In fact, I will say I *happily* pay my taxes, with the exception of funding a bunch of wars I don’t particularly agree with, but as far as the military itself, social programs, hell, even a lot of the pork? Happily pay that. Pork usually means jobs, better roads, improved infrastructure, research, and all sorts of stuff the pays tangible dividends down the road. Even research that I think might be a little silly, like the mating habits of the (insert insect name here) can have a purpose if it will help farmers etc protect their crops from swarms. DoD R&D projects include things like vaccination studies, and a lot of military tech has translated into some of the better consumer electronics of the last 50 years.

You want projection from wingnuts?

Go read this and prepare to be astounded…

The right wing projections are coming fast and furious these days.  The biggest whopper to me is the whine about class warfare.

Whoa.  There it is.

Republicans: Screeching About Their Taxes
Democrats: The Fucking Grownups

There’s the sound bite for the next year.  I’m going to say it as much as I can.

Projection for serious. And also, somehow, reading the 53% folks, so many of them are, like, not doing well? I mean, many on the 1% are all ‘I am in the 1% because I have health care’ which is not right either but is somehow positively incorrect. Whereas the peeps on the 53% tumblr are all ‘everyone in my entire family has cancer and works 500 hours a week, suck it stupid liberals’. And having noted that:

Does anybody want to do the graphics part for a ‘which protest should i join’ flow-chart/infographic/site? As in 99%, 53%, 1%, which one should you join. I have a lovely decision tree all worked out (including such as options as ‘Are you super fabulously wealthy?’->‘Not just in your head?’ and ‘Do you like Ayn Rand’s fiction works?’->‘Is it just for the dirty (rapey) sex scenes?’), but it’s been several days and I haven’t moved forward on the graphics bit. So! Pandasourcing. Who’s itching for a quick project?

The most irksome thing: A solid percentage of the people on the 53%er site seem to be college students who are either unemployed or earning babysitting money. They are NOT the 53%. I don’t even know what the fuck they are ever talking about.

My beef with the “53 percent” is the same as the duck-billed placelot’s.  Most of those people have been struggling all their lives and are still struggling.  They’re happy about that?  I guess they need to cling to something to make themselves feel better about themselves, but claiming the moral superiority of not “whining” is some pretty weak sauce.  It’s like my coworker who doesn’t have a life and is stuck in a dead-end job, but likes to feel superior to the rest of us for working the hardest.  Our company has never and will never reward her for that.

Anyway, I stand by my assertion that this is practically a religion in this country: the insistence that no one needs a safety net and fuck you for even suggesting it.  The supposed 53 percent takes it personally if you suggest they won’t make it to the top 1 percent someday.  That attitude is incredibly prevalent among the people who actually participate in the political process.

You hit the nail there, Amanda. And when a nutter whines about the possibility of his tax money going to family planning, his complaint is considered “serious” because funding contraception, STD testing and abortions breaks some 2,000-year-old rules of said crank’s invisible sky fairy.

When I mention that I’m bothered by the fact that too many of my federal income tax dollars are being used to build and drop freedom bombs on foreign brown people, I’m a filthy hippy.

AnonymousDog with the “I know you are, but what am I?” defense!

You shoulda been up there debating the other retards in Vegas last night.

I wonder about this 53/47 split. Was this true in 2000 as it is today? Does it have something to do with the massive Bush era tax cuts?

If so this is one of those “murdering your parents then pleading you’re an orphan” things.

*gives mass a poke about ablist language*

I wonder about this 53/47 split. Was this true in 2000 as it is today? Does it have something to do with the massive Bush era tax cuts?

I think some of it is due to recent tax breaks and credits passed under Obama and isn’t something that you would necessarily see once the economy recovers.  Massive unemployment also contributes to that number.

typist: no, it was in the 20s back then. The difference has been the recession, with lots and lots of people not making as much money, and some increases in tax credits aimed at the poor and middle class. I think pm had a pretty good breakdown last week.

And you know what I’ve decided the 53-percenters remind me of? slut-shamers. The ones who slag women who are raped for having dressed wrong in an attempt to convince themselves that it could never happen to them, because they’re clean.

To engage in a bit of anecdotal, armchair psychology for a moment: my observations of right-wing tax resentment is that a lot of these people hate, hate their jobs. They hate getting up in the morning to go to them, the tedium, the co-workers, the clients and customers and the asshole boss. But they do it anyway. Why? Because it means they’re responsible, and because they get paid. And when they get those paychecks, they say “I suffered through so much for this, but now I can go out to eat or remodel my kitchen or take that vacation, and I sure deserve it.”

But then the government goes and takes a big chunk of it! And they resent that. They went through all that misery to get that paycheck, only to have it taken away? And for what? They think it’s to support people that don’t get up to a job they hate every day - people who have taken the easy way out and aren’t working like a responsible person is supposed to.

This is all, of course, a ridiculously narrow and selfish view - if you’re getting paid enough to give a third of your check to the government, you’re doing better than most no matter how miserable you are. And putting up with a horrible job doesn’t make you a better person somehow, I’m sorry. But a bad job can really grind some people down and build the kind of resentments that a lot of conservatism is based on.

I am stunned at the innumeracy of people who think that the 99 percent doesn’t include most of the 53 percent.

I wonder about this 53/47 split. Was this true in 2000 as it is today? Does it have something to do with the massive Bush era tax cuts?

It has to do with incomes which took a huge dive in 2009, though part of the Bush tax cuts made a big increase to the child tax credit, which eliminates federal income taxes for a bunch of people once you have 2-3 kids.

Right that makes sense Kesh.

Point taken Mighty Ponygirl. I apologize for my boneheaded wording.

last year I was on a jury in a prominent trial. after the verdict (which mostly exonerated the defendant) was announced I was surprised at how some of the comments left on the newspaper articles were all about how the jury must have been filled with welfare recipients who don’t pay taxes. of course that was factually wrong, but it was the out-of-context leap to that conclusion that surprised me. Your post illuminated it, Amanda - thanks.

oldfeminist:

I am stunned at the innumeracy of people who think that the 99 percent doesn’t include most of the 53 percent.

Well, that’s just it.  The argument is that the OWS protest doesn’t really represent 99% of Americans.  It represents the 47% of Americans that don’t pay federal income taxes and still want federal spending to benefit them.  The 53% is supposed to represent the people that do pay their taxes and don’t want federal spending because they don’t believe it benefits them.

The 53% card is also being played because it implies a majority.  OWS is about populism and collective action.  Erick Erickson’s retort basically amounts to claiming that OWS isn’t a majority populist movement and instead is made up of a minority fringe group out-of-touch with America as a whole.

Obviously the whole argument falls apart when you swing by your local Occupy Together meet up spot and encounter hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of protesters, with maybe a dozen or so counter-protesters in dispute.  If crowd size is any indication, the 99% moniker is an earned one.  The protests have a broad support base and are impressively large.  So I wouldn’t worry too much about 53%ers, as they aren’t as 53% as they appear to be.

Did you see the photoshop job they apparently posted?

http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/11646106350/1/tumblr_ltavhjEtuD1qa4ff3

I don’t have any way of verifying it, but… Sheesh.  I hope it was just someone messing with them.  The other option is that they’re just fake, which rings a bit true, with their other posts.

yea not much better, that.

These morons must think that Granny should be paying income tax on her already pitiful Social Security check, since the elderly are a large chunk of the 47%. Oh wait, they DON’T think.

But a bad job can really grind some people down and build the kind of resentments that a lot of conservatism is based on.

That’s what makes shitting on the middle class such a win-win strategy for the plutocrats.

”...my observations of right-wing tax resentment is that a lot of these people hate, hate their jobs. They hate getting up in the morning to go to them, the tedium, the co-workers, the clients and customers and the asshole boss. But they do it anyway.”

This isn’t limited to denizens of the Reichwing by any means.  People on the right, left, and smack in the center too often feel the same way.  Welcome to life in these United States (and pretty much everywhere else too).

”...if you’re getting paid enough to give a third of your check to the government, you’re doing better than most no matter how miserable you are. And putting up with a horrible job doesn’t make you a better person somehow, I’m sorry. But a bad job can really grind some people down and build the kind of resentments that a lot of conservatism is based on.”

What bugs me about these kinds of resentments is the blind acceptance of the idea that all jobs are horrible, that none of them pay enough, that no one is respected for their (often difficult) work.

Where is it carved in stone that the guy (and it’s almost always a guy) at the top must earn get paid 400-times what the poor sucker in the mailroom is getting?  And have a golden parachute too, so they can flit to the next grotesquely-overpaid job and screw the workers there too?

Where does it say that most jobs have to involve the maximum amount of degradation and humiliation, that you must be treated like an animal or it’s not a Real Job, that you must come home late and exhausted, physically and mentally worn out, and expect to do this from the age of 18 14 10 until the day you die because having workplace rules requiring decent working conditions and having an adequate social safety-net would make us into Evil Godless Socialists?

Why are there Americans who are convinced to the core of their being that the 1% on Wall Street “earned” their billions (often/usually stolen from the hides of the 99%) and deserve our worship and admiration (for either choosing the right parents or being simply more ruthless than others), while otherwise normal, average, Real Americans who suffered an unwanted setback and now struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over head are leaches and parasites for simply attempting to continue living?  Even Ayn Rand took government assistance before she finally left for her golden perch in hell.

The teabagging morons, the wingnuts, and the rest of the Reichwing apologizers shouldn’t blame the people who’ve had enough and are protesting the unholy inequities of modern America in “occupy” movements, they should examine the unholy inequities and set them right.

These attitudes can’t last forever.  I think I can just barely hear the wheels of the tumbrels way off in the distance as they gather together to bring the unjust overlords to (a kind of) justice.  Too bad it has to come down to this…again…

It’d be nice if the 53%ers could realize how good they got it if they make enough to pay federal taxes. I make $9612 a year, but I’d bet money that these people think I live on the gravy train due to the circumstances of how I make that income.

It’s boggling to me how the fact that they’re doing better than the people who don’t make enough slips by them, and they have the gall to tell people who want better in their lives to shut up. Don’t they want better too?

They pity themselves for their miserable lives and jobs and yet aspire to no more, and tell others not to aspire as well. It doesn’t make sense when observed with any sort of rationalism or economic theory, even bad economic theories still assume that people aspire.

It makes sense only if one considers the 53%ers toadies and protectors of the systems and people that have harmed them.

Understanding authoritarian personalities and their critical lack of self awareness goes a way to explain why these people even exist, but it is still hard to accept that people who fortune has treated well can actually act so put upon by the world.

Point taken Mighty Ponygirl. I apologize for my boneheaded wording.

Hey!  Stop insulting MikeEss.

He prefers the term “cranially over-protected”.

I think MikeEss has a great point here about the “jobs-are-supposed-to-be-horrible” caucus. Ages ago I worked for a place the was stressfull and mediocre-paying, but mostly gave the people who worked there the freedom to do good stuff (OK, and the frequent travel perk didn’t hurt either when I was young). Then a new middle manager came in, and the next thing you knew we were all spending a couple hours every friday afternoon filling in the reports documenting weekly progress on our personal Fourteen-Month Plans. One of my co-workers complained that the job wasn’t fun any more, and he responded, “Young lady, work isn’t supposed to be fun.”

It’s that same spirit, I think that leads people to see government workers with health plans and guaranteed pensions and think “they’re a bunch of overpaid slobs” instead of “hey, let’s organize so that our boss agrees to fund health care and pensions.” Or at the disabled and complains that they have special rights to park in the convenient spot. There’s really a school of thought (I blame the protestants) that life is supposed to be hard, and that if it’s not you’re doing something wrong. (It’s allied with but not the same as Krugman’s “pain caucus”, which is composed of people who believe that other people’s lives should be hard, with essentially the same moralizing justification.)

Insert MikeEss’ remarks here

Honestly?  It doesn’t have to be written in stone but because our society’s rules are written in such a way that work becomes the lowest common denominator.  In most other first world countries they have strong labor laws and a general support for collective bargaining along with socialist ideology inherited from either their Catholic background or a natural coalition of tradesmen that formed a larger base.  In the US due to the protestant work ethic and the elites holding the cards at the top trickling value to those with less than to keep such policies they have been able to turn work into a drudgery of human suffering.  Already our standard of living is lower than half the countries of Europe because we simply allow ourselves to be bullied.  “Right to work” (i.e. right to fire without cause) and other laws have made working anywhere but for yourself or at a highly-skilled professional position a frightening endeavor.  Thus the resentment comes out and people take it in two ways, they either internalize the blame and spew bile about how others should be given less so they can have more or turn it outwards and try and gather others to gain more collectively.  There are shades between them but largely it falls into an argument of whether or not you want the tide to rise or you deserve more.

I remember listening to conservative radio 4 or 5 years ago and the host, maybe Eric Erikson himself, said something that really stuck with me as something wrong with the conservative mind set towards work. The host was talking about people working 40hrs a week, full time, and things not working out for them, and offered his solution, to quote “get off your lazy ass and get another job.” To conservatives, even working full time is lazy, slothful, and one should work harder for the things a full time job is supposed to confer.

Conservatives don’t seem to understand the point of work, that one works to have a life; instead they think that one lives in order to work. They also don’t appreciate the irony of how they use a medium when they tell people to work in order to contribute to society: socialist.

Conservatives don’t seem to understand the point of work, that one works to have a life; instead they think that one lives in order to work.

One works to support one’s family. Self-sacrifice for one’s own family is the greatest good. And making a show of self-sacrifice for one’s own family is the only time you’re allowed to make a show of anything and remain unassailably virtuous (unless you count making a show of self-sacrifice for one’s lawn or house as separate from one’s family).

Basically it’s as close as you can get to the letter of the classical immigrant-sacrifices-self-so-immigrant’s-kids-get-a-better-life American dream, despite still violating it entirely in spirit. The better life has become entirely conflated with the self-sacrificial life.

Someday maybe someone will write a book about it.

Conservatives work for the same reason they do anything else—to hurt people in order to justify their poor decisions post hoc.

They coughed up the same crap about how those of us who support Occupy Wall St. are lazy parasites who don’t want to work, and are playing victim. And that we hate people who do work and pay taxes.

Am getting all of that with a high school classmate on FB along with the fact “Those layabouts are enjoying free gourmet organic food most people cannot afford”. 

But then the government goes and takes a big chunk of it! And they resent that. They went through all that misery to get that paycheck, only to have it taken away? And for what? They think it’s to support people that don’t get up to a job they hate every day - people who have taken the easy way out and aren’t working like a responsible person is supposed to.

It isn’t just the misery aspect. 

The high school classmate would argue that she’s “earned” the right to make far more than most people because she’s gained admission to one of the most elite universities in the country with some outside merit scholarship, excelled as a STEM major with a pre-med concentration, gained admission to one of the best med schools in the country, got through her highly competitive specialization residency with flying colors, and deserves the promise of being potentially filthy rich as a result of her intelligence and hard work as a student/doctor without having to worry about more taxes on top of the “onerous taxes” she’s already paying. 

In short, anyone who didn’t have her level of academic/professional achievements has no right to complain if they’re not doing as well or are in dire economic straits.

I’m part of the 1%, in wealth if not in income, and for the last few years I’ve paid no income tax at all; something to do with capital losses and the like. Since all my income is unearned, I don’t pay Social Security or Medicare either. My mother’s house in a Southern California beach town, bought 50 years ago and worth over $1 million, is assessed at $85,000 and we pay about $1500 in property tax, thanks to Proposition 13. I’m part of both the 1% and the 43%, and I’m not alone!

(This is not to say I haven’t paid enormous amounts in income tax during the years we were growing our company, but when we sold out we were treated gently by the recently reduced capital gains tax.

Any job ought to be a decent job, with good benefits and plenty of time off, even waiting tables, but for some reason that’s not the American way. Maybe it’s like the old joke about Hollywood: it’s not enough to succeed, your best friend must fail. Some people can’t feel good if they don’t feel superior.

Basically it’s as close as you can get to the letter of the classical immigrant-sacrifices-self-so-immigrant’s-kids-get-a-better-life American dream, despite still violating it entirely in spirit. The better life has become entirely conflated with the self-sacrificial life.
Someday maybe someone will write a book about it.

Certainly, I wrote that book.

I just can’t get over how many of the 53% posts are people claiming to be immigrants who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and paid their own way by joining the army.  Where do they think their wages, benefits and special veteran programs were being funded from, the war fairy?

@Delishka #37: Not to mention, what is the point of their testimonies, that we should *all* join the army?  For one thing, they wouldn’t take us all.  I watched Winter’s Bone last night, and that exact reason (lack of $$$) is why the main character wanted to join, but she couldn’t.  And, you know, another thing, I’ll just go tell my 80 year old grandmother that joining the army is the solution to her poverty.

One works to support one’s family. Self-sacrifice for one’s own family is the greatest good.

Yeah, because it’s such a great thing to have parents you hardly see, and who are too worn out when you do see them to spend any time with you. I love my father, but it bothered me to no end how little time he had to spend with me sometimes (Kicker: he’s self-employed, and thus basically makes his own hours). That dedication to work has paid off for his business, but having him work up to fourteen hour days 7 days a week sucks for a child who just wants time with her dad :/

Someone needs to tell these bozos that doing something good for you is not diametrically opposed to doing something good for your family.

Exholt: Huh. I remember my former college roommate saying something similar. He was halfway through his residency, sleeping four hours a night, treating really unpleasant people in an urban ER, and said “After I get through this, I’m going to feel completely justified in charging my patients whatever I can get.”

That’s another reason for work as suffering, at least among the elite: if you’re miserable, or have been miserable, you feel no compunction about screwing over everyone else. And of course the vicious hazing as part of admission to the group works pretty much everywhere.

Not to mention, what is the point of their testimonies, that we should *all* join the army?

No, the point is that if we didn’t, either because we dared to want something else to do in life or because we were too small/sick/old/LGBT (until very recently), then we deserve our shitty failing starving cold and dirty lives. Because everyone deserves to fail except them.

Exholt: Huh. I remember my former college roommate saying something similar. He was halfway through his residency, sleeping four hours a night, treating really unpleasant people in an urban ER, and said “After I get through this, I’m going to feel completely justified in charging my patients whatever I can get.”

That’s another reason for work as suffering, at least among the elite: if you’re miserable, or have been miserable, you feel no compunction about screwing over everyone else. And of course the vicious hazing as part of admission to the group works pretty much everywhere.

In addition to the misery and work as suffering aspects was the rampant elitism common at the high school she and I attended.  It was such that kids who got into her elite non-Ivy university would make snide comments about classmates who got into Ivy schools considered less prestigious back then…much less schools rated lower on their perceived prestige ladder. 

That was underscored by a cool high school friend who was a target of one such snide comment after he had to turn down that elite non-Ivy university’s admission offer for a lower ranked Ivy because the latter offered him a 50% scholarship whereas the former school gave him practically nothing. 

One bright spot was that being in that environment caused just as many classmates to view the whole system as BS….including some of their biggest beneficiaries.  A reason why most FB friends who were high school classmates are strongly supporting OWS. 

However, we still retain a bit of that elitist edge as most of them weren’t hesitant to point out their disappointment at how easily that doctor classmate is uncritically regurgitating Fox News and right-wing talking points considering her educational background.

That’s another reason for work as suffering, at least among the elite: if you’re miserable, or have been miserable, you feel no compunction about screwing over everyone else. And of course the vicious hazing as part of admission to the group works pretty much everywhere.

Post grad school, I was talking with someone else who had also finished her PhD, and we werediscussing what we were doing afterwards. She (jokingly) described her position as a professor as “continuing the cycle of violence.”

I have a perverse love for suffering and hard work as much as the next guy (I’m a live-to-work kind of person), but I realize that this isn’t wanted or even preferable for most people, and I don’t hold it against anyone who wants the basic honest dignity of a 40 hour workweek that pays for retirement and health coverage.

I keep trying to explain to people that money should buy the frivolous things in life: vacations, nice cars, great clothes. But things like education, health insurance, and everything *important* shouldn’t be inaccessible because of money.

Also, exholt, I thought all the people who got into those shills were lazy upper middle class students who weren’t that bright. Now you’re saying that they were extremely hard worming and competitive and got into top level med schools and other graduate programs where they worked extremely hard?

Yeah, there is no doubt that people at top med schools (and to a much lesser extent, top law schools) worked their behind off. And while there are schools for lazy upper middle class kids, they tend not to be top ten schools. More like top 30.

I would suggest there’s another layer to the 53% thing though. It’s not just trying to stoke resentment against liberals. It’s also a direct reaction to the fact that so far, Obama has mostly cut taxes for working class people. People like Irk Irksome know this, so this becomes something like the swiftboating incident—an attempt to turn an opponent’s strong points against them. Of course, the fact that taxes weren’t cut for the Right Kind Of People is part of this as well, but The 53% (tm) don’t want you to realize that.

#44:

Some schools even have places to segregate idiot legacies and other assorted half-wits and undesirables. For example, Boston University has the College of General Studies—it’s two more years of high school for underqualified students they can’t reject.

@John:  Meh.  I coasted through high school and college.  I did not get into MIT for grad school because I was a slacker and had no idea what I wanted to do.  Judging from my GPA and GREs, though, I’m pretty sure I could could have gotten into a top med or law school.  I’m just very good at taking tests.

Didn’t go that route, and I’m quite happy for it.  But don’t believe for a minute that brains and/or money can’t substitute for hard work, even at top universities.  I’ve known enough med and law students to be pretty confident of that.

So what’s the big deal if it’s smarts and not hard work that gets you ahead?  It’s great to be born smart (or tall, or pretty, or athletic, or whatever).  But the idea you should be rewarded for your genes doesn’t make much sense.  Hard work should be rewarded - whether you have an IQ of 160 or 60.  Nobody deserves to suffer in poverty if they’re willing to work a full-time job, no matter how much natural skill they happen to be graced with.  And nobody should expect the world to be handed to them on a platter because they were born under the right stars.

Nobody deserves to suffer in poverty if they’re willing to work a full-time job,

You should have stopped at “poverty” and left off the conditional clause.

Nobody deserves to suffer in poverty.  Nobody.

Point made.  The set of people who are able-bodied and healthy, could get a job, have no complicating factors making a full-time job problematic (like being a lone caretaker of small children), and choose not to work is vanishingly small.

Singling out those individuals is like the death penalty - in theory, a very small group of people might deserve it, but in practice it’s a weapon to be used by the majority against people they don’t approve of.

Do the numbers, people: 53% < 99%.
As for me, I am one of the 100% who have benefitted from the existence of Federal, state, county and municipal governments.

But the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be embraced as St. Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to spend his urban eighteen shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen shillings a week on his beer and his family instead of saving it up for his old age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done for “the undeserving”: let him be poor. Serve him right! Also—somewhat inconsistently—blessed are the poor!

Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. Let him be a standing exhibition and example of ugliness and dirt. Let him have rickety children. Let him be cheap and let him drag his fellows down to his price by selling himself to do their work. Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect our young men with the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him by turning the nation’s manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty, hypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of oppression and malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still less deserving; and let the deserving lay up for himself, not treasures in heaven, but horrors in hell upon earth. This being so, is it really wise to let him be poor? Would he not do ten times less harm as a prosperous burglar, incendiary, ravisher or murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity’s comparatively negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were to abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that poverty is the one thing we will not tolerate—that every adult with less than, say, £365 a year, shall be painlessly but inexorably killed, and every hungry half naked child forcibly fattened and clothed, would not that be an enormous improvement on our elcisting system, which has already destroyed so many civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours in the same way?

G. B. Shawz, The Gospel of St Anthony Undershaft, Preface to Major Barbara

Anyway, I stand by my assertion that this is practically a religion in this country: the insistence that no one needs a safety net and fuck you for even suggesting it.  The supposed 53 percent takes it personally if you suggest they won’t make it to the top 1 percent someday.

It’s one of the differences, in general, between Canadians and Americans. While we don’t necessarily like paying our taxes any more than you do, and of course a given number of the rich will try and maintain as much of their income as they can, I’ve found that there’s less of an issue with the concept of being taxed: I hardly see anyone advocating for a flat-tax, in general people aren’t whining that they shouldn’t have to pay more because they’re rich, and so on.

I theorize the difference is because Americans don’t want to pay higher taxes when they get rich and therefore don’t need the services (they think) taxes pay for (also explaining why people who will never pay an inheritance tax are opposed to an inheritance tax). Canadians, being more inclined to pessimism, accept paying for government because they assume that at some point in the future—even if they don’t need it right now because they are well off—they might need to go on unemployment, get welfare, or need some other form of assistance.

In short, your average American expects to be one of the Stinking Rich. Your average Canadian considers the possibility of being one of the Huddled Masses.

Also, exholt, I thought all the people who got into those shills were lazy upper middle class students who weren’t that bright. Now you’re saying that they were extremely hard worming and competitive and got into top level med schools and other graduate programs where they worked extremely hard?

One of the most difficult things about arguing with that anti-OWS FB high school classmate is the fact she’s a great poster child for the Horatio Alger immigrant rags to riches story.  When I attended that high school, most of us were first-generation immigrants, working/lower-middle class, and eligible for free/reduced lunches.  Though there were a few upper/upper-middle class kids there in my time, the lazy slacking types as described above tended to prefer transferring to the more nurturing confines of a NYC/NE private school within the first two years. 

Moreover, her uni is one of the few elite institutions that has been perceived as one school brain-dead rich legacy types or overentitled upper/upper-middle class kids would avoid like the plague because of the insane workloads/rigor(Think MIT, Swarthmore, UChicago or Reed).  The brain-dead legacy or slacker upper/upper-middle class kids tend to avoid “grinder schools” from what I’ve observed.

exholt: it makes sense for someone who has pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and not had that much exposure to legacies to think that other people are like them. Alas.

Paul: I agree, and somehow some of them manage to ignore how much their parents sacrificed for them and how much they benefited from opportunities that many do not have, no matter how hard they work, mostly due to luck of time/place/family.  I am one of those poor/extremely poor kids who got lucky, was given opportunities and worked damn hard to get myself places.  I’m not going to forget the luck aspect of it nor that much of what I managed was tax-supported and still is (much of what I do is government contracting).

Brian X:

CGS comes in pretty handy for the hockey team when they’ve found a player they desperately want, too. Although my sophomore roommate whose parents could cover full price helped subsidize my major academic scholarship, so I can’t knock it too hard.

BrianX,
FYI - General studies, most places, was the precursor to interdisciplinary studies and could be fairly rigorous, depending on the university and the committee (as most early GS degrees required committees of 2-4 profs rather than a single advisor). 
When I was working at a western state U, the dumping grounds for unprepared students were: nonmatric, L&S undeclared, history and poli sci.  At the just-across-the-state-line U, they were slightly different, though L&S and Ag undeclared were both popular.  This was early 80s through early 90s.