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

[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.