The Makers And The Takers

Over at Balloon Juice, Mistermix points out this NY Times piece on the fact that government money is going to middle-class government-hating Tea Party types and not the poorest Americans.  It's a fascinating read, but the real issue is that behind the obvious hypocrisy, there's good ol' Puritan Shame.

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year. 

And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

That's a load of crocodile tears, of course, as the piece goes on to explain.

But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs. 

“How do you tell someone that you deserve to have heart surgery and you can’t?” Mr. Gulbranson said. 

He paused. 

“You have to help and have compassion as a people, because otherwise you have no society, but financially you can’t destroy yourself. And that is what we’re doing.” 

It's interesting to note what the real argument is here, because it's not being said.  And the real issue is there are Tea Party folks like Mr. Gulbranson of Minnesota who believe that what the government gives them is fine.  It's what the government gives all those other people that needs to be cut.   

And the even bigger issue is that the whole point of the GOP austerity movement is to demonize and "other-ize" enough of the American population so that the concept of austerity can be sold to the American public.  "It's not you who will get hurt, it's all those undeserving slobs on the dole who will be."  It exists to transfer wealth upwards to the top.  It seeks to leverage the tyranny of the majority in order to take rights from minority groups and keep them out of power so that people like Gulbranson can maintain their middle-class status.  It's literally class warfare.

Only the reality turns out to be the one percent at the top are going to take it all and leave middle-class America devastated, all over the fact the people at the top have enough money to influence people that millionaires and billionaires are the only minority class worth protecting, and that the notion that the 50%+1 of America is enough to permanently remove the rights of all other minority classes.  There's a logical endpoint to that kind of thinking, of course:

It's working, of course.  And if more folks like Mr. Gulbranson here vote and people like you don't, then they win.