Why are some liberals so condescending toward Trump supporters? Do they really feel they are superior?
They can’t believe anyone voted for someone who has spouted so much hate speech, who has so few coherent ideas, and whose tendencies seem too patently autocratic.It’s not about liberals feeling “superior”: it’s about us being morally aghast that you guys got behind a demi-man who called Mexicans “rapists” in his campaign announcement, has degraded women, attacked anyone who dares criticize him, waged a systematic war on the very free press whose constant attention to him probably factored in his victory, attacked a Gold Star family and compared his “sacrifices” as real-estate billionaire to those of the young and dead Muslim-American soldier Humayun Khan, who besmirched John McCain’s status as a war hero — when was Trump ever in Vietnam?, who wants to create a registry for Muslims (much as Hitler did for Jews — bad precedent), who has the zealous support of the KKK, who cozied up to Putin (whose government interfered in the election — in the country whose security the president is supposed to ensure), who has been nominating plutocrats and alt-right loons to very lofty and powerful positions, who promises to deport millions and break up families, to “build a Wall and make Mexico pay for it” (good luck), who will lead us into trade wars and likely encourage fiscal policy that will lead to another huge financial meltdown, calls climate change a hoax propagated by China (and therefore embraces destructive industries and deregulation, and has no agenda to help mitigate the first anthropogenic extinction in our planet’s history), etc., etc., etc.We are disappointed to think we live in a country in which our fellow citizens think that these things are presidential, that they befit the leader of the free world. We are horrified to think that America elected its own image, and that image is this. The man’s affronts to common decency and infantile vulnerability to any provocation should have disqualified him in the minds of all decent and sane people.So what the fuck happened? I am no great fan of Hillary’s. I don’t think Washington is functioning properly. But electing this wholly selfish, power-hungry golem to our highest office was not a wise alternative.It’s not so much about superiority. The feeling is “This is America in the twenty-first century! How could you?”
What do American Conservatives think about the causes of the 2008 recession?
The second answer is a deliberate falsehood. Banks were never forced to make loans to unqualified buyers. They WERE forced to stop redlining — the practice of refusing to make loans to qualified buyers because they lived in certain neighborhoods — but the buyers still had to qualify. This Big Lie was promoted by the Wall Street Journal in an attempt to disguise the fact that……what was REALLY happening was that mortgage lenders began to write loans for buyers who they KNEW, or avoided trying to know, wouldn’t be able to pay off the loans. (The miscreants here were not primarily banks but non-bank lenders, which were unregulated. They accounted for 75% of the bad loans.) Why would anyone loan money to someone without even trying to ascertain that they’d be paid back? Because they could then sell the loan to financial institutions which packaged them as collectivize debt obligations (CDOs), which were then marketed, with the aid of tame rating agencies, as being AAA-rated bonds. Once this was done, the loan company was off the hook and collected its fee for the original financing deal, the institution which packaged the CDO was off the hook, and the institution which sold the CDO to some sucker (aided by the rating agency) was off the hook.As for the unqualified buyers, their exit strategy was that the housing market would continue to rise (Alan Greenspan assured them it would continue to do so) and that at some point their asset could be refinanced or else sold at a profit to cover the loan.Conservatives are cowards when it comes to confronting the fact that any system can be rigged if it’s not regulated, and as free market, small government true believers, they tend to create ideal conditions for the riggers to do so. Much easier to blame the borrowers, and let everyone else off the hook.What happened that even conservatives couldn’t foresee was that the banks were stupid enough not to see what was going on and actually bought many of the CDOs themselves. They, of course, were bailed out.
Why don’t employers want to pay a living wage?
Because many business owners are slaves to narrow self interest.There is an argument to be made about paying a wage that can support a reasonable level of nutrition and education for your employee’s children. Not from a moral standpoint, but from a macro market standpoint. Narrow self-interest can lead to short term success, or even long term success if you live in an insulated, wealthy bubble. In less than ideal market conditions, bigger picture thinking is necessary from business leaders.If no one in the market is getting paid more than what it takes to just barely keep your head above water, all it takes is a minor economic downturn (an eventuality) for a lot of business to go under anyway. Now its not just five, but maybe five thousand. And if those five thousand were only making enough to barely pay their bills and not enough to actually save, that means populist politics, higher taxes for higher earners, and bigger government.As Henry Ford figured out, it actually pays in the long term to pay your employees not just the bare minimum of their bottom line value, but enough to help create a consumer class that has enough money to keep you in business even through economic downturns.Then you should also factor in, if no-one is getting paid enough to ensure a decent education within the home - and the government is run by business owners ruled by narrow self-interest - your voter base will get stupider by the generation. A stupid voter base means a government that has to sell its proposed policies via reductionism rather than based on logical thinking and long-term planning. A stupid voter base also means subsequent generations of consumers who can’t get jobs that pay well enough to be reliable consumers.As a business owner myself, its obviously not always possible to pay top dollar from day one when you’re just starting out. But for companies like Wal-Mart that make $10B+/year in net profit, yet whose employees cost the government $6B in welfare subsidies…you’re literally destroying the future of your community for the sake of a few extra billion.