chance I get.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Yeah, it’s funny how the Republicans always trot out the Horatio Alger-style pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps meme to prove how America is the Bestest! Country! Evar! and then fight so hard for the “right” to inherit wealth.
How about confiscatory inheritance taxes to address inequality of wealth? The right talks all the time about how giving poor people money they haven”t earned destroys their character. The same must be true of rich kids. We must do more to protect the character of rich kids.
BTW, it slows or stops the development of a hereditary ruling class.
1. The War of the rich against everyone else started about the time the USA was formed.
2. You are in the Class War whether you like it or not just by being in the USA.
3. The 1% have been winning since the 1970’s. It never ends though, so that is subject to change.
PS Social mobility has been decreasing in the USA for a long time. And of course, it is lowest in the South. Not surprising. Whateve the social problem, it is always worse in the South.
On class warfare, one reason why poor, uneducated rural whites can’t suck up to the upper classes enough is that they’ve proven incredibly easy to exploit through race-baiting. When you hear any call for increased taxes on ‘the wealthy’ some dirt poor rural white person imagines that it means that “blah people” will get some $. Some are even foolish enough to believe their poverty wages will be taxed to finance Cadillac driving ‘welfare queens.’
With government aid, I can’t imagine how these people see a racial aspect to it, given that so many of them get it, but then again, I don’t know if some of them can do the math well enough to figure it out.
Propaganda works!!!
I was at a dinner party sitting next to a “conservative” who was telling me about how he didn’t want his hard-earned tax money going to someone who didn’t earn it -- like a welfare mother with kids out of wedlock yadda yadda yadda. So I asked him if he was planning on leaving his money to his kids? “Of course!” But, says I, “they didn’t earn it.”