Thursday, December 22, 2016

A Glimmer of Insight

I generally find the opinions of Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post tediously left-wing and out-of-touch. "Generally," but not always.

Today she writes about the white working class supposedly voting against their own economic interests, i.e., voting Republican. Rampell opines they do so out of frustration:
Maybe they believed any Big Government expansions would disproportionately go to the “wrong” kinds of people — that is, people unlike themselves.
She expands upon this theme:
Democratic policies probably would help the white working class. But the white working class doesn’t seem to buy that they’re the ones who’d really benefit.

Across rural America, the Rust Belt, Coal Country and other hotbeds of Trumpism, voters have repeatedly expressed frustration that the lazy and less deserving are getting a bigger chunk of government cheese.
Unlike Rampell and the coastal elites, the white working class actually know many undeserving screw-off dysfunctional layabouts who are their neighbors, and/or relatives. They resent tax money being spent on losers who are infamously their own worst enemies.

I understand and share those feelings. If we subsidize feckless behavior, we should expect to get more of it, as B.F. Skinner demonstrated.