This video shows the new line of thinking from the American right on the cause of our economic problems - blame the old.
To understand some more about the speaker, just click here. This is Koch Industries at work.
But mad - and bad - as this logic is expect it to be followed. The idea that we 'can't afford the elderly' is growing rapidly. It's the inevitable outcome of the 'we can't afford pensions' argument. And morally it takes us toi places I'd rather not go - but will if I have to, because I sure as heck do not think we consign the old to destitution, even if the right do.
Hat tip: TJN
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I await the compulsory euthanasia for over-retirement- age legislation for those who have not paid into the support fund for the financial “industry” (private pensions).
It operates quite well in other parts of the world, where the elderly are simply put out to die when incapable of self-support. Here they are put into homes or hospital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/dec/15/comment.theobserver
Old thing from Guardian
Catalyst did some work on the demographic timebomb and one thing I learned to tell my patients every time they apologise for the economic climate (yes, they really do!!) is not to look at demographics in age groups. Look at the number of dependents in society. The real issue is can the number of workers in society meet the number of dependents?
The “demographic timebomb” is a pretext for cutting pension schemes and scaremongering over the future costs of social and health provision.
I wonder if the graph showing the wealth of the under 35s and over 65s includes house value?
By 65 people have paid off the mortgage and the asset might have risen due to demand. But it’s not spendable unless people sell and live with relatives or in a tent. Under 35s are at the beginning of the mortagage and their debt outweighs their available money.
Looks to me like an attempt to cut state spending and taxes by the use of dishonest arguments. But they take in some people, unfortunately.
I seem to remember some ginger bloke saying in 1992 that if the Tories won, ‘I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old…’
They did, and he was right.
If you listen closely it sounds like she’s playing in the foothills of respectability…’safety net for the poor’ etc…but it’s the direction of travel with the right…’we have no plans for the privatisation of the NHS’ or ‘there will be no top-down organisation of the NHS’ and so on but stuff leaks out and we know where they’re headed.
One thing about the number of economics graduates who seem to be crowding out intelligent discussion in the media, it seems to me that economics needs to become a second degree subject the way Law is in America and is slowly becoming so here. There are way too many economics graduates, way too sure of themselves, and way too oblivious of the history of their subject, economic history in general, and intellectual history in particular. If society is now unable to afford so many public sector workers (which I dispute) it is even more the case that there are too many economics graduates acting as courtiers to the well off and ready to appear at the drop of a hat on the TV and radio telling the unwashed about wealth creation and how it can be achieved. I have never heard one, not one, say that unearned increment and the wasteful consumption of the rich are a drag on the economy. I wonder why? Because they’re courtiers at the beck and call of the elites.
On the subject of the day: where’s a modern Charles Dickens when you need them?!!
The Guardian rumbled her a couple of years ago over her dodgy ‘scholarship’ on the Obama stimulus
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/apr/01/us-politics-conservative-scholarship
Is it really an interview if you’re speaking to one of your own columnists?.. Just how impaired do your critical faculties have to be to believe this stuff? Wait, don’t answer that!..
Anyway, I’d be delighted to know what the difference between an ‘entitlement program’ (‘boo, hiss’) and a ‘real safety net’ is. (This is the kind of begged question a real interviewer would raise.) I think I can guess though: the latter is a market fundamentalist sham with no other purpose than to destroy the former.
I mean, are people entitled to the safety net or not?! If so then it’s an entitlement, if not then it’s not much of a safety net.
It’s obviously a propaganda piece, barely concealing its agenda behind a thin veneer of neutrality but she really betrays herself when asked ‘what would you do?’ – her eyes roll, she looks off to the side, sneers slightly and you can see the disgust and megalomania in her eyes where she declares that she’d destroy it all. Nasty.