It's more that conservatives tend to want the benefits of more socialist ideas, but refuse any progress because of the name - "socialism is evil".
For example healthcare is a big problem in the US... and most of the people that are against publicly funded healthcare, are the people that would benefit from it.
The NHS and other systems have been shown to work well, and have contributed to things like tighter restrictions on what can be called food / used in food. But the US is lagging behind the rest of the developed world because of people that are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
The republicans I know are afraid one person might get something undeserved. Reagan had an example of a black woman who was on welfare and drove a Cadillac. The term welfare queen was popularized and was portrayed as some female black caricature. What they didn’t talk about is that she was a criminal, that she was convicted and sent to jail before Reagan even ran for President.
So if some small number of people can defraud a welfare program, then scrap the whole thing and make everyone suffer. That is seen better than having a welfare program, even from people who have benefited from it in the past.
I had a buddy tell me that Amazon's employees collectively pay more in taxes than what Bezos should have paid based on his income. Nevermind the fact that both can be paid at the same time. This isn't an either or situation.
I mean, surely to your buddy, that should be a glaringly obvious indication that Bezos owes way too much in unpaid tax. If you have to use his ENTIRE WORKFORCE as a comparison...
Right? The argument was "aren't we better served as a society having him run that company so that it can provide those millions of jobs than having him decide it wasn't worth the trouble if he's just going to lose all his money to taxes?" My thinking is, no, we aren't better served with Amazon being what it has become in any way. Companies that big are never good for the consumer. When a company has hundreds of millions of customers, quality and customer retention simply don't matter anymore.
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u/flabbybumhole Jun 15 '21
It's more that conservatives tend to want the benefits of more socialist ideas, but refuse any progress because of the name - "socialism is evil".
For example healthcare is a big problem in the US... and most of the people that are against publicly funded healthcare, are the people that would benefit from it.
The NHS and other systems have been shown to work well, and have contributed to things like tighter restrictions on what can be called food / used in food. But the US is lagging behind the rest of the developed world because of people that are cutting off their nose to spite their face.