Tall tale
An exaggerated, unreliable story: “My uncle claims that he was raised in a drainage ditch, but it's just another of his tall tales.”
Now to Uncle John: Those Lazy Jobless. By Paul Krugman.
Ah yes, the favorite Republican meme
Last week John Boehner, the speaker of the House, explained to an audience at the American Enterprise Institute what’s holding back employment in America: laziness. People, he said, have “this idea” that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.” Holy 47 percent, Batman!
The abandonment of a cohesive social structure:
The result is that most of the unemployed have been cut off. Only 26 percent of jobless Americans are receiving any kind of unemployment benefit, the lowest level in many decades. The total value of unemployment benefits is less than 0.25 percent of G.D.P., half what it was in 2003, when the unemployment rate was roughly the same as it is now. It’s not hyperbole to say that America has abandoned its out-of-work citizens.
Gosh, the reality is so far from their favorite meme as to be absurd.
The Pedlars of belief:
My guess, however, is that it’s mainly about the closed information loop of the modern right. In a nation where the Republican base gets what it thinks are facts from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, where the party’s elite gets what it imagines to be policy analysis from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation,
The reality
Whatever the explanation, Mr. Boehner was clearly saying what he and everyone around him really thinks, what they say to each other when they don’t expect others to hear. Some conservatives have been trying to reinvent their image, professing sympathy for the less fortunate. But what their party really believes is that if you’re poor or unemployed, it’s your own fault.
Basically it's fuck you, you lazy oiks.
Outsourcing to maximize profit.
Importing temporary workers to maximize profit.
Increasing productivity, the whip that drives maximizing profit.
The reward?
Stagnating wages.
To those working 3 minimum wage jobs just to get by, well that is normal.
And a big fuck you to those thrown to the wolves.
The plutocracy at work.