The Heritage Foundation AND Bill Whittle can kiss my ass...

[TrollBuster9090]

Run time: 08:53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkebmhTQN-4   Posted on YouTube: August 04, 2011 By YouTube Member: Pajamasmedia Views on YouTube: 73539   Posted on DU: August 23, 2011 By DU Member: TrollBuster9090 Views on DU: 2317

 
I nominate Bill Whittle as the new face of modern conservatism. The Koch brothers may be the financiers of modern conservatism, but Whittle provides the sentiment with his “the poor are doing better than ever, rich people are just plain superior, and the poor should just suck it up and be thankful for the few crumbs they’re being tossed instead of being a bunch of envious little bastards” commentary.

Many of you have heard of this "Study" put out by the Koch brothers-funded Heritage Foundation (if you can call an exercise in sophistry a study), where they claim that the poor in America are doing better than they ever did, so they should just suck it up, stop envying the rich, and be grateful to the top 50% of "producers" who pay for the social programs of the parasitic bottom 50%.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty

Whittle takes this bit of plutocratic propaganda and unloads a telling tirade of resentment against the poor that it would take a Freudian psychotherapist at least 40 years to untangle. It includes the standard conservative talking points:

1. The bottom 50% of income earners pay no income tax.
2. The poor today are more likely to have refrigerators, TVs, video games and air conditioners than the poor of the 1970s.
3. The poor in America have more space to live in than the average person in western europe.
4. Poor people in America are rarely malnourished like they are in Africa.

...without mentioning the actual reasons for these sophist, cherry picked numbers:

1. The wealth disparity between rich and poor in America has not this great since the GILDED AGE, and has become so distorted that the top 400 people now control more wealth than the bottom 150 000 000.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2011/04/400-super-rich-americans-control-more-wealth-country-150-million-other-americans

And the reason the bottom 50% pay no tax is because they have now become so poor that they fall below the minimum level of taxable income:

http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2011/07/27/why-do-people-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2/

2. The price of consumer electronics has dropped with the rise of cheap southeast asian imports to the point that even the poor can afford a TV and a refrigerator.

3. Western Europe is more densely populated and urban than the United States. DUH!

4. It's a well known fact that the poor in America live on fast food because they don't have time to shop or cook. Fast food is the most fattening. Whittle leaves strangely absent the definition of malnutrition, and fails to distinguish it from body mass index etc. Ironically, poor people in America are both OBESE AND MALNOURISHED. It's one of the great ironies of our time.

No meaningful comparisons???
No GINI Index?
No comparison of minimum wage between 1970 and now vs. incomes for the top 10%?
No measures of poor ownership of new cars rather than TVs?
Poor vs. rich savings for then vs. now?
Consumer and credit card debt, then vs. now?
Property?
Health? Health insurance??

No. Just TV sets. REALLY? The poor are doing better than ever because more of them own video games now than they did in 1970...um...before they were invented. Okay...

Whittle then goes on to do the compulsory "personal disclaimer," and points out that HE was really "poor" when he was young.

HELLO! That's not called being POOR, dipshit! That's called BEING YOUNG!

Working in a fast food drive through for minimum wage when you're 19, and having trouble making rent occasionally does not make your life a RAGS TO RICHES story!
Only if you're working in a fast food drive through for minimum wage when you're 50, and living in a room with nothing to your name but a $55 TV/video game console, a $100 Air Conditioner, a $200 computer and a $300 refrigerator, all made in China and purchased at Wall Mart are you entitled to call yourself POOR.

But his thoughts on class warfare basically boil down to the idea of the poor being simply ENVIOUS of the rich who take such good care of them, without realizing that they actually have it better than they ever did. He then goes on to mention his analogy of how you only feel poor when your boss gives you a $100 000 bonus if you find out that he gave everybody ELSE in the office a $300 000 bonus.

Well, okay...let's play that game. Actually, there is a REAL NAME FOR IT. It's the famous Behavioral Economists experiment called THE ULTIMATUM GAME:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

Here's how it works: A pair of players are given some money. The money is given to player A on the condition that they share some of it with player B. Player A will make an offer on how much to give to player B. If player B thinks the deal (a "re-distribution of wealth" if you will) is "unfair" they have the power to reject the offer, and NEITHER player gets any money. Logically, you'd think player B should NEVER reject the offer because SOME money is ALWAYS better than none, right? When in fact, there is always a point at which player B thinks the distribution is so unfair that they'd rather NEITHER of them get any than see player A get away with rank exploitation. That point is usually reached when player A offers 20% or less of the money.

NOW HEAR THIS, PLUTOCRATS: YOU WOULD DO WELL TO REMEMBER THIS GAME!

If this country reaches the point where enough of the middle class and working poor feel they're being exploited by you....YOU'LL GET NOTHING.
At this point IT IS IN YOUR OWN FINANCIAL SELF INTERESTS TO START THINKING ABOUT THAT AWEFUL "R" WORD: REDISTRIBUTION. Maybe it's not such a bad thing after all.
I'm convinced that FDR saved this country from both FASCISM AND COMMUNISM in the 30s through a nominal redistribution of wealth. Other countries in europe and asia weren't so lucky! Liberal Socialism always defeats nationalist extremism, and Roosevelt was smart enough to realize that. Too bad our modern leaders have forgotten it!

[indurancevile]

1. knr. but those talking points are the same old recycled ones.

heritage has been pumping out that crap about tvs & air conditioners for years.

chris whittle married into the agnelli dynasty that owns italy; he's a made man & a supporter of fuhrer-princip.

associate of benno schmidt jr, part of the whitney family gang.

Chris Whittle was one of the early players in "school reform" because, being part of the global aristocracy, he got the memo early.

creep city.

[ScottLand]

2. Then the rich should stop whining about class warfare

and come down to our level, since it's so great down here.

Whenever someone like that says the facts come from a Heritage Foundation study, it should tell you that you need an "unbiased" study. Heritage Foundation is completely right-wing and their studies or surveys will always favour the filthy rich.

{Edited to add a point)

[HughBeaumont]

3. Billy Whittle needs to watch this and buy a clue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

It's not the toys, it's the NECESSITIES that are killing us. Tchotchkes are cheaper than they've even been because they're made by slave labor and disposable. When one can't afford the basics like housing, transportation, food, education and health care and multiply that figure by millions, then you got a serious problem on your hands.

But it's not like the Heritage Foundation or CATO Institute will ever admit to that. They'll just rack it up to "jealousy".

They don't seem to get that the originators of the idea of universal health care was thought up by people who wanted to steer workers AWAY from Communism rather than towards it.

[midnight]

4. Koch brothers -lots to learn about their distortions....

[chelsea0011]

5. Just to be clear about the 70's especially the early 70's

Air conditioning was a luxury. I knew very few families in our working class neighborhood who had them. Video games? The 70's? Nice try. TV's in the 70's? Most of us had them and they were of the black and white variety until the mid to later 70's> I didn't see my first color TV until the early 70's in my house and didn't see a color TV until the first Super Bowl in 1967(?). Refridgerators were the true constant. And since when is that a luxury when they had been common since the late 50's?

What a pile of crap. I'm surprised they don't talk about having a bathroom instead of an outhouse.