Hatred of the working class isn't Randian...

[elfs]

Mitt Romney is an amazing businessman and CEO, able to crunch the numbers and analyze the data and understand how we got here and where we're going. He has to know that the unemployment rate is 8%, not 47%; he has to know that the 47% number comes because Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II all cut taxes on and extended tax "credits" back to middle class families with children, in the hopes of encouraging more middle class children.

(The very poor didn't get credits because they didn't have any money in the first place to credit; the idea was that the middle class [read: mostly white, mostly Christian people] had Protestant values and just needed a little encouragement to have more kids, so most credits are targeted at 'having work, having kids' families.)

So what explains the attitude Romney showed in that video? Paul Krugman today in the New York Times claims it's all about Rand:

The fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn't have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party's affection is reserved for "job creators," AKA employers and investors.

The G.O.P.'s disdain for workers goes deeper than rhetoric. It’s deeply embedded in the party' policy priorities. Mr. Romney's remarks spoke to a widespread belief on the right that taxes on working Americans are, if anything, too low. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal famously described low-income workers whose wages fall below the income-tax threshold as "lucky duckies."

[This] reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.

Okay, I've never read Atlas Shrugged, but I have read The Fountainhead, and while it's certainly about heroic individuals persuing their creative vision so thoroughly and so without compromise that their genius is eventually recognized by the masses, there is no disdain whatsoever for the working classes in The Fountainhead. Roarke admires the working classes: the riveters, steelworkers, stonemasons, even managers who are doing good work; he learns from them, studies them, and takes from them the values of creation. They are part of the system of creation, and Rand acknowledges that.

As of the writing of The Fountainhead, Rand had (and apparently never had) a thought for the organizations of communities outside of work; for fraternal organizations, for mutual aid societies, for families. Children never appear in her work. But she was not at all disdainful of work, or workers.

So is this loathing of the working class an Atlas Shrugged thing, or is this just another case of our oligarchical masters taking what they can from any text from which they can propagandize while still pursuing the policy of Sodom?

Comments

Spam??

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

I wrote a nice long comment here but LJ says it was marked as spam. I hope Elf is able to approve it anyway. If not, I can chop it up and post it in pieces.

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Re: Spam??

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I got two copies in email; I think Livejournal saw the repost and assumed it was spammy, because it didn't show up in the actual queue.

Pity; I thought the points you made were worthwhile.

Re: Spam??

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Elf,

I replied once, got the spam message, then replied again and tried to post only half of the message. That also earned a spam notice, so I deleted the second attempt myself.

The first post is actually still here; at least it comes up for me.

http://elfs.livejournal.com/1525444.html?thread=7883716#t7883716

If you can approve this, please do. Otherwise I'll keep trying to post in smaller chunks. Or I may have to chop up and disable the links to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in case LJ doesn't approve of that sort of thing. :-)

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[bolindbergh]

LJ seems to class anything that contains non-LJ URLs as spam these days.