Sunday, February 2, 2014

Blame those lazy blue collar workers? The right wing says yes.

The most revealing thing about every right wing study is that it confirms what we already knew; they don't understand economics and can't solve simple problems wearing an ideological straight jacket.

The conservative low information reporters at Townhall are again making their case against the victims of "free market" deregulated business interests, the displaced blue collar worker:
The most interesting analyses of the problem are on the right, not the left. Let's start with Charles Murray, who says we are experiencing an ever widening cultural divide. Upper-middle class professional types live by old fashioned puritan values … They get married and stay married. They work hard and work long hours.
Not so for the blue collar, never-got-beyond-high-school class ... A shocking number aren't even working at all. Many are not getting married in the first place. Of those that get married, the divorce and separation rates are soaring.
Huh? But the GOP has been saying don't go to college. As for marriage, maybe conservatives are suggesting a legal ban on divorce. They are our social engineers after all.

So what’s the solution to the massive income gap? What’s the magic path to wealth?
For the scholars, behavioral remedies are paramount. From the Cato Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis comes the observation that if you do these four things, it's almost impossible to remain poor:

1. Finish high school,   2. Get a job,    3. Get married, and   4. Don't have children until you get married.
I have never seen a Krugman column discussing how the solution to inequality is for those at the bottom of the income ladder to change their behavior. Instead, we find the ever-present hint that those at the top are somehow to blame.
Naw, those low wage high profit companies can't be to blame. One question: Anyone see the wealthy “charitably” handing out decent paying jobs to the desperately poor? 

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