Quote:
Originally Posted by Wooders0n
Even completely ignoring any humanitarian reasons, you, as an aspiring upper classer should even selfishly want to help the lower class because they inhabit the same land as you and the further the gap widens the more they'll threaten the quality of life that you hope to enjoy.
That's still a bit abstract. The concrete/pragmatic/cynical/easy connectivity between the poor and upper-middle class is that the upper-middle and the top half of the middle class are big de facto employers in this country. Small business owners, yeah, but huge consumers of mom-pop goods and services and independent contractors--child care, landscapers, home improvement, restaurants/bars/cafes, boutique stores.
All of this labor is of the lower-middle to working-poor classes. These classes have less time with their families, more anxiety, worse health, no ability to consume the goods and services in their professional fields, and even less ability to save.
One argument against easing their burden is that it raise the prices of said goods and services, but it is ignored that these a non-zero percentage of these people would then become greater consumers of these goods/services to raise demand.
The "Economics 101" argument of vulgar capitalists is actually trite microeconomics. They smugly shame rebuttal on the seen and unseen but choose to not see past the surface level effects of a policy. It's very weird.
Economic policy is always multilayered and a mixture of art and science. No one is looking to completely eliminate the invisible hand. But slash taxes and let the invisible hand save us all is just self-defeating dogma.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ClarkNasty
Nah, it's counterproductive to any meaningful dialogue to have someone just say "everyone sucks". We have to choose. It's how it works. Force ranking choices is a super useful exercise for this.
I can buy this. At the moment, I'm still very confused. Currently, I probably lean:
O'Malley
Sanders
Stein
Clinton
Your electability, stand alone, he won't win anyway approach in December is really weird. The media is really good at fooling people into this way of thinking, so its not your fault, but you've been led to believe its a lot deeper into the primary season than it actually is.
Don't believe me? Look at the pre-Iowa polling numbers from the last lame duck presidential elections of both parties: December of 2007, 1999, and 1991 (1st election I was eligible to vote, so these are the ones I can remember). Electability is undefined right now, so citing it is a fake, warped version at a failed realism attempt.