Who'd have guessed? People living on gov't assistance love Obama.

[lastparker]

LongTomH  (1000+ posts)        Wed Jan-27-10 08:54 AM
Original message
Americans fear losing affluence after decades of "dole."
 Pierre Tristan has an interesting op-ed over at the Smirking Chimp blog. Mostly, it's an analysis of the numbers behind the 'shrinking poll numbers' for both Pres. Obama and his health reform plan. The author notes that Mr. Obama's approval numbers among the unemployed are much higher than among those who still have jobs; 61 per cent approval among unemployed adults versus 50% for the general population.


When the economy tanks, the president and his party pay the price in lower approval ratings. The jobless are last to reward the president. So, what's going on? This is: For the first time in any recession, including the Great Depression, health-insurance coverage for the unemployed was vastly expanded and made cheaper, unemployment insurance was expanded and homeowners, the jobless among them, got multiple lifelines to ward off foreclosure.

Obviously these people are not worrying about the size of the deficit! They're worried about finding jobs and keeping a roof over their heads.


There's a similar disconnect in health polls, which now show a sizable majority opposed to "health care reform," whatever that is, but not to proposals in their particulars. Big majorities still think the uninsured should be covered, that government has a responsibility to cover them, that a government-backed public insurance system competing with private insurers is a good idea, even that Medicare should be expanded. Bundle all those proposals under "health care reform," and you get a big fat "No" -- not from those who don't have insurance or jobs but from those who do: the employed, the retired, the rich. In sum, what "rebellion" there is about Obama and his agenda isn't the cry of the dispossessed. It's the rasp of the misers. It's the size of a national character diminishing in tandem with its presumed returns. The greediest generation is in its prime.


The radical change isn't the kind Obama supposedly wants to inflict on the country. It's America's radical change from what it was in the middle of the last century to what it has become since the 1980s. When Franklin Roosevelt increased Americans' taxes faster and more than ever before, and Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower raised them even more, they paid up. There was a Depression to get out of, fascism to defeat, a postwar world that wasn't even our own to rebuild, a Cold War to prosecute and a national debt much fatter than it is now (in relation to the economy) to pay down. We did it all. And got richer for it, because taxes were seen for what they are -- "what we pay for a civilized society," in Oliver Wendell Holmes' words. The generosity spilled over to the 1960s in the form of the Great Society, when Americans turned toward each other and extended a further hand. The country was rich and confident. It could afford it.


It still can. But, for a generation, Americans have been turning on each other for being too fearful of losing what they have. It's not responsible government they want. Quite the opposite. They're worried about the end of the decades of dole -- of the tax cuts and artificially cheap credit and God-bless-us-chauvinism that posed as reinventions of American power even as it plundered that power to the point of catastrophe. We paid the price in 2008 and 2009.

To sum up, our problem is a middle class terrified of losing the affluence they've gained in the last half century. The people ready for change are the people who've had their illusions of a comfortable, affluent middle class life for themselves and their children shattered. Sad to say, we can draw a sort of 'hope against hope' from the fact that the numbers of the latter group are growing.

So far, nobody has joined the campfire.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x513668

[Carl]

Parasites never care about the host to the point they will kill it and themselves in the process.

[Specbid]

The people ready for change are the people who've had their illusions of a comfortable, affluent middle class life for themselves and their children shattered

Aw bullshit...the folks ready for a change are finding that they have to WORK to reach middle class. Life ain't easy. My Grandparents worked their asses off through the depression (with their kids working also) to build a better life for their kids. My parents worked hard for their kids etc.
Now some of these folks are seeing that it takes work, that not everything was given to those that have reached some level of success. No such thing as a free lunch DUmmies. 

[jukin]

While working Americans got a $10/week break on their taxes (which many will have to pay back on 4/15/10) the unemployed got $25/week increase.  The welfare and food stamp programs went up more than $10/week. 

Of course the unproductive love the man he rewards them for it.

[Texacon]

Another post of "We should all be poor"?  Wow. 

KC

[Texacon]

I think these kinds of posts really highlight one of the major differences in conservatives and liberals.

Where we see a worthless, do nothing, live off the government tit when they could and should have a job, kind of person .... you know, the ones you know damn WELL could be productive.

The liberals see someone "we really don't understand".

They make excuses for the laziest folks in the country while we just want them to produce like the rest of us.  Yes, I know there are some who are drawing a check who have every right to do so but I see far more who are simply gaming the system and that must stop.  The problem is ... as long as there are 'Freebies' out there you are going to have those who will work their asses off to game the system.  It doesn't matter to them that they will work harder to earn the freebie.  All that matters is that they 'got theirs' and the rest of us are suckers.

KC