For me it was when he just said out loud that he didn’t want more efficient government, he wanted less government. That efficient government had more public support so was harder to cut. That convo was actually a watershed moment for me. It was the first time I actually understood what modern conservatives wanted. Until then I actually bought into the ‘contracting out service delivery makes things better’ rhetoric. That private industry could deliver the same outcome faster/cheaper so you got more bang for your buck. At that time the evidence was starting to pile up that the opposite was true. But I still bought into the Econ 101 shit Paladin is currently spouting so I was confused. But once Paladin helped me realize that it wasn’t just the wealth extraction from the lower and middle classes that the rich loved but that the inefficiency of privatization was a feature not a bug that it all made sense. Probably one of the most important things I have learned from WF.
Fine, but don't shit on the guy who worked to better himself but had the ladder greased and was twelve rungs down before he even started. You say you're in the top 10% of earners. In the US, that's a $158k salary minimum. And you're STILL driving a 10-year old car (assuming you didn't BS a little and are choosing to own a classic). If hard work paid off, folks working two jobs would be doing better than just making rent and bills each month.
Maybe if your thinking tops off at "hard work" being only menial labor. Part of the work is setting goals and planning towards them with the most efficient use of your labors, making practical use of your earnings and deferring any short-term gratification that might undermine it. Yes, that includes having unprotected sex and making babies. This should be in your thoughts from the day you earn your first paycheck, and part of your upbringing from the day you speak your first words. Hard work does pay off, but you can't just mindlessly turn that metaphorical wheel all day and expect the machine to spit out boxes of "prosperity and happiness" as a commodity at the other end. If you're looking for guarantees, you're looking to be parented, and that only happens at the expense of individual agency.
You left out the "unfair" part. That is also "common sensical." Life is unfair, but that does not automatically sort everyone into "victim" or "oppressor" buckets. Being smarter, stronger, faster, these things also confer an advantage, but that doesn't mean the "advantaged" owe you so much as the acknowledgement of that fact.
Lick those boots. Lick 'em hard, lick 'em long, lick 'em wet. Maybe someday, a prize will pop out. Like cow shit in the treads. Yum yum (I'm SO aware that UA has me on ignore, but don't ruin my fun)
Straw man. Talk with anyone who doesn't simply reject the idea of privilege out of hand, and they'll say that privilege is not a binary state and the world is not starkly divided into "victim" and "oppressor" buckets. I didn't come into life with a trust fund and the ability to not care if I always had a job, but it's undeniable that part of the reason I've done well in school and life, and have had the luxury of being able to prioritize fulfilling jobs over immediately lucrative or extremely stable ones, is that my grandfather had a good government job that allowed him to invest well, my parents are married and there was always somebody at home when I got home from school, both of my parents were college-educated and would have been comfortable navigating academia even if my father were not also an M.Ed., and if I did wind up unemployed, they wouldn't have been able to subsidize my life without missing a beat, but I never would have ended up destitute because moving home and living rent-free for a few years would always have been an option.
The system will never be fair. Some people will be smarter than you, some will be harder-working, some will have better intuition, some will be just plain luckier. And, yes, some will have started with more advantages than you or have connections that opened doors for them that would never open for you. But you play the hand you're dealt as well as you can play it. If you're near the bottom rung, your concern shouldn't be how much better off the guy who went to Harvard Law is, it should be about getting another $1/hour.
Trouble is, the guy who went to Harvard Law controls much of the societal narrative, and can spend lots and lots of money to make sure the guy near the bottom rung spends most of his time resenting the guy below him. Fighting jealously over the crumbs at the bottom of the cookie jar and ignoring the guy who snarfed up everything else.
Paladin's inability to recognize his own privilege and inability to recognize the cycle that traps people in the underclass no matter how good their decisions are reminds me of the Chinese adage that "Fish aren't aware of water." The very definition of living in a bubble on the order of Mitt Romney suggesting that all anyone needs to do to start a business is borrow $50,000 from their parents.
Then you have absolutely no right to complain when they beat you down and take your shit. After all, you should have never expected fair. And when you understand THAT, you understand conservatives. They don't want systems that help everyone. They want unfair, where they see themselves as the victors and everyone else as the victims. So they'll break the government, they'll throw away democracy, they will pretend to virtue while stabbing anyone in the back they can get away with. They want their guns and they absolutely will do anything to any group that organizes political power, because that is the only thing that truly terrifies them. That someone might force fair. And that means they are in for a world of shit.
If you're convinced that poor people are poor because of bad character, bad decisions or are just the unfortunate by-product of the best of all economic systems nothing will convince you otherwise.
People are poor for lots of reasons. But whether by bad luck or bad decisions, they still face this dilemma: are they going to look for ways to escape it or not? I don't claim there's any guarantee of escape or that everyone can, but I can guarantee that everyone who doesn't try probably won't.
well, that's progress... although you still seem to be insinuating that they haven't been trying as hard as they are able with what few (if any) resources they have all along.
And yet you buy a gun every month. Not out of need, but out of spite. It's just a stunt to prove a point...to thumb your nose at the state you CHOSE to live in. At least that's what it seems to me. Correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, that just seems fucking crazy to me. To me, that's money that could go into savings/investments/the house we've going to build. That's where all my extra money goes (not to play one upmanship, but I'm gonna anyway...our cars are over 15 years old and apparently their warranty is about to expire ).
While I comically suggest it's out of spite, it is not. I do choose to live here for a variety of reasons (my work is here, my family is here, my friends are here, etc.). I hope to leave eventually, perhaps when/if I retire. It could and it probably should (and eventually will). But there are things I wanted my whole life that I couldn't have until now, so I'm indulging. I also have a ridiculous physical media movie collection and, as said earlier, I like to go on a nice vacation every year. Guns, movies, trips, and food...these are where my discretionary income largely goes. I'm 52, it's not like I've got that many more years to really enjoy life. I'm still (relatively) healthy, but this can change rapidly. In your case, you're married so you have different considerations than I do.
If hard work had a better chance of paying off do you think that encourages or discourages people to try working hard?
Oh yeah, I forgot that classic, that a more expensive and less efficient private healthcare system would still be better than a cheaper and more efficient public one because otherwise people might realise it could work.
Pacing myself. If we agree that certain people are generally going to have an advantage over people who don't have those traits, and it looks like we do, then we can move on to what might constitute "fair" or "unfair" in this context and why it matters. Yes, it's probably a truism that life is often unfair by whatever definition one wants to employ of that word. But there is no inherent need for life to be unfair overall, or at least, as unfair as it is. A society in which there was more active effort to create equal opportunity would still likely result in differing outcomes. But at least it would involve more people having a fair shot, as opposed to the current set up, where some people literally do start off on third base, and others don't even get a chance to step to the plate. For the context of this discussion, I would submit that when we are talking about "unfair advantage" we are talking about advantages that are essentially unearned rewards for being born in a certain class/demographic and that it takes no real effort to maintain. Tom Brady (or really any NFL player) is inherently a better football player than any normal person, in part because of genetics. But he/they also work extremely hard on a number of fronts to be better than the average person certainly and in an attempt to even be better than the average NFL player. Tom continues to enjoy a number of advantages that even the average NFL player might not get to know. He's had great coaches and has been surrounded with great players and his entire career, the league loves him and gives him latitude that maybe other players might not get both on your average calls. But at the end of the day, he does a lot to take his good situation and make the most of it. Would he have had his Hall of Fame career if he had been traded to, say, the Jets or some mediocre franchise early on? Who can say? But at least we can point to various things he has done to say he has earned his future HOF position. Fitting in with what the overall society expects and is geared to means a lot of advantages, entirely unearned. I don't have to do anything to benefit from being straight and male. The world is geared to straights and males, by and large. Being straight and male means that there's a bunch of things I don't have to worry about, that I get subconscious and conscious confidence boosts from a world that says "It's cool to be straight and male." And it's very rare that the world sends messages saying it is uncool to be either of those things. I don't have to experience, or even spend mental energy worrying about experiencing, being called names based on my gender or sexual preference, being passed over or discriminated at work because of those things, being subjected to physical attacks or other crimes because of those things, etc. Does that make me an oppressor? I would say no. What might make me an oppressor is if I didn't acknowledge that there was this generalized advantage that I am under, and disadvantage that women or LGBTQ people might and often do find themselves under. What might make me an oppressor is if I basically were to endorse that setup as part of the way of the world rather than something that can and should be changed more than it is. What people might "owe" others is another discussion that is full of subjectivity. At the end of the day, one could very well argue that no one owes anything to anybody. Another way of seeing things would be that there is some debt to acknowledge reality, and if the reality is that demographics/class do convey unearned advantages, and again, I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that they do not, then there seems to me to be an obligation to concede that point is reality. What one does from there is largely up to them. Taking the attitude of "Fuck you, got mine" is one option. So is working to break down the breadth or depth of unearned advantages. So is not taking any action, or handwringing about these disadvantages or any number of other things.
The fact that the system will not be 100 percent fair does not mean that it cannot or should not be substantially fairer than it is. It would hypothetically be possible to greatly diminish, if not end, the notion that being born poor, minority, female, and/or queer means that you are at a significant disadvantage over people who are not those things. But ideologies that say such things as "oh well, life just isn't fair" or focusing on the notion that individuals can succeed even against a backdrop in which it should be expected that they fail are probably going to get in the way of trying to forge a more equitable society.
"I have an advantage over him!" (which in my case is basic, but secure housing and a modest income) "So how can you help?". I'm not sure being better than anyone really enters into "the idea". The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. — Samuel Johnson.
My "rob a casino or become a Republican Senator" post wasn't frivolous. Conservatives count scams and crimes as "finding a way" and "working hard". They'll never say it out loud, you have to read between the lines.
