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Think Before You Speak
Ailz has quit Facebook because she was tired to getting into spats with feather-bedded young people who think the poor would stop being poor if only the State treated them harshly enough. Take away their child benefit and- hey presto- no more children living in poverty- that sort of thing. Is it just my neighbourhood or are today's young people a lot more right-wing than we were?
It so happens I ran across a quote from Marx this morning. Boiled down to its essentials it was saying that the morality that obtains in any society is the morality that serves the interests of the ruling class. So, for example, it isn't theft to enclose common land but it is theft to poach a rabbit or a deer from the land-encloser. It makes you want to spit, doesn't it? Or at least it does if you sit down and think about it. Only people don't think. They just swim around in the murk gulping down the intellectual fish food that drifts down from above by way of the Mail, the Telegraph and the BBC.
I seem to have Dickens on the mind at the moment but it strikes me that if only the feather-bedded young people would read him (he's easier than Marx) they might stop believing it was so cool to be cruel.
It so happens I ran across a quote from Marx this morning. Boiled down to its essentials it was saying that the morality that obtains in any society is the morality that serves the interests of the ruling class. So, for example, it isn't theft to enclose common land but it is theft to poach a rabbit or a deer from the land-encloser. It makes you want to spit, doesn't it? Or at least it does if you sit down and think about it. Only people don't think. They just swim around in the murk gulping down the intellectual fish food that drifts down from above by way of the Mail, the Telegraph and the BBC.
I seem to have Dickens on the mind at the moment but it strikes me that if only the feather-bedded young people would read him (he's easier than Marx) they might stop believing it was so cool to be cruel.
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On the other hand, there's Occupy and plenty of leftie idealism among today's young (I know, I teach them). But the sour poor-hating attitudes seem to dominate.
Sigh. I don't blame Ailz.
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I may have made good in life via education and would probably now be described as middle class and moderately wealthy, but I haven't forgotten where I come from.
The privileged rarely see beyond that privilege and as you say, that's mighty depressing.
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Not all young people though - my niece who works in the NHS gives me some hope for the future.
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"Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold..."
And so on.
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Many young people do not read much at all, much less would they read Dickens -- and they are proud of not reading. (The humanities are valued less and less.) In the USA, I think it's not so much conservatism as ignorance, though doubtless, the two are linked.
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"foreigners who come and take away our jobs"- with Latvian, Italian and Breton ancestry myself, I've always loved this one!
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Perhaps someone could explain it.
From what I observe, it just pushes them to desperation. And then things get worse.
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Anatole France (1844-1924)
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From what I understand, the benefit cap is 500 a week, which can add up to 26,000 a year. Unless I'm misunderstanding, that seems like a hefty amount still. People who work full time earn less than that. I don't see how its unreasonable to aim to make any job pay more than benefits.
What's the argument against it? How much do you think should people be able to get in benefits?
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From what I understand, the benefit cap is 500 a week, which can add up to 26,000 a year. Unless I'm misunderstanding, that seems like a hefty amount still. People who work full time earn less than that. I don't see how its unreasonable to aim to make any job pay more than benefits.
What's the argument against it? How much do you think should people be able to get in benefits?
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I wouldn't say you were feather-bedded. You've always worked for your living- and you never got much in financial backing from your dear old dad.
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(Anonymous) 2013-07-19 07:14 am (UTC)(link)Yes, I agree with the benefit cap.
Yes, my parents are extremely supportive.
That's about as far as the comparison with this post goes.
I get child tax credits. I could not afford to work without them. A scrounger I am not!
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As it says in the Music Hall song-
"It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Isn't it a blooming shame?"
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(Anonymous) 2013-07-19 08:21 am (UTC)(link)My mother (which you know would not entertain the 'cruel' culture) agreed with my stance and felt I put it across sensitively.
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If you don't have any money it gets worse as time goes on - how do you get to interviews, buy smart clothing for said interviews, afford a phone to call or leave a number for someone to ring you? It is reckoned that between 1 & 10% of the unemployed don't want to work and about the same of sick swindlers, but reading the papers you'd think it was the opposite way around and that most unemployed people are shirkers. I don't believe all I read,but I do read a wide variety of views on a subject that interests me. xx
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As the Americans say, you've got to recognize your privilege