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The economy and food stamps. The economy and the homeless. The economy and unemployment.
And it's difficult to glean much from Internet comments, but it seems to me that more and more I'm seeing people decrying low taxes on the rich and super low minimum wage, and the people complaining about lazy, feckless, greedy poor people are being replaced, slowly but surely, with people complaining about lazy, feckless, greedy rich people who incidentally utterly lack compassion.
I tend to agree with this view, at least in the abstract (I'm sure people are very complex no matter what their income), but the dramatic change worries me a little. Sooner or later, something's gotta give, and I don't know what the outcome of the current economic climate is ultimately going to be.
On that note, within the past few weeks I've seen numerous commenters all around asking why we don't have a CCC anymore, or any of the other New Deal works programs. That, I have to say, strikes me as an excellent idea. Nationwide, all our roads need work, and for sure most of the country could use public transportation. There's really no reason we couldn't or shouldn't expand our rail network between cities either, and invest in more high speed trains. The electrical grid is more than due for an upgrade. For that matter, construction isn't the only thing we need. With so many people turning to libraries for Internet access and, um, books, we could hire more staff and keep longer opening hours. And the one thing nearly everybody wants in schools is smaller class sizes, and teachers pay taxes and buy goods just like everybody else. (We might have to have a slightly more progressive tax system than we currently do to pay for this, but, you know, I think I'm okay with that.) But even just fixing the roads would employ lots of people, people who might otherwise need to use welfare. I'm writing to my representatives as soon as I'm awake in the morning.
And it's difficult to glean much from Internet comments, but it seems to me that more and more I'm seeing people decrying low taxes on the rich and super low minimum wage, and the people complaining about lazy, feckless, greedy poor people are being replaced, slowly but surely, with people complaining about lazy, feckless, greedy rich people who incidentally utterly lack compassion.
I tend to agree with this view, at least in the abstract (I'm sure people are very complex no matter what their income), but the dramatic change worries me a little. Sooner or later, something's gotta give, and I don't know what the outcome of the current economic climate is ultimately going to be.
On that note, within the past few weeks I've seen numerous commenters all around asking why we don't have a CCC anymore, or any of the other New Deal works programs. That, I have to say, strikes me as an excellent idea. Nationwide, all our roads need work, and for sure most of the country could use public transportation. There's really no reason we couldn't or shouldn't expand our rail network between cities either, and invest in more high speed trains. The electrical grid is more than due for an upgrade. For that matter, construction isn't the only thing we need. With so many people turning to libraries for Internet access and, um, books, we could hire more staff and keep longer opening hours. And the one thing nearly everybody wants in schools is smaller class sizes, and teachers pay taxes and buy goods just like everybody else. (We might have to have a slightly more progressive tax system than we currently do to pay for this, but, you know, I think I'm okay with that.) But even just fixing the roads would employ lots of people, people who might otherwise need to use welfare. I'm writing to my representatives as soon as I'm awake in the morning.
