re: #259 SanFranciscoZionist

The argument speaks to one of the deepest fears of much of the Wingnut GOP’s target audience: that someone, somewhere, somehow, is getting something they don’t deserve, and it’s being bought with your money.

I think that one reason for this, honestly, is the broad economic gap between the point where you can’t afford what you really need, and the point where you are actually entitled to many kinds of public assistance. Lots of us live in this gap when it comes to healthcare. We can’t afford it, and we’re not poor enough to get any help from anyone with it.

For a lot of people in this lower-middle-class void, it’s easy to become convinced that ‘other people’, who don’t look that much poorer than you, who are a different color, who have too many babies and no husband, who…all the stuff here…are getting away with something by getting welfare, Medicare, Section Eight, you name it. And it’s being paid for, politicians are standing by to tell you, with YOUR TAX DOLLARS.

Easy for this to boil down into an irrational, buzzing sense of “I don’t ever get any shit, and I’m not buying any shit for anyone else.”

This is another argument for a universal system. Our current way of doing things does breed resentment. Medicare is popular because everybody gets it.

As a single, child-free (not childless) person I feel a little resentful during tax season, that people get tax credits for having children. So I understand the feeling.