Quote:
Originally Posted by Xringer
I'm not sold on the whole redistribution of wealth idea. Especially when we are borrowing a LOT of that wealth from China.
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I think that the real genius of the conservative movement is that it has motivated it's base to vote for policies that are against it's own interest.
It is perfectly reasonable that a wealthy conservative would favor legislation that would cause wealth to migrate upwards, but it take real cunning to convince people who are struggling to get by, to favor the same legislation. "Useful Idiots" might be a fair term in this case.
It seems that the mechanism is to use a person's sense of outrage (which is usually justified) to convince that person to favor policies that that are ultimately not beneficial to that person, but only beneficial to the wealthy (which is misguided).
There is a very interesting report that was recently put out by the OECD, which is a consortium of industrial countries. This report addresses 'social justice', and looks at things such as access to employment, wealth distribution, access to education and childhood poverty, etc.
The Report can be downloaded here.
The report has lots of graphs, so it is easy to see what is really going on.
Pretty sobering how countries with much smaller economies are succeeding at making life better for it's people, on the whole.
It is pretty amazing how far, as a country, we have fallen. Not only are we not the best, we are uncomfortably close to the worst.
And all the while, we have more millionaires and billionaires than any country in the world... that should be comforting if you are a millionaire or a billionaire.
-AC_Hacker