Here in the middle of Act #235.1 of the ongoing ad-hoc improvisational Conservative project known generally as "How many ways do Liberals Hate the Poor?" - Paul Ryan makes the statement that yet again, Liberals Just Don't Understand...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Ryan said Republicans offer their constituents "ideas" while Democrats offer a "full stomach and an empty soul."
He then told an anecdote he said was relayed to him by Eloise Anderson, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) Department of Children and Families secretary.
"She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program," Ryan said.
"He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids," he continued. "He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand."
What the Total F#ck!??
First of all, having grown up in a fairly poor neighborhood of South Central LA, I will openly acknowledge the reality of what Ryan is trying to say - which is really that the capacity for poor kids to Food Shame Each Other is an nearly inexhaustible. When i was growing up any kids receiving government food assistance were said to be "On the County", and were regularly embarrassed for it.
I'll tell you, it was brutal.
So yeah, I can certainly understand how a kid in that situation would certainly prefer not to be the person at the other end of the stiff pointing fingers, and the snickers, and having to do the walk-of-eternal-shame to their free lunch supplements. That is certainly something that The Right Doesn't Understand, because they happen to be the primary source of many of these damagingly shaming concepts and framing.
But this is what we hear from the them right after they manage to cut SNAP Food Supplements by $8.7 Billion. Because Poor People are getting pampered when trying to live on $35 worth of food per week. That's $5 a day. But for Republicans that's clearly far too much.
Let me wonder for a second just what Ryan is suggesting.
If this poor kid didn't have access to a free lunch, suddenly then - and only then - would his parents magically grow a conscience and a sense of humanity? Because since he gets the amazing luxury of free food at school, they obviously Don't Give a Shit about him do they?
See, it's those cruel heartless poor people, not Republicans, who are holding these kids down. It's not like raising the minimum wage would lift 6 Million People Out of Poverty so that they actually could Buy Their Own Lunch for their children, but then people like Ryan oppose that.
http://www.cbo.gov/...
Many more low-wage workers would see an increase in their earnings. Of those workers who will earn up to $10.10 under current law, most—about 16.5 million, according to CBO’s estimates—would have higher earnings during an average week in the second half of 2016 if the $10.10 option was implemented. Some of the people earning slightly more than $10.10 would also have higher earnings under that option, for reasons discussed below. Further, a few higher-wage workers would owe their jobs and increased earnings to the heightened demand for goods and services that would result from the minimum-wage increase.
CBO does estimate that there would be job losses, but those loses would be massively dwarfed by the number of people who would financially gain, and as noted above many of those people, now with more disposable cash in hand, would
spend that cash specifically in the industries that would employ minimum wage workers offsetting much of the job loss by increase demand. Which also means, increasing the GDP and improving the economy.
So does Ryan care about the people who would be pulled out of poverty by this? Not so much.
RYAN: I think it’s inflationary. I think it actually is counterproductive in many ways. You end up costing job from people who are the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Look, I wish we could just pass a law saying everybody should make more money without any adverse consequences. The problem is you’re costing jobs from those who are just trying to get entry level jobs. The goal ought to be is to get people out of entry level jobs into better jobs, better paying jobs. That’s better education and a growing economy. Those are some of the things he talked about and I don’t think raising minimum wage — and history is very clear about this — doesn’t actually accomplish those goals.
And he's not alone.
He thinks it's inflationary? And exploding CEO pay isn't inflationary? He wants to focus on education? By doing what? Increase privatization using public buildings for free and using public money to provide vouchers that undermine public education, then cutting Pell Grants and Student Loan support? And better jobs? Where? In China with the Suicide Nets around the building or India with the Collapsing Factories?
Exactly what jobs bills or efforts has Paul Ryan been in favor of? Anything? Other than more Tax Cuts for the Rich that is?
The fact is, even if the CBO is skeptical, previous studies and reports have shown that rising wages do not produce an inflationary effect on prices, but does increase demand enough to completely mitigate jobs loses.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
In fact, the history says that raising the minimum wage has little if any impact on job creation. A study published in November 2010 in the Review of Economics and Statistics, for instance, found “no detectable employment losses from the kind of minimum wage increases we have seen in the United States.” Another published in 2011 “found no impact on hours worked or employment levels.”
The Seminal study of the minimum wage, done by economists David Card and Alan Krueger, found that job creation was actually strengthened by an increase in the minimum wage. This result has been found time and time again. So Rubio and Ryan have the history exactly backwards: raising the minimum wage results in higher wages and more purchasing power for workers, not job losses.
Yes, it would be nice if poor parents were able to purchase their own lunch for their own kids and Federally subsidized school lunches
weren't unneeded, but they can't because we're at a
40 year HIGH in income inequality - and the need remains. What if anything, is he doing to alleviate that need? All of Paul Ryan's
third hand sob stories do not change the act that he and his party are standing there literally
ripping the food out of the mouths of poor malnourished children while attempting to shame and embarrass their parents for it.
That's just fucking despicable.
Vyan
6:42 PM PT: P.S. Ryan's story didn't come for a Walker staffer, it was actually plagiarized from a book on a homeless boy.
Wonkette reported on Thursday that Ryan’s remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday regarding a “young boy from a very poor family” relying on “a government program” for his lunches was strikingly similar to the premise of the book An Invisible Thread, which recounted author Laura Schroff’s 1986 meeting with an 11-year-old “homeless panhandler” named Maurice, who was receiving lunches through a school program.
“If you make me lunch,” he said, “will you put it in a brown paper bag?”
I didn’t really understand the question. “Do you want it in a brown paper bag?” I asked. “Or how would you prefer it?”
“Miss Laura,” he said, “I don’t want your money. I want my lunch in a brown paper bag.”
“Okay, sure. But why do you want it in a bag?”
“Because when I see kids come to school with their lunch in a paper bag, that means someone cares about them. Miss Laura, can I please have my lunch in a paper bag?”
So, since Schroff
appeared on Mike Huckabee's Fox show to talk about this section of her book Ryan is
lying about the source of his story, or else his source in the Walker Admin is lying to him, and either way - since this story is about a homeless boy, who was very likely an orphan, just how are his non-existence or otherwise similarly homeless parents supposed to have been providing this brown-bag lunch for him exactly?