True but useless

Erik Kain 8 Comments

IOZ:

Let me explain something to you.  "The Social Safety Net" is not a benefit or an entitlement; it is a bribe.  It is a package of bribes offered to fictitious, created entity called "The Middle Class" in order to entice them away from any sense of solidarity with the poor.  Its origin is anti-Communism.  And it has been very effective.  Middle-class entitelements, from Social Security to the mortgage deduction, have kept you poor slobs in line for seventy years, toiling away, building the foundations and walls of your own prison.  The ongoing "attacks" on those entitelements are not attacks on the middle class by conservatives.   There are no conservatives.  The mass grave has been dug and it is no longer necessary to offer you rations as you stand at its edge.  There never was a middle class; there is an ownership class and there is everyone else.  You don’t own anything that you own.

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the editor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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8 Comments

  1. I don’t think it’s even true. I was discussing this post with a friend yesterday, and it’s painfully obvious to both of us that the so-called “Middle Class” is fairly complicit in whatever is going on here. It’s hard to see white collar professionals as the ones standing above their own graves, given the quality of life most of us enjoy.

    • Good point. I suppose the stuff about bribery is true enough, but incomplete and…well…useless.

    • White collar professionals are the actual middle class. The problem is that our definitions lump them in with people that work for hourly wages in factories, shops and restaurants.

  3. All entitlements have their roots in “We’ll give you this because we fear the alternative is socialism”. With socialism off the table, they have no reason to exist.

  4. Please, Dems keep voting for the social safety net b/c how else can they keep the votes of the lower socio-economic classes and minorities? They got them hooked on bread and circuses and now want to keep them voting the Dem. What better way to do it? Funny, I don’t get anything from the social safety net and I am part of the white collar middle class.

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