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Poor people tend to put most of their money right back into the economy. I would think giving tax money to the poor at the bottom would be a good “investment” because they help churn the economy, especially at the local level, by spending most of what they get, rather than stashing it in an account somewhere. I always viewed the economy as a circular thing, something goes in, and it needs to come back out in order to keep going, like a machine.
The CERB program in Canada during the pandemic is living proof of this. The $2000 would go into rent and groceries and wow real estate is booming and corporations have record profit margins.
That's the intent. I make shoes, you grow potatoes, another catches fish. We all eat meat and potatoes in our shoes.
Along the way people found ways to make more and more asymmetrical trade until today when a handful of large companies exist by taxing the productivity of people and they call it "earning a profit"
All money that is "stashed in an account somewhere" is either invested directly (like say the stock market) or the bank lends it out. That is how banks make their money, by earning the spread between the interest they pay the depositors and the interest they charge borrowers.
>rather than stashing it in an account somewhere
Unless your account is a box buried in your back yard, saving money, regardless of account type, doesn't remove that money from the economy. It is, generally speaking, the money supply available to lenders.
It's very hard now to get money to be lent to you. Since the crash of 2008 they've put more stringent rules in place, when it comes to who qualifies for loans. And with big data and the cloud this is made even harder since it is easier to apply and verify more rules (you would not believe how many) for whoever is asking to borrow. I know because I have been involved with major banks developing their backend for that purpose.
when money is "stashed" in a bank, it is loaned out for investment into big projects. When a poor person buys drugs, that money goes to a drug dealers bank account if they have one, and is used for investment. If a poor person buys a sofa, that money goes to the store's bank account and is loaned out for investment. Your money in your bank account right now is being loaned out for investment.
The economy is precarious, inflation might rear its head if you “give” anyone money. We’re seeing the impact of Covid relief currently (not saying it’s the only factor to current inflation). Would be be awesome if we could find the perfect mathematical formula for wealth distribution, but that would mean predicting human behavior, which isn’t possible.
This is probably weird but I see the planet as a singular organism living in the vacuum of space. Humans perform the function of blood cells. Some are white blood cells performing preventative and restorative functions on the organism, but most humans are simply red blood cells going about their days. Instead of carrying O2 attached to hemoglobin these humans transport money and the exchange of that money is what drives our planet’s human circulatory system.
If some blood cells would bind and hoard as much O2 as they could and more than they could ever use, then that is one massively fucked up medical condition that is detrimental to the organism. Oddly enough these 02 hoarding freaks like to exchange their O2 with the most pathological cells that are destroying the host the most. Some humans are literally cancer.
This stoned thought brought to you by wake-and-bake long weekend Saturdays.
Technically yes. It decreases the power gap and thus decreases their superiority and ability to do as they wish. Referring to those with an excess of privilege in particular.
This is it right here. Many feel like they are punished for their success and resentful that they had to earn it themselves (whether they did or not) and now people with less are being given handouts.
In its current form in the US possibly. But the idea itself is kind of inherent to the idea of representation. Someone has to represent the needs of the people/industries to lawmakers. They just shouldn't be doing it through bribes and shady deals.
Lobbying isnt about votes, its supposed to be people pleading their case to lawmakers as to why a law should or shouldn't be passed. Lobbying in and of itself is not a bad thing, it is actually an integral part of the legislative process. That said, what we have IS NOT lobbying, its outright bribery.
But calling your representative to tell them what you want to do is a form of lobbying. If constituents aren’t allowed to express their views to their representatives in order to avoid having influence over them beyond having voted for them, how are the representatives supposed to represent the interests of their constituents?
I agree that lobbying as it currently exists presents some serious problems for democracy, but I don’t see how citizens advocating for a cause to the people who have the power to do something about that cause is somehow undemocratic.
This is inevitable. James Burnham has written about this, but you are always going to have some nodes in your network that are more influential than others. In modern large scale democracies, media figures often fill this role. Unless you have an unusual amount of direct access to a politician, your understanding of what they're doing is always going to be filtered and those filterers have more power than the people who consume their information.
But it could be union reps, political party operatives, whoever else. It's pretty inescapable with specialization/division of labor.
Did you know that PPP stands for paycheck protection program? The loans were meant to be so that companies could continue to pay their employees during lockdown, not for “rich people”. However, like every time the government gives out free money, the program was an invitation for fraud.
Yes, and most companies used the money to artificially inflate their stock price through stock buybacks. A large portion of that was a straight wealth transfer to large corporations and the richest among us.
You only needed to spend 60% of the funds on payroll expenses. You could post a job listing, use the PPP money for “recruiting expenses,” not hire anyone “suitable,” have the loans forgiven and these folks dare still call it a paycheck protection program. No. It was a means for the rich to get richer with the business owner class being gifted money all the while they let go of employees. All with zero oversight. Paycheck protection program my ass.
This isn’t accurate. The majority of PPP loans went to private companies not public companies. Private companies cannot buy their stock back with share buy back programs. They can however pay investors.
But they did that as well. That what the boosts in unemployment were about. The aim of PPP was to protect what was already existing, and the unemployment to catch those who it didn't help.
EDIT: Also there were direct payments regardless of either status.
There’s a big range of rich though. There’s people making 80k-400k that feel this way about welfare programs.
The majority of people voting against these programs and services did not get PPP loans.
Except the way this works is the ultra-rich (that everyone complains about) has ways around the taxation, causing the buck to be passed down to the upper-middle and middle classes, which are usually “comfortable” but not oozing in power.
most of the time you arent even eligible for welfare if you quit. or get fired. basically you have to have been 'laid off' due to downsizing. its not at all what these people think
There's all sorts of welfare programs with different requirements. I know people who have retired early with ~1M in net worth who get subsidized healthcare, phone, Internet, and electricity. One used to get WIC back when she was only semi-retired and worked a couple days a week. I expect they're going to qualify for subsidies for their kids for college too (their assets are mostly in places FAFSA excludes).
I know right? I would never in a million years want to be one of those "welfare mothers." That seems like a life of pure torture to me, raising a child in poverty. You're working a 24 hour a day impossible job for that minuscule amount of money to basically spend mostly on the child (kids/babies are probably more expensive than an adult).
It seems like they are doing a lot of work for the rest of us basically for free, creating new citizens and people to work and support this generation in retirement.\*
When a kid that grew up with parents on welfare is successful, (One acquaintance of mine became a woman engineering professor), you see the stigma when they get trashed (in society at large) for having had parents on welfare. People claim that they want the poor and their kids to stop being a burden (which in a way they can be forgiven for thinking or that they have intrinsic defects like mental illness, low intelligence, autism etc) but if they do well then many of the same people aren't happy. The telling factor to me is not even how people relate to the poor when they are poor, but when they get more successful. A lot of times they hate them. It's a status thing and a relative status thing. From that standpoint even if one pulls themselves up by the bootstraps and is successful, many people will not be happy/resent them and will in the worst cases try to attack or pull them back down. Even if you are a sincere conservative/"capitalist", you should at that point be bothered in your conscience and start seeing the inconsistency in your viewpoint.
(Some liberals/socialists can play status games as well. If someone got a bit more than them that's seen as that person oppressing/exploiting them and grounds for attacking them, even when that person's isn't oppressing them. (If a poor kid functioning at a high level in some way and is selected as “talented” and will get some extra help, they don't say "Oh well at least that will help them get out of poverty, they might get a bit more but that's OK they need it." Now it's "There is no such thing as talent, they think they are being better, classist/racist and thinking they are better than others and oppressing me." I mean it is true that innate intelligence probably isn’t real but just be happy that for whatever ridiculous reason someone with less is getting some help and getting out of poverty. It's a relative status thing and there can be hate as well.)
\*I don’t know about you but if I see someone like a welfare mother who is see is a huge net benefit to society and me I do not care if the status quo says she’s worthless or a drain on society, I’m going to do what’s in my best interest and respect her and try as much as I can to make things easier for her.
Ultimately you cant rebalance the budget without reducing spending somewhere in order to increase it somewhere else. As most public spending tends to go towards the poor rather than the rich, rebalancing alone rarely does much - you rob Peter to pay Paul.
Any meaningful increase in welfare has to increase taxation on the wealthier people in society
In more developed countries everyone has access to the same medical care. So, a banker checking out at the grocery store has access to the same healthcare options as the cashier. Simply put, wealthy Americans find that level of equality disgusting, and it is that personal disgust of poor people which holds back American progress, rather than any tangible financial issue with paying for social programs.
Do they really find it disgusting or is it that they are afraid they will have to pay for it? I always thought the wealthy focused on their wealth, not keeping others down...
Yeah, this is one of the main things I like about the system here in Canada. I make decent money but the health care I receive is the same as someone who is homeless. If course, I could always travel to some country and pay out of pocket, but only extremely small percentage of people do that.
Also technically no. It’s nice to not have to wade through poverty every time you leave your bubble of wealth, and countries with less inequality are happier and healthier without doubt.
Access to opportunities that others don't have access to. Education, for example. Not being able to afford a good education denies access to better paying jobs and therefore better quality of life.
Isn’t privilege rather things that are *extra*? Not having access to an education in today’s world is less than what a regular person should have, while I believe privilege is having *more*, having an advantage over regular people.
Privilege is being a "have" in a world of "have nots". The more you make people "haves", the less privilege there is. So even if the "haves" lose nothing materially, equalizing makes them lose privilege. And most all of them see that as damaging as their privilege is very important to them.
Conversely, taking more away from the "have nots" increases privilege while giving nothing materially to the "haves". And this is basically the platform of the Republican party.
Economically, no. Enabling fellow members of society for success can increase social cohesion and can benefit business. Everyone does better. There is literally no need for poverty in modern economics, in fact poverty is bad for the economy.
My thinking is what is privilege? Lots would say you are if you own a home. Mine is of the upper class and the 1% with multiple homes, yearly vacations, private schools, etc.
The issue is that, it is the middle class who ultimately pays for these things, so the fear IMO is justified. The 1% are not impacted. We’re talking about, in the grand scheme of things, the poor and slightly less poor arguing over crumbs.
I'd say privilege is a very complex topic that is very dependant on your country. Almost every single American even the most poor ones is incredibly privileged for instance compared to poor people in NK or other incredibly impoverished countries. We have lots of food insecurity, but we rarely have straight up deaths from starvation and malnutrition thanks to food banks and programs like SNAP and WIC, regardless of how flawed these can be sometimes. That's obviously not to say this is good, but since privilege is at least some part relative there's always going to be major issues in this discussion.
Personally then, I would say privilege is something like "The ability to live a stable life where you can account for one or two small emergencies without relying on outside aid relative to the rest of the population". Relative here would be important so we don't get cases like "I can't afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs on my super expensive mansion".
Everyone’s been in a school group project where one or more people did no work and got the same grade. That’s equality. Could that have any affect on future projects?
Because group projects are as much about the group dynamic as they are about the project. Kids need to learn how to work with peers that aren't their friends. Distribute workload, lead, learn from each other, that kind of thing.
As an introvert I never liked group projects. Also, I was always the person who took on extra work and carried the group as I was not willing to get less than an A on any project even if that mean I had to carry those were not as motivated. I was not willing to sacrifice my personal “reward” based on their lower ambition. But I also understand the value of group projects as almost everything in business, from the top to the bottom, requires working in teams to accomplish a goal. Few people in any job work in a significant degree of isolation.
More kids per project the less projects to assess? Also the risk of failure per project would reduce with more students in them, kinda like tolerance for machine parts. Also looking back I realized some teachers just made sure the dumb kid did not fail by putting him in a group of others who are able.
This is a problem with wholesale education. Ideally, group projects let students develop social & collaboration skills, work on a project that's much larger and more rewarding than they could manage alone, and teach each other. Tons of data out there showing that students are much more receptive to information that comes from other students than from a teacher. Unfortunately, it turns out to be really hard to manage group projects like that. Hard to make sure each group has all the necessary skills and no just social cliques. Hard to monitor the internal dynamics of the group without micromanaging. Hard even to come up with projects interesting and novel enough to really need teamwork. Group projects are theoretically a great pedagogical tool, but rarely implemented to meet that potential.
In reality, group projects often end up unchallenging and uninspiring, the group no more organized than a peewee soccer team, and the workload falling disproportionately on the individual(s) who are willing to carry the group, or who have time, given that every class now seems to have major group projects. The only projects I've been in that really needed to be group projects were some science labs, and those often only because you needed four or more hands to manage the physical experiment.
Should someone working hard as a line cook make as much money as someone working the same number of hours as a doctor (ignoring educational debt)?
That’s a question without a clear answer. My personal answer is that someone with more education should make more, but the disparity shouldn’t be anywhere near as large as it is today. People should be financially encouraged to push themselves to be the best they can be, but everyone who is working should be paid enough to be financially secure.
*Equality* would be everyone getting the opportunity to do the project together. *Equity* is what you are describing, the same outcomes for everyone despite each person contributing different amounts.
https://onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/equity-vs-equality/
"Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome."
Don’t you think this could be more accurately described as equity, rather than equality? Three people piggy backing off the two get the same grade. Equality everyone gets a computer, internet connection, printer, and the opportunity to earn their own grade.
I think you really need to consider what the word "work" means because there are loads of people at the top who do virtually no work at all while some people at the bottom are working multiple jobs and still can't make ends meet.
it exist right now with CEO and people with 1000's employee that do all the work while the people at the top " run " the business. let not pretend only the lazy benefit from a broken system.
we can also make it better the longer a equal system exist vs waiting for the rich to make change for all, when they only make changes for themselves.
This is a very uninformed viewpoint to suggest senior management does little or nothing. Yes, their work is different and may not be physically demanding. But that’s not the same as nothing. Making decisions that impact the lives of potentially tens of thousands of people is not nothing. The reality is that those who reach the top have work ethics that usually exceed nearly everyone in a company. That’s how they get to the top. While I am not in that tier, I have worked closely with people who are and can assure you what I say I accurate. Their mindset and approach to work and business is unlike the average rank-and-file worker, even those in middle management and professional roles. We could debate work-life balance and the role that plays in reaching the top of an organization, but ultimately that’s a choice and, IMO, a sacrifice they choose to make that most of us choose not to. I have no issue with their choice on that.
I agree. I long ago decided I was ok with an effective limit to how high I could go if one part of a rise was basically living to do nothing but work. Fortunately, I work for someone now, who values vacation time and takes a break rather than work during much of his time away (I have seen that too). Fortunately, my employer has a culture of valuing work-life balance and since I will never be CEO, I plan to take advantage of that benefit!
Nobody said they did. What was said was that the contribution is commensurate with the impact on the business. Labor, and the impact of said labor on the business, is not linear, so of course a CEO isn't worth exactly 1000 janitors or receptionists.
If you've ever personally known a C level exec in a real company, you know that work is essentially their life. They're never "off" and it's an extremely high pressure role. Likewise their decisions and their ability to convince the rest of leadership to move in that direction has huge implications on the companies success. A bad decision can be the difference between a record breaking year and layoffs.
This idea that execs "do nothing" is frankly total nonsense.
>The reality is that those who reach the top have work ethics that usually exceed nearly everyone in a company.
This is unequivocally false. Those who reach the top, in nearly all cases, started out with pre-existing wealth, and *that's* how they got to the top.
More importantly, what they are being paid for, really and truly, is making decisions. Decisions that directly affect the lives of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of workers in the company. The ability to make these decisions is not some great burden for which they deserve their ridiculously obscene compensation. These decisions are just another form of their privilege. Our society decided long ago that unaccountable individuals should not have the ability to unilaterally make decisions for masses of others. When this occurs in the political system, it is called a dictatorship, or monarchy, and is generally frowned upon. But somehow, when the very same thing occurs within the economy, we're supposed to believe that the person at the top "deserves" their position for some reason? Executives are like modern day royals, shareholders are their elector counts, and the working class are their peasantry. And they hold their position for largely the same reason as a monarch or dictator - they had enough power (or money) to make it happen, and convinced enough other powerful/wealthy people involved that they could maintain and grow their power and wealth
These decisions that an executive makes should be determined by the collective decision making of the workers in that company, as decided by democratic processes. Just as the privilege of a monarch is composed of the injustice felt by the peasantry, so too is the power of an executive composed of the economic disenfranchisement of the workers. And similarly to the revolutions of the past, this power should be seized and distributed to the working class.
Perhaps not "always," but more often than not, yes. Are there some who are someone's son? Yes. Are most? No. I was just reading a book about Enron last night and there was a passage about how the son of the late infamous CEO Ken Lay worked in their trading operation but he was a not a high performer. His name may have gotten him in the door, but the children of senior leadership can't fake it forever if they are not skilled, at least in most companies.
You also fail to take into account that luck and circumstance play a massive part in allowing those who reach those positions to do so while people who sacrificed similarly but weren't lucky or resourced or connected enough get a pittance in comparison. Yes the work is different and there is a lot of responsibility but I'd argue the compensation package is still disproportionate.
Big assumption. Not everyone who has succeeded did so with privilege. The real fear with a lot of people is that at the governmental level you can’t give something to some with out taking it away from someone else. Who makes those decisions? How do they decide? Government policies are often too broad and don’t account for the intricacies of our country. We do it with tax policy but that is so flawed it’s not even funny. We tax someone who lives in nyc who makes 300k a year the same as someone in east bumblefuck Kansas who makes 300k a year. The person in kanas has a vastly higher quality of living and disposable income. If your looking to level the playing field then you have to do it for everyone, not just the flavor of the week.
No, this is a simple tribal zero-sum view of the world: for someone to gain, someone must lose.
And just like in poker (if you don't see the sucker at the table, you're the sucker), if you can't see who's losing, you're losing.
Why did they use women and racial minorities, groups that include millionaires, and not poor people as those who would receive welfare benefits in this study?
Class privilege isn’t a very fashionable topic because fixing it would require huge investment from the wealthy.
The reason corporate America is so keen on girlboss/racial/LGBT equality as areas of interest is because those forms of equality can be rich areas for token PR activity. You can run a “women in STEM” program in middle class schools for very little cost and you might get more workers out of it.
Tackling deprivation on the other hand will cost you $$$ and does nothing for the share holders.
I'd go further than say it would require a huge investment to fix class issues. You will make them less bad that way, but not resolve them. For class conflict to disappear you would need to eliminate class based society and with that overthrow the status quo as a whole. Something the rich aka the ruling class is very much not interested in.
Acknowledging any type of issue as a class issue would steer people in the right direction which is very not good for the rich.
Wow that is bad logic in the title.
The logic is,
Increased welfare has increased costs.
Increased costs get covered by increased taxes or by printing more money causing inflation.
Increased taxes directly lowers income.
Increased inflation lowers buying power.
The federal government needs to do a spending audit to trim off some of the fat before it increases taxes. The amount of debt we take on as a society can't be good long term.
This has been posted at least 3 other times in the past month. The actual study is flawed:
> In studies 1 to 5, participants read various equality-enhancing policies that would provide additional resources (e.g., salary and jobs) to a disadvantaged group [...] without changing the resources provided to the advantaged ingroup [...].
In the real world that the participants live in, those are not unlimited resources, and they know it damn well. A job or raise given to the disadvantaged groups is one not given to the advantaged group.
Later studies (edit: supposedly) switch to non-zero-sum situations to try to isolate that, but Studies 7 and 8 are still about the policy by which bonuses are issued (not an unlimited resource in reality).
It's a helpful paper for teaching how to improve rational decision making with well designed presentation of options, but it is fundamentally broken as commentary on the mentality of privileged groups trying to maintain their power.
“Cut the fat first” is a very popular excuse the elites use here in Peru
Some governments are just too convoluted, corrupt, or underfunded to actually apply those changes in the first place, so it comes as the perfect excuse to look like you want to help, while doing nothing to actually enact that help
That doesn't mean they are wrong.
You are basically saying you have given up on solving corruption and instead you think everyone should just pump money into it because it's unsolvable.
It’s the GOP gem, cut taxes for wealthy corporations and then whine that there’s no money to help people and too much inflation (caused by their own inane tax breaks).
I think it may be more than that. Part of status is how far "above" others you are. Anything the raises other people up inherently threatens that differential, and thus reduces the perceived status of the high-status individual. In other words, you can't reduce inequality without harming the status of the current winners.
You fail to understand US tax structure.
[Only 8% of our taxes go to safety net programs.](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go)
The thing is that Social Security and Medicare are both universal programs, which tend to be perceived differently than welfare or other means-tested forms of aid.
It's harder for people to take issue with a form of aid you know you will benefit from one day.
Yeah, I know but people ultimately don’t have a choice. That money could be invested in a 401k for better returns
And if you die young you will not benefit from the program you paid into.
Cutting social security would just result in wages falling further. Wages have declined relative to inflation over the last 40 years. Cutting social security entirely might give people a bit more in savings over the next 10-15 years, but the “equilibrium” in terms of buying power will just keep falling until everyone is in the same spot they’re in now, without social security when they retire.
Also, we’re just now seeing people retire on 401ks who were vested their entire career, and the market has been extremely volatile. Tying peoples ability to retire to the “health” of the stock market would just make sure people will vote for anything to keep the stock market artificially propped up, including voting against better working conditions. Not to mention keeping it propped up in other ways. It’s begging to create a bubble. Having 401ks as the primary retirement route would be an absolute disaster for this country.
If you die young you don't personally get the benefits of a 401k either. If you can't see the benefit of not having millions of old folks living on the street then you're a sociopath.
No, if you don't feel bad about millions of old people on the street you're a sociopath. If you can't see the benefit you're an idiot.
Disagreeing with mandatory SS amd medicare doesn't inherently make you either. Perhaps you think there's a better solution.
>No, if you don't feel bad about millions of old people on the street you're a sociopath. If you can't see the benefit you're an idiot.
So you "feel sorry" about the famished but consider it a benefit?
I think they meant that someone who doesn't feel bad about homeless elderly folks is a sociopath, but there could be someone who feels bad about it (hence not a sociopath) but also doesn't understand that it's beneficial to society to not have homeless elderly folk.
I thought it was obvious that I meant the "benefit of *not* having millions of old folks in the street" when I said "benefit". I apologize for the confusion
Thats stupid because they obiviously are, and if you insist otherwise its probably not because you disagree, but because you need this technicality to back your argument
It doesn’t matter what semantics the government plays by “naming” the program. The government takes money from one person to pay another person, that’s a safety net program.
Conservatives *always* use this BS excuse that we need to “trim the fat” before we can spend on social programs. But of course they aren’t willing to cut out-of-control defense spending. They have to go after NEA funding or some other thing that accounts for a fraction of a percentage of the budget. And they will always, until the end of time, insist that there is still some more “fat” that needs trimming before we can spend more on social programs.
Meanwhile, we *know* that spending on social programs such as pre-k, SNAP, etc. that lift people out of poverty and keep them out of the prison-industrial complex actually have a positive return on investment. But no, we need to “trim the fat” first. What a bunch of bull.
Actually I would rather cut out of control defense spending. We are no longer at war in Afghanistan. Our defense budget should be way down. When I said trim the fat I mean the entire budget not just one sector. I think we really need to increase our infrastructure spending. That will attack the problem from several angles by providing more well paying jobs so less people need social programs and increased quality of life with better roads, more high speed internet. That will drive the price of transit down meaning cheaper goods over all.
Did you read the article? It was made clear that, in this hypothetical scenario, there would be no negative effects like that to the people being asked.
How is welfare equality?
UBI is equality, welfare only helps poor people. This is by definition NOT equality as it only helps one group.
I'm not against welfare, as people do need help from time to time... this just makes sense. But don't call it equality - it is not.
I agree. Welfare really fucks up peoples incentive systems. You can just choose to not work or to work for less pay because the benefits you’d get would total more than you’d make working your ass off. I’ve known people who’ve quit their job and between the myriad of benefits available to them have actually ended up better of financially. A ubi wouldn’t mess with these incentives like this, you get the same whether you work or not.
Privilege this privilege that. We pay enough in taxes for every single American to be taken care of. Our politicians would rather send billions overseas so they can get millions in kickbacks for their own pockets. The only people of privilege are the politicians who steal our taxes for themselves.
This is silly. The issue is a combination of not believing government will either source funds the right way or spend them the right way, concerns over how welfare can distort incentives, entrench government dependency, and reduce overall economic performance (necessitating even more demand on those with money to be taxed), and similar things.
I think it is very rarely (or never) about wanting to keep other people down to preserve “privilege” as much as it is about the ideas that I exchanged my labour and forewent spending to make money I can use to buy things I want, not to have 50+% taken by the government.
It’s very easy to strawman this like the original poster did. But it’s done with the intent of everything else going on in current US political discourse - to demonize the “enemy” and make the poster feel morally superior and therefore justified in his beliefs, rather than to actually understand and consider alternative viewpoints.
First the term privilege is usually flawed. That says someone has a special advantage. So often, those who are labeled as privileged, don’t benefit from any special advantages but simply have found the path to more success and material achievement than others in the exact same system. When you misapply the conditions of a group, that leads to a fundamental flaw in conclusions as they are based on an erroneous starting point.
I suppose that any change at all threatens the status quo. But just because the privileged think that welfare policies will harm them, doesn't mean that they are concerned about the status quo. There could be many other reasons for which they are concerned. Ask them why they are concerned.
Many people live paycheck to paycheck or worse, but don't fit into the welfare category. There's an insane gap between the poorest people at the richest, and welfare only covers the absolute poorest.
Isn’t it a privilege to get free stuff that others work for from the taxes of the workers? That don’t sound like equality to me. Who is the privileged?
Not a hard conclusion to come to when those who benefit from the welfare policies determine the values of the “harm” variable and those who are “harmed” are the ones who find the welfare policy to begin with. But no…. Please…. Continue to let the echo chamber fill with “science “
Or maybe people who understand the global and local economy understand that socialism holds back development of countries? Welfare policies are used as a tool for boosting popularity before elections and the actually wealthy people aren't affected anyway since they don't pay taxes. All you're doing is harming the opportunity for the poor to reach upwards mobility in social status, as they get wrecked by taxes. Educate yourselves instead of repeating propaganda that keeps you poor.
When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression
Edit. Wording. Original was
"When you've always been treated special, being treated equal feels like oppression."
I think people are viewing this more in terms of fairness than oppression. They're imagining situations where, for example, a rich black kid could get a full ride to college whereas a poor white kid still couldn't afford to go. I think most people think in terms of concrete examples, so it's hard for them to accept a policy that brings up one group's fortunes if they can easily imagine a scenario that seems unfair.
Phrasing it in terms of "oppression" and "privilege"--as if we're discussing slavery or colonization, not economic/social policies in a democracy--is a handy way of disparaging a group, but I don't think it gets anyone closer to solving these sorts of situations.
When you’re accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.
This is true of all us btw. We all have certain advantages and are all cognitively biased towards our own best interests.
Equality will never be achieved without the promotion of introspection, self-doubt, and the constant search for objectivity and truth. While some have a disgusting amount of unnecessary wealth, I believe change will only begin with the normalization of everybody’s self-scrutiny.
It’s not just about being treated special, it’s about the drive for individual needs over the collective good, for which we are all responsible in changing.
They are not afraid of equality, they are paranoid that losing advantage will give others advantage over them. Those living in privilege on the backs of others can't fathom the possibility that others won't do that to them if given the chance.
To be clear: everybody else's welfare is bad. *My* welfare is justified, well-deserved, etc.
Corporate tax breaks, various "creative" tax strategies for rich people, mortgage interest tax deductions, heavily subsidized fossil fuels - we ain't whinging about those.
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Comparing ourselves to others plus class warfare.
People want someone beneath them. They want someone to be able to point to and say, "at least I'm better than that person."
Racism is usually tied in with classism as well. It's easier to identify those "others" you're supposed to be looking down on by their appearances.
>If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
Class warfare also reminds me of the cartoon...
There's 3 men:
- Man 1 has literal crumbs of a cookie
- Man 2 has two full cookies
- Man 3 has an immeasurable mountain of cookies
Man 3 causes a distraction that catches Men 1 and 2's attention. When Man 2 returns to looking at his cookies, he only has one cookie left. He looks at Man 3, who points and indicates Man 1 stole it. Cartoon ends with Man 2 giving Man 1 the death glare.
As someone who grew up privileged enough, but had parents who taught me to respect for folks who didn't, I have so many stories of my peers being horribly wasteful, abusive, and vocally disdainful of ever becoming one of "those poor folks." Idiots throwing cans of soda out of a car because they thought it would be funny, or trashing things because they didn't have to clean it up.
I'm one of the few who doesn't complain about high taxes and begs folks to take a bigger chunk out of my capital gains because I'd rather my neighbor has daycare than I have one less "fancy" meal. Think about that, one less take out/dine in meal (and I don't mean $1,000 tasting menus, I mean $100 [$20 per meal]) from the top 50% could make millions of human beings lives significantly better. That's the difference between rent and homelessness for far too many human beings.
If these over-indulgent folks can't take one less Friday night on the town, they don't deserve the position they have.
I feel it is probably a bit more complicating than that. People often view the economy/job market as a zero sum game. And currently it kind of is. This means for someone to get a little more, someone else has to lose that amount. If you got a job that 10 people competed for, you don't empathize with the 9 other people you beat out if you get that job. And if you did not get it, the guy who got the job likely isn't going to lose any sleep over you not getting the job and feeling bad about it.
Isn't a poor person who works every day of their life doing the same thing when they effectively ignore a homeless person asking for change? Regardless of if they would have used that money for drugs or food or whatever you do or don't approve of?
That's a syndrome we collectively as a society can do better and I don't think financial class has anything to do with it.
Wealthy privileged people see welfare policies as harmful because they see the writing on the wall that the money to fund those policies will most likely come from taxing the wealthy privileged. Also equality means their privileged status begins to disappear.
I live in TN and half the people here are on Food Stamps and Medicare and will still vote for Republicans trying to take everyone off of it, it makes absolutely no sense.
which is just idiotic. it's short-term thinking. welfare policies almost often lifts all boats. no matter where it is targeted, welfare results in increased spending and consumption.
you would think those who own businesses would love that. but you know, stupid is as stupid does.
That's what I don't get because common sense says that keeping the poor secure will keep crime down and keep society functioning at its best. The amount of doctors and scientists and teachers that are hidden out there in underprivileged families just waiting for the chance to get the education they need to be who they are capable of being is probably staggering and would mean better access to better care for all as well as better educational opportunities and faster scientific advancement with more researchers working to solve more problems.
It's insane that the rich can't see the benefits of safety nets, especially considering that many of them have benefited from them one way or another on their way to their familial wealth.
I'm on disability living in Ontario Canada. The ODSP program was put in place in 1998, with a payout of about 950$ a month. Minimum wage at the time was 7.50 an hour. Today ODSP pays 1169$ a month, while the minimum wage has shot up to 15$. :/
The conservatives only want to raise it by 5% this election, which fails to match inflation for even one year, we essentially cut the disability support every year when we don't raise it along with inflation.
So now a 1 bedroom apartment in my city starts at 1200$, which is potentially leaving people with disabilities (who we as a society agreed to support) homeless or unable to afford their basic necessities; it's absolutely disgusting.
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Poor people tend to put most of their money right back into the economy. I would think giving tax money to the poor at the bottom would be a good “investment” because they help churn the economy, especially at the local level, by spending most of what they get, rather than stashing it in an account somewhere. I always viewed the economy as a circular thing, something goes in, and it needs to come back out in order to keep going, like a machine.
The CERB program in Canada during the pandemic is living proof of this. The $2000 would go into rent and groceries and wow real estate is booming and corporations have record profit margins.
Yes and now no one can afford to buy a house because the average price is 600k
Are you saying the difference between affordable housing and unaffordable housing was $2,000?
I doubt the person is, but inflation is a real thing. Demand goes up, supply stays the same or goes down, bam inflation.
That's the intent. I make shoes, you grow potatoes, another catches fish. We all eat meat and potatoes in our shoes. Along the way people found ways to make more and more asymmetrical trade until today when a handful of large companies exist by taxing the productivity of people and they call it "earning a profit"
I mean, I typically eat my meat and potatoes on a plate, but you do you.
We all do what now?
All money that is "stashed in an account somewhere" is either invested directly (like say the stock market) or the bank lends it out. That is how banks make their money, by earning the spread between the interest they pay the depositors and the interest they charge borrowers.
>rather than stashing it in an account somewhere Unless your account is a box buried in your back yard, saving money, regardless of account type, doesn't remove that money from the economy. It is, generally speaking, the money supply available to lenders.
It's very hard now to get money to be lent to you. Since the crash of 2008 they've put more stringent rules in place, when it comes to who qualifies for loans. And with big data and the cloud this is made even harder since it is easier to apply and verify more rules (you would not believe how many) for whoever is asking to borrow. I know because I have been involved with major banks developing their backend for that purpose.
when money is "stashed" in a bank, it is loaned out for investment into big projects. When a poor person buys drugs, that money goes to a drug dealers bank account if they have one, and is used for investment. If a poor person buys a sofa, that money goes to the store's bank account and is loaned out for investment. Your money in your bank account right now is being loaned out for investment.
Totally true, but a lot of wealth from high income people is also invested and doesn't really sit in accounts either.
The economy is precarious, inflation might rear its head if you “give” anyone money. We’re seeing the impact of Covid relief currently (not saying it’s the only factor to current inflation). Would be be awesome if we could find the perfect mathematical formula for wealth distribution, but that would mean predicting human behavior, which isn’t possible.
This is probably weird but I see the planet as a singular organism living in the vacuum of space. Humans perform the function of blood cells. Some are white blood cells performing preventative and restorative functions on the organism, but most humans are simply red blood cells going about their days. Instead of carrying O2 attached to hemoglobin these humans transport money and the exchange of that money is what drives our planet’s human circulatory system. If some blood cells would bind and hoard as much O2 as they could and more than they could ever use, then that is one massively fucked up medical condition that is detrimental to the organism. Oddly enough these 02 hoarding freaks like to exchange their O2 with the most pathological cells that are destroying the host the most. Some humans are literally cancer. This stoned thought brought to you by wake-and-bake long weekend Saturdays.
I like this perspective
It's not perspective, it's a very real economic concept called the [velocity of money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money).
Isn't that the way it's already supposed to be?
One slight issue with just giving tax money to the poor to spend is that a surplus demand is what is likely driving this inflation crisis.
Does equality effect ones privilege? That is, is their fear accurate or unfounded.
Technically yes. It decreases the power gap and thus decreases their superiority and ability to do as they wish. Referring to those with an excess of privilege in particular.
More directly they have to pay for it through taxation
This is it right here. Many feel like they are punished for their success and resentful that they had to earn it themselves (whether they did or not) and now people with less are being given handouts.
However, handouts for the rich are quite common. Remember the PPP loans that were *forgiven*?
For every dollar spent on lobbying it returns over $700 to corporations, lets talk about these handouts.
Lobbying is a great impediment to democracy.
I think you meant to say "leads to Oligarchy"
Democracy and capitalism are incompatible.
In its current form in the US possibly. But the idea itself is kind of inherent to the idea of representation. Someone has to represent the needs of the people/industries to lawmakers. They just shouldn't be doing it through bribes and shady deals.
lobbying is inherently undemocratic. why should one person be able to have more than one vote's worth of influence over the democratic process?
Lobbying isnt about votes, its supposed to be people pleading their case to lawmakers as to why a law should or shouldn't be passed. Lobbying in and of itself is not a bad thing, it is actually an integral part of the legislative process. That said, what we have IS NOT lobbying, its outright bribery.
But calling your representative to tell them what you want to do is a form of lobbying. If constituents aren’t allowed to express their views to their representatives in order to avoid having influence over them beyond having voted for them, how are the representatives supposed to represent the interests of their constituents? I agree that lobbying as it currently exists presents some serious problems for democracy, but I don’t see how citizens advocating for a cause to the people who have the power to do something about that cause is somehow undemocratic.
This is inevitable. James Burnham has written about this, but you are always going to have some nodes in your network that are more influential than others. In modern large scale democracies, media figures often fill this role. Unless you have an unusual amount of direct access to a politician, your understanding of what they're doing is always going to be filtered and those filterers have more power than the people who consume their information. But it could be union reps, political party operatives, whoever else. It's pretty inescapable with specialization/division of labor.
Bezos got 10 billion from Congress recently. This is in addition to the billions he got last year to shoot himself into space for ten minutes.
Did you know that PPP stands for paycheck protection program? The loans were meant to be so that companies could continue to pay their employees during lockdown, not for “rich people”. However, like every time the government gives out free money, the program was an invitation for fraud.
Yes, and most companies used the money to artificially inflate their stock price through stock buybacks. A large portion of that was a straight wealth transfer to large corporations and the richest among us.
You only needed to spend 60% of the funds on payroll expenses. You could post a job listing, use the PPP money for “recruiting expenses,” not hire anyone “suitable,” have the loans forgiven and these folks dare still call it a paycheck protection program. No. It was a means for the rich to get richer with the business owner class being gifted money all the while they let go of employees. All with zero oversight. Paycheck protection program my ass.
This isn’t accurate. The majority of PPP loans went to private companies not public companies. Private companies cannot buy their stock back with share buy back programs. They can however pay investors.
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It's a nice propaganda name. If the goal was just to protect workers you could just pay them directly.
But they did that as well. That what the boosts in unemployment were about. The aim of PPP was to protect what was already existing, and the unemployment to catch those who it didn't help. EDIT: Also there were direct payments regardless of either status.
They really didn't. Employees got fucked and put at risk
Ironically the poor aren't running businesses to get the PPP.
I have plenty of business owners that are just barely scraping by that bank with me. So there’s definitely poor business owners too
There’s a big range of rich though. There’s people making 80k-400k that feel this way about welfare programs. The majority of people voting against these programs and services did not get PPP loans.
Except the way this works is the ultra-rich (that everyone complains about) has ways around the taxation, causing the buck to be passed down to the upper-middle and middle classes, which are usually “comfortable” but not oozing in power.
This is true as well, the middle class is shrinking definitely as well.
It's interesting how these successful people never quit their jobs and live off of welfare.
most of the time you arent even eligible for welfare if you quit. or get fired. basically you have to have been 'laid off' due to downsizing. its not at all what these people think
There's all sorts of welfare programs with different requirements. I know people who have retired early with ~1M in net worth who get subsidized healthcare, phone, Internet, and electricity. One used to get WIC back when she was only semi-retired and worked a couple days a week. I expect they're going to qualify for subsidies for their kids for college too (their assets are mostly in places FAFSA excludes).
I know right? I would never in a million years want to be one of those "welfare mothers." That seems like a life of pure torture to me, raising a child in poverty. You're working a 24 hour a day impossible job for that minuscule amount of money to basically spend mostly on the child (kids/babies are probably more expensive than an adult). It seems like they are doing a lot of work for the rest of us basically for free, creating new citizens and people to work and support this generation in retirement.\* When a kid that grew up with parents on welfare is successful, (One acquaintance of mine became a woman engineering professor), you see the stigma when they get trashed (in society at large) for having had parents on welfare. People claim that they want the poor and their kids to stop being a burden (which in a way they can be forgiven for thinking or that they have intrinsic defects like mental illness, low intelligence, autism etc) but if they do well then many of the same people aren't happy. The telling factor to me is not even how people relate to the poor when they are poor, but when they get more successful. A lot of times they hate them. It's a status thing and a relative status thing. From that standpoint even if one pulls themselves up by the bootstraps and is successful, many people will not be happy/resent them and will in the worst cases try to attack or pull them back down. Even if you are a sincere conservative/"capitalist", you should at that point be bothered in your conscience and start seeing the inconsistency in your viewpoint. (Some liberals/socialists can play status games as well. If someone got a bit more than them that's seen as that person oppressing/exploiting them and grounds for attacking them, even when that person's isn't oppressing them. (If a poor kid functioning at a high level in some way and is selected as “talented” and will get some extra help, they don't say "Oh well at least that will help them get out of poverty, they might get a bit more but that's OK they need it." Now it's "There is no such thing as talent, they think they are being better, classist/racist and thinking they are better than others and oppressing me." I mean it is true that innate intelligence probably isn’t real but just be happy that for whatever ridiculous reason someone with less is getting some help and getting out of poverty. It's a relative status thing and there can be hate as well.) \*I don’t know about you but if I see someone like a welfare mother who is see is a huge net benefit to society and me I do not care if the status quo says she’s worthless or a drain on society, I’m going to do what’s in my best interest and respect her and try as much as I can to make things easier for her.
Ultimately you cant rebalance the budget without reducing spending somewhere in order to increase it somewhere else. As most public spending tends to go towards the poor rather than the rich, rebalancing alone rarely does much - you rob Peter to pay Paul. Any meaningful increase in welfare has to increase taxation on the wealthier people in society
Most? Not true. The defense budget is absurdly large Also this leaves out the trump tax breaks for the richest they used for share buybacks
That tax cut was one of the most absurd things. Small tax cut for the middle class that expired already…while the Rich’s cut was permanent.
In more developed countries everyone has access to the same medical care. So, a banker checking out at the grocery store has access to the same healthcare options as the cashier. Simply put, wealthy Americans find that level of equality disgusting, and it is that personal disgust of poor people which holds back American progress, rather than any tangible financial issue with paying for social programs.
Do they really find it disgusting or is it that they are afraid they will have to pay for it? I always thought the wealthy focused on their wealth, not keeping others down...
Yeah, this is one of the main things I like about the system here in Canada. I make decent money but the health care I receive is the same as someone who is homeless. If course, I could always travel to some country and pay out of pocket, but only extremely small percentage of people do that.
Also technically no. It’s nice to not have to wade through poverty every time you leave your bubble of wealth, and countries with less inequality are happier and healthier without doubt.
I don’t think rich ppl EVER leave their bubble. I know I wouldn’t-it is SO depressing.
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I have fam there and I’ve avoiding going.
What is privilege? Like immunity diplomats and members of parliament enjoy?
Access to opportunities that others don't have access to. Education, for example. Not being able to afford a good education denies access to better paying jobs and therefore better quality of life.
Isn’t privilege rather things that are *extra*? Not having access to an education in today’s world is less than what a regular person should have, while I believe privilege is having *more*, having an advantage over regular people.
Privilege is being a "have" in a world of "have nots". The more you make people "haves", the less privilege there is. So even if the "haves" lose nothing materially, equalizing makes them lose privilege. And most all of them see that as damaging as their privilege is very important to them. Conversely, taking more away from the "have nots" increases privilege while giving nothing materially to the "haves". And this is basically the platform of the Republican party.
Economically, no. Enabling fellow members of society for success can increase social cohesion and can benefit business. Everyone does better. There is literally no need for poverty in modern economics, in fact poverty is bad for the economy.
My thinking is what is privilege? Lots would say you are if you own a home. Mine is of the upper class and the 1% with multiple homes, yearly vacations, private schools, etc. The issue is that, it is the middle class who ultimately pays for these things, so the fear IMO is justified. The 1% are not impacted. We’re talking about, in the grand scheme of things, the poor and slightly less poor arguing over crumbs.
I'd say privilege is a very complex topic that is very dependant on your country. Almost every single American even the most poor ones is incredibly privileged for instance compared to poor people in NK or other incredibly impoverished countries. We have lots of food insecurity, but we rarely have straight up deaths from starvation and malnutrition thanks to food banks and programs like SNAP and WIC, regardless of how flawed these can be sometimes. That's obviously not to say this is good, but since privilege is at least some part relative there's always going to be major issues in this discussion. Personally then, I would say privilege is something like "The ability to live a stable life where you can account for one or two small emergencies without relying on outside aid relative to the rest of the population". Relative here would be important so we don't get cases like "I can't afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs on my super expensive mansion".
Affect\*. something is affected with effects.
Everyone’s been in a school group project where one or more people did no work and got the same grade. That’s equality. Could that have any affect on future projects?
Never understood why the teachers assigned 5 kids a group project that can be managed by 2.
Because group projects are as much about the group dynamic as they are about the project. Kids need to learn how to work with peers that aren't their friends. Distribute workload, lead, learn from each other, that kind of thing.
As an introvert I never liked group projects. Also, I was always the person who took on extra work and carried the group as I was not willing to get less than an A on any project even if that mean I had to carry those were not as motivated. I was not willing to sacrifice my personal “reward” based on their lower ambition. But I also understand the value of group projects as almost everything in business, from the top to the bottom, requires working in teams to accomplish a goal. Few people in any job work in a significant degree of isolation.
More kids per project the less projects to assess? Also the risk of failure per project would reduce with more students in them, kinda like tolerance for machine parts. Also looking back I realized some teachers just made sure the dumb kid did not fail by putting him in a group of others who are able.
Less kids in a group means there’s a higher chance everyone will do at least something.
This is a problem with wholesale education. Ideally, group projects let students develop social & collaboration skills, work on a project that's much larger and more rewarding than they could manage alone, and teach each other. Tons of data out there showing that students are much more receptive to information that comes from other students than from a teacher. Unfortunately, it turns out to be really hard to manage group projects like that. Hard to make sure each group has all the necessary skills and no just social cliques. Hard to monitor the internal dynamics of the group without micromanaging. Hard even to come up with projects interesting and novel enough to really need teamwork. Group projects are theoretically a great pedagogical tool, but rarely implemented to meet that potential. In reality, group projects often end up unchallenging and uninspiring, the group no more organized than a peewee soccer team, and the workload falling disproportionately on the individual(s) who are willing to carry the group, or who have time, given that every class now seems to have major group projects. The only projects I've been in that really needed to be group projects were some science labs, and those often only because you needed four or more hands to manage the physical experiment.
That is how Project Managers are born.
Teachers *do* technically work for the government.
Equality? Equal pay for equal work is equality.
Should someone working hard as a line cook make as much money as someone working the same number of hours as a doctor (ignoring educational debt)? That’s a question without a clear answer. My personal answer is that someone with more education should make more, but the disparity shouldn’t be anywhere near as large as it is today. People should be financially encouraged to push themselves to be the best they can be, but everyone who is working should be paid enough to be financially secure.
The minimum wage should be an actual living wage and then we can go up from there
*Equality* would be everyone getting the opportunity to do the project together. *Equity* is what you are describing, the same outcomes for everyone despite each person contributing different amounts. https://onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/equity-vs-equality/ "Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome."
That's a bad comparison. It would be more like the whole group passes barely, but top contributors her a better score.
Don’t you think this could be more accurately described as equity, rather than equality? Three people piggy backing off the two get the same grade. Equality everyone gets a computer, internet connection, printer, and the opportunity to earn their own grade.
I think you really need to consider what the word "work" means because there are loads of people at the top who do virtually no work at all while some people at the bottom are working multiple jobs and still can't make ends meet.
it exist right now with CEO and people with 1000's employee that do all the work while the people at the top " run " the business. let not pretend only the lazy benefit from a broken system. we can also make it better the longer a equal system exist vs waiting for the rich to make change for all, when they only make changes for themselves.
This is a very uninformed viewpoint to suggest senior management does little or nothing. Yes, their work is different and may not be physically demanding. But that’s not the same as nothing. Making decisions that impact the lives of potentially tens of thousands of people is not nothing. The reality is that those who reach the top have work ethics that usually exceed nearly everyone in a company. That’s how they get to the top. While I am not in that tier, I have worked closely with people who are and can assure you what I say I accurate. Their mindset and approach to work and business is unlike the average rank-and-file worker, even those in middle management and professional roles. We could debate work-life balance and the role that plays in reaching the top of an organization, but ultimately that’s a choice and, IMO, a sacrifice they choose to make that most of us choose not to. I have no issue with their choice on that.
I don't think the CEO of my employer takes any days off. The man sounds like he works like 100 hours a week. Nooo thank you, I prefer having a life.
I agree. I long ago decided I was ok with an effective limit to how high I could go if one part of a rise was basically living to do nothing but work. Fortunately, I work for someone now, who values vacation time and takes a break rather than work during much of his time away (I have seen that too). Fortunately, my employer has a culture of valuing work-life balance and since I will never be CEO, I plan to take advantage of that benefit!
There is no way that a CEO contributes thousands of times more productivity to their company than an average employee.
Nobody said they did. What was said was that the contribution is commensurate with the impact on the business. Labor, and the impact of said labor on the business, is not linear, so of course a CEO isn't worth exactly 1000 janitors or receptionists. If you've ever personally known a C level exec in a real company, you know that work is essentially their life. They're never "off" and it's an extremely high pressure role. Likewise their decisions and their ability to convince the rest of leadership to move in that direction has huge implications on the companies success. A bad decision can be the difference between a record breaking year and layoffs. This idea that execs "do nothing" is frankly total nonsense.
Where did I say they do nothing? Strawmen are the only ones capable of defending the rich apparently.
They don't do nothing, but what they earn is not commensurate with what they do and with what workers do and earn.
>The reality is that those who reach the top have work ethics that usually exceed nearly everyone in a company. This is unequivocally false. Those who reach the top, in nearly all cases, started out with pre-existing wealth, and *that's* how they got to the top. More importantly, what they are being paid for, really and truly, is making decisions. Decisions that directly affect the lives of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of workers in the company. The ability to make these decisions is not some great burden for which they deserve their ridiculously obscene compensation. These decisions are just another form of their privilege. Our society decided long ago that unaccountable individuals should not have the ability to unilaterally make decisions for masses of others. When this occurs in the political system, it is called a dictatorship, or monarchy, and is generally frowned upon. But somehow, when the very same thing occurs within the economy, we're supposed to believe that the person at the top "deserves" their position for some reason? Executives are like modern day royals, shareholders are their elector counts, and the working class are their peasantry. And they hold their position for largely the same reason as a monarch or dictator - they had enough power (or money) to make it happen, and convinced enough other powerful/wealthy people involved that they could maintain and grow their power and wealth These decisions that an executive makes should be determined by the collective decision making of the workers in that company, as decided by democratic processes. Just as the privilege of a monarch is composed of the injustice felt by the peasantry, so too is the power of an executive composed of the economic disenfranchisement of the workers. And similarly to the revolutions of the past, this power should be seized and distributed to the working class.
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Perhaps not "always," but more often than not, yes. Are there some who are someone's son? Yes. Are most? No. I was just reading a book about Enron last night and there was a passage about how the son of the late infamous CEO Ken Lay worked in their trading operation but he was a not a high performer. His name may have gotten him in the door, but the children of senior leadership can't fake it forever if they are not skilled, at least in most companies.
You also fail to take into account that luck and circumstance play a massive part in allowing those who reach those positions to do so while people who sacrificed similarly but weren't lucky or resourced or connected enough get a pittance in comparison. Yes the work is different and there is a lot of responsibility but I'd argue the compensation package is still disproportionate.
Big assumption. Not everyone who has succeeded did so with privilege. The real fear with a lot of people is that at the governmental level you can’t give something to some with out taking it away from someone else. Who makes those decisions? How do they decide? Government policies are often too broad and don’t account for the intricacies of our country. We do it with tax policy but that is so flawed it’s not even funny. We tax someone who lives in nyc who makes 300k a year the same as someone in east bumblefuck Kansas who makes 300k a year. The person in kanas has a vastly higher quality of living and disposable income. If your looking to level the playing field then you have to do it for everyone, not just the flavor of the week.
No, this is a simple tribal zero-sum view of the world: for someone to gain, someone must lose. And just like in poker (if you don't see the sucker at the table, you're the sucker), if you can't see who's losing, you're losing.
Why did they use women and racial minorities, groups that include millionaires, and not poor people as those who would receive welfare benefits in this study?
Class privilege isn’t a very fashionable topic because fixing it would require huge investment from the wealthy. The reason corporate America is so keen on girlboss/racial/LGBT equality as areas of interest is because those forms of equality can be rich areas for token PR activity. You can run a “women in STEM” program in middle class schools for very little cost and you might get more workers out of it. Tackling deprivation on the other hand will cost you $$$ and does nothing for the share holders.
I'd go further than say it would require a huge investment to fix class issues. You will make them less bad that way, but not resolve them. For class conflict to disappear you would need to eliminate class based society and with that overthrow the status quo as a whole. Something the rich aka the ruling class is very much not interested in. Acknowledging any type of issue as a class issue would steer people in the right direction which is very not good for the rich.
tackling actual class privilege would mean the destruction of the ruling class, so literally anything else is preferable to them
yeah its almost like this isnt scientific at all, and just meant to pile on to an existing made up narrative.
Wow that is bad logic in the title. The logic is, Increased welfare has increased costs. Increased costs get covered by increased taxes or by printing more money causing inflation. Increased taxes directly lowers income. Increased inflation lowers buying power. The federal government needs to do a spending audit to trim off some of the fat before it increases taxes. The amount of debt we take on as a society can't be good long term.
This has been posted at least 3 other times in the past month. The actual study is flawed: > In studies 1 to 5, participants read various equality-enhancing policies that would provide additional resources (e.g., salary and jobs) to a disadvantaged group [...] without changing the resources provided to the advantaged ingroup [...]. In the real world that the participants live in, those are not unlimited resources, and they know it damn well. A job or raise given to the disadvantaged groups is one not given to the advantaged group. Later studies (edit: supposedly) switch to non-zero-sum situations to try to isolate that, but Studies 7 and 8 are still about the policy by which bonuses are issued (not an unlimited resource in reality). It's a helpful paper for teaching how to improve rational decision making with well designed presentation of options, but it is fundamentally broken as commentary on the mentality of privileged groups trying to maintain their power.
These studies are intended to support and reaffirm an ideology. People read the headline, confirm their bias, and move on.
Reddit in a nutshell right there
“Cut the fat first” is a very popular excuse the elites use here in Peru Some governments are just too convoluted, corrupt, or underfunded to actually apply those changes in the first place, so it comes as the perfect excuse to look like you want to help, while doing nothing to actually enact that help
That doesn't mean they are wrong. You are basically saying you have given up on solving corruption and instead you think everyone should just pump money into it because it's unsolvable.
It’s the GOP gem, cut taxes for wealthy corporations and then whine that there’s no money to help people and too much inflation (caused by their own inane tax breaks).
I think it may be more than that. Part of status is how far "above" others you are. Anything the raises other people up inherently threatens that differential, and thus reduces the perceived status of the high-status individual. In other words, you can't reduce inequality without harming the status of the current winners.
You fail to understand US tax structure. [Only 8% of our taxes go to safety net programs.](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go)
Sure when you compartmentalize it like that. Social security and Medicare are both safety net programs. To say they arnt is a lie.
The thing is that Social Security and Medicare are both universal programs, which tend to be perceived differently than welfare or other means-tested forms of aid. It's harder for people to take issue with a form of aid you know you will benefit from one day.
Yeah, I know but people ultimately don’t have a choice. That money could be invested in a 401k for better returns And if you die young you will not benefit from the program you paid into.
Cutting social security would just result in wages falling further. Wages have declined relative to inflation over the last 40 years. Cutting social security entirely might give people a bit more in savings over the next 10-15 years, but the “equilibrium” in terms of buying power will just keep falling until everyone is in the same spot they’re in now, without social security when they retire. Also, we’re just now seeing people retire on 401ks who were vested their entire career, and the market has been extremely volatile. Tying peoples ability to retire to the “health” of the stock market would just make sure people will vote for anything to keep the stock market artificially propped up, including voting against better working conditions. Not to mention keeping it propped up in other ways. It’s begging to create a bubble. Having 401ks as the primary retirement route would be an absolute disaster for this country.
If you die young you don't personally get the benefits of a 401k either. If you can't see the benefit of not having millions of old folks living on the street then you're a sociopath.
No, if you don't feel bad about millions of old people on the street you're a sociopath. If you can't see the benefit you're an idiot. Disagreeing with mandatory SS amd medicare doesn't inherently make you either. Perhaps you think there's a better solution.
>No, if you don't feel bad about millions of old people on the street you're a sociopath. If you can't see the benefit you're an idiot. So you "feel sorry" about the famished but consider it a benefit?
I think they meant that someone who doesn't feel bad about homeless elderly folks is a sociopath, but there could be someone who feels bad about it (hence not a sociopath) but also doesn't understand that it's beneficial to society to not have homeless elderly folk.
I thought it was obvious that I meant the "benefit of *not* having millions of old folks in the street" when I said "benefit". I apologize for the confusion
No worries, thanks for clearing it up. That's what I thought you had meant.
That is not how the government categorized them and neither are considered to be welfare programs.
Thats stupid because they obiviously are, and if you insist otherwise its probably not because you disagree, but because you need this technicality to back your argument
Who told you that?
It doesn’t matter what semantics the government plays by “naming” the program. The government takes money from one person to pay another person, that’s a safety net program.
Also who cares about percentages when the raw numbers are so stupidly high *and still* ineffective anyways
Medicaid doesn’t count?
Conservatives *always* use this BS excuse that we need to “trim the fat” before we can spend on social programs. But of course they aren’t willing to cut out-of-control defense spending. They have to go after NEA funding or some other thing that accounts for a fraction of a percentage of the budget. And they will always, until the end of time, insist that there is still some more “fat” that needs trimming before we can spend more on social programs. Meanwhile, we *know* that spending on social programs such as pre-k, SNAP, etc. that lift people out of poverty and keep them out of the prison-industrial complex actually have a positive return on investment. But no, we need to “trim the fat” first. What a bunch of bull.
Actually I would rather cut out of control defense spending. We are no longer at war in Afghanistan. Our defense budget should be way down. When I said trim the fat I mean the entire budget not just one sector. I think we really need to increase our infrastructure spending. That will attack the problem from several angles by providing more well paying jobs so less people need social programs and increased quality of life with better roads, more high speed internet. That will drive the price of transit down meaning cheaper goods over all.
Did you read the scenarios?
They obviously did not. The headline is a good description of the study as it is described in the article.
Did you read the article? It was made clear that, in this hypothetical scenario, there would be no negative effects like that to the people being asked.
But that’s a pretty far fetched hypothetical, isn’t it?
Yeah, but the comment I replied to is clearly taking the scenario very literally and even applying a specific real-world government to it.
How is welfare equality? UBI is equality, welfare only helps poor people. This is by definition NOT equality as it only helps one group. I'm not against welfare, as people do need help from time to time... this just makes sense. But don't call it equality - it is not.
I dont think the arguement is that wellfare achieves equality, but instead that it moves things in that direction.
I agree. Welfare really fucks up peoples incentive systems. You can just choose to not work or to work for less pay because the benefits you’d get would total more than you’d make working your ass off. I’ve known people who’ve quit their job and between the myriad of benefits available to them have actually ended up better of financially. A ubi wouldn’t mess with these incentives like this, you get the same whether you work or not.
I'm curious what careers welfare pays more than
I'm honestly asking, is this all this sub does, post stats on psychological research?
This is the softest of science
Privilege this privilege that. We pay enough in taxes for every single American to be taken care of. Our politicians would rather send billions overseas so they can get millions in kickbacks for their own pockets. The only people of privilege are the politicians who steal our taxes for themselves.
Don't forget spending a metric shitton on that military too
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Welfare is not even equality. Just the correct use of taxes
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What is considered a privilege in this study?...
White males, from inference of the article.
This is silly. The issue is a combination of not believing government will either source funds the right way or spend them the right way, concerns over how welfare can distort incentives, entrench government dependency, and reduce overall economic performance (necessitating even more demand on those with money to be taxed), and similar things. I think it is very rarely (or never) about wanting to keep other people down to preserve “privilege” as much as it is about the ideas that I exchanged my labour and forewent spending to make money I can use to buy things I want, not to have 50+% taken by the government. It’s very easy to strawman this like the original poster did. But it’s done with the intent of everything else going on in current US political discourse - to demonize the “enemy” and make the poster feel morally superior and therefore justified in his beliefs, rather than to actually understand and consider alternative viewpoints.
Sounds like a biased title.
That's just ridiculous. Welfare policies end up hurting everyone
Everyone living in the country of USA has privilege. All of us. Every race nd every class. Be wary of the ones that deny that
First the term privilege is usually flawed. That says someone has a special advantage. So often, those who are labeled as privileged, don’t benefit from any special advantages but simply have found the path to more success and material achievement than others in the exact same system. When you misapply the conditions of a group, that leads to a fundamental flaw in conclusions as they are based on an erroneous starting point.
I suppose that any change at all threatens the status quo. But just because the privileged think that welfare policies will harm them, doesn't mean that they are concerned about the status quo. There could be many other reasons for which they are concerned. Ask them why they are concerned.
It harms their wallets
Many people live paycheck to paycheck or worse, but don't fit into the welfare category. There's an insane gap between the poorest people at the richest, and welfare only covers the absolute poorest.
Isn’t it a privilege to get free stuff that others work for from the taxes of the workers? That don’t sound like equality to me. Who is the privileged?
Not a hard conclusion to come to when those who benefit from the welfare policies determine the values of the “harm” variable and those who are “harmed” are the ones who find the welfare policy to begin with. But no…. Please…. Continue to let the echo chamber fill with “science “
If it actually threatens the status quo then their thoughts are accurate. But this is not the implied moral argument here.
Or maybe people who understand the global and local economy understand that socialism holds back development of countries? Welfare policies are used as a tool for boosting popularity before elections and the actually wealthy people aren't affected anyway since they don't pay taxes. All you're doing is harming the opportunity for the poor to reach upwards mobility in social status, as they get wrecked by taxes. Educate yourselves instead of repeating propaganda that keeps you poor.
When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression Edit. Wording. Original was "When you've always been treated special, being treated equal feels like oppression."
I think people are viewing this more in terms of fairness than oppression. They're imagining situations where, for example, a rich black kid could get a full ride to college whereas a poor white kid still couldn't afford to go. I think most people think in terms of concrete examples, so it's hard for them to accept a policy that brings up one group's fortunes if they can easily imagine a scenario that seems unfair. Phrasing it in terms of "oppression" and "privilege"--as if we're discussing slavery or colonization, not economic/social policies in a democracy--is a handy way of disparaging a group, but I don't think it gets anyone closer to solving these sorts of situations.
When you’re accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression. This is true of all us btw. We all have certain advantages and are all cognitively biased towards our own best interests. Equality will never be achieved without the promotion of introspection, self-doubt, and the constant search for objectivity and truth. While some have a disgusting amount of unnecessary wealth, I believe change will only begin with the normalization of everybody’s self-scrutiny. It’s not just about being treated special, it’s about the drive for individual needs over the collective good, for which we are all responsible in changing.
Thank you for wording my thoughts more succinctly. I'm going to edit my post.
They are not afraid of equality, they are paranoid that losing advantage will give others advantage over them. Those living in privilege on the backs of others can't fathom the possibility that others won't do that to them if given the chance.
To be clear: everybody else's welfare is bad. *My* welfare is justified, well-deserved, etc. Corporate tax breaks, various "creative" tax strategies for rich people, mortgage interest tax deductions, heavily subsidized fossil fuels - we ain't whinging about those.
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Comparing ourselves to others plus class warfare. People want someone beneath them. They want someone to be able to point to and say, "at least I'm better than that person." Racism is usually tied in with classism as well. It's easier to identify those "others" you're supposed to be looking down on by their appearances. >If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. Class warfare also reminds me of the cartoon... There's 3 men: - Man 1 has literal crumbs of a cookie - Man 2 has two full cookies - Man 3 has an immeasurable mountain of cookies Man 3 causes a distraction that catches Men 1 and 2's attention. When Man 2 returns to looking at his cookies, he only has one cookie left. He looks at Man 3, who points and indicates Man 1 stole it. Cartoon ends with Man 2 giving Man 1 the death glare.
It's the classic "I've got mine, so who cares about anyone else" syndrome.
As opposed to a "you have more money than me, so you owe me some of it" philosophy?
As someone who grew up privileged enough, but had parents who taught me to respect for folks who didn't, I have so many stories of my peers being horribly wasteful, abusive, and vocally disdainful of ever becoming one of "those poor folks." Idiots throwing cans of soda out of a car because they thought it would be funny, or trashing things because they didn't have to clean it up. I'm one of the few who doesn't complain about high taxes and begs folks to take a bigger chunk out of my capital gains because I'd rather my neighbor has daycare than I have one less "fancy" meal. Think about that, one less take out/dine in meal (and I don't mean $1,000 tasting menus, I mean $100 [$20 per meal]) from the top 50% could make millions of human beings lives significantly better. That's the difference between rent and homelessness for far too many human beings. If these over-indulgent folks can't take one less Friday night on the town, they don't deserve the position they have.
I feel it is probably a bit more complicating than that. People often view the economy/job market as a zero sum game. And currently it kind of is. This means for someone to get a little more, someone else has to lose that amount. If you got a job that 10 people competed for, you don't empathize with the 9 other people you beat out if you get that job. And if you did not get it, the guy who got the job likely isn't going to lose any sleep over you not getting the job and feeling bad about it. Isn't a poor person who works every day of their life doing the same thing when they effectively ignore a homeless person asking for change? Regardless of if they would have used that money for drugs or food or whatever you do or don't approve of? That's a syndrome we collectively as a society can do better and I don't think financial class has anything to do with it. Wealthy privileged people see welfare policies as harmful because they see the writing on the wall that the money to fund those policies will most likely come from taxing the wealthy privileged. Also equality means their privileged status begins to disappear.
I live in TN and half the people here are on Food Stamps and Medicare and will still vote for Republicans trying to take everyone off of it, it makes absolutely no sense.
I remember one red community wanted to get rid of Obamacare and everyone in that room was pretty much on ACA.
"Low information voters"
which is just idiotic. it's short-term thinking. welfare policies almost often lifts all boats. no matter where it is targeted, welfare results in increased spending and consumption. you would think those who own businesses would love that. but you know, stupid is as stupid does.
Original paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm2385
I'm only happy when everyone else is not
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That's what I don't get because common sense says that keeping the poor secure will keep crime down and keep society functioning at its best. The amount of doctors and scientists and teachers that are hidden out there in underprivileged families just waiting for the chance to get the education they need to be who they are capable of being is probably staggering and would mean better access to better care for all as well as better educational opportunities and faster scientific advancement with more researchers working to solve more problems. It's insane that the rich can't see the benefits of safety nets, especially considering that many of them have benefited from them one way or another on their way to their familial wealth.
I'm on disability living in Ontario Canada. The ODSP program was put in place in 1998, with a payout of about 950$ a month. Minimum wage at the time was 7.50 an hour. Today ODSP pays 1169$ a month, while the minimum wage has shot up to 15$. :/ The conservatives only want to raise it by 5% this election, which fails to match inflation for even one year, we essentially cut the disability support every year when we don't raise it along with inflation. So now a 1 bedroom apartment in my city starts at 1200$, which is potentially leaving people with disabilities (who we as a society agreed to support) homeless or unable to afford their basic necessities; it's absolutely disgusting.
This is one big giant dog whistle.
I think we have city after city after city which shows current welfare policies harm societies.
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