Re: Big purple digit

John Dallman <jgd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I'm afraid my belief at the time, and since, remains, that their
> economic policies are largely formulated in terms of benefit to the
> wealthy, and have to have explanations that are intended to attract
> the votes of the less wealthy pasted on afterwards.

That's true of pretty much all politicians.  More specifically,
in terms of benefit to the powerful.  (Power and wealth are not
perfectly correlated.)

Even when they tout benefits to the poor or middle class, those
benefits are generally to the detriment of others who are worse off.
For instance they want to make it easier for people who foolishly
bought houses beyond their means, by taking money from renters who
showed more prudence by remaining renters.  They want to tax people
who never went to college to provide free college to those people's
future competitors.  They make the interiors of cars safer, though it
makes those same cars more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, and
makes cars less affordable.  They provide free medical care to those
with no savings -- care that people who have worked decades to save
will forego rather than lose decades of savings, and that those same
people have to pay taxes to provide that care to others.

They respond to moral panics by attacking the victims of those panics.
For instance a married middle-aged woman, forced to leave her husband
and children because they live within a thousand feet of a school
bus stop and because she was convicted of giving a blow job to her
boyfriend in high school decades earlier.  In neighborhoods where
there are a lot of crime victims, police burst unannounced into homes
at midnight, without a warrant, and if the homeowner successfully
defends himself against people he thinks are criminals, he's either
shot dead on the spot or sent to death row.

This has nothing to do with whether politicians consider money the
only important thing in life.  Money is simply one of the easiest
things for politicians to control.
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html
before emailing me.