Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
Recently had a conversation with a guy from Great Britain.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t figure out why Trump voters wouldn\u2019t pay for free college, free medical care, higher minimum wage, longer paid vacations, better social security.\u00a0 Why are we such haters? Tried to explain to him that the math doesn\u2019t work but he didn\u2019t get it.\u00a0 \u201cIn my country, if an old woman has no income and can\u2019t work, we consider it an honor to pay for her retirement.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, but that\u2019s giving a moral answer to a mathematics question.\u00a0 It\u2019s a category error.
\nConsider it this way: what\u2019s 2 + 2?\u00a0 If you answer 4, you give a mathematically correct answer.\u00a0 But is 4 a virtuous moral answer?\u00a0 Does it reflect society\u2019s commitment to diversity and the underprivileged?\u00a0 Maybe 5 would better enhance social justice?\u00a0 Maybe if we were more caring people, our politicians would pass a law making 2 + 2 = 5.
\nThat\u2019s pretty much the way we operate nowadays.\u00a0 The poor pay no taxes.\u00a0 The rich hide their money and pay no taxes.\u00a0 The middle class claims to want to help everybody but that\u2019s just a way to signal their virtue to others (any politician who ran on a platform of promising to double your taxes to support higher welfare spending would be crushed at the polls).\u00a0 Politicians take in 4 but spend 5 to signal their virtue to taxpayers.\u00a0 All those extra 1\u2019s are the reason the national debt is more than $20 trillion.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019ll never have to be repaid and there will never be any consequences because Americans are just that clever.\u00a0 This is my skeptical face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u00a0Joe Doakes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It was about 100 years ago that Americans learned that they could get others to pay for their virtues.\u00a0 It’s been downhill ever since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Recently had a conversation with a guy from Great Britain.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t figure out why Trump voters wouldn\u2019t pay for free college, free medical care, higher minimum wage, longer paid vacations, better social security.\u00a0 Why are we such haters? Tried to explain to him that the math doesn\u2019t work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67012,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67011\/revisions\/67012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}