Sounds good,right? (via Raise The Minimum Wage)
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Are those record high corporate profits making it easier for you and your family to pay your bills? Didn’t think so. (via Jobs With Justice)
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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?
Rich people have no fucking clue.
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend/co-worker of mine named Jim about how my classes were going and then we were interrupter by some strange woman that I later found out was the boss’s wife!
She butted in and said “Excuse me, young man! You should write a letter to Dan Soucek because he will do more to save the New River than Virginia Foxx will!”
I was a little taken aback by her rude interruption and the irrelevance of her statement but replied calmly and politely, “That’s because she’s and evil, rich capitalist and that how our society works… maybe.”
Even though she was basically ordering me to support a Democratic party candidate, she then busted into some Ayn Rand-loving bullshit speech about how important capitalists and without them civilization as we know it would come to and screeching, exploding halt. First she tried to tell me the difference between “good capitalists” and “bad capitalists”, which I easily shot down by reminding her of the fact that its all about making money, no matter who gets exploited in the process.
She then tried to bring up examples like Steve Jobs. I said that she is confusing smart people with rich people. Because Capitalists are just money men that unfortunately smart people have to go through. Jobs was a rare example of someone that didn’t have to.
She kept up though. “Well, think about you Ipad…” trying to get me to love rich people because of a gadget that I can’t afford. So, I interrupted her this time, “MY IPAD?! HA HA HA! Hey, Jim! Listen to this! ‘My Ipad!’ Look at me! I’m the millionaire who can afford an ipad and can afford to go see a doctor every time I get sick! HAHAHAHAHAH!”
In the end, I reminded her that she had no concept of what it was to be a member of the working class. Her husband makes $90,000 a year, plus full health benefits, PLUS a four figure bonus at the end of the year for keeping our operating costs low. He keeps operating costs low by keeping most of us at staring pay and denying us benefits like health insurance. So every year he and missus get to spend a week in Hawaii and my and the rest of blue collar scum get ramen for dinner.
I also told her that there is no such thing a “good capitalist”, just as the Republicans and the Democrats are two halves of the same party: The Elitist Wealth-Protection Rich Man’s Party. They may vary on things like abortion, gun control or the environment but at their core they only represent the interests or the wealthy elite.
She just tried to blow me off by telling me that I was not old enough to understand. I told her that it doesn’t matter what your age, you know what its like to be hungry and have some asshole with everything to tell you to eat cake. What its like to be so hungry you can’t go to sleep. To be a school and drink as much water at the fountain as you can to keep your stomach from hurting. To feel like a rich man when your lucky enough to have a jar of peanut butter and a sleeve of saltine crackers.
She would never understand because she was born into money and she will die with money.
And boss’s wife or no boss’s wife, I gave her my speech I give any time some rich fuck thinks that daddy’s money makes him better than everyone that has to work for their own money. “One of these days there is going to be a revolution in this country; and people like me are going to string people like you up, and all of daddy’s money won’t save you then.”
Surprisingly I did not called into the boss’s office or punished.
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