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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsConservatives Don’t Want To Talk About Income Inequality. That’s Why We Should.
Jesse Myerson wrote a great piece in the Rolling Stone rolling out five bold ideas for reducingpermanentlythe very serious problem of income inequality. As he says in the piece, while some of these ideas may seem outrageous, they arent new or untried ideas. In some places, such as Alaska, things like having the government buy up a bunch of stocks and bonds and pay the dividends directly to the people are already in place. The point of the piece is to be bold and to start pushing progressives to think big, particularly as theres starting to be a lot more support for progressive economics in the larger public. It also caused right wingers to go on major meltdown alert, as Brian Beutler explains.
...
Conservatives, perhaps because they come to the conformist mentality more easily than liberals, tend to be more cognizant of how much political discourse is governed by the Overton window and not by niceties like intellectual honesty and rigor. So theyre attempting to make an example out of Myerson for the rest of liberals: Do not even consider bringing up policy ideas to fix our income inequality problems or this will happen to you. Conservatives are clearly afraid, particularly that the public might warm to these ideas. Which is all the more reason for liberals to start pushing harder. If conservatives are this afraid to have a discussion about income inequality, its because they know that its a weak spot for them and a strong spot for liberals.
This is particularly true for Myersons first suggestion:
Its a piece of received wisdom on the right that unemployment and use of social services is the result of laziness, not lack of opportunities. Thats the justification for cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits. The argument is that the jobs are out there, but people arent taking them because they have unemployment checks and food stamps, so all you need to do is take social services away and voila! Full employment. Advocating for guaranteed work, therefore, not only is the right thing to do, but it means calling the conservative bluff on this. Okay, you say to conservatives, How about we start a new WPA and when people come in for food stamps and unemployment, we offer them a decent-paying job on the spot doing work that needs to be done anyway? If they really believe that people arent working because theyre lazy, theres no danger in making that offer, right? After all, people will turn it down and their point will be proved. But if were rightand we arethen we would be moving millions of people out of poverty and into good-paying work that will build up their resume so they can get other jobs elsewhere. Thats a situation conservatives desperately dont want, so theyre trying to use hyperbole and pile-ons to prevent it from happening. And thats why we need to keep pressing the point.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/07/conservatives-dont-want-to-talk-about-income-inequality-thats-why-we-should/
But conservatives went absolutely apeshit. So severe was the apoplexy that they failed to recognize that included in these ideas were a bunch of things conservatives like replacing income taxes and replacing paternalistic welfare programs with cash transfers and that already exist successfully in the non-communist world. It was amazing.
In their rendering, Myerson hadnt sketched out a road to serfdom. Hed planned a massive frog-march to Siberia for our society.
Part of this was emotional affect. Myersons Twitter bio is satirically hashtagged #FULLCOMMUNISM. Combine that with the articles hyperbolic framing and many conservatives reacted tribally.
...
Conservatives, perhaps because they come to the conformist mentality more easily than liberals, tend to be more cognizant of how much political discourse is governed by the Overton window and not by niceties like intellectual honesty and rigor. So theyre attempting to make an example out of Myerson for the rest of liberals: Do not even consider bringing up policy ideas to fix our income inequality problems or this will happen to you. Conservatives are clearly afraid, particularly that the public might warm to these ideas. Which is all the more reason for liberals to start pushing harder. If conservatives are this afraid to have a discussion about income inequality, its because they know that its a weak spot for them and a strong spot for liberals.
This is particularly true for Myersons first suggestion:
1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the public sector. There are millions of people who want to work, and theres tons of work that needs doing its a no-brainer. And this idea isnt as radical as it might sound: Its similar to what the federal Works Progress Administration made possible during Roosevelts New Deal, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. vocally supported a public-sector job guarantee in the 1960s.
Its a piece of received wisdom on the right that unemployment and use of social services is the result of laziness, not lack of opportunities. Thats the justification for cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits. The argument is that the jobs are out there, but people arent taking them because they have unemployment checks and food stamps, so all you need to do is take social services away and voila! Full employment. Advocating for guaranteed work, therefore, not only is the right thing to do, but it means calling the conservative bluff on this. Okay, you say to conservatives, How about we start a new WPA and when people come in for food stamps and unemployment, we offer them a decent-paying job on the spot doing work that needs to be done anyway? If they really believe that people arent working because theyre lazy, theres no danger in making that offer, right? After all, people will turn it down and their point will be proved. But if were rightand we arethen we would be moving millions of people out of poverty and into good-paying work that will build up their resume so they can get other jobs elsewhere. Thats a situation conservatives desperately dont want, so theyre trying to use hyperbole and pile-ons to prevent it from happening. And thats why we need to keep pressing the point.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/07/conservatives-dont-want-to-talk-about-income-inequality-thats-why-we-should/
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