Frustrating
Dec. 13th, 2016 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribAs readers of this blog know, I found this current election very frustrating. First, had Clinton won narrowly with implications of Russian hackers providing help, the entire Republican establishment would be up in arms over it. But because a Republican did it, it's okay.
Second, this article, entitled Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump, also drives me nuts. Beneficiaries of Obamacare are convinced, or have convinced themselves, that Trump and the Republicans won't do what they say they will and take their benefits away. They're also convinced that, unlike themselves, "undeserving poor" are getting freebies that they aren't.
Having said all of this, all I can do is point out the truth.
Second, this article, entitled Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump, also drives me nuts. Beneficiaries of Obamacare are convinced, or have convinced themselves, that Trump and the Republicans won't do what they say they will and take their benefits away. They're also convinced that, unlike themselves, "undeserving poor" are getting freebies that they aren't.
Having said all of this, all I can do is point out the truth.
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no subject
Date: 2016-12-13 05:42 pm (UTC)'Eavy kudos for th' ref'rence, guv'nor.
https://youtu.be/chZjiVs7boQ?t=4m51s
[Try that - it's not what you're expecting!]
no subject
Date: 2016-12-13 06:40 pm (UTC)As for being “up in arms,”
“If it ain't broke, don't fix it” depends entirely on how you define broken.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-electoral-college-faithless-trump-231731
Of course, if Comrade-Secretary Hillary had won, they'd have no problem with the Electoral College, the institution works just fine… because it provided the Correct results.
[The funny thing, Chris, is that you and I get on well despite all this - I had someone unfriend me! - but I think it's because we have something basic in common: Our standard-bearers aren't bearing our standards. Your position is not well served by today's DNC (http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/2544756.html), and I'm a Reagan Republican in the GW Bush era. Donald Trump may be a fat-cat robber baron yadda yadda, but as Gene Simmons said, “You may not like rich people, but when did a poor person offer you a job?”
Pardon my language, but I liked the Twitter remark I saw immediately thereafter: “All right, you orange f**k, let's see what you've got.”]
no subject
Date: 2016-12-13 06:59 pm (UTC)The rich people I know mostly work for organizations that are very rich, few of which actually involve a rich individual. Most of the large companies around here have a very rich management team, but then again, most of the executives of the mutli-billion dollar companies around here are politically to the left of me too...
I employ two people for the house myself, I'm not super rich. I just think this 'rich' / 'poor' thing is as over played as the left / right one.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-13 08:11 pm (UTC)Well, bearing in mind that he's deceased: Sam Walton, of Wal-Mart fame.
As for wealthy management, the Star Wars symbol of two contraposed equilateral triangles comes to mind, because as one climbs the managerial ladder at Wal-Mart you can indeed make an increasingly comfortable salary - and your perch becomes ever more precarious. Here today, gone tomorrow.
Me, I perceive that “the absence of rank hath its privileges” - I go to work each day, punch a clock, and have no rational fear of losing my job unless something goes very badly wrong.
“Socialism is a conspiracy of losers against achievers.”
- Attribution currently withheld at present
no subject
Date: 2016-12-13 09:24 pm (UTC)This idea that there are achievers and everybody else is, to be honest, kinda rubbish. It smacks of an attitude that most people are just millionaires who've just hit on hard times recently. The reality is the vast majority of people could work their asses off and never be actually rich. Socialism (as it is actually practiced in most of the world, rather than the fantasy version where it's indistinguishable from North Korea Communism) just recognizes that reality.
In the current paradigm I have a serious fucking problem with the idea that a person could work two full time jobs and not be able to afford to live(*). I have a really serious problem that entry level staff, and some above, at Walmart (for example) need government (i.e. my fucking taxes) handouts to make ends meet.
Looking forward a couple of decades I am curious about what we do when the current 'make work' jobs are largely automated too. At some point we have to accept that the current capitalist model basically doesn't work in a world of increasing automation and AI.
We currently make something like 4 times the median household income, and that's with me underpaying myself while the company grows - prior to running my own business it was something like 6-8 times depending on the bonus payments... I'm going to get a really good tax cut from the Trump Administration, people richer than me will get a lot more... Thing is. I don't really need it and the charities we support aren't going to do much for the poor bastards living in the deep red states who are about to have a crash course in the economic realities of trickle down.
Frankly, I suppose I should just sit back and enjoy that the company is doing ok and we're in a hot space. The thing is, I don't want to have to enjoy what wealth I generate in the next few years behind the walls of a safe zone in some kind of SF dystopia.
(*) - afford a place to live, an education, healthcare, retirement etc...
no subject
Date: 2016-12-14 04:48 am (UTC)enjoy what wealth I generate in the next few years behind the walls of a safe zone in some kind of SF dystopia
Oh? Well, just for your information, back in Ye Olde Days one of the promised joys of Heaven® was to be able to look down on the sinners roasting in Hell® and gloat. “Neener neener, serves ya right, ya losers, hey, you wanna drink of nice cool water? Too damn bad, ah hah-hah-hah…”
No joke. Look it up.
So yah, if the oil is at $1000 a barrel and the insanely over-extended Federal Debt Ceiling has finally cracked and fallen in and the “urban underprivileged” have decided that if the welfare checks and foods stamps have stopped (and the iron-barred local grocery stores are looted to the walls) then Whitey in the rich suburbs must be made to pay directly, but Whitey has had decades enough of that already and is better armed, resulting in a viciously genocidal race war…
Then you can safely huddle behind your medieval-fortified “gated community” walls and private paramilitary-armed police and listen to the gunfire, with your solar radio tuned in to occasional, ludicrously optimistic, indeed downright delusional “news reports.”
“Most of the GIs I knew sort of winked at the news they heard, but not
until later in the war, after Tet, did they really seem to be broadcasting
such sterile news that it flew right in the face of reality, what the
average GI was seeing…
“When you found in the heighth of battle, with the country coming to
pieces all around you, and Armed Forces Radio News consisted of what was
happening at the State Fair in Burning Stump, Montana, then its
credibility became simply destroyed.”
- Don North, ex-Armed Forces Vietnam Network reporter
no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 06:29 pm (UTC)I'm far more worried about un-secured, insured private debt and what that would do when/if it blows up.
At some point we have to deal with wealth concentration because while money isn't a zero-sum game, the amount of money around doesn't grow anywhere near as quickly as it accumulates at the top.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 06:54 pm (UTC)At some point we have to deal with wealth concentration
And it's funny, y' know, how “dealing with“ that always seems to end up involving great quantities of barbed wire and armed guards - at the national borders if nowhere else, and usually it's plenty else.
The “cure” is far worse
than the “disease.”
Date: 2016-12-13 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-13 06:56 pm (UTC)Which, to paraphrase, is: enjoy this, I live in a rich, liberal state which can afford to pick up the slack, most of you don't.
I do wonder if the 2 tier USA we're heading towards will make any impact on the people most impacted?