I don't understand why the GOP has so many policies to increase the number of poor people

[applegrove]

when they hate them so much. They need to know this. Making for more rich people (which the GOP with their tax cuts for the rich promotes) also makes more poor people as government programs are cut (like acorn).

[lob1]

1. It's very simple. A desperate work force will work cheap.

[applegrove]

2. Except that there are going to be shortages of workers

as the baby boomers retire. I thing the GOP is just trying to get all the concessions they can right now in a recession because they know it is going to be an employees market sometime soon. I just hope that the unions don't give up too much during this recession.

[Dr Morbius]

7. Spot on.

However, they're being unwise. Alexis de Tocqueville, observing democracy in America as a visiting Frenchman in 1830, noted that when the poor put someone in power, they increase taxes on the wealthiest class. The rich, being the least numerous part of any nation, cannot put their own in power in a true democracy (though of course they can manipulate the process). But when the middle class is the largest part of the population, they feel the result of their own taxation... and therefore are the least likely to impose usurious taxes on the rich. Ergo, the wisest course for the richest Americans would be to grow the middle class! Sadly, they don't see this.

[mrcheerful]

3. Because the more people using government programs means the thinner the budget is for

those programs which means that at the end of the day they can cut said program or lower the amount of help people get from the program. That was what was behind Raygun's idea of making alcoholism a disability, many alcoholic's quit their jobs to get on disability as well as the alcoholics that were bad enough to where their drinking made employment impossible, it also put a strain on SSDI, which in turn allowed Raygun to change rules and payments to the disabled.

2 changes were 1) work history, before Raygun, it didn't matter if you hadn't worked for X number of years before applying for SSDI to receive full benefits, after Rayguns rule change if you applied after X number of years you got the lowest amount SSDI paid out. 2) if there was more then 1 child that was disabled before the age of 18 instead of each being able to apply for parents SS benefits and getting the full amount that the parent was entitled to, the disabled children had to split the payments that were set by the lowest SSDI payments, meaning that 2 disabled children had to split $597 a month as of this years SSDI monthly payments.

That is why con's push people into the poor house.

[gratuitous]

4. They have so many policies in case one doesn't work

Some of those poor people are pretty wily, and they might avoid the pernicious effects of one, two, or even five policies. Or they'll adapt and change to escape their fate. Republicans must be ever vigilant to keep large segments of the population down, and to convince other segments that with a little luck - like hitting the lottery - they, too can join the elite ranks. This latter group constitutes useful dupes who will argue, vote and even resort to violence against their own interest, and persuade others to do the same. So they need many policies and programs to be sure that the wealth of our nation, generated by the labor of millions, is reliably funneled to them and their ilk.

It's a delicate act, and hard to sustain. And while the material rewards are astronomical, would it kill all of us to acknowledge once, just once, what a superlative job Republicans do in tilting the playing field to their own advantage?

[baldguy]

5. It's not that they hate the poor so much.

It's just that they hate the middle class so much more they make them poor.

[applegrove]

6. Yup. They hate those union members who had good strong middle class jobs.

They hate all americans except for the wealthy elite. Now how can we teach that to the vast majority of Americans?

[HillbillyBob]

8. A friend said 'Plantation Mentality'

Keep us poor and desperate and keep us in 'our' place..
At the time I thought,' yea exactly what makes for rebellion'.
Desperate folks do desperate things. The riech wing mouth pieces have the slow thinkers all upset at the left..when all of us are really upset with the plantation owners..sooner or later all will turn on them..if we can only wake up the deluded.