Sometimes people ask rhetorical questions that make no sense

[conuly]

Like with the talk about the minimum wage recently. "How would you feel if you worked hard to earn this much money, and your neighbor suddenly started getting that for standing behind the register at McDonald's?" Um, I'd be glad that my hypothetical neighbor could put food on the table without having to go to the food bank every month?

And if I lost my house (looking less likely by the day) and my neighbor had a sudden bailout that allowed them to keep theirs, I'd be glad that they got to stay in their home. Seriously, do these people all hate their neighbors or something? Maybe they should move! (These people inevitably are the sort who say that "If I couldn't feed my child, I wouldn't beg my neighbors." They think they sound principled and proud, but really they just sound like bad parents. I'd turn tricks on the street if I couldn't feed my kids, and man, that is not my skillset. Fortunately, I wouldn't have to - I've given money to my neighbors when they needed it, and they've given cash to me. That's because the people on my block don't all hate each other, or if we do, we keep it to ourselves.)

Except they won't do that. "If I lived in one of those countries where conditions are miserable, I wouldn't try to sneak into another country!" Well, bully for you, because I would, and I wouldn't look back. Bombs are dropping, there's no food, the money I had saved to buy a house isn't enough to buy a dollhouse - yes, I'm getting me and the kids out of there just as fast as our little legs can carry us.

Seriously, I don't get it. There may be good arguments to be made, but this is one area where an appeal to emotion is not going to work, because these people seem to be devoid of all human emotions whatsoever.

Comments

[siderea]

"How would you feel if you worked hard to earn this much money, and your neighbor suddenly started getting that for standing behind the register at McDonald's?"

Me, I'd feel grateful I could make that much money without having to stand behind a register at McDonalds. Is this not universal?

I just found out how much therapists at my credential level can make working for the VA. It is a lot of money. Like, programmer money.

And I find myself thinking, "Yeah, it would kind of have to be, to compensate for handling Federal paperwork."

If you think standing behind a register at McDonalds is a better job than what you've got right now for the same money, good news: you can trade up with no pay cut! Go apply for your McD position and enjoy your dream job!

Also, can I just say I am wicked in favor of as many people around me making as much money as possible because I sell things to my neighbors for a living. Like approximately everyone who is not a defense contractor or selling things wholesale, does. My ability to earn a living depends on the financial ability of customers to pay me. I am really, really, really in favor of people who want to buy my services being able to pay me for them. There are few things I am more a fan of, tbh.

As a convenient side-effect of people being able to afford to keep me in shelter and food in exchange for my professional services, they are also able to keep my favorite restaurants and cafés and bookstores and ice cream shops and museums and boutiques open, they are able to keep my favorite musicians, comedians, documentary film makers, authors, artists, and instrument makers from having to get boring day jobs that won't entertain me, and they keep my favorite music festivals and theater companies alive. My neighbors being well compensated means I get to have planetaria and movie theaters, libraries and tall ship parades, FirstNight and the Fourth of July, well kept parks and structurally sound bridges; it keeps grocery prices down and civic engagement up. Really, my neighbors making more money... I don't even, to be honest, think of it as their money, so much as "money that will soon benefit me." So I am entirely in favor of there being lots of it.

[conuly]

Me, I'd feel grateful I could make that much money without having to stand behind a register at McDonalds. Is this not universal?

Apparently not. Apparently, if you can earn $15 an hour at McDonalds, then nobody will ever put in the footwork to become a doctor or an engineer. Nevermind that the social status of those jobs is a benefit all on its own, it just won't happen.

I don't even, to be honest, think of it as their money, so much as "money that will soon benefit me." So I am entirely in favor of there being lots of it.

This is because you didn't completely sleep through high school economics, I take it? (And also kindergarten. These people inevitably seem to have gone to some crappy-ass kindergarten that didn't teach them to share their toys.)

[siderea]

This is because you didn't completely sleep through high school economics, I take it?

No, it's because I did. Man, that class was useless.

And also kindergarten. These people inevitably seem to have gone to some crappy-ass kindergarten that didn't teach them to share their toys.

I often ask people, in my head, "Did you flunk kindergarten?"

[conuly]

LOL, maybe my class was better, or maybe I was already so thoroughly indoctrinated into lefty views that it didn't take.

[agoodwinsmith]

I am here by way of Andrew Drucker, and I have quoted your words here hugely because you have exactly captured my inchoate view of Economics 101 - "it's about the customers, less-intelligent-person."

[elfy]

This, so much. I really, really don't get people who do not understand why refugees are refugees. And how they seem not able to grasp that these people probably did not just randomly say "Oh, yeah, let's just to that rich country and live in a refugees home and totally be dependent on their good will! I don't care about my homeland anymore and my friends, family and neighbourhood, I'd totally prefer to live in a country that has a totally different culture than mine and does not look favourably on me and makes it a big hurdle to work legally, etc."
What the f*ck, people! You simply have no idea what it means to be bombed and to have no food for your family and to flee from war and terror and genocide and f*cking economic and environmental disasters - do NOT pretend as if you wouldn't be the first in line to get some shelter, food and promise on a better life.

[conuly]

do NOT pretend as if you wouldn't be the first in line to get some shelter, food and promise on a better life.

Maybe they wouldn't be. Maybe they'd be, like, second in line.

(On a related note, they all go "When my ancestors came here, they learned the language!" No, your ancestors did not. Your ancestors lived, worked, and worshiped in ethnic enclaves and had no need to learn "the language", whether that language was English or Iroquois!)

[kyrielle]

This. This, so much this!

Now, if I can get paid the same amount to *not work at all* (bearing in mind that I make more than would pay for bear subsistence here), I gotta admit I'm lazy and that might be tempting. But McDonald's? Seriously? That's ... I'm pretty sure that's the antithesis of a dream job. Ugh. I think you'd need to pay me *more* than I'm making now to get me there, and no one is proposing that, nor do I think they're likely to.

On the other hand, we do like stopping there occasionally, and that would taste so much better without the extra flavoring of guilt, if I could at least tell myself the employees were making a living wage.

Also, EVERYTHING that siderea said (except the bit about therapists at the VA, as IANAT, heh).

[conuly]

bearing in mind that I make more than would pay for bear subsistence here

Bear subsistence? How much does it cost to sustain a bear? :P

That's ... I'm pretty sure that's the antithesis of a dream job.

Depends on what sort of dreams you have. Some of mine are pretty scary.

[zhelana]

I think you have to be either stupid or evil to be a republican, but for some reason they think the rest of us are as stupid and evil as they are.

[conuly]

That sums it up. Even if they're solely motivated by self-interest they ought to see that their plans fail in the long-term, but they never do seem to see that.

[zhelana]

Nope but then when you see them bitching about the highways, it's that there isn't enough maintenance done on them.

[conuly]

Oh, god, don't get me started on the freaking highways and the bridges and the power grid and the general infrastructure omg.

[zhelana]

Which is to say nothing of the internet.

[conuly]

Well, I was trying to say nothing of it...!

[zhelana]

Oh lord. I posted that dinosaurs to birds article you posted at my politics message board and seem to have uncovered a young earth creationist amongst the posters. The stupid! It burns!

[conuly]

Oh, geez. Good luck with that!

[zhelana]

Well, fortunately for sanity, one of the other posters is a biology professor.

[conuly]

Sounds like popcorn time!

[zhelana]

Yes indeed!!

[redbird]

I suspect at least some of the people who are saying this are actually thinking that they will never have to choose between begging and seeing their children starve, or be in danger of their lives if they stay where they are. I suspect that is part racism and other bigotry--they aren't the kind of people who become refugees, as if there was a "kind of people" that happened to—and part a deep unconscious belief that they are the heroes of a kind of story where nothing really bad happens to the hero.

None of that explains why they think I should resent the idea that the person doing a job much more difficult and less pleasant than mine might earn a decent living too. Getting to sit down, and take breaks to drink tea and pet the cat, and do work I find interesting, are all advantages that would remain if that register worker was better paid. And they're not a zero-sum thing: my feet won't start hurting if more cashiers get to sit down.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I suspect you're quite right, but I also suspect that that kind of thinking has a large component of Denial, because deep down they know it could happen to them. We've all grown up with the imagery in our faces, of the people it did happen to:

"This time we saw the face of barbarism.
This time we saw them: people like us, in clothes like ours,
arriving in shock, avoiding the mined land, trudging the last miles
along the rail track to the frontier;
faces contorted with grief,
women, men, children weeping uncontrollably,
having lost everything save each other."

--Kosovo Easter 1999 (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3685680.html) by Anne Baring

That's what all those 'Preppers', as they call themselves, are about - their fear of precisely that is so great that they build themselves mini-fortresses to hide from it in. And then they still aren't safe, because deep down they know they couldn't hold their little 'holdings' for a day against a real military force. (Against zombies, they'd probably do okay.)

"None of that explains why they think I should resent the idea that the person doing a job much more difficult and less pleasant than mine might earn a decent living too."

The reason isn't a nice one. The whole idea of status-hierarchy requires that the people on top have easy, pleasant, optional work and opulent rewards, while the people on the bottom have hard, dirty work, and no choice but to do it because otherwise they'll starve. If a preschool teacher with a B.A. in Education earns $15.00 an hour, that's currently a reason to be happy, because most preschool teachers don't earn that much. But if the minimum wage goes up to $15.00 an hour, suddenly the chick who partied her way through high school and is now asking if you want fries with that is earning the same. What does that say about the relative value in which their work is held?

Myself, I'm in favor of a Basic Income to all citizens, plus a comprehensive National Health Plan that includes dental care, plus a law that says the highest-paid employee of a company cannot earn more than 100 times the pay of the lowest-paid employee. Then we wouldn't need either Welfare or a minimum wage, and McD's would have to offer good wages and working conditions to get anyone to work there.

[conuly]

I also suspect that that kind of thinking has a large component of Denial, because deep down they know it could happen to them.

Undoubtedly.

[conuly]

I suspect at least some of the people who are saying this are actually thinking that they will never have to choose between begging and seeing their children starve, or be in danger of their lives if they stay where they are.

Which shows a serious lack of imagination on their parts, if nothing else.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Word. This reminds me of the story of The Farmer and the Money-Lender (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/steel/punjab/punjab-26.html) - except, of course, the farmer had personal reasons for hating the money-lender, who'd stolen his conch and forced him into the bargain. Even so, he blinded himself in one eye for the sake of his hate.

Suppose the farmer had asked for spiritual wealth instead: "O Ram, I wish my heart to be filled with such love and generosity that I don't begrudge the money-lender".... ha! The money-lender would have gotten twice as much, so he would probably have given all his wealth to the poor and become a wandering saint. Problem solved, no one blinded, no one dead. And Ram would have been delighted.

Selfishness, envy and petty malice are human emotions, and appealing to them works quite well on a lot of people. That's what those questions are about.

I'd do whatever it took to feed my child, up to and including slitting throats in a dark alley, and that is definitely not my skill-set (but I think I could learn if I had to.) If my neighbor couldn't feed her kids, I'd feed them, and her too, and if she was too proud to accept 'charity', I'd find work for her hands so she needn't feel beholden. And if she wouldn't take even that, I'd feed her kids on the sly, because keeping children fed is the Prime Directive, and to hell with stupid adult pride.

At this phase of my life, having no children at home, and living where I do, I don't think I'd leave even if conditions got miserable. I'd sign up with whatever group was helping people, do what I could, and stand my ground. This is my land; if it burns, I will burn with it.

However, I might think differently if it was burning, with green Canada just 20 miles away, in clear view across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On the other hand, drowning in icy water isn't a very appealing fate either, and I don't have the skill to get any kind of boat across that wild tidal channel. But the question is moot, because if the Olympic Peninsula was doomed, Victoria B.C. would be equally doomed; there'd be no point trying to get there.

Here's an appeal to human emotion fit to shame a Randroid:

[conuly]

I don't think I'd go so far as to slit throats unless they were the sort of throats that adamantly deserved it.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well, naturally one would much prefer not to have to slit any throats at all. But I think I'd be a lot better at slitting throats than I would be at turning tricks.

[conuly]

I suppose you could double up, slit the throats of those who leave a poor tip.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ah, no - it wouldn't be cost-effective; I'm well past the age when I could have made good tips in that line of work. Not worth the risk either; even with a knife I might not win a face-to-face fight. Therefore the classic 'death from behind' method would be my best option.

I should, of course, endeavor to target evil-doers with no children, both on moral principles, and because they're more likely to have money.