And this is going to save the state how much, once you account for the work done to find out how much these people have in savings? I think it’s not so much that modern “conservatives”, who are of course actually reactionaries and not conservative at all, don’t want the poor to get out of poverty, but rather that modern conservatism is all about Being a Dick. To be a Republican now is to be a (almost always) white, (usually) male smug jackass who wants everyone to suffer, because you yourself are so insufferable that anyone else who isn’t a dick wants to avoid you, and therefore why should you think that niceness gets you anywhere?

Yeah, $2,000 is an absurdly low amount of assets to have to disqualify you for food stamps. Now, I don’t know what the average cost of living is in Pennsylvania, but with no other source of income, $2000 would only last me a month and a half, and that’s if I cut off all of my “unnecessary” services like internet/TV, phone, water, electricity. I could stretch that to 3 months if I stopped paying my student loans, but then I’d be acting “irresponsibly”.

Oh, and I live in one of the lowest cost of living districts in the nation.

That’s just fuckin’ evil.

It won’t save anyone anything. It’s just going to depress the economy of the state. Research has shown that food stamps are by far the most cost-effective stimulus program out there. For every $1 the government spends on it, it creates $1.73 in stimulus.

Weird to see the ‘rationales’ of privilege. It’s becoming clearer to me as I get older that it’s not ‘capitalism’ that conservatives want to more pure - it’s feudalism - but with the twist of vertically integrated corporation. They will not be happy until the 99% are born owing money to a corporation.

And this whole idea of ‘personal responsibility’ has become a sick joke. They want authority over everything and ‘responsibility’ for nothing. - For us it’s the reverse - we are ‘responsible’ for everything but have authority over nothing.

Weird to see the ‘rationales’ of privilege. It’s becoming clearer to me as I get older that it’s not ‘capitalism’ that conservatives want to more pure - it’s feudalism - but with the twist of vertically integrated corporation. They will not be happy until the 99% are born owing money to a corporation.

Yep. I’ve been calling it “neofeudalism” for a while now.

I live in pennsylvania (in the Philadelphia region) and my best friend relies on food stamps to, well, eat.  I don’t think that this would actually disqualify him-though it very well might-but this is still a horrific attack on something that those people who are already struggling the most rely on just to live.  Does anyone know anything that I or people I know could do to try to stop this?

It’s not just savings.  It’s savings or assets.  So does that mean if I have a beater car worth $2000 I have to get rid of it to get money to eat?  There are a lot of areas in PA with no public transportation.

Apparently, you’re supposed to be living on Doritos.

Please, can you imagine the righteous wingnut outrage if they saw someone spending their food stamp money on Doritos? Why should MAH TAX DOLLARS pay for some lazy unemployed person’s Cool Ranch lifestyle?

No, I’m fairly sure that the only thing poor people can eat and avoid most wingnut outrage is gruel. And I say most because there will always be at least one wingnut who’s angry that a poor person is eating anything at all.

If the government can’t create the job for an auditor to check every food stamp recipient’s assets, I guess it will have to be a contractor, like privately-owned city parking meters.  This must be another policy meant to create a giant black market, like eliminating income tax and putting sales tax on everything.  I guess everyone had better get bigger mattresses.

Its always been like this for the disabled. It’s called a “spend down” and you need to do it to qualify for SSI and Medicaid, which in turn qualifies you for foodstamps. I was actually unaware that in any state you could have more than $2000 to get food stamps. It’s always been like that in the three states I’ve lived in.

The problem is (and do they realize this and just not care?) is that all the rules that inhibit you from getting on some kind of benefit program also prohibit you from getting off of them. Its a one way ticket to poverty.

The problem is (and do they realize this and just not care?) is that all the rules that inhibit you from getting on some kind of benefit program also prohibit you from getting off of them. Its a one way ticket to poverty.

To a wingnut that’s a feature, not a bug.

This feudalism argument is dead on.  Conservatives want to be like Lord Whats-His-Name on Downton Abbey, so if you’re very, very lucky, loyal, and valuable, they MIGHT decide to pay for your cataract surgery but if the government takes away from them that God-given RIGHT to be charitable they’d rather just close down the manor, thank you very much.

For every $1 the government spends on it, it creates $1.73 in stimulus.

Oh dear, we see these tired old facts again and again.

How often does it have to be pointed out that the confidence fairies are scared by government spending?  And we can’t survive without fairies(*)?  We’ve got to eliminate all(**) government spending so the fairies come back!

(*) Obviously, this doesn’t include any fairies except confidence fairies. 

(**) Except military spending, security spending, tax cuts, and government programs for churches and other right-wing approved activities.

It’s not just savings.  It’s savings or assets.  So does that mean if I have a beater car worth $2000 I have to get rid of it to get money to eat?  There are a lot of areas in PA with no public transportation.

According to the article I read in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, one (1) car is exempt from the assest calculation, but if you own a second car, it must be a PoS worth less than $4000.  Your house is also exempt from the asset calculation, but of course, assets could mean everything you own.  Doesn’t take much to top out over 2k.

The piece also noted that Pennsylvania has one of the lowest food stamp fraud rates in the country, along with being one of the more efficient at delivery, so this effort by Governor “Bought’n'Paidfor” is clearly just another way to punish the poor for being poor.

I was stuck in a crappy low-paying job for months because I didn’t have enough money saved to be able to pay the bills between the time I took a new job and when I got my first paycheck there.  I had to get a second job so I could could save money to quit the first one!  You have to have some savings to start a new job.  The people are assholes.  But we all knew that.

The sad thing is that the people in the Pennsylvania T are the ones that shoot themselves in the foot voting these people into office. Those near Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (which light up bright blue pretty much every election) are at least in a slightly better position to keep living if this would go through. Those in the middle where there are little to no public services always vote red and will most likely suffer the most when/if this passes.

However, I have a feeling (I hope a true one) that this is a appeal to the base that won’t actually go anywhere. Corbett is on thin ice with the voting public because as AG he failed or possibly hindered the PSU abuse investigation. People hate him right now because, thankfully, raping children is still seen as a bad thing.

One of the best ways to deny benefits is to discourage people as much as possible from even trying to get it—this is a major function of paperwork and certification.  Even if you qualify you have to prove it somehow, at great expense in time and energy. 

This is especially pernicious when what is easy for a person of wealth to come up with is harder for someone who needs the service.  For example to get a paper from the bank listing his account balances, Daytrader Dave prints it from his online banking on his computer in seconds, while Jobless Jane spends time physically visiting the bank, waiting in line, showing ID, filling out a form, and so on.

Then add on the fact that a lot of people who need these services are already physically challenged so that what is just an inconvenience to someone in good health basically takes up the whole day’s resources.  Or maybe more, to the extent that the challenged person decides that’s too much of a challenge and they’ll just have to eat a little less and go without heat.

I’ve also read about outrage that the poor have cell phones!

Which, at this point, are cheaper than a landline: mine is $20, and my monthly plan $30, but I saw fliers for a program to give free cells to those under the poverty line, and free 250 minutes a month.

Just enough minutes to job search, or call 911 in an emergency.

But somehow proves that they’re not poor afterall.

@Lexie: I know I’ve read alot of anecdotes of people who couldn’t afford to get a better paying job, because the extra income wouldn’t make up for the lost benefits. For some reason Republicans interpret the solution to this as “No more benefits!” instead of as a sliding scale where, if you make more money you get less assistance, although I heard from a friend that it works best when there isn’t a 1:1 ratio of increase wages:lower benefits (e.g. if you earn 1 more dollar you get 30 or 50 cents of reduced benefits instead of a dollar of reduced benefits). Does anyone know of any good studies into this?

#19- Back when I had my really low-paying job, I tried to get WIC or food stamps (can’t remember the difference), and let me tell you, IT IS HARD!  It took the better part of the day, two times and I still couldn’t get everything in order so I gave up.  I had to bring every document you can imagine, have them all filled out prefectly and then sit in an awful building that looks like a jail for hours.  People make it sound like a drive thru that shovels cash into your BMW.  It is not like that.  It’s demoralizing, humiliating and difficult.  Just the way they like it.

If you pick up “The Wealth of Nations” you don’t see really see much of our current economics debates. Yes, as famously pointed out by a litany of economists, the book was written before the ‘satanic mills’ of the heartless 19th Century.

But Smith’s world of “commerce” with the notion of free bargaining in a post feudal world (workers are free to move, no longer being indebted from birth to the landlord) is almost as foreign to the 21st Century conservative as the 18th Century gentry. This notion of ‘capitalism’ as corporate bribing of the congress for some kind of franchise (Blackwater - and just you wait for our water supply to become privated, etc) has nothing to do with Smith’s notion of add the wealth of nations - in fact it’s pretty much 180 degrees opposite.

All of this reichwing obsession with corporations being “job creators” is actually neo-feudalist, not capitalist.

I think it’s telling that both communists and libertarians refer to us people as “The Masses”, like we are just stupid lumps of protoplasm. That’s because they both agree us little people are just to dumb and lazy to do what’s needed. Authoritarians all share a contempt for ordinary folks. Suffering is all us stupid mules understand, and it keeps us in line. The one thing they fear is a peasant uprising. So, we have the security state.
It’ll get worse before it gets better.

@Comment #24: kmg50 on 01/11 at 01:51 PM

I think it’s telling that both communists and libertarians refer to us people as “The Masses”, like we are just stupid lumps of protoplasm.

I think it’s dumb when you say how communists refer to people, without actually reading anything by communists *. If you did, you’d see that they don’t, in fact, refer to “the masses” that way.

*
People’s World Website,
“Food Stamp Usage Jumps to Record Levels In Illinois”
January 20, 2011
by Pepe Lozano

Is anyone else seeing this posted twice?

According to wingnuts, having a refrigerator means you are not poor.  To really be considered poor, you have to be living in a refrigerator box.

@Comment #26: helen w. h.  on 01/11 at 02:03 PM

Is anyone else seeing this posted twice?

Yes.

It’s not just savings. It’s savings or assets.

My books alone are easily worth more than that! So even if a car is exempt, add in a computer, a television, a cell phone, and a few other common things, and hardly anyone could pass that threshold. But I guess if you really need to eat you could set your apartment on fire before requesting food stamps.

`Neofeudalism’ is a good word for it. Notice the increasingly open acceptance of economic coercion as a force for good, far beyond the usual talk of efficiency and the invisible hand. That, I think, was what bothered me most about Romney’s “I like being able to fire people.” Set aside that he once again conflated corporations with people, since, remember, he was talking about “firing” an insurance company, and set aside that, for the most part, only privileged people like himself ever have that luxury—the crux of it, for me, was his appeal to coercion: It’s not just that markets are efficient, it’s that they allow you to punish people who don’t “serve” you well enough! That’s his argument.

Corbett isn’t operating from a radically different playbook.

If you pick up “The Wealth of Nations” you don’t see really see much of our current economics debates. Yes, as famously pointed out by a litany of economists, the book was written before the ‘satanic mills’ of the heartless 19th Century.
Wrong:

“And did those feet in ancient time” is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date on the title page of 1804 for Milton is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed c. 1808.[1] Today it is best known as the anthem “Jerusalem”, with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916.

The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, travelled to the area that is now England and visited Glastonbury during Jesus’ lost years.[2] The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation (3:12 and 21:2) describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian church in general, and the English Church in particular, used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.[3]

In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake implies that a visit of Jesus would briefly create heaven in England, in contrast to the “dark Satanic Mills” of the Industrial Revolution. Analysts note that Blake asks four questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ’s visit; According to this view, the poem says that there may, or may not, have been a divine visit, when there was briefly heaven in England. But that was then; now, we are faced with the challenge of creating such a country once again.[4][5]
...................................................................................................................................

Dark Satanic Mills

The term “dark Satanic Mills”, which entered the English language from this poem, is often interpreted as referring to the early Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships.[8] This view has been linked to the fate of the Albion Flour Mills, which was the first major factory in London, designed by John Rennie and Samuel Wyatt and built on land purchased by Wyatt in Southwark. This was a rotary steam-powered flour mill by Matthew Boulton and James Watt, with grinding gears by Rennie,[9] producing 6,000 bushels of flour a week. The factory could have driven independent traditional millers out of business, but it was destroyed, perhaps deliberately, by fire in 1791. London’s independent millers celebrated with placards reading, “Success to the mills of ALBION but no Albion Mills.”[2] Opponents referred to the factory as satanic, and accused its owners of adulterating flour and using cheap imports at the expense of British producers. An illustration of the fire published at the time shows a devil squatting on the building.[10] The mills were a short distance from Blake’s home.

The mill in question was built in 1784, only 8 years after TWON was published.

Blake was 19 when TWON came out, but I don’t know if he ever read it or even heard of it.

By claiming “I saw a poor person with a cell phone,” the conservatives are playing to people’s personal biases. Most people these days think “cell phone” and they think “iPhone on Verizon network, probably at least $100/month, the phone is work at least $300, etc” They really aren’t considering the Virgin Mobile $20/month no contract phones, or similar offerings from MetroPCS, Boost, etc, and of course these options are way cheaper than a landline.

I’ve lived in a lot of shitty apartments—some that probably wouldn’t meet section 8 requirements, and all of them have come with a shitty old refrigerator (one literally wedged under a top cupboard that was skewed up because they didn’t bother to measure the fridge for the space and just crammed it in). No filtered water and ice dispenser in the door, and only one crisper drawer and no “meat and dairy” drawer, but it kept the fridge cool and the the freezer cold.

These are the sort of people who don’t understand that it’s possible to buy a set of bedsheets for less than $70 if you don’t care about threadcount.

The Academy should revoke his certification: http://www.solarguard.com/tchome.htm

Just enough minutes to job search, or call 911 in an emergency.

Well, calling 911 doesn’t actually use minutes, but yes, a phone is 100% essential these days to getting a job, and the conservatives who deny that (and I’ve met plenty) are really showing their hand. If you spend all your energy telling them to bootstrap themselves up, you can’t then turn around and get angry that they’re allowed to own bootstraps.

Well said, Triplanetary!  Of course, the wingers I know will say exactly that with no inkling of the contradiction. I’d say they were ignorant, but that could be insulting to ignorant people!

Oh gawd. I read this after just having read about TX and OK bills that would compel women to get vaginal sonograms (i.e. a prolonged vaginal probe), hear the doctor describe the fetus and wait 24 hours before accessing an abortion, and would allow doctors to withhold information about physical defects in the fetus from the pregnant woman. Which would be state-mandated rape IMO. (I’m having trouble finding the actual bills, so I’m going on the info in the article). It’s really like the conservative party is composed of villains twirling their mustaches and Mr. Potters cackling, “mwehhhh, hehh hehh hehh!” while surveying the little people below.

(Begin rant.)
Over the past year or two I’ve noticed that the lifetime working-class lefties I know, whose progressive values were forged in the fire of growing up in the Bible Belt, have become nastier toward their fellow man as well. My sister in law was livid when she was perusing the Angel Tree (like the Toys for Tots Christmas charity) and saw that some kid had requested an iPod. She raged at how spoiled and entitled kids are these days! Who does that kid think he is? No amount of pointing out that kids don’t understand money and that she also requested expensive gifts from her broke parents when she was little would convince her that that child didn’t need to be “taught a lesson.” Yeesh. And then, worse, hearing my mom, hardcore lefty extraordinaire, side with the Republicans over the recent Wisconsin teacher’s union busting fracas (“why should teachers expect something special, huh? The rest of us don’t get those perks!”). It was maddening. And then hearing her praise Ron Paul for sticking to his guns even though she disagreed with him, like working as an OB/GYN for decades and refusing to understand that choice comes with nuance is somehow a positive value. She’s been married to a bullheaded man for over 30 years, how could she not see this?? And then hearing my brother in law on the other side of my family complaining about entitled welfare queens driving BMW’s and spewing out babies, then in the same breath complaining about racists. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

It was hard not to connect these attitudes to the other major topic of conversation over the holidays: everyone’s work environment. Everyone had a job that was under threat of termination because of the economy. Less pay for what should be illegally long work hours. Everyone had pulled multiple all-nighters in order not to have to work from home during Xmas Day.* Co-workers fighting each other tooth and nail for scraps (i.e. unpaid approval from bosses and the possibility of not getting laid off), everyone pissy and mean to each other, and no one can leave their shit job because they are lucky to have it. It’s so frustrating, but shit rolls downhill. So the working classes, rather than voting in their best interests and feeling empathy for the truly poor, are just happy to see that shit keep on rolling.

Amanda, you’ve made an excellent point in the past that the right-wing extremists cause the moderate position to shift right-ward. But I don’t think the paranoia, anger and resentment of what should be the working-class leftist base can be discounted either.

*you know, people complain about the corporatization of Xmas because people buy, buy buy instead of enjoying the holidays. But the problem I see with corporations and Xmas is that they work their employees extra-hard right up until Xmas-Eve because deadlines !!!!11!! so people are emotional wrecks by the time they get their three days off (if that). Worker’s rights is a family value.

EVERYTHING SUCKS.

PS - @satanicpanic I had the same experience with collecting unemployment in 2009. Demoralizing, humiliating and difficult. Also I misread your name as satanicpicnic every. single. time. And it is delightful either way.

Mosey—lol. How dare that child have desires.

Mosey, one of my frustrations lately is coming to the realization that Americans are just downright mean people. That’s really all there is to it. We are mean and vindictive towards our fellow citizens and just becoming moreso during these hard times.

Wow Tyro, I’m jealous of your gift for succinctness. I want to say that it didn’t used to be that way but it’s frustrating that I cannot really know how people felt in, say, the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. But it kinda seems like movies made frequent appeals to people’s charitable feelings toward poor people, orphans, etc. But then again, Jim Crow.

...kid had requested an iPod…

You can buy an iPod shuffle for $50.  In fact, I did that for one of the kids I picked in my office’s Christmas charity this year.  When I saw that was what he wanted I feared that he wouldn’t have the computer set-up necessary to support it, and I was sorry that I wasn’t able to get him a fancier, better iPod, but it would never have occurred to me to be disgusted with him for -what -not knowing his place?  That’s horrible.

I see some of the things that people bring in for charity gifts though, and while it isn’t my place to judge I wonder why they bother sometimes.  I don’t ‘adopt’ a kid in order to give him/her the cheap stuff from the 99 Cent Store, that his parents probably already give.  I think the intention is to get them something special, that they’ll like and that will make them feel good.  Right?

From the Inquirer article, the state claims that only 2% of the 1.8 million people currently on food stamps would be affected (which is of course baloney because every one of those people is going to have to prove lack of assets, and any number of them will be kicked for getting some form wrong). If that were true, the state would expect to save at most $3.2M of the reported $160M it spends administering the program (the feds pay the actual benefits). That’s assuming, of course, that it costs exactly nothing to modify all the software in the benefits offices to handle the proof-of-assets paperwork and also nothing to retrain every caseworker to handle that paperwork properly, and that they don’t have to hire any additional workers to process an extra million or so forms a year.

Oh, and also assuming that none of the 35,000+ people cut loose from the food stamp program ends up in a hospital because of, y’know, malnutrition or hypothermia or not buying necessary medicine, and similarly that none of those people ends up in jail because, say, they decided to shoplift some food or steal something that they could fence to pay their rent.

Of course, the neofeudalists are just spending taxpayers’ money, not their own.

    What, does a rich person lose a stock option if a poor person has an old computer that they look for work on? Part of it is that deep conservative hatred of giving anything for nothing at all—-and of course the peasants are the definition of replaceable.

    The very act of asking for help is what these guys hate. 

    The thing about not allowing poor folks to have anything just fascinates me. I mean, what good does it do? They can’t look for work without a phone.  They can’t get help without a phone. And once they sell all their stuff—-then what? It just makes no sense. Why? If you sell stuff in a hurry, you don’t get anything like the full value and then what? I don’t dare mention the intangible things that some possessions give people that can cheer them up.  You can’t argue morals or kindness or humanity to conservatives. You can’t even argue practicality.  As Amanda mentioned, food stamps are one of the best things for the economy that there are, along with unemployment. People spend that money, and the people who receive that money turn around and spend it and everybody benefits.

    But why? Saying they’re sadistic scumbags who bullied everybody they could just doesn’t cover it. They want to be in the position of being the person who gets asked for their benevolent kindness, but…..they don’t want to be asked without prostrations and tears and smiling-through-sobs gratitude.  I think they’re thinking to themselves that they’d only be wonderfully kind if people would just give them the gratitude they’re due,  and beg and plead for help, which the Lord of the Manor will grant after a suitable period of consideration. 

The idea that poor folks have to self off everything, yet keep themselves clean while searching for work, cap in hand,  is their standard for poor.

@Tyro #37
Mosey, one of my frustrations lately is coming to the realization that Americans are just downright mean people. That’s really all there is to it. We are mean and vindictive towards our fellow citizens and just becoming moreso during these hard times.

It all goes back to our ridiculous emphasis on individualism.

@Eileen #39
I think the intention is to get them something special, that they’ll like and that will make them feel good.  Right?

No, the intention is to make middle-class white people feel morally superior with minimal actual effort or sacrifice.

At its heart, conservatism is always based on the just-world fallacy, and the American strain of conservatism is heavily influenced by Calvinism.  Conservatives think the main reason poor people are poor is because they’re bad people.  They eat too much, fuck too much, use drugs, and don’t value mindless, grinding labor for its own sake.  If they stopped being so sinful, God or the Market (they’re basically the same thing in this model) would reward their virtue by making them wealthy.  This is why conservatives have always loved religious “charities” like the Salvation Army and Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity, who are more concerned with saving souls than saving lives.  From the conservative perspective, you can’t have one without the other.  In fact, trying to help the poor without converting them is both evil and futile; you’re trying to reward sin, and God/Mammon will punish you for it.

Mosey - Not to mention that an iPod shuffle costs less than $50 brand new.

But it’s a common, if unfortunate aspect of human behavior that when things get bad, the impulse is not to band together but to fight each other for the scraps.  It’s the plot of every post-apocalyptic movie.

Things have to be really, really bad and there has to be an easily-identifiable enemy for the common people to rise up and fight back against their oppressors.

No, the intention is to make middle-class white people feel morally superior with minimal actual effort or sacrifice.

No question, and I include myself to some degree, but I have to believe that people also want to reach out and share and engender good feeling in others with these things, especially at Christmas.

I can’t reconcile the meanness of the conservative stance with their purported embrace of family and community values, honestly.  I’d like to see people be able to eat and house themselves simultaneously.  And make phone calls too!

It’s funny, because my dad doesn’t have a fridge (or many other basic amenities, like a shower/bath), and only has a mobile because his house doesn’t have a landline. Yet he defies a lot more of the conventional definition of the “noble poor” than most of the people in poverty who have cells and fridges, since a lot of his situation is caused by poor decisions rather than financial deprivation (as he’s been employed with a decent wage since before he first moved out of our family home, though he does have a few debts).

That said, anyone with half a heart should be able to sympathize with people like him, since the poor decisions in question (buying a house in need of repairwork, ripping out the old amenities and never putting in new ones, preferring to go out and spend money on leisure rather than on repairing his house, hoarding) are all things that ensue from mental issues and stress (some inherent, others due to the stress of divorce as he moved in, then as a result of having to live in a shithole).

Conservatives, regardless of country, always focus on the poor decision itself to delegitimize poor people’s claims to suffering (when they aren’t busy disqualifying them as poor for having a certain possession). They simply don’t think about the actual practicalities of living in poverty, the reasons people in depressing situations might be more likely to make certain mistakes, or the fact that making the mistakes has much greater consequences for the poor than their wealthy contemporaries.

But it’s a common, if unfortunate aspect of human behavior that when things get bad, the impulse is not to band together but to fight each other for the scraps.

No, that’s an unfortunate aspect of American behavior. It would be a mistake to extrapolate it to the rest of the world. I’m not saying we’re the only country where people trample each other when things get bad, but it’s not nearly as universal as libertarians would have you believe.

Huh, sometimes I think I should see someone about my parentheses problem.

I can’t reconcile the meanness of the conservative stance with their purported embrace of family and community values, honestly.

For conservatives, “family values” mostly just means patriarchy, and “community values” conjures up images of pasty white Leave it to Beaver suburban neighborhoods.

Comment #39: Eileen on 01/11
Thank goodness for people like you! Though to be fair to my SIL, whom I love, she was also angry that her office was *requiring* all the employees to participate in this charity to build “team spirit” and “office morale,” even though the employees didn’t get Xmas bonuses and they all got paid just above minimum wage even if they held graduate degrees (they’re archeologists). That is really unfair. But she shouldn’t have taken that anger out on the anonymous kid. Which brings me to

Comment #41: ginmar on 01/11
Yeah I think you’re spot on with some attitudes I’ve encountered among the wealthy (Mr. Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life really is a great charicature). But IME most very wealthy people simply don’t want to have to think about poor people or deal with them, there’s little of that petty outraged jealousy. In fact such an attitude would considered common. I see most of that attitude coming from the slightly-richer-than-poverty class, and the Mr. Potters would probably keep such attitudes to themselves if they didn’t get massive applause from the working-middle classes.

My sister in law was livid when she was perusing the Angel Tree (like the Toys for Tots Christmas charity) and saw that some kid had requested an iPod. She raged at how spoiled and entitled kids are these days! Who does that kid think he is? No amount of pointing out that kids don’t understand money and that she also requested expensive gifts from her broke parents when she was little would convince her that that child didn’t need to be “taught a lesson.”

You can get an iPod shuffle new for $49. I bet you could get a used earlier generation one (without voiceover and three-way shuffle/play/off switch) for $30 or less.

If you sell stuff in a hurry, you don’t get anything like the full value and then what?

Then you get to pay more to buy it back when and if you can afford it, and/or you get to pay someone for the right to use it or the equivalent without the benefit of ownership.

That’s the truly insidious part of austerity and how the 1% benefit.  Not only will they end up with more money in hand form the tax cuts, but the austerity will force fire sales for the assets of the other 99% (ie, their homes, etc.)  So, their more plentiful dollars buy more in the depression prices.  It is a lovely vicious circle that benefits a few at the expense of all of us.

And to all the people helpfully pointing out the cost of an iPod shuffle, I know nothing about Apple gadgets so I don’t recall what the specific iPod model was but it was something pricier that my SIL genuinely couldn’t afford for herself.

Sorry I didn’t mean to repeat what everyone else already said! 

As penance I will add that iPod is kind of a generic term nowadays and you can get non-Apple MP3 players for way less.  Coby (the sony namealike ripoff) has them for $20 new with color video and audio.

Oops again Mosey!  Doesn’t really matter as a kid asking for a pony is the kind of standard “asking for more than is affordable isn’t that cute” thing.  So long as the kid isn’t the poor kid who has to have his desires crushed as early as possible.

  I have a little guilloche vanity set—-manicure set, miniature perfume bottle, compact and comb——that’s over a hundred years old, in perfect condition, and matched. I couldn’t replace it these for less than several hundred dollars, and frankly, I couldn’t replace it at all, realistically.  Theoretically it’s highly collectible. But how do you sell stuff like that? You have to pay fees for auctions and all that stuff.  Do you pawn it? Then there’s interest.

But it’s more than that. Sometimes I take it out and admire it.  It’s a lovely little thing.  Its beauty is distracting and satisfying.  Stephen King said something about this kind of thing in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Rebellion (paraphrased) where Red says the banker character (brain fart, played by Tim Robbins) made such beautiful little rock chess pieces: They were so damned pretty I nearly cried. You need pretty things in a place like this, but some people don’t seem to know that, or to have ever had them. The implication is that it kills some little spark in your soul.  I think that’s really what they’re after. And even the humblest, oldest Ipod is, in its own way, a striking little thing to hold in your hand. Add in the wonder of carrying pretty music with you—-like the aria scene from that same movie—-and you have a means of creating and nurturing something that the oligarchs don’t want you to have. 

  And that’s to say nothing of the insidious ways that poor people are penalized and kept poor: payday loans,  ER bills,  rent-to-own, the difficulty of replacing anything; and the difficulty of buying anything that might save you money, such as just pots and pans to cook with, rather than spending money on individual meals here and there.  Ordering a pizza delivery can pay for several days’ worth of meals,  but what if going to the grocery store takes three buses, three hours, and wears you out when you could be destressing form working two jobs? (If you can get a single job at all.) 

Agreed on the neo-feudalism, but only to an extent.  Feudalism recognized not only obligations of vassals/serfs to lords but also of lords to vassals/serfs.  The neo-feudalists want to only have obligations of the lower orders to the higher orders without any of the reciprocal obligations.  Note for example, the emphasis that poor should be supported via voluntary “charity” rather than via tax-funded government programs.

@oldfeminist Ha, that’s ok! If I wanted an iPod (I’m happy with my hand-me-down music device though) would appreciate such a substitution. I hope that kid would too because that’s probably what he got, if anyone ended up “adopting” him. I also suspect that the kid belongs to a peer group where brand defines you: you know, if you don’t have the right kind of shoes or whatever, you get made fun of. It reminds me of when my older sister asked my mom for an “alligator” shirt in the 80’s and my mom got her some off-brand polo shirt, which entirely defeated the purpose, which was blending in with the cool people. Kids can be mean. The iPod kid may have been asking for social acceptance for Xmas. Or maybe he just wanted to listen to MP3’s. It’s these kinds of situations the conservatives overlook because “poor people” are just robotic figments of their imaginations created to serve their fearful obsessions rather than fleshed out people with emotions and personalities.

The mill in question was built in 1784, only 8 years after TWON was published.

Blake was 19 when TWON came out, but I don’t know if he ever read it or even heard of it.

DARK AVENGER:
Thorstein Veblen (of ‘conspicuous consumption’ fame) is just one of many economists to point out that TWON describes more the ‘shop’ of the mid 18th Century, not the ‘factory’ of the 19th C. Smith was not predicting the future but describing a post guild, post feudal world. In this context the scale was smaller (remember the pin factory was all hand work) and of course the whole idea of TWON is that all that better mousetrap building and the “commerce” was the true wealth of nations, not the gold sitting in the King’s coffers. By this standard I think he would have thought original corporations like the British East India company were mostly just subsidized state power (BEIC had its own army for example) and were most definitely not examples of ‘the invisible hand.’ By definition, the invisible hand is not ‘legislated into existence.’

But the modern conservative turns Adam Smith around completely - Blackwater or Xe or whatever - actually even the practice of the race to the bottom in state laws to attract an auto maker - that’s all held up as an example of “capitalism” but it would be antithetical to the cornerstone notion of TWON, which is that National Wealth should be thought of as the sum total of individual ‘commerce’ or “GNP.”

DAS, that’s a very good point.  They want all the power to dole out and to give but none of the responsibility. They want total control. They think they’ll be the benevolent lord.

And that’s to say nothing of the insidious ways that poor people are penalized and kept poor: payday loans,  ER bills,  rent-to-own, the difficulty of replacing anything; and the difficulty of buying anything that might save you money, such as just pots and pans to cook with, rather than spending money on individual meals here and there.  Ordering a pizza delivery can pay for several days’ worth of meals,  but what if going to the grocery store takes three buses, three hours, and wears you out when you could be destressing form working two jobs? (If you can get a single job at all.)
Comment #56: ginmar

Don’t mean to keep pushing Thorstein Veblen, but his “Theory of the Leisure Class” takes great pains to point out how the catch-22 and ‘vicious circle’ dynamic you describe are not the exception to the rule, but the rule.

And this whole idea of ‘personal responsibility’ has become a sick joke. They want authority over everything and ‘responsibility’ for nothing. - For us it’s the reverse - we are ‘responsible’ for everything but have authority over nothing.

Comment #6: KingElvis

DAS, that’s a very good point.  They want all the power to dole out and to give but none of the responsibility. They want total control. They think they’ll be the benevolent lord.
Comment #60: ginmar

Ginmar, this is clearly further proof of the indisputable fact that great minds think alike

DAS, that’s a very good point.  They want all the power to dole out and to give but none of the responsibility. They want total control. They think they’ll be the benevolent lord.

Er, no, they don’t.  They think they will be safe in their walled communities, protected by slavish private police, and free to ignore the misery outside.  The model isn’t feudalism but all those cyberpunk dystopian fantasies.

You had noblisse oblige precisely because the noblisse felt a sense of responsibility to the serfs they “owned”. Your modern aristocrats eschew any resoponsibility, and therefore any chance of benevolence.

Feudalism recognized not only obligations of vassals/serfs to lords but also of lords to vassals/serfs.

In theory, yes, although lords routinely tried to skirt their obligations and their social inferiors had to vigorously defend their customary rights pretty frequently. I don’t want to get into the historiography (and I’m not even a medievalist, but I’m sure we have one or two here), but it’s my understanding that feudalism as a unified concept has been thrown out since the 1970s because, like the “free market”, the general ideal didn’t actually exist anywhere. Nonetheless, I think “feudalism” and “neofeudalism” are still useful terms of art.

TWON describes more the ‘shop’ of the mid 18th Century, not the ‘factory’ of the 19th C. Smith was not predicting the future but describing a post guild, post feudal world.

Factories weren’t really on the horizon as far as AS was concerned, or later developments like Eli Whitney’s standardization of gun parts:

Many historians regard Matthew Boulton’s Soho Manufactory (established in 1761 in Birmingham) as the first modern factory. (Other claims might be made for John Lombe’s silk mill in Derby (1721), or Richard Arkwright’s Cromford Mill (1771)—purpose built to fit the equipment it held and taking the material through the various manufacturing processes.) One historian, Jack Weatherford, contends that the first factory was in Potosí, for processing silver ingot slugs into coins, because there was so much silver being mined close by.[2] See City and Factory Life for more background concerning factory conditions.

Americans are just downright mean people. That’s really all there is to it. We are mean and vindictive towards our fellow citizens and just becoming moreso during these hard times.

True enough. I would call us fundamentally insecure about our own worth as people. We have no way to tell if we’re rich or happy or satisfied except by comparing ourselves to others who have less. We claim to value hard work, and we do, as long as someone else is doing it. We pride ourselves on cheating and sleeping our way through school, learning nothing, and being handed the diplomas we were entitled to all along and shouldn’t have had to suffer through school for. But at the same time, we’re uncomfortable with the image of ourselves as lazy, complacent slackers. So we do our best to get as indignant as possible about other people’s bad behavior, and we think somehow mitigates our own.

Eileen - Am I with you!  I can’t deny that they are popular due to the making middle class people feel good part, some no doubt by feeling superior.
I was travelling when the Angel Tree went up at work this last year.  Now that my kids are adults and we have enough stuff, we get each other what are basically symbolic gifts.  I really look forward to being able to buy something special for someone else’s kids. 
In 2010, it was a mountain of arts and crafts supplies for a girl who had two tags for that - one for arts stuff and one for a craft kit - and none for toys.  It was fun trying to think of and find neat stuff for the right age.  I also got some other small items from other tags and a couple of toys for the toys for tots box.  This year, it was seven or eight things for toys for tots, but I really missed looking for the right thing for someone specific. 
Having had some really lean Christmas holidays as a kid, including being the older sibling of a kid getting toys for tots gifts through daycare, I like to pay back (or forward) to the groups I know do a decent job of it without making the families feel utterly awful for not being able to manage it on their own.  There are some charities I wouldn’t come within a mile of for just that reason.

<blockquote>No, the entire conservative view of social spending is rooted in a authoritarian, hierarchical view of the world that believes that it’s somehow for the best if the lower classes suffer privation.<blockquote>

Reminds me of the arguments used in support of slavery by the Antebellum South—best to keep slaves to make them Christians and perfect them for God.

@mosey and others.  ive heard similar things.

i spent more money on my angel tree kids than my own this past christmas and i wish i could have spent more.  as I explained to my boys, they have grandparents and family that can and will spoil them rotten.  these kids probably dont.  the presents we buy may be the only thing they get for christmas.  besides, the salvation army (who runs the angel tree) makes sure their families are at a certain economic level and they arent “double dipping”, etc.  (points about the worthy poor, or the poor being dishonest aside.)  Oy, I’m an atheist and I can get into the Christmas spirit for these kids!

@67 could you name what those charities are?  I do the SA angel tree because it’s convenient.  I know they are anti-lbgt and anti-potter, but for lack of other options, that’s what I do.

Well, after all, if they were good people they wouldn’t be slaves,  would they? Slavery was good to Africans, went some of the excuses,  because they really weren’t civilized.

It’s funny how these ultra religious types so embrace the notion that suffering is good for the soul——-other peoples’ suffering, that is.  Do they trade in suffering to their God for points or something?

Mighty Ponygirl @31

I’d go a step farther and say that a lot of the slamming of poor people with cellphones is a generational appeal to the prejudices of older (mostly whiter) Americans. People to whom the Jitterbug phone (which, I just learned, actually has a dial tone so it seems more like a “real” phone) is marketed. People who lived more of their lives without cellphones tend to think of landlines as the “normal” and cheaper option whereas the cell is an extravagance. The idea that a cell phone may be a lower-cost, easier-to-access, and convenient alternative to the traditional landline doesn’t occur to them.

Is it even legal to require unpaid participation in a charity?  It’s negative wages.

this move is just like the local Michigan statesman who wanted foster families to be given gift cards to goodwill so foster families would have to buy second hand clothes for their foster kids or spend money out of pocket. 

because second hand kids are only worth second hand clothes. /sarcasm.

#35- thanks!  And I agree, there’s something just mean about our country that seems to be increasing every year.  It always was there, but the recession really just brought it out. One thing I was happy about OWS was that people were having a good time.  It’s really hard to not get dragged down in all the negativity in the USA right now. 

#56- beautiful comment.

gardenom - Unfortunately not that would likely help you as they are local to my area of MA.  I try to keep local as much as possible so that I can check.  The one with the Angel Tree I referred to is organized at my work place by a coworker through her church, but they get the family via a public assistance list and do not apply a religious requirement.  That effort also rolls in gifts for patients at the Tewkesbury State Hospital.  I try to stick with charities I know directly and have seen in action - the Boys and Girls Clubs and Big Brothers/Sisters sometimes have good programs, possibly the YM/WCAs (though here they seem more business oriented than those I remember from my childhood in WA), Headstarts, etc. You can check with a United Way office (if you can find one) for recommendations.  The SA is better than some, even with there limitations, but I have stopped donating to their kettles et al for the last couple of years, mostly due to their anti-lbgt stance.

jeev—because they are so far removed from having to squeeze an extra $30/month out of their budget that they have just paid their landline bill without even bothering to see if they can do better. People who have never looked at what shit costs don’t get to get all pissy when other people find ways to economize.

  #63: The French nobles thought that way, too.

  #63: The French nobles thought that way, too.

Ginmar, I don’t know enough about the attitudes of Revolutionary French nobles to give even my usual half-baked ignorant opinion.  Do you have a reference you found useful?

Nothing I’ve read recently, alas. Right now I’m on an epidemiology spree.

I think the idea that Americans are fundamentally a mean people is fairly recent. If you look at earlier eras you see meanness, but you also see a fair amount of openheartedness during times of national crisis. But 40 years of propaganda aimed at convincing everyone that greed is good and that everyone around them is a greedhead (because it’s easier to act like a jerk if you think everyone else will too) has taken its toll.

#80:  I don’t know if there’s been research on this, but my pet theory is that Americans were more likely to be openhearted and generous with their neighbors because those neighbors were understood to be people like them (Christian, white, likely even the same flavor of white).  Nowadays, of course, those on the recieving end of our charity or welfare dollars might be (gasp!) brown or (shock!) non-Christian or (horrors!) might not even speak English- in which case, they’re probably those dastardly “illegals”.  In short, our generosity used to go to Us, and now it goes to the scary Other.  Agreed that the last 40 years of propaganda have contributed.

A side note on the “illegal” issue (sorry for a potential derail)- I’ve recently moved to Texas from the Midwest, and I was struck (can’t say shocked) by how attitudes towards Latin@s and “illegals” are one and the same.  One of the big issues currently is redistricting, and I read a letter to the editor a week or two ago about how we shouldn’t be so bothered about making our districts correspond to racial demographics in a fair manner, because the Hispanics are mostly illegals, and the illegals are mostly criminals, and therefore having fair representation of Latin@s in our congressional districts is unfair to us Real Americans.

paxemilia: you certainly have a point about the ethnic assumptions, but at the same time ethnic, political and religious divisions are all things that right-wing propagandists have worked very hard to emphasize. That’s, for example why the “average” person is so sure that black and hispanics are the majority of food stamp and AFDC recipients, or that states like Massachusetts don’t have any christians living there.

So let me guess this straight.  By conservative “logic”, taxing corporations is basically punishing them for earning money (which they worked oh so hard to do, obvs).  But somehow this isn’t punishing people for saving up?  The stereotype is that poor people are just bad at managing money, so now Republicans want to do everything to make sure that stereotype is true.  If some poor person manages to save up for later, they get their food taken away.  And this is especially ridiculous when you consider that many working class families have an unsteady income, whether it’s from working part-time and get more hours some months than others, or doing side jobs like wedding photography to bring in a little extra.  They might bring in a few thousand extra over a season, but only because they’ll desperately need that extra during the next few months when income is slower.

I’d go a step farther and say that a lot of the slamming of poor people with cellphones is a generational appeal to the prejudices of older (mostly whiter) Americans. People to whom the Jitterbug phone (which, I just learned, actually has a dial tone so it seems more like a “real” phone) is marketed. People who lived more of their lives without cellphones tend to think of landlines as the “normal” and cheaper option whereas the cell is an extravagance. The idea that a cell phone may be a lower-cost, easier-to-access, and convenient alternative to the traditional landline doesn’t occur to them.

A lot of older people struggle with the idea that there is technology that a younger generation is just going to flat-out skip. I read a small article on how it looks like most of the third world will never phone lines; they’re just going to skip directly to cell towers because it’s more practical, and the comments were all about how that was a terrible idea because of whatever bullshit panic-over-change they could come up with. Same with smart phones that do a lot less than a modern desk or lap top. I know quite a few people who spent their new computer money on an Android or an Iphone because they don’t use any bigger programs, just an internet connection.

I had to get a second job so I could could save money to quit the first one!  You have to have some savings to start a new job.

This is so true.  When I got laid off, I expected that I would have to relocate.  The job market is so slow that if I confined myself to just one area, I’d still be unemployed.  I applied to jobs all along the Eastern states, from New York to North Carolina.  And I did end up moving to another state when I got my one and only job offer (for a 13k pay cut) in a different state.  And I was lucky enough to even negotiate a relocation allowance.  But I didn’t get that until after I started working, and even then I had to wait for the for it to come in with my first pay check.  Moving costs a lot and you can’t pay credit for any of it.  Movers take only cash or money orders, and my deposit was paid for by check.  I had to have to cash up front just to move so I could start earning money again.  Luckily I had it saved up, but I might have had to turn down a paying job if I didn’t have that money.

Corbett is an ass in other ways too.  My family is in PA and my brother is an engineer who inspects bridges and overpasses.  And he won’t get a raise while Corbett is in office because he doesn’t want to raise a tax that would cause everyone to pay an extra $2.50 over his entire term.  Because safe bridges are just an unnecessary luxury.  But even worse, since that industry isn’t getting funded, that’s money my brother isn’t making, and it’s money that he’s not spending to stimulate the economy.  Way to kill so many jobs all the way down the chain, Corbett!

Yeah, I’d noticed both American’s vicious cruelty toward one another and the opposite activity during #OWS.

They want all the power to dole out and to give but none of the responsibility. They want total control. They think they’ll be the benevolent lord.

They also want the bar to be as low as possible and the people to be as desperate as possible, so they can play the benevolent lord with as little effort as possible and amuse themselves as much as possible with what the recipient of their benevolence can be expected to do out of gratitude.

I’m reminded of something I heard somewhere in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault discussions, about the tendency of some rich male hotel guests to make sexual advances to the women on the housekeeping staff under the banner of “helping them out” financially—-the aspect of “I’m rich, you’re poor, let me buy sex from you as a favor to you” and the fantasy of being able to offer someone a position of sexual servitude to you as a favor to them . . . power means not only the ability to do things to other people, but the ability to define it as benevolence.

#86, yeah, tell that to the 13 people in Minneapolis who were killed when the bridge collapsed one August morning,  thanks in part to Tim Pawlenty vetoing a works bill in February that would have surely found the bridge to be unsafe.  If he’s that venal as governor, ponder him as a weak, vicious,  meagre President.

What’s better for the economy? Giving foodstamps to people who will spend all the money they save on other essential items bought in local stores or giving taxbreaks to millionair ‘jobcreators’ who will use it to invest in offshore companies, go short on Wallstreet or just put it on top of the rest of their moneypile?
The real jobcreators are the consumers who create businesses with their demand for products and services, not the lucky few who own a business. No matter how good a jobcreator is at creating jobs, if there’s no demand, there will be no jobs.

maan - that logic and reason stuff just doesn’t seem to make an impact or stick with some people….
Or, yes, I agree your second paragraph is absolutely true.

Another way this benefits the 1%: I’m currently reading some interviews Barbara Garson did with McDonald’s employees, and the common thread is that the company jerks you around, makes you work 12-hour shifts and so on, and if you can’t bend over backwards far enough, there’s always another poor person to replace you with. When you view unskilled labor as parts, cutting social programs makes those parts more readily available at a cheaper cost.

@92

Oh, most fuckin’ definitely. I’ve worked many unskilled wage jobs, including fast food, retail, and warehouse. Now, as of last month, I’m in my first white-collar, salaried position, and the difference is ridiculous. My current employers actually treat me like a human being!

Several of my old wage employers would regularly threaten us with termination. The threat is there with any such employer, but a could were explicit about it. “Work your ass off, try not to use the bathroom, plus whatever demands we decide to toss on you at any given moment, or we could have you replaced in less than a day.” The worse the economy is, and thus the more unemployed people who will jump at the chance to work a shitty minimum wage job, the more tangible the threat. And the worse the consequences for someone who’s fired and is unlikely to be able to find another job anytime soon.

Employers (aka the 1%) love love love this recession. If you’re wondering why it seems like the Fed isn’t doing enough to buoy the economy, think on that.

I am aware that I’m incredibly lucky and privileged to have a college degree and a salaried career now. Many people will spend their entire lives in those shitty wage jobs where they’re treated like cogs and can’t piss more than once a day without getting threatened with termination.

When I was hired at HellMart for the second time (after having been fired at the one across town for such crimes as needing to take care of my disabled child) they made sure to point out during orientation that they had something like 300 applications and WE got the jobs. I’m sure they’ll claim they were trying to make us feel like we were ‘select’ but the threat was very clear to me- we can ALWAYS get someone else, be grateful we deigned to hire you. I hate that I had to crawl back to the company for a job, but people weren’t exactly knocking down my door to hire me. I hate that the corporations have us by the short hairs so badly that 300 people were begging to get a shitty part-time job at 9 something an hour. I hate the hoops I have to jump through to get SSI for my child, and the fact I’ll probably have to sign over my daughter’s car to her so I haven’t so many ‘assets’ (because a 2002 Malibu with 130k miles is a huge asset) requiring her to pay more for car insurance.

I hate that I’m likely in this rut for life.

And I really hate the assholes who want to keep me here.

#80:  I don’t know if there’s been research on this, but my pet theory is that Americans were more likely to be openhearted and generous with their neighbors because those neighbors were understood to be people like them (Christian, white, likely even the same flavor of white).  Nowadays, of course, those on the recieving end of our charity or welfare dollars might be (gasp!) brown or (shock!) non-Christian or (horrors!) might not even speak English- in which case, they’re probably those dastardly “illegals”.  In short, our generosity used to go to Us, and now it goes to the scary Other.  Agreed that the last 40 years of propaganda have contributed.
Comment #81: paxemilia on 01/11 at 09:14 PM

I think it’s maybe more nuanced.

Years ago, it would be normal for a White person to give money to a charity that would help poor Indians on a reservation or poor Black or Hispanic youth because the benefactor’s position vis-a-vis the recipient was secure.  You could give them stuff and be a hero.  They would never overtake you, they would be ever grateful.

Today they think they’re as good as us, and yet they want our money as charity too, and damned if we will let them get away with it.

They would never overtake you, they would be ever grateful.

There’s a scene in The Invisible Man (Ellison, not Wells ) that really demonstrates this point. The narrator gets a college scholarship from a bunch of rich white “benefactors,” provided he subjects himself to humiliation and plays the role of simpering, grateful inferior.

when I see angry ideologues advancing their pet political viewpoints over epistemology in the (putatively) skeptical community

Careful, I can see the spit flying out of the corners of your mouth as you hit all those p’s.

Yep. I’ve been calling it “neofeudalism” for a while now.

No. It is not “neofeudalism.”

This attitude has pervaded capitalism for almost it’s entire history. Please go back and read virtually everything written about or done to the working class for most of capitalism’s history (excepting 1945-1975) and you will see this has been the attitude of the capitalist class for most of capitalism’s history.

I know the liberals don’t like to acknowledge this, but labeling this stuff “neofeudalism” does nothing but obscure the reality. Capitalism was monstrous in it’s treatment of the poor and the working class for almost its entire history. The present day capitalist class just wants to go back to the pre-WW2 glory days, and, in the last 30 years they’ve had remarkable success.

You’re mistaking me for an angry ideologue. I’m posting out of a spirit of glee.

When people say things I don’t like or agree with, I want to see not only them, but the entire human race, wiped off the face of the earth. What can I say, it’s easier than having to think up a coherent argument. Because I am a sociopath, the desire to kill people is not accompanied by anger, but by joy and pleasure.

Perhaps, but Nash was a bit of a sociopath and what you are spouting is the shit a sociopath would believe naturally from his/her adaptations to our modern society.  If you don’t want people to think you are a sociopath, don’t spout that crap.

While the weapons of war do okay remotely (as in do their jobs), drilling and digging still require an element of “feel” that lag in signal makes problematic as yet.  It is nowhere near to “nearly fulfilled.  See the Mars sample drilling projects and the issues there.

if you knew, you might shit bricks.

If we gave a damn about you and your posturing in the first place.

I’m making it happen in the real world.

Ohh, is that suppose to impress me, Herr Von Esel?

You lot are screaming into an echo chamber and thinking it makes a damn bit of difference.

Glad you could take time away from your awesome real-life duties to come here and play Romper Room.

So who exactly is posturing here?

The stick is strong in this one.

No, it’s supposed to make you realize how futile your next vote or indeed any other activism you engage in really is.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

George Jean Nathan

Oh, btw, I’m not here to instruct you on German, are you shocked?

It’s a pleasure. We do have a pretty trolly office environment.

That’s good, I’d hate for a world-changer like you to have to suffer in a cubicle decorated with Post-it’s and glossy photos of Darth Vader.

Incidentally, have you heard of blockquote tags?

I know nothing of this blockquote that you speak of, barbarian devil.

Apes fliegt aus meinem Hintern, bevor ich Ihre Geschwafel nehmen hier ernst.

What it looks like you did is go on Babelfish and translate “ass” into German.

Sorry, donkey-ears, I called you a noble donkey because that’s what you come across as, but thanks for the language lesson.

Erwin, was zum Teufel hast du die Katze zu tun, sieht das arme Ding halb tot?

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

That’s from Emerson the philosopher, not the electronics brand.

Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen, der Batman müssen Sie für sich selbst lernen.

You (just for example) haven’t shown yourself to be very knowledgeable about, well, anything.

And if someone had appointed you the Rhadamanthus of this thread, that would be a relevant objection.

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.”

La vertu s’avilit à se justifier.

You’re the one coming in here calling this site an echo chamber, that’s what I deem fatuous and worthy of denounciation.

Is there usually any substantive, even heated debate here?

On this thread, perhaps not.  On this site, lots of times, but I wasn’t put her to bring you up to speed on this site, and why you choose to come here remains a mystery.

No?

we like to have a devil’s advocate to expose potential weaknesses in plans and theories. You have nothing even remotely close. Well, besides me maybe.

What do you mean, we, kemosabe?