They’re doing good for themselves. That’s all that matters.
I’m willing to consider the possibility. But, it has been my personal experience that most RWs I have encountered, on this Board and elsewhere on the Intertubes and IRL – not all, but most – are not merely mistaken, they are bad people. Rotten souls. Fundamentally dishonest. It’s not hard to tell. By “RWs,” I’m talking about “Staunch Conservatives” here, not “Main Street Republicans” or “Libertarians.” (As defined in the Pew Political Typology.)
Possibly. On one level they have contempt for the American worker, who needs to become more productive. That’s not pure speculation, btw, I understand that was the actual attitude at Bain. So they introduce incentives to cut costs, which has a predictable effect on product quality and careers but produces solid metrics. Then they sell the company to some collection of chumps and wash their hands of the matter. Hey, their profits increased while they owned the business.
Psychologically, they elide rent extraction (from suppliers, customers and workers who relied on the firms former reputation) with long term productivity improvement. Larry Summers wrote about this economic process in a Brookings journal from the early 1990s.
So, I’ll gut this company, and the guys who lose their jobs will vote for me!
Sounds kind of unrealistic. :dubious:
Yes.
One can believe that such a process weeds out inefficient or noncompetitive companies and efficiently redirects it resources into more competitive operations within or without the same industry. That’s the free market model.
What one cannot honestly believe is that such is “job creation.”
Nevertheless, there are such things as “values voters” to whom RW social/moral/religious/cultural considerations trump their economic interests even as they perceive them. Despite the designation, most of those are actually bad people, IMO.
I can’t believe that.
The constituency here includes folks like the guy who say my Yankee #2 Wife stuck in the snow and when his truck wouldn’t pull her van out, went to get his “Daddy’s Big Truck” which did. Many of them are honest, kind, hard working people, and I cannot imagine why they would vote against their own best interests. It isn’t racism, they always vote that way. Perhaps gun control and religion are more important to them then a living wage and health care.
“say” should of course be “saw”.
Well, maybe I’m judging too much by RW Internet-personas. (And I still think the Tea Partiers are mostly bad people.) As to why they vote against their best interests, which they do, that’s been a matter of debate for decades now; apparently their values-complex includes economic conservatism in the sense of a belief in self-reliance, the-government-governs-best-that-governs-least, taxes bad, etc.
But what about the people I mentioned? Mitt Romney, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan. Do you classify them as well-intentioned people who hold mistaken beliefs or as rotten souls who are knowingly doing wrong?
Boehner and Romney are rotten souls, to be sure; don’t know much about Ryan.
Depends. Were there net jobs created by the process? And that would be as compared to what would be expected to happen without the intervention. Not an easy thing to determine, but hardly something one could question someone’s honesty over.
I don’t think Bain Capital gave two shits if any net jobs were created. That was not what they were paid to do. They were paid to make as large a profit as possible and return value to the shareholders. Nothing more, nothing less.
In hindsight, Romney and his mates may try to spin it as “net” job creation, but at the time, that was not a metric they were judged by, so I believe that it held no meaning whatsoever for them.
On the whole people do not think of themselves as bad people, doing bad things (excluding sociopaths, who do not care one way or the other). Folks will create justifications for what they do, in order to live with themselves. They’ll tell themselves that they are doing things for the greater good. Of course, this does not make it true; it just makes them feel better about the bad things that they are doing.
I think they were just making money, and screw the little guys.
Lie to the little guys and they will vote for you, too.
If Obama was as unpopular as Herbert Hoover was in 1932 I think heckling him would reinforce the perception that he was unpopular. Because he is slightly ahead in the polls, and because many voters have still not made up their minds I think heckling will engender sympathy for him if he handles it well.
The heckling could easily get nasty with people yelling “Kill him!” and “Traitor!” That will hurt Romney.