Comments on: 6 Ways the Rich Trick the Poor into Supporting Capitalism

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:40:52 +0000

Friend, while I read through this post and agreed with it, that doesn’t come as any great surprise since I’m an ardent anti-capitalist anyway.
However, I feel sure that if I was an as yet uninformed moderate and I happened across this post (as I did, since it’s been Stumbled), I’d be put off by the introduction and it’d be extremely unlikely I’d ever read anything more. Using phrases such as “the United States of Torture” and foul language is a pretty poor way of winning converts to the opinions you’re expressing.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment, but the way the post is written is pretty much guaranteeing that you’ll only ever be preaching to the converted, and that’s no good when what’s needed is spreading these facts.

By: Petit discour sur le capitalism - danychouinard.net

Petit discour sur le capitalism - danychouinard.net — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:47:33 +0000

[...] 6 Ways the Rich Trick the Poor into Supporting Capitalism [...]

By: Borderboy

Borderboy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:41:56 +0000

Being rich is a relative term, being successful is more correct. Everyone is successful at something.

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:21:07 +0000

@Kavan – LOL. Yeah, thanks for seeing past my math(or lack of):) I shouldn’t be posting in a hurry(like now):)

By: Kavan Wolfe

Kavan Wolfe — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:10:41 +0000

@Rick, 330 million people times $1 million is $330 trillion. The current bailout price tag is some in the neighborhood of $1 or 2 trillion. The total GDP of the U.S. is about $14 trillion. So no, that does not pale in comparison to government waste. However, The real number of people on welfare is far smaller (something like 5 million) and the amount they receive is much less than $1 million, so yes it does pale in comparison to the cost of, say, the Iraq clusterfuck.

@Zander, If you compare Canadian political rhetoric to U.S. political rhetoric, the Canadian politicians are less crazy, and our (Canada’s) economic policy is similarly less cowboy-ish. However, all the same rhetorical trickery is used. It’s just less effective because Canadians weren’t as brainwashed during the cold war.

By: Zander

Zander — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:12:25 +0000

I have more of a question than a comment.

How does this compare to our own country, Canada?

My self i think we are mid-way between the welfare states of Europe and the capitalist run USA.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:30:45 +0000

@H- LOL – Sorry, mutil-tasking. I meant 1 million and my point still the same. I think there is a limit on how long a person can be on welfare (please correct me if I’m wrong) and hopefully we’ll never have every person in the US on welfare (or even a 3rd). Either way , it’s going to pale in comparison to the money our government is wasting elsewhere. No matter how we spin it, it s still the least of my worries.

By: H

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:54:58 +0000

@Rick

330,000,000 x 3,000,000 = 990,000,000,000,000

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:07:40 +0000

@Kavan – Very nice, thanks!

“You often here these talking heads going on about the U.S. becoming a welfare state, “like France”. I have a feeling that they don’t actually know what “welfare state” means, but it sounds bad, so they say it anyway.”

So true, yet very, very sad. Why should I spend one single second of my life worrying/caring if my neighbor,friend, family…etc. is on welfare? There’s roughly 330 million people in the US. If every single man, women and child milked the system for 3 million dollars (each, over a lifetime), it would be less than 1 billion dollars. What’s the government bailout price tag at now, something like 1.5 trillion? That’s not even getting into the 5k toilet seats and 10k hammers.

It’s going to get worse! The goal of most companies is to reduce the bottom line by reducing employees and benefits. That’s all well and good, except the price of their products isn’t going down. What is going down is employee wages. The gap just keeps getting bigger:(

It’s all fucking smoke and mirrors and apparently the sheepeople like smoke and mirrors.

By: Kavan Wolfe

Kavan Wolfe — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:37:23 +0000

@David, much agreed. The question is, are conservatives doing this intentionally? Do they really understand what they’re doing, or does this phenomenon emerge organically from other motives and actions?

@SFC Rath, I don’t know. I think the right would never get into power without first conflating social and economic conservatism, and thus would be unable to manipulate the “American Dream”. But both are important, obviously. To your second point, I believe it is possible to bring honest, ethical and effective discourse into the public debate. This is a complicated endeavor that requires several simultaneous approaches. I am eventually going to write a book on the subject, based on many of the discussions on this site.