Baron Max said:
Interesting. I think it'll be just the opposite ...taking from the hard workers to give to lazy bastards is what's gonna' cause civil war. Just think, ...the lazy bastards won't want to start a war, they're too fuckin' lazy.
But when some people, mainly idealistic liberals, start trying to take money from the workers to give to the lazy bastards, they're gonna' start gettin' damned tired of it. That might lead to civil war ...not the way you suggest.
I find it interesting how those who are hostile toward the poor depend on the "lazy bastards" argument. Certainly there are lazy bastards out there. But what about the greedy bastards who take more than their share? Who buy influence and corrupt society, and cause more people to be poor? As long as we insist on weeping over the "lazy bastards", we'll never actually address solutions to poverty and its accompaniment difficulties.
The hard workers? Take one of your vaunted "hard workers", say a CEO who runs a clothing manufacturer. Now put him to work for a week or two in one of the sweatshops he pretends he doesn't finance. Since he's a "hard worker", and the poor are "lazy bastards", the CEO should do just fine. In fact, he should be able to outperform the "lazy bastards".
Even better, make him leave his wealth behind for that period, and ask him to subsist on the wages those "lazy bastards" get while working twelve to sixteen hour shifts. The lazy bastard is the guy at the top who thinks he deserves more because he has the power to bleed it out of others. Most poor, and even those not among the working poor, aren't "lazy bastards".
Relying on such hatred as the "lazy bastards" myth is just a way for the "hard workers" to be lazy. They want lots of money, and they think that by going to an office and inventing all sorts of silly rituals to follow they're working hard. And when those "hard workers" at the top do their jobs wrong, it's the "lazy bastards" busting their asses that lose their jobs.
Over the years, I've heard some outrageous things:
- A single mother who won't work sixty to eighty hours a week outside the home for insufficient wages is "lazy". (U.S. politics)
- The Reconstruction-era blacks who built stable businesses only to have them taken away by racist laws were "lazy". (Myth of Southern Reconstruction)
- The tribal slaves carrying their European masters around the Caribbean on their backs were "lazy". (Myth of Columbus, Colonization, &c.)
- People suffering disabilities are lazy. (Baron Max)
If the world were really so simple, Baron Max, if success and stability were simply matters of will and desire, if everything was a matter of simple choice, rich people would long be extinct.
We live in a society that
needs poor people. Western society could not survive as it does without the support of a massive poverty class. We need them. If decency and justice aren't convincing arguments, then think of it as an investment. The "hard-working" rich invest money and resources in the "lazy bastards" who are poor, else the rich would have a hard time being rich. Without the "lazy" poor, the "hard-working" rich might have to carry their own luggage to the private jet before flying off to a "business meeting" complete with coke and hookers; without the "lazy" poor, the "hard-working" rich might have to get out of the sauna and clean their own toilets. Without the "lazy" poor, the "hard-working" rich might have to go fight their own wars, take care of their own children.
As long as we imagine the poor to be "lazy bastards", as long as pretend the "lazy bastards" straw man is the vital issue, we cannot make a serious attempt to deal with poverty and the social challenges associated with it.
If so many of the poor are lazy bastards, why do the rich hire them? Why should the rich not trim their own hedges, change their own tires, raise their own children?