Can Someone Give Me A Hand Here?

[Lord Jim]

There's no question that many people are hurting, that the economy is in the toilet, and that some of the folks who bear responsibility for this have not been called to account...

Let's accept that as a given...

But there's a theory I keep hearing advanced for which, frankly, I have yet to see any evidence...

It's this:

"The rich people are making us fight each other, so we won't see who the real enemy is"...

If there is indeed some evidence to support the theory that there is a cabal of "rich people" who have somehow worked out a fiendish plot to get everyone who isn't "rich" to "fight each other" so that they can remain "rich" ...

I'm more than happy to look at it...

Absent such evidence, I have to say it sounds like demagoguery...

[rubato]

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow


The very same people who expanded the deficit to the historic levels of the Reagan and Bush II regimes are now winding up the tea-baggers with the idea that the deficit is the biggest problem we have. They are cutting thousands of jobs at the local, state, and federal levels. They are killing Unions in an era when wages are already falling in an alarmingly deflationary* fashion.

An intelligent person would say that our biggest problems are 9.1% unemployment and an ongoing housing crisis.


yrs,
rubato

* Worse than inflation in its effects.

[Joe Guy]

"The rich people are making us fight each other, so we won't see who the real enemy is"...

Who is saying that?

I would think that only people who believe in the MOTU have those kinds of thoughts.

In the meantime, I'm not sure who is fighting who and over what. Nothing has changed much. We're always fighting about something.

[Gob]

Can Someone Give Me A Hand Here?



Oh come on, someone had to!

[The Hen]

Wouldn't the enemy be your incredible stupid and unfair taxation laws that the rich want to keep in place because they only have to chuck loose change into the pot?

[dales]

[Lord Jim]

Heh heh heh....

We certainly have no shortage of comedians here....


Joe:

Who is saying that?

I have heard numerous liberal media pundits express that view. I also have seen it recently on this board....

It came up in the context of one of the Libs (I really wish that one of them would choose a different handle; I know that one is a little more conservative than the other but it's really confusing; the one who was Ytrrebil at the CSB is now "Liberty" and the one who was "Liberty" is now "Liberty1") talking about being part of the "53%"....The 53% who pay federal income taxes, as opposed to the 47% that don't....

Somebody, (it may have been Grim, but I wouldn't swear to it; I'll try to find the quote) said that the 53-47 percent construct was a phony one, cooked up by the "one percenters" to keep the "99 percenters" divided and fighting with each other....

In the media, I've seen the same claim made regarding the divisions between public and private sector employees, among other things...

And of course Steve editec and Gwen used to make this claim constantly....

[Grim Reaper]

The 53% movement is just a silly distinction, everybody pays taxes through some means. The people in the 53% group should be on the same side as the people in the 99% group, instead they've split into their own camp and are defending how things work now. These people say things are just fine, usually while claiming to hold multiple jobs, or having received some exceptional scholarships, and a few are clever fakes.

[Crackpot]

Actually Liberty1 was always Liberty1 Liberty was originally liberty at the CSB but changed it to ytrebil because he got tired of the confusion But when Plan B started lib1 wasn't posting yet so he reverted his nick.