https://www.theatlantic.com/bo...thew-desmond/673453/

The article will probably slip behind the paywall in a day or two. I recommend reading it while you can.

Excellent article - especially enjoyed the Tolstoy quotes.

IMO one of (if not THE) main falsehoods about why conservatives (~the wealthy ones) think poverty exists is that they believe wealth and privilege are entirely deserved.

That they have earned their high status through meritocracy and (for those who believe in a higher power), that prosperity is a deserved reward.

By extension (majorly), that luck plays only a trivial role in success. I.e., that they owe their top of the pack status entirely to hard work and by being smiled upon by fate (starting with the odds of family qualities. Thinking less of inherited wealth than parental inherited mental health and support. (Health certainly IS wealth too.)

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
https://www.theatlantic.com/bo...thew-desmond/673453/

The article will probably slip behind the paywall in a day or two. I recommend reading it while you can.

It's already there, if you've used your free allotment.

It’s available via MSN.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...nsidered/ar-AA18TbhT

And probably via Reader View….

I could just quote the whole article while I nod along but the last paragraph will do…

quote:

What is “maddening,” Desmond writes, is “how utterly easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes,” or by doing 20 or 30 smaller things to curtail just some of the subsidies of affluence. Yet his book makes it all too clear why the loopholes don’t get closed. The real reason the well-off sustain the status quo isn’t that they believe the poor are shiftless. It’s because meaningful change would require giving up their own advantages—or, to put it bluntly, because “we like it,” as Desmond writes. This is, he notes, the “rudest explanation” for our current state of affairs. Getting affluent people to engage in rhetorical hand-wringing over inequality is easy enough. Persuading them to yield some of their entitlements is a lot harder.

I have heard it said that either Bezos or Musk could single-handedly eliminate hunger and educate every kid in the US and not experience any effect on his standard of living.

I understand that the top income tax bracket in the US used to be close to 50%, but it didn’t seem to stifle entrepreneurship of the growth of viable corporations. Only the really really really high income earners were in that bracket. I’m guessing less than 3%? 1%? Too lazy to google it.

Yes, taxing the rich to support the poor does sound like socialism. Or it sounds like the formula for a healthy and stable society.

From what little I ever learned about politics, what classic “conservatives” want to conserve is The Aristocracy: the principle that a small few were born to rule and the vast majority was born to follow and that how God intended it and it cannot be changed. There is no chance of upward mobility, at least not to advance from the great unwashed into the ruling class.

But that’s the exact opposite of the pablum the right feeds the masses: just work hard and you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps while at the same time ensuring that such a thing is nearly impossible.

The people who really need to understand this article will never see it. Such socialist ideas never get any airtime on Faux News. So people will keep voting against their own interests. Tucky and friends will make sure of it.

quote:

I have heard it said that either Bezos or Musk could single-handedly eliminate hunger and educate every kid in the US and not experience any effect on his standard of living.

I'm sure that's true.

Also, shame on them.