Let's be honest here. Republicans don't hate Social Security because it's not a true investment program. They don't hate it because the country can't afford it (the country can EASILY afford it).
They hate Social Security because it exists -- and they always have, for 80 years. SS just offends their sense of morality. They hate it for the some reason they hate Medicare and Obamacare.
Some people just think "freedom" means old people who haven't got enough money saved should just live on the streets and beg for their food just like the good old days before Social Security. Because having gangs of starving old people hanging out outside the grocery store would be such a GREAT moral lesson for our sons and daughters.
Republicans would never say this of course, but their Social Security "reform" always involves a lot of street begging and a lot of old people eating cat food. Just like their idea of Medicare "reform" involves telling old people -- too bad, you used up your $3,000 health care voucher, I guess your time is up!
Just like Paul Ryan's brilliant "replacement" for Obamacare -- which is just to repeal all the taxes, all the mandates, all the subsidies, so that health insurance becomes so expensive that only the top third of Americans can afford it. Let's make a health care system where only the wealthiest can afford hospitals -- that's a Republican dream!
All of this -- old people eating cat food, sick people just dying already instead of health insurance -- all this just gives Republicans a warm fuzzy feeling, especially if it involves tax cuts so the wealthiest Americans can buy more beach houses and yachts and private planes, so they can gold-plate their kitchen tables and their bathroom walls. Heck, so they can gold-plate the gold plate, because you can never have too much of that. Because, again, we want our sons and daughters to grow up in a country where the top 1% poop gold -- because it will motivate our sons and daughters to work really hard so they can poop gold as well. Because money is life, and life is money!
Maybe the poor and the working class just aren't suffering enough these days -- wouldn't it just feel good to turn the screws and make their lives a LOT more miserable? And while we're at it, let's abolish that darned minimum wage because $7.25 an hour is just too damn much money when we could be paying $2 an hour...
It's all about the gap.....
Rodger Mitchell -
We evolve by surviving. We evolve to survive — not only in competition with the world, but in competition with our fellow human beings. And that brings us to
the Gap.
The ability to survive is power, and in all aspects of human society,
there are the few who have the most power and the many who have less power. What separates them is
the Gap.
With greater sophistication, the survival urge becomes sublimated into symbols, and so for us humans there are many kinds and levels and symbols of power.
Money is power. Privilege is power. The Law is power. Control, Possessions, Strength, Influence, Glory, Weaponry, Knowledge, Talent – all are power. And despite their vast diversity, they all have one measure:
The one measure of power is the Gap between the most and the rest.
Power is not an absolute; it is a comparative. If each person on earth owned one million dollars, no one would be rich. But if one person had just a hundred dollars and everyone else had but one dollar, that one person with the hundred dollars would be rich.
It’s not the absolute amount of money that makes him rich; it’s
the Gap.
If everyone had the same privileges, no one would be privileged. But if one person has special privileges, that one person has the power. And the greater his privileges, compared to the privileges of all others, the greater his power. It is the privilege Gap that gives him the feeling of power.
From the perspective of the more powerful, there is little benefit to accumulating more money or possessions or influence if the less powerful accumulate at a faster pace.
Because it is the Gap that provides power and the feeling of power, the powerful understand, either intellectually or by intuition, that to maintain or increase their power, the Gap must be maintained or increased.
Owning a gun provides power, unless everyone else owns a bigger gun.
For every level of power, those below wish to narrow the Gap above them, and those above wish to widen the Gap below them. Thus, those below can be persuaded that Gap-widening strategies are beneficial, so long as the perception is that these strategies will be applied below them.
On average, fear is stronger than desire.
The fear of narrowing the Gap below is stronger than the desire to narrow the Gap above. The fear of losing relative power is stronger than the desire to gain relative power.
In evolutionary terms, losing power can result in death, while gaining power may have only marginal benefits, if at all.
Being forced financially to move down to a “worse” neighborhood is far more traumatic than is the pleasure of moving to a “better” neighborhood. Being demoted carries deeper, longer-lasting emotions than does being promoted.
That is why the middle-class easily is persuaded by the rich, that social payments (food stamps, unemployment insurance, welfare, etc.) cause sloth, and so should be eliminated. We want to believe those below us are inferior and should be treated as inferiors.
Social payments also benefit the middle, but to the middle, that is less important than widening
the Gap with the poor.
People emulate those with more power, emotionally trying to narrow the Gap. We approach the rich and famous; we hope to engage in brief small talk; we ask for autographs, we name-drop, we glow in their recognition, we flaunt diamonds and overly expensive cars. These are Gap narrowing (to those above – widening from those below) acts.
(Some Lamborghini cars cost in the neighborhood of $400 thousand. It is difficult and uncomfortable to drive, with an unlawful top speed of 200+ mph. Why would anyone want to own such a car? The Gap.)
We distance ourselves from those with less power. We don’t want to attend their dinners. We don’t want them to live near us. We want them tucked safely away from us, perhaps into jail. We try to widen that Gap.
The Gap can be widened in two ways: By reducing the power of those below, or by increasing the power of those above. “Broadening the tax base” and “reforming Social Security” are euphemistic examples of how
the Gap can be widened by punishing those below..
The populace want both ways to widen
the Gap – narrow it above and widen it below..
A few examples of Gap widening:
*Racial, religious and sexual adverse discrimination
*Voting restrictions
*Deficit reduction
*All taxes on salaries and Social Security benefits
*Strict immigration laws
*Forced segregation
*Minimum wage jobs
*Lax or non-existent political contribution limits
*Exclusivity: Country clubs; gated communities
*Laws/judges/politicians favoring higher-power groups or disfavoring lower-power groups.
*Harsh jail terms for crimes typical of the poor; light or no jail terms for crimes typical of the rich.
The universal desire (conscious or subconscious) is to distance oneself from those below and to approach those above. Evolution has taught us this intuition, as the best path to survival.
Sadly, our intuitions inherited from our tribal ancestors, may not serve us well in modern society.
The discrimination that built cohesion and strengthened a tribe vs. other tribes, can weaken a nation.
“Fixing” a traffic ticket encourages dangerous driving. Strict immigration laws, while ostensibly to protect jobs, actually reduce the demand for goods and services that creates jobs.
Voting restrictions and lax political contribution limits create dictatorships that diminish the entire nation. Gated communities inevitably yield poorer services to those outside the gates, in turn, creating lawlessness and greater dependency.
Economics is ruled by the psychology of the Gap. Morality tells us to narrow
the Gap. Fear tells us to widen
the Gap.
Fear is more basic. It overrules logic, which is why people are able to accept the illogical notion that our government of unlimited wealth should take money from the poor.
It’s
the Gap, the whole
Gap and nothing but
the Gap . . . so help me . . . .
Economics is all about
the Gap.
