You know how Republicans are always going on about lazy welfare recipients and hammocks and making out how destroying the social safety net would be the best thing for the poor? That’s just what they talk about so that their vile policies sound reasonable. Most of the poor work. And this is getting more true every day. Everyone knows about all the public assistance that gets given to Walmart employees because they are paid so badly. These are the working poor and they are who you should think of when you think of “welfare” — not Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen.”

I recently had a conversation about welfare with a conservative and he told me that the problem with it was that people just live on it their whole lives. “How what that?” I asked. Had he not heard of how we ended welfare as we knew it in the 1990s? Did he not know that there are extreme lifetime limits on welfare? It doesn’t matter how much we as a society do to harm the poor, people continue to think that it is 1970 and we are in the middle of the Great Society. This is how Republicans continue to win elections. They just keep making the same arguments, even though things have utterly changed.

It isn’t just me saying this. Last week I read, Most of America’s Poor Have Jobs, Study Finds. A study by “sociologists at BYU, Cornell and LSU” looked rigorously at the data and found that, “The majority of the United States’ poor aren’t sitting on street corners. They’re employed at low-paying jobs, struggling to support themselves and a family.” It isn’t surprising. What else are these people going to do?

The truly sad thing about all this is that the whole idea of “welfare reform” was if you could just get people working, then they would be able to climb out of poverty. But of course, they don’t. That’s because we’ve allowed our country to become the New Feudalism. We have an economic system that is set up to over-reward the winners. And a big part of this is taking tax revenues — that get more regressive all the time — and use it to allow companies like Walmart to pay far less than the market rate for employees. There are plenty of other ways this is done. But it is important to remember that when the government gives food stamps to a Walmart employee, what’s actually going on is the government is giving money to Walmart by allowing it to pay people less than a living wage. This is welfare for the billionaire Walton family.

At the same time that we have an incredibly unjust economic system, we have a social system that is devoted to the idea that we have a perfectly just economic system. Thus, we lionize the rich — even though very few of them even earned their wealth and those who did have no special abilities outside their own professions. And far worse, we scapegoat the poor. It’s bad enough being poor, but we blame the poor for their poverty and then blame them for much that is wrong with the society.

So stop and think the next time you hear someone like Paul Ryan say, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into complacency and dependence.” Remember: most of the people depending upon the safety net are not lying in a hammock; they are working the swing shift at Walmart.

Here in the Bay Area, there are certain people — almost entirely men — who have a really bad attitude this entire Pride weekend each year. They are of the “why do they have to flaunt it” types. On the plus side, things really are better. Twenty years ago, two men holding hands would have been considered “flaunting it.” Today, I’m not sure what makes the cut — but it is a higher standard. It’s still sad that LGBT couples doing in public what octogenarian heterosexual couples do is still considered something that must be stopped. But I am glad to say that progress does continue to be made. And it continues to be made because the LGBT community has the bravery to “flaunt it.”

After the legalization of same sex marriage this last week, one response I’ve heard it, “I wonder what they’ll ask for next?” Because it’s always something, am I right?! It’s funny how asking for equality is framed by opponents as something special that is being asked for — as though same sex marriage is equivalent to asking to not have to pay taxes. But I try to avoid getting into arguments of these types. The people who say things like this are not open to rational debate. Their complaints are based on the most primal of fear and hatred.

But there is an obvious response: there is no “next.” The LGBT community is asking for equitable and humane treatment. Same sex marriage was just a small part of that. It wasn’t even the end of institutional homophobia. As of late last year, you could still be fired for being LGBT in 29 states! I’m proud to say that in the three states I’ve called home (and still feel at home in) — California, Oregon, and Washington — you cannot be fired for being LGBT. You can still be fired in “liberal” New York for being transgender. So I guess that “those gays” won’t be satisfied until they have equal rights to work in Texas; what moochers!

There is, of course, the issue of getting beaten, raped, and murdered because you happen to be LGBT. And I like to think that most of the people in the Bay Area who bristle over San Francisco Pride do not think that this kind of thing is okay. But what these people who don’t want homosexuality “flaunted” need to understand is that all of these issues are related. Same sex marriage is about equality, but it is also about making homosexuality no big deal. When sexuality and gender identity become just another of the endless idiosyncrasies of humanity, it will stop bothering people.

Above all, what boggles my mind is that people don’t see that the problem is reversed. The problem isn’t with the LGBT community, but with those who are offended by it. It has never moved an argument forward for me, but I have asked many people, “Why do you care?” In the past, I have heard responses about pseudo-scientific reasons such are scarring children. People are less and less likely to use these excuses. Now they usually respond, “I don’t. It’s just…” It’s just what? They aren’t too clear on that, but I know what they want to say, “It’s just that they creep me out.” Or: “It’s just that I don’t like it.” And all that means is that it is all about the anti-LGBT people. It’s just that they don’t understand that.

If you ask Tyler Cowen, Scandinavians just have the right stuff! He approvingly quoted a new Nima Sanandaji book where he claims that the Scandinavian countries don’t have more equitable societies because of their redistributive systems but rather because Scandinavians are just better. And we know this because, “Median incomes of Scandinavian descendants are 20 per cent higher than average US incomes.” This isn’t about race but rather “cultural norms.” This is almost too delicious. I should not be allowed such cake to masticate!

Here’s the thing: of course it isn’t about race. It couldn’t be about race because race is a myth. But even among those who still believe in race, nothing can be about race because everyone (except for the proud bigots) knows that you just don’t talk about racial differences. So this is how people who want to make these kinds of anti-egalitarian, classist arguments talk about it. Sanandaji is Swedish, but it hardly matters. Paul Ryan is American and he talks about the “dependency culture.” But the meaning is the same. The point is that words become offensive because the the ideas that they represent. For example, we know that the “poll tax” was racist, so people don’t use the term today, even though they are using the same kinds of tactics today.

It’s clear enough today that phrases like “cultural norms” and “dependency culture” are racist. But it isn’t clear to most people. In 20 or 40 or 100 years, people will see it very clearly for what it is. And this isn’t to say that Cowen and Sanandaji think of themselves as racists. They may not even be — at least directly. They seem like men who are ideologues who want to push a particular economic system that just so happens to be good for them and their allies. But roughly the same can be said for a lot of 19th century slave owners: it wasn’t about racism; it was about profits.

Over time, I’m sure that science will show that all this business about “cultural norms” will be seen as working in exactly the opposite direction. Matt Bruenig thinks this, Institutions Matter Except When They Are Socialist. He noted that Scandinavia has a long tradition of egalitarianism. So those societies have set up economic and political systems that facilitate this. I assume he means to imply that the 20% advantage is just the result of the Scandinavian ancestors being lucky in the sense that they are white in a white-controlled racist society. I wish he had been explicit in that regard.

But the main thing is conservatives like Cowen have this neat trick. They start with a racist society — one that has done everything it can to keep down African Americans especially. Then they rush off and find people who came from countries that are heavily represented in the power elite. And then they conclude that the American economic system must just be treating everyone the way they ought to be treated: according to their “cultural norms.” Whether it is because of explicit racism or the desire to acquire as much money as they can, the result is the same: unjustified inequality.

Martin Longman brought my attention to something interesting in a brief post yesterday, The 50’s Called: They Want Bobby Jindal Back. After last week’s three moderate (the Supreme Court doesn’t do “liberal”) decisions on housing, marriage, and Obamacare, Jindal was beside himself. He told The Advocate in Louisiana, “The Supreme Court is completely out of control, making laws on their own, and has become a public opinion poll instead of a judicial body. If we want to save some money lets just get rid of the Court.” Longman responded, “Over here on the left side of the aisle, we’ve been increasingly frustrated with the decision making of the Supreme Court, from Bush v Gore to the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, but you don’t see any of our governors or presidential candidates calling for the abolishment of the entire Court.”

But this is what has become to the conservative movement in this country. It really is best to see it like an authoritarian movement. There is no thought to consistency. Their ideology is one of results: how do we keep power so that we can continue to enrich ourselves. So it is nonsense to imagine that Bobby Jindal actually believes in anything coherent. Whatever furthers the cause of the conservative movement is good. This week, the Supreme Court was bad for the conservative movement so abolish it.

To some extent, you could say the same thing about ideological coherence about liberals. The big difference is that liberals are not shortsighted. They aren’t willing to destroy democracy in order to “save” it. But when listening to someone like Jindal, I’m reminded of how the Nazis used the democratic system until they had power and then abolished it. Is this what Jindal would do? It’s hard to say. We’ve already seen plenty of Republicans pushing for laws designed to make voting harder. And now they are going after “one person: one vote.” Regardless, the impulse is there.

This “destroy the Supreme Court” impulse isn’t the only one. There is also the “destroy the IRS” impulse. It’s curious. Destroying the IRS would be the same as destroying the government. It just sounds better. It’s kind of like the Walmart CEO saying, “Let’s stop charging people for stuff.” That decision has ramifications — namely, that Walmart would go out of business. But conservatives change what they want to destroy from day to day. For example, Jindal is afraid that the Supreme Court is getting too democratic — having “become a public opinion poll.” But conservatives make populist arguments all the time against Court decisions they don’t like. If they don’t like a Supreme Court decision, it is either that the Court is wrong because it is just following public opinion, or it is wrong because it is going against the will of the people. Reasonable people can’t have it both ways. But Republicans can!

A lot of people have talked about the Republicans being post-truth. It’s actually worse than that. They are post-meaning. And post-planning. If they took the Marshmallow Challenge, they wouldn’t even wait until the proctor was out of the room before eating it. They are the party of the haves who think it is due to their own greatness. As Ann Richards said about George HW Bush, “He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.” So whatever offers the easiest way to their goals, they follow it. You know, it’s called our bad luck.

Afterword

That last sentence was a reference to this song:

There is no better place in society to look to see how the power elite rig the economic system than the Federal Reserve. And the best example of this is the way that most people have been entirely brainwashed into self-oppressing regarding monetary policy. Ask anyone which they think is better: a strong dollar or a weak dollar? Unless they know economics, they will say a strong dollar. Yet it is a weak dollar that that is good for workers. It is a weak dollar that makes our exports competitive. The strong dollar is primarily a prize only to people who already have a lot of money — not for people who have to work each week to pay the bills.

So all the time, on CNBC and Fox Business, you will hear people worrying about inflation. Actually, you will hear that same thing pretty much everywhere else. We can’t have inflation! That would reduce the value of the dollar! That might encourage the business community to stop sitting on piles of money and invest instead! They might be forced to hire some unemployed Americans! We can’t have that, now, can we?! Of course, inflation and a strong dollar are not exactly the same thing, but they are related and they both affect how well workers do. And the two things that are constantly pushed — a strong dollar and low inflation — are bad for workers.

Given all this, I was intrigued to see a Ben Leubsdorf article at The Wall Street Journal, US Inflation Undershoots Fed’s 2% Target for 37th Consecutive Month. The Federal Reserve has decided that it should keep inflation right at 2%. So that ought to mean that sometimes it is above and sometimes it is below. But it’s now been over three years and the Fed has managed to keep it under that value without error. I can assure you this: if the Fed kept the inflation rate 0.5 percentage points above 2% for three years, you would see heads exploding on CNBC.

And even the 2% inflation target is a joke. Jeff Madrick in his book Seven Bad Ideas, explained that this target was pretty much made up out of whole cloth by Alan Greenspan. “Persuasive studies find that only annual rates of inflation into the double digits affect economic growth.” But we have the 2% inflation target — not because everyone thinks Greenspan is a genius — but because it is good for the power elite.

Do you know what the core inflation was during the 1980s? It was 4%. That was considered reasonable. But over time, the tax rates that are considered reasonable for the rich to pay go down and down. And the inflation rate that the rich are expected to face goes down and down. It’s a feedback. The more policy changes to enrich the power elite, the more money they have to buy further policy changes that will enrich them. We still commonly see conservative plans to cut the top marginal tax rate down to 25%. We don’t hear much about cutting the Fed’s inflation target down. But it isn’t really necessary, since the Fed seems afraid to ever get much above it, and has no problem coasting way below it. The power elite know the Fed does its bidding: 37 straight months!