Why do people not care about their own interests? (Poor support of the rich)

I've done my share of fighting and trying to keep information open, available, and as easily understandable as possible. I don't support either party, and can list problems with every candidate. I also realize that the reality is we have to vote for one of two parties until major change happens and one is substantially weakened.

With that said, today Obama said if we don't reach a deal before we hit the debt ceiling payments would stop. I can agree this is political. The problem is, the arguments I always see come up are support of cutting every program (except those the individual benefits from), and a vast portion supporting no tax cuts for the wealthy.

I've got plenty of abbreviations after and before my name. I've worked for political parties (both), military, and in government revenue. I've seen people screwed by the system, and I've seen people change their tune about benefits once they needed to be on them. Unemployment is the biggest benefit I've seen people change their tune about. In 2005, I remember every R supporter saying it was a leach program and should be destroyed, and this year I've met a couple who now defend it on grounds they paid for it, and now deny being against the program ever. They are still against every entitlement/benefit program they haven't used.

I also know a few individuals, I know for a fact (one being family) who relied on welfare for years. Now they say the program should be destroyed (one saying it held him back).

I believe most entitlement and benefit programs work effectively, there are abuses, but I know those gross abuses don't exceed 10% for any program.

Turning to taxes, the first issue I have is with people's view on taxes. The one type of tax I believe in the most is estate tax. The death tax. All those issues. Today many states have gotten rid of the rule against perpetuities. This is of course due to the generation skipping tax. Furthermore, the estate tax is currently around $5 million for an exemption. I realize some family farms may meet this level with farmland. Overall, I don't understand why the average person would want to support estate taxes that carry on for generations. This is how dynasties and aristocracies are made. This is precisely the reason England has stricter rules on it than the US, and even the founding fathers favored the RAP and estate tax generally. The reason is that the longer a person can keep large sums of money away from creditors the more it can grow, and their descendants keep gaining that power. I know many on this board with (imo farfetched) ideas on the Rockefeller family, which is atleast partially true as even Congress has done studies which suggest their power due to the family trust. Now that RAP is being destroyed, this trust can exist forever... How do the poor benefit? This wealth is out of the reach of the average person, they will not be investing that capital into new start up businesses, but only into well developed corporations. This will not create jobs nor help our new entrepreneurs.

Then generally, I wonder why the support for no taxes on the wealthy 10....5...2% or whatever. I won't go into why I don't believe trickle down economics should be reversed, but I will say that even if all money was equally distributed among people within a few years the vehicles in places would still funnel most of the money back to where it came from.

If this is still being read, this is my concern: if the poor support the wealthy, and a vast majority of the wealthy support themselves (I will acknowledge a few do legitmately care about the poor), then how will there ever be equality?

Our nation was partially founded on a lie, all people are created equal... Okay maybe not a lie since we are all created them same, but we are certaintly not born equal. I raised myself above my family, but I know most I knew are doing the same or worse than their parents. I got lucky many times, and I know many who got unlucky. There is no equalizing luck. However, I do know those who came from families in poverty and are where I am, are either much more lucky or much more hardworking than myself, and the opposite is true from people who came from families above where I am.

Our nation, in my opinion, has essentially regressed to the robber baron era. The poor do nothing, and maybe they can't. It can be hard to follow politics, economics, while working 80hr weeks and raising a family. The middle class, however, has the ability to be the equalizer, but is so concerned about what their plight would be if they made it to the top, that they let the top destroy them in the meantime.

While I respect the argument that taxation is theft, and therefore it is wrong to tax even the wealthy, I believe in the principle that there should be sacrifice for the greater good. Taxation is a means to preserve order (keep the poor off the streets, police to enforce rule of law, courts to administer the law, and a military to protect sovereignty).

I would like to hear opinions on why support is where it is. Am I fundamentally wrong on everything? Maybe I am. My concern is that if I am right and the middle class waits until another great depression comes, it won't be the way it was for our grandparents. I foresee the next great depression if it hits being very destructive as the poor will be resorting to riots and crime far earlier (as in the 70s and 80s), and since today we don't have the community we used to have the major safety net our grandparents lived on is already gone. Politics aside, if taxing the rich is class warefare, then is it necessarily wrong that the middle class and poor fight for their interests through progressive taxation?

Great thoughts there,,I feel terrible everytime i purchase gas knowing that money is going to quadrillionaires,,they are keeping me down with the price of gas alone..

reply to post by Anon404



Part of the problem is there is only two parties and it seems it seems they packaged social policy with financial policy.

People just seem to pick a side based on their social circle.

reply to post by avatarded1


and i would also like to add,, as a business owner,,people will spend more money in my store if they think i have lots of money,,so i bought a car i couldnt afford and put on a great act,,i dont know why but it works....for some reason i feel the majority of people will more than likely give money to a wealthier person,,the psychology is retardo but so are the vast majority,,thats why im here with you people,,i mean if your on ATS then you gotta be cool..

It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

There is something in people that craves to roll over submssively and have their bellies scratched by your betters. I guess its an adaptive thing for dealing with competition. Someone in TPTB has figured out how to exploit it, quite cleverly it seems.

They say the 70's was the "me generation". I think this is actually the me generation. Many people are very attached to themselves, their worldly goods, and what they have going for them. Not everyone, but many.

Both Democrats and Republicans have been raising taxes on the poor with there sin taxes. These rates keep going up almost every year. They are using Alcohol and Tobacco taxes to generate more revenue that's been lost from so many being unemployed.

We are involved in multiple military engagements [war] and in a recession, and the main thing the republicans are concerned about is keeping tax cuts for the wealthy. We were told under the GWB administration that these tax cuts for the rich would create jobs.....What Jobs????

None of the 3 branches of government serve the people. Corporate and banking interests trump us. The gop has convinced people that walmart and Exxon and Monsanto are good and the average food stamp recipient is bad, and heaven forbid if you wasn't born here in the states.....

Our main problems started with the bush presidency, the day the supreme court appointed him our president.

Have you noticed the rash of elections around the country that are being overturned by local and state governments?

Cut military spending!
Eliminate lobby and special interests
The judicial, executive, and legislative branches should receive immediate pay and benefit cuts.
I can thing of other things to do away with. but it seems hopeless

I think it's because some people sort of enjoy the fallacy fatasy-land idea that maybe they will be one of them one day, and they are all potential Hoarders as well,the "don't take my stuff" kid on the playground mentality. Personally I don't respond well to people that are not part of the solution, full self responsibility is the solution, for instance, say I was to get lucky and join the ranks of the very rich, I would support my government in whatever amount of tax they wanted from me, because I believe this country is founded on TEAMWORK, and if you're not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. If you cannot help raise this country back up to a leadership country in its' full glory like it was a beacon for the hopeless, disenfrachised, hungry masses, then personally I don't believe you are worth the air you breathe. If you hire twenty lawyers and several accounting firms to avoid your responsibilty, then worse than not being worth the air you breathe you should be exiled.

Its all about programming of those you wish to collect an easy life from.

Get an education ,get a good job .

Ten % get an education and get if they are lucky a lousy job.

Then the other 90% in the world , get no education,no job, but hunger pains for life.

The 1% get the cream and the chocolate icing plus all the things unspoken.

They also get POWER, that they never ever give up.

Criminals they are perhaps the ones who know better, but they end up being no better than the 1%.

For they hurt others to feed themselves.

We are a world run by Supercrims the 1%... but they never ever serve time , they just buy and buy and buy.

I say vote everyone out.. From local officials all the way up.. And we shall start over.

reply to post by Anon404

Our tax system involves several overlapping issues.

One issue is that it has become centralized, which is against federalist principles and gives the central government dangerous amounts of power to meddle in the affairs of ordinary citizens.

Another issue is that it is an income tax, which on the face of it penalizes production. If you are trying to repair an economy, or keep one healthy, the last thing you want to do is penalize production. For this reason, I support taxes on consumption administered by state and local governments.

Finally there is the issue of social justice. Did the "rich" get that way by hard work and in-ethics, as they claim, or by cheating their friends, their competitors, and the public at large? We need to look into how some of these fortunes were really made. It seems so bizarre that so few people control so much wealth. It is hard to believe that all of them are perfectly honest. And if they aren't why aren't they paying?

And so we see the central problem: The "powers that be" have exerted undue influence on our democracy, and turned it into a system that works for them and doesn't work for us. This IS criminal. But solving this is going to take more than deciding who to vote for or what policy to support. The whole system has been corrupted and requires a major overhaul. Either you pitch in on that effort or you try to be quiet and make do.

reply to post by Partygirl


You know, I didn't think about Stockholm syndrome. I guess I tend to go with the occam's razor approach, but this seems like a real possible expalantion. If so, part of me feels better as that means those people are not complicit in their pain, but just suffer from a common psychological problem. Although, perhaps this makes finding an answer even more difficult than if they just suffer from common human motives (greed, exhaustion, et al.).

The more I think about it the more it seems likely, since no matter how bad things are getting for the poor and middle class how many of them are more passionate in their support.

Excellent point.

reply to post by LDragonFire


I generally agree with you on most of those topics. Although, I will admit I don't think now is the time to focus on the national debt. Now is the time the government should be creating "boots on the ground" jobs. The last stimulus was a joke, and it was never designed to target middle America in my opinion, but that's for another thread. I do think if we are going to focus on the national debt right now, the wealthy need to pay it down as their corps and tax portfolios benefitted the most from government programs and subsidies.

I know you didn't expressly say no to taxation just want to reiterate that although all the spending you mentioned I agree generally could be reduced or cut; I believe the US, like a business, needs to both cut costs and raise revenues.

reply to post by Dr Expired


It's funny you mentioned criminals. I wanted to touch on it, but my OP was likely too long as it is. I personally still believe Robin Hood was a good guy. Although unlike when I was a child, I now realize most criminals are too cowardly to rob the rich and instead rob their neighboors and those who are in the hole with them. It is a pity.

Writing this I just realized, that the wealthy say they don't like taxes, but their neighboorhoods have some of the highest local taxes in the nation. Part of this I'm sure is for police, but no doubt part of it is to keep the poor out of their communities. It's funny, but I don't think this point is ever brought up much, if the poor hate taxes so much why such high local taxation? They certaintly don't have 5x's the police as the average equal sized community...

Originally posted by Thunder heart woman
They say the 70's was the "me generation". I think this is actually the me generation. Many people are very attached to themselves, their worldly goods, and what they have going for them. Not everyone, but many.

It is because the "me" generation is now in the age of height of power- in their 50's and 60's- so they are the ones screaming "me" the loudest- as they always have.

Then there was the street smart X Generation who was largely raised by neglectful, nacissistic hypocrites, and are used to getting the chitty end of the stick and surviving through self reliance, in their 30's and 40's, just giving a sigh and saying, "we"ll get nothing.... what else is new..... it can all go to chit for all I care, I'll stock up on ammo and water".

Then we have the young generation, who have mostly been overprotected and after watching their exhausted hardworking parents (getting that particular end of the stick) are not in any hurry to grow up or do same- so they're clamouring for environmental and social issues, wanting support available to them and less exhaustion of resources (both of earth and human).

In any social grouping, those who grab the most power are also expected to carry the most responsibility.
Once we figured that responsibility would be carried in the form of providing jobs. But outsourcing was more attractive to them, as was using machines instead of people. So they aren't fulfilling the responsibilities that go with the power.

So some start to think, if they won't carry it in that form, then have them carry it in pure financial form- give money directly to those below that need it. In return they get loyal support and worship from their inferiors.

So some now are still proclaiming their support and loyalty for those in power, hoping they will get some support in return. They won't, I personally think. But that's my opinion. Some like to cling to hope despite all evidence to the contrary.

I've always put it down to False class consciousness.

An inability to see things, especially social relations and relations of exploitation, as they really are. The term occurs in late work of Engels, although the phenomenon is implied in Feuerbach's account of the religious impulse. The state of false consciousness may be the inevitable result of a way of living, and characterizes the generic and chronic kind of servitude that cannot even perceive its own situation. It may therefore coexist with a kind of illusory contentment. The cure is ‘consciousness-raising’. In the later writings of Marx the concept to some extent supersedes that of alienation.

Read more: www.answers.com...

reply to post by Anon404


Thanks.

It's got to be more than one thing for sure but I think Stockholm Syndrome (or something very similar) is a big piece of the puzzle.

Another thing is that people live in fantasy worlds, and the more mediated everything gets (I don't know if that's the right word..."media-ized" ?? lol), the easier it is to lose touch with reality. The media experiences people are now being subjected to are insanely powerful: 8 hours on the computer, endless immersion in the fantasy roleplays of video-games, and then movies, tv shows, perhaps pornography, and books/novels for the eccentric...information is literally everywhere and now with mobile telephones and iPads and stuff, its totally inescapable. What all this means is that people's sense of self is unmoored, they don't have a firm idea of who they are because they can slip in and out of all these personas and storylines and "experiences". I think the psychological toll of this is incalculable and hardly explored at all. Perhaps all this makes it easier to identify with storylines, or to construct bizzare fanatsies of an imaginary life they'd rather be living, all the while plodding along in the dull day-to-day horror.

Campaigns are structured so that it appears that by voting for/supporting a certain side of the coin, you partake in a certain something, become a different person almost. It's complex and they play on a lot of things, but I'm thinking that with people's sense of self unmoored by media as described above, it's a lot easier to get people to buy into any story line. Why worry about actually making and keeping your own money (somethign that seems basically impossible for most people anyway) when you can just buy into a fanatasy by immersing yourself in TV, wearing or buying the right stuff..and voting/arguing politics a certain way of course.

Originally posted by Anon404
reply to post by Dr Expired

 

It's funny you mentioned criminals. I wanted to touch on it, but my OP was likely too long as it is. I personally still believe Robin Hood was a good guy. Although unlike when I was a child, I now realize most criminals are too cowardly to rob the rich and instead rob their neighboors and those who are in the hole with them. It is a pity.

Writing this I just realized, that the wealthy say they don't like taxes, but their neighboorhoods have some of the highest local taxes in the nation. Part of this I'm sure is for police, but no doubt part of it is to keep the poor out of their communities. It's funny, but I don't think this point is ever brought up much, if the poor hate taxes so much why such high local taxation? They certaintly don't have 5x's the police as the average equal sized community...

you certainly see our social situation as it is.

most of my life i live in the country, small middle class communities, great police protection, good schools, citizens well taken care of.

two years ago i moved to a downtown neighborhood, what an interesting difference.
(friends and relatives were shocked and tried to make me move, but i was facinated by a chance to study this "alien" society)

in the suburbs you can have a back yard party, bond fire, fireworks, live band, no problem with the law unless your neighbors complains.

but if some inner city drunk is going through the suburban back yards, 6 months of mental evaluation followed by restraining order.
in the inner city these out of control, anti social individuals are not even noticed.

criminals selling drugs while lying to access every useless social give away ever imagined by governments, call themselves prostitutes and get away with their lifestyles.

the cops don't arrest prostitutes because the local judge will just let them go.
he states that we have no programs to "help" these criminals, so until the government comes up with more money for another useless scam, he wont sentence them.(my words)

in the inner city, every problem is used to create more contactors and non profits that will manage the problem.
bring in more state and federal cash, everything is a racquet.

chaos is an industry, we have over two dozen non profit in this neighborhood, our inner city have become mini Haiti.

and the criminals prey on the poor, mentally challenged.
they call them vampires around here, the blood suckers work 365 days a year.

the entire concept of society is totally different from suburb to inner city.
in the suburb citizens expect their police, schools, etc to work.
streets clean, livable, quiet, civilized atmosphere.

in the inner city problems are ways of getting more cash from state and federal, so they are managed, not solved.
all the damaged done by many inner city individuals is such that keeping them in jail would save society a fortune.

People are being blasted over and over with this [real] idea that the economy is dying, the government is corrupt, and that this world is evil. They turn on the news and find that there were 3 deaths and maybe a robbery since they last tuned in yesterday. Maybe on a busy night, there was a car accident as well. So we go on and talk to our neighbors about the weather and the latest score for whatever sport is in season. No one wants to address this anymore because there's no longer any public answers for how we can fix this. The only time we see something on the news that isn't explicit death, depression, or corruption, is when the news flashes over this unnessicary gossip about which major star cheated on who or how many foreign babies they adopted or what have you.

Thusly we're trained to replace our daily conversation with a diversity of gossip and lies. We're conditioned to accept this instead of demand results and answers to our questions or problems. There's big business in making someone feel safe, happy, or of value.

we are conditioned from this country's inception to believe wealth and success come from the top. every leader we've had has been wealthy and/or a businessman. has any ever openly campaigned on that platform? no! they can't get elected with 10% of the vote, so they tell us (the bottom rung) that they care about us.

maybe we can never break free from the chains of the 2-party system, but perhaps we can get a different canidate. wouldn't it be nice to vote for someone who wasn't rich? someone with no business background? no ivy league ties? wasn't a lawyer? just once, it couldn't possibly worse then what we've had/got.