Libertarian ‘Utopia’ Styled After Ayn Rand Book Spectacularly Falls Apart Almost Immediately
image via galtsgulchchile.com
A community made up of American ex-pats deep in the South American hills of Chile – far away from America’s annoying taxes, healthcare mandate, and legal abortions…
“How can you be so poor and have all this stuff?” -Bill O’Reilly
Each of these screenshots is from a different Fox show attacking poor Americans for having amenities, trying to make the point (pretty much) that “when I was a kid, poor people had a lot less than this.”
Of course, this is all based on one thoroughly-debunked Heritage Foundation report that conservative media have been parroting for years.
Breaking news for Fox: We’re not in the 1950’s anymore. As technology advances, each year older technology gets less and less expensive, and therefore more working class Americans are able to access it.
Matt Yglesias elaborates:
A serious person would follow this up with a discussion of relative prices. Over the past 50 years, televisions have gotten a lot cheaper and college has gotten a lot more expensive. Consequently, even a low income person can reliably obtain a level of television-based entertainment that would blow the mind of a millionaire from 1961. At the same time, if you’re looking to live in a safe neighborhood with good public schools in a metropolitan area with decent job opportunities you’re going to find that this is quite expensive. Health care has become incredibly expensive. The federal poverty line for a family of three is $18,530 a year. I wonder how many Heritage Foundation policy analysts are deciding they want to cut back and work part time because it’d be super easy to raise two kids in DC on less than $20k in salary? Perhaps just an outfit full of workaholics.
While Fox is so busy pointing out how many people have access to microwaves and refrigerators, they conveniently forget to mention how many people have poor access to quality education, health care, and affordable housing. Because really, what good is an A/C if you can’t even afford to keep living in your house?
Tracy Hall was a physical chemist who worked for General Electric. He was the first person in the world to create a synthetic diamond, in 1954. General Electric went on to make billions of dollars off his invention. His reward was a $10 savings bond in addition to his regular salary. Further proof that incentives and capitalist do not drive innovation. They merely seek to control the intelligentsia and the proletariat who make it happen.
AnonymousAgreed. When folks say “But capitalism gave us x, y, and z” what they really mean, even if they don’t know it, is “Capitalism stole x, y, and z from the People.” Humanity has always had incredible ingenuity. Capitalism has only been the latest iteration of a power hierarchy which funnels the benefits of human ingenuity to the top while externalizing any negative outcomes toward the bottom.
The fundamental law of capitalism is: When workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers—not rich businesspeople—the true job creators. A thriving middle class isn’t a consequence of growth—which is what the trickle-down advocates would tell you. A thriving middle class is the source of growth and prosperity in capitalist economies.
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| — | Nick Hanauer (via azspot) |
Happy Towers-Go-Boom-Eternal War-Death To Freedom and Privacy-Jesus-America-Hotdogs-Freedom Fries-Terrorism-Patriot Day!!!
“The freedom of freedom has freedomed! Nine-Eleven!” - Pres. George W. Bush
I resolved to apply antiquity’s teachings to our world today, and so began my path to conquest. Conquest not of men, but of the evils that beset them. Fossil Fuels. Oil. Nuclear Power. Like a drug, and you, gentlemen, along with foreign interests, are the pushers
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| — | Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, Watchmen |
