I see only three problems with this line of argument:
There are those who would argue that American workers, hard-working or not, are and have been paid for their services by the wages, salaries and benefits if any that they agreed to trade their time for at the time of their employment, and that unless agreed upon at the time of hire or at some point during advancement there is no such thing as their “deserving” a share of the profits. They have no financial investment in the companies they work for, no stake in its future other than their continued employment, and can walk away anytime they want.
It isn’t up to you or anyone but the employees and the companies they work for to say what a worker’s “fair share” is, or for that matter what anyone’s “fair share” is. It is precisely this line of thinking that Republicans want to save America from. We think a person’s “fair share” is what they are able to accomplish for themselves (ourselves included) and not some arbitrary and ever-increasing amount decided by left-wing rabble-rousers and Democrat politicians.
Proletariat pay vs. evil capitalist pigs isn’t what income redistribution refers to anyway. It refers to dinging society’s producers (read studyers, risk-takers, opportunity recognizers, competition analyzers, technology keep-up-withers, long-hour workers, etc., etc.) to give money and government benefits to other people who aren’t. This isn’t to say they’re lazy; many work hard and many work 40 hours a week or more, but they chose a less disciplined and less difficult way of life and their income reflects that. C’est la vie. There is simply no reasonable argument as to why they “deserve” more. You might as well argue that third-string athletes “deserve” more playing time or that less talented actors and actresses deserve more starring roles. Life isn’t fair, but in the case of high earners (and I’m talking about the vast majority of those in the $250,000+ range) most have indeed “earned” their incomes and I don’t happen to believe it’s the proper role of the President of the United States to decide for himself that at that point they’ve “made enough money” and thus can afford to provide for the needs of people who’ve chosen to take an easier path in life. The very idea that the President of the United States should presume to decide acceptable income levels for private citizens is anathema to almost everything America stands for, and the type of thinking that would lead a president to make such a declaration is also what Republicans want to save America from.
SA, you’re falling into that right wing react mode that is precisely what the GOP needs less of. Why do you simply fall in line, lock stock and barrel, behind what is best stupidity and worst (and most likely) race baiting?
Obama isn’t from Kenya. So why would Thompson say that? He’s either an idiot or attempting to appeal to racists and/or jingoists. You seem to be fairly intelligent… why wouldn’t you expect representatives of your party to behave and act to a higher standard?
That sort of behavior isn’t worth defending, but you choose to go down that path. I don’t get it.
And by the way - considering the govt positions that females have / do hold in the rest of the world, America has a freaking dismal record of female participation in politics
First of all HH, I wasn’t defending what Thompson said; I was disputing Shayna’s attempt to make it look like Preibus said it too.
As far as why Republicans don’t expect more or demand more in this regard from their representatives and officials, I’d mark it down to a few things:
Most of the country’s Republicans don’t view someone like the governor of Wisconsin to be their representative. He’s a governor of a far away little populated state and most Republicans around the country know little about him. Same holds true for most state politicians. So to that degree most of the country’s Republicans don’t feel he’s speaking to them to begin with.
There’s the strong inclination among conservatives toward a belief in the concept of individual responsibility. This means we feel that people should rise or fall on their own merit, and that if someone like Tommy Thompson sticks his foot in his mouth regarding Obama coming from Kenya, then it’ll be up to him to defend those remarks when the press challenges him on it and up to the voters when it comes time to decide his future.
You might note that here on this board there really is no such thing as a conservative pile-on. Piling on and insisting that other individuals behave the way we want just really isn’t our nature, whereas it’s much more typical for liberals and Democrats to try to bring about change through angry mass piling on against opponents or practices they disapprove of. Thus it probably seems to you as a liberal that we ought to be rising up in anger and protesting vigorously against these people you so strongly disapprove of because that would be your reaction, whereas we simply don’t take them that seriously and are willing to let them take whatever heat their comments generate and deal with it themselves. In other words we don’t feel bound by what they say, and we don’t feel bound to defend it either. It’s all on them.
Republicans are fighting Democratic policies and phiosophies and goals for the future and this is much more important to us in the overall scheme of things. We literally feel that the America which has always existed is under attack by a political party and a philosophy that seeks to transform it into something it has never been, and which in our opinion has never worked very well in other countries where it’s been tried. So we’re far more concerned about keeping our government out of the hands of income redistributionists and would-be socialists (in either sense of the term) and big-goverment zealots than we are interested in creating dissention in the ranks by making a big deal over it every time some Republican somewhere in the country shows up at a rally of hundreds of people carrying a sign with a racial slur or some obscure politician from the quasi-frozen tundra in the north says Obama came from Kenya.
And even if what Thompson said was a dog-whistle to the party’s racists, so what? What can they do about it? Racists these days can’t do much more about the fact they don’t like black people than anyone else can about the fact they might not like redheads or short people or smooth jazz musicians. Everybody doesn’t like somebody, but it only becomes a problem if they can cause that somebody harm. And given the ever increasing number of blacks being elected to Republican state, local and national office these days I don’t believe anyone can persuasively argue that a vote for the Republicans is a vote that is harmful to blacks.
Long story short I guess, is that the Republican base in toto is not racist and looks forward to the day when U.S. society is fully integrated and the color of a person’s skin is of no more significance than the color of their eyes or hair, but it is willing to tolerate a few scattered and ineffectual racists in its midst in order to more effectively do battle with a party it views as seeking to destroy much of what has always made this country great.
There are more vocal liberals here than vocal conservatives. But conservatives here are just as likely to post statements which agree with each other in the same thread as liberals are.
I can only make sense of this claim as one that would seem plausible to anyone if you’re thinking chiefly of fiscal conservativism rather than moral conservatism. Moral conservatives are quite happy to insist, in explicit, vocal and visibly amassed unity with their co-conservatives, that others behave the way they (the conservatives) want.
If there’s more to what you mean by “angry mass piling on” than “insisting in explicit visible unity with some cohort” then you will need to be more clear about that.
SA, please remember that you said this and apply this sentiment on behalf of some poor liberal when he is asked to justify, condemn or apologize for the actions or words of some liberal (or, even less sensibly, some foreign agent) he has nothing to do with.
As a liberal, I actually agree to a large extent with SA’s interpretation of Republican politics today. Specifically, while there may be individual racists within the party, and politicians today who are willing to use “dog whistles” to excite other racists in the base, I don’t believe racism itself is a clear or significant factor in the GOP’s agenda.
But let me add a caveat: I do think the GOP economic agenda is one that promotes the economic system of the old American South, making racism at best an incidental factor (though IMO it’s more about socio-economic class than race). Michael Lind wrote about this recently on Salon:
And you know what? For pointing out the obvious, in my mind he gets props. For acknowledging reality, while idiot-cum-performance-artist Ann Coulter denies that racism exists, he’s already my favorite Republican. Well, him and Olympia Snowe.
Excellent start. The subjective theory of value is a cornerstone of modern capitalist economics and something there’s a wide consensus over. The one issue is that there is an apparent power disparity: violating a contractual obligation to work often results in more severe penalties for a worker than for when a company terminates a contract for whatever reason (in worker vs. company tribunals, the worker frequently loses). Not to mention that “stake” should carry the signifier “stakeholder”, a concept which encompasses employees.
This is where you go off the rails. The position that the worker is entitled to the sweat from their back is an anarchist one. The worker is entitled to the full produce of their labour, owns the means of production, pays no rent and has no fealty to a state. Otherwise their wage is an arbitrary and ever decreasing fraction of the value reified in the products they create.
The history of labor since the industrial revolution up until about 30 years ago has been that wages have increased almost linearly with productivity. This correlation was decoupled in the 1980s and the stock market exploded. Something happened to decouple the two. There were some extrinsic factors (global labor competition and multinational corporations) but capital has been taking a larger and larger share of productivity over the last 30 years. It has not always been this way.
Then why does it seem like you are defending birthers.
The link is dead now. What did he say?
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Which is why he raised so much money from outside of Wisconsin. Come on, the guy is a standard bearer.
And yet Republicans go running to the aid of other Republicans (like the governor of Wisconsin) that stick their foot in their mouth. See Mitt Romney and Mourdock. These guys are actually raising more money than before.
UHC has never worked well? Because thats about the only really liberal thing Obama has done.
Some people would say that racism is a harm in itself.
Totally not related to most of the conversation, but it seems to me that black conservatives/ Republicans are more likely to be men than women. Which reminds me of the gender gap between Obama and Romney supporters. I’ve come up with my own theories as to why this may be the case, but I’m curious as to what other people think. And also curious about the OPs political journey and rationale behind supporting the Republican Party.