![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Feb. 25th, 2005 09:13 amYou know, I think that politics quiz gives too much weight to anarchy. I'd rather have a dictatorship than anarchy. At least there'd be structure.
The problem is that the quiz, much like the news media, focuses on social issues and mostly ignores economic issues. That will result in making liberals look like anarchists, when in fact we want plenty of government control over business, we're only against government control when it comes to personal matters. This tendency to ignore economic issues is the reason why poor and middle-class people vote for Republicans even though they end up with poorer public education, proportionally smaller tax breaks than the rich are getting and cuts in social services that hurt them even if they don't use the services themselves, by making it harder for the people around them to get jobs and health care, making them more likely to continue to be poor. Hurting the poor ends up hurting everybody. It's sort of the reverse of trickle-down economics. It's trickle-up crime and lack of skilled workers.
The difference is that trickle-down economics doesn't work. When the government makes the rich richer, they don't use that money to create more jobs, they keep it and they continue keep labor as cheap as they possibly can. Like at McDonald's: they get money from the government as an incentive to hire unskilled workers. The idea is that having a job will allow these workers to develop their skills so they can get better jobs that actually pay enough to support themselves and their families. But that's not what happens. McDonald's does everything it can to keep its workers as unskilled as possible, because it costs money to train people. They spend the money on developing processes that are so simple that absolutely anyone can do the work, without ever learning any skills. McDonald's also makes sure the employee turnover is as high as possible, because this helps prevent people from becoming more skilled. They keep wages and benefits low, forcing people to have more than one job; this is another way to make it harder for people to focus on learning and moving up in their career.
Conversely, the trickle-up problems of artificially maintaining an underclass do happen. When people are denied an education and oportunities for real, long-term employment, they have to find other ways of surviving. Many turn to welfare, many end up selling drugs. A few are determined enough and lucky enough to overcome their disadvantages. But if we could change the system to make it easier for people to get an education and make a living wage, thereby making more people likely to be productive members of society, doesn't it make sense to do that? We can wail about "personal responsibility" while the situation continues to worsen or we can take steps that will actually improve the situation. We aren't hurting ourselves by failing to cut taxes or by preventing CEOs from walking away with millions from the companies they ran into the ground.
It wouldn't hurt the average person that much to stop the government from unnecessary military spending (which is separate from necessary defense spending, which should be preserved) and stop the tax breaks for corporations like the one I desribe above. What's so offensive about making sure every citizen has a decent education? What's so offensive about insisting that someone who works 40 hours a week should be paid enough to support at the very least one adult and one child? What's so offensive about saying everyone should have their basic needs for health care met? I'm not just saying this because that's what we commie hippie liberals say; the purpose of a society is to provide for the basic needs of its members. Humans form societies because the benefits of that outweigh the costs. If that weren't true, then we'd have anarchy.
The problem is that the quiz, much like the news media, focuses on social issues and mostly ignores economic issues. That will result in making liberals look like anarchists, when in fact we want plenty of government control over business, we're only against government control when it comes to personal matters. This tendency to ignore economic issues is the reason why poor and middle-class people vote for Republicans even though they end up with poorer public education, proportionally smaller tax breaks than the rich are getting and cuts in social services that hurt them even if they don't use the services themselves, by making it harder for the people around them to get jobs and health care, making them more likely to continue to be poor. Hurting the poor ends up hurting everybody. It's sort of the reverse of trickle-down economics. It's trickle-up crime and lack of skilled workers.
The difference is that trickle-down economics doesn't work. When the government makes the rich richer, they don't use that money to create more jobs, they keep it and they continue keep labor as cheap as they possibly can. Like at McDonald's: they get money from the government as an incentive to hire unskilled workers. The idea is that having a job will allow these workers to develop their skills so they can get better jobs that actually pay enough to support themselves and their families. But that's not what happens. McDonald's does everything it can to keep its workers as unskilled as possible, because it costs money to train people. They spend the money on developing processes that are so simple that absolutely anyone can do the work, without ever learning any skills. McDonald's also makes sure the employee turnover is as high as possible, because this helps prevent people from becoming more skilled. They keep wages and benefits low, forcing people to have more than one job; this is another way to make it harder for people to focus on learning and moving up in their career.
Conversely, the trickle-up problems of artificially maintaining an underclass do happen. When people are denied an education and oportunities for real, long-term employment, they have to find other ways of surviving. Many turn to welfare, many end up selling drugs. A few are determined enough and lucky enough to overcome their disadvantages. But if we could change the system to make it easier for people to get an education and make a living wage, thereby making more people likely to be productive members of society, doesn't it make sense to do that? We can wail about "personal responsibility" while the situation continues to worsen or we can take steps that will actually improve the situation. We aren't hurting ourselves by failing to cut taxes or by preventing CEOs from walking away with millions from the companies they ran into the ground.
It wouldn't hurt the average person that much to stop the government from unnecessary military spending (which is separate from necessary defense spending, which should be preserved) and stop the tax breaks for corporations like the one I desribe above. What's so offensive about making sure every citizen has a decent education? What's so offensive about insisting that someone who works 40 hours a week should be paid enough to support at the very least one adult and one child? What's so offensive about saying everyone should have their basic needs for health care met? I'm not just saying this because that's what we commie hippie liberals say; the purpose of a society is to provide for the basic needs of its members. Humans form societies because the benefits of that outweigh the costs. If that weren't true, then we'd have anarchy.
