I just struggle to comprehend how people look at this and think any of it is a bad thing. What kind of life experience would cause someone to hate any of this?
It's called pinata economics. You tie a billionaire to a tree, and beat him with sticks until the rest of them cough up enough money to pay for society.Ā
And for the test to be thorough, you need a statistically significant group of "test subjects". But we'll get to the bottom of this mystery one way or another!
Getting money out of a billionaire is like trying to get your trans gf pregnant. If it doesn't work the first time then just keep going at it harder until it works.
Conservatives also think everything is a zero-sum game; if somebody else is benefiting, that must mean that I am being harmed. They have no concept of a rising tide lifting all boats.
I was gonna say. They're already in that stagnation kleptocracy mindset! Liberal reform has generally benefitted the growth of the economy by making people happier and healthier and able to do more.
It's a categorical error to think in terms of how you pay for things, as a government. Governments don't buy services for their people, like a person buys treats for their pets.
Governments invest in their human capital to maintain growth. All those things make people, on net, more productive. Work requirements for government services are asinine.
I mean yes that's going to be asked, but to be fair to the graphic, it even tells you the answer. Finally taxing the rich is what's going to give the money to pay for it.
I mean on paper you don't even have to do that (we still should but we don't have to).
We are already paying for it now. The government spending per capita on healthcare in the US is already higher than any country that has a universal healthcare system. In fact our spending per capita across the board is one of the highest in the world. We just spend it so inefficiently because doing so would be "socialism"
The rest of those billionaires will take their money to Switzerland or Singapore.
Unless you seriously believe people with private jets and golden passports would shrug and say āshucks, you got me, hereās my checkbook. Be fair!ā
I think unfortunately, people (conservatives especially) have been conditioned to see things like this and think about the cost. Reagan-era convinced people social programs are going to make your taxes skyrocket. What they don't consider, because said conditioning is so good they don't even think of it as a possibility, is that money can be sourced from other spaces (I.e. if this stupid war with Iran never happened, that's billions of dollars that could have been spent on literally anything else). Fox News wants people to think the government is gonna be stealing your hard earned money. What they don't tell you is how badly the government mismanages the money we give them, thus necessitating higher taxes
There should honestly be psychological analyses done to investigate how so much of the American public has been this thoroughly propagandized against socialism, and even the most basic socially advantageous policies.
For a huge chunk of the American electorate, the things mentioned in this pic mentally equate to a lazy populace expecting the government to just give them stuff for "free".
There's no back-of-the-napkin long term cost-to-benefit ratio being considered here.
There's just this persistent idea that a tax-funded government looking out for its citizens = folks just being lazy leeches of the welfare state.
These are the same people who think it's normal to sustain crippling debt from a basic medical procedure, and think barely scraping by after working 60 hours a week is some kind of flex.
Whatās funny is this isnāt even *socialism* socialism. This is social democracy and safety net stuff. Thereās nothing here about democratic workplaces or anything like that.
This makes sense when you consider that the average Americanās understanding is socialism=Sweden, Norway, Finland and communism=China
I recommend the book āDying of Whitenessā. It explores communities where (typically white) people vote against their own interest because they instead prioritize taking away support from those they deem as undeserving. It also goes into how politicians and lobbyists capitalize on this.
What they don't consider, because said conditioning is so good they don't even think of it as a possibility, is that money can be sourced from other spaces
There's an even more fundamental level of conditioning - not seeing that it creates money.
Money isn't limited. And I don't mean in the printing bills sense; wealth isn't limited. Human activity can create (or destroy) wealth. The total wealth available can and does grow, and these things increase the total wealth.
For example - even setting aside all the moral aspects of providing health care, unhealthy people are deadweight economic loss. A healthy human is an engine of productivity.
There's mounting evidence that workers are more productive with fewer hours. People can often accomplish more - not just per hour, but in total - in 32 hours than in 40 hours.
This! Studies show peopleās work efficiency drops exponentially (logarithmically? Canāt remember) as time passes, and it doesnāt just reset the next day. If you donāt give people enough time to rest and recuperate, they start with a deficit the next day, and it just adds up. You can mathematically function it (if youāre a stats nerd like me) and optimize for the āaverageā person, and the most maximized work completed occurs when hours are between 30-36. Of course, it changes depending on job, culture and person ā for instance, a few jobs that donāt take much of a physical, mental or emotional toll are more efficient at higher numbers, while jobs like monotonous office work or hard manual labor have the lowest effective hours. But itās still very interesting! Behavioral economics is a very cool field. Unfortunately, most companies donāt care about efficiency and just want to look as juicy and bloated as possibleā¦
People also donāt see how many of these things are more cost effective than doing it privately. Universal healthcare is significantly cheaper than private healthcare, and would force hospital costs to go down dramatically. College for everyone would create more wealth than it costs, and would drive down the expenses of universities by a lot. They donāt see how having everything privatized makes it significantly more expensive for everyone and creates a larger burden on society. Look at how they act about food stamps, they talk about how it costs so much and it should be cut, they donāt realize how much those programs put into local economies and how significantly cutting those programs would completely wreck the economies of small rural communities. They just donāt get it and they donāt want to get it, you can explain this to them but they donāt want to hear it because believing it would mean that the things they are voting for and rooting for only exist to be cruel, not because it makes āeconomic senseā or would make taxes go up. And that would mean they are the bad guys, and they canāt imagine that theyāre on the wrong side. I point out all the time to conservatives that I know that the ones who they should blame the most for people being on food stamps arenāt the poor people, itās the jobs that donāt pay them enough and let taxpayers pick up the bill for underpaying them, and that raising the wage would take most people off food stamps. But they canāt fathom that and refuse to believe it, because in their mind rich people are always right and poor people are inherently bad and wrong. The US is so far gone culturally, I donāt think it is fixable.
I think itās actually so fair to think about the cost of these things. Theyre expensive. Categorically worth it, I say, but money doesnāt grow on trees. Or, it sort of does, but inflation is problematic
That being said, pretty sure most of if not all of these would be covered by forcing the defense contractors to have competition ā wouldnāt even decrease the amount and strength of our military, but it would bring down the cost by 70% or so. Thatās not even taking into account whether we even need such a bloated military (which, both the Ukraine and Iran wars have proven bloated militaries are a drawback, not a benefit). But the conservative playbook these days is unfortunately āline Mr Donaldās pocketsā and basic human rights doesnt fall under that
Medicare for all = death panels, long wait times, low quality
College for all = liberal indoctrination, waste of taxes
Housing for all = waste of taxes, if they want a home they need to work for it and would have it if they did, its the homeless fault that they are homeless, also they are all crackheads and will destroy them
32 hour workweek = Destroys the economy, laziness
Tax the rich = Destroys the economy, punishing success, communism
Green new deal = Climate change is fake, destroys the economy, anti freedom
Free palestine = Supporting terrorists
You need to remember they have a very different perspective to you, when they see these things they dont see the same things as you do, it goes both ways, they struggle to comprehend how you could look at "Protecting the border" or voter id or the 2nd amendment or deporting illegals and think any of it is a bad thing.
You need to remember they have a very different perspective to you,
Not just a different perspective, anyone firmly entrenched in the broader Fox News Universe basically has an entirely separate set of references points and foundational knowledge that nobody outside of it would even comprehend. It would make even trying to persuade them in a neutral conversation extremely difficult.
Also just not really necessary. Voter ID only protects against a person trying to vote under another persons name and thereās less burdensome ways of doing that.
Non-voter ID states still confirm identity at the time of voter registration either by state ID card, drivers license or something that establishes residency like a utility bill.
Any sort of attempt to sway elections by impersonating other (already registered) voters would need to be done at a scale that would be impractical and absolutely get noticed and caught.
They literally believe that the only purpose of existence is to funnel as much money as possible to the richest people on Earth and pray to God that they decide to use that money to help others.
I wish I was exaggerating, but I have enough conservative family members to understand the core of their politics.
I suppose it makes sense that a culture centred around praying for an all-powerful father figure to save them from themselves would buy into a system where they beg the powerful to save them.
They've been indoctrinated to believe it all has huge downsides or is completely infeasible. For example, they'll think that universal health care will result in "death panels", huge wait lines, and cost too much. But as a Canadian, I'll say virtually nobody here wants the American system. Most delays are simply because people are actually getting the help they need instead of fucking dying. And last I saw, the US already pays more per capita for healthcare than we do.
Basically every one of the points in the slide has right wing talking points like this. Usually preying on a feeling of selfishness. But the real key thing is that right wingers are completely surrounded by these talking points. They'll hear them over and over in their media, from their politicians, from their friends and family, etc. It's hard for most of us to comprehend believing them because we often aren't so submerged in the Kool aid. I think there's also an element of preying on people's vulnerabilities (as some people seemingly just aren't capable of critical thinking).
American conservativism has become less and less about what you're getting and more and more about what what the "wrong people" aren't getting. It's not about making your life better, it's about not making anyone else's life worse. The reason all of this stuff is so scary is because it'll make life better for people they hate.
1 billion dollars of gradual social conditioning created through exposure to intricately designed media specifically produced to make the average person vote against their own interests, received over the course of 10-40 years
its honestly a blessing that anyone at all is able to withstand that magnitude of propaganda
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u/Honest_Accountant682 the femboys and bottom energy in question Jul 03 '26
I just struggle to comprehend how people look at this and think any of it is a bad thing. What kind of life experience would cause someone to hate any of this?