Blaming the Victim 1
McClatchy discusses the apparent trend of blaming unemployed persons for, apparently, laying themselves off.
One manifestation of this is complaining that persons with no income pay no income taxes.
A nugget:
The reality is that the economy isn’t creating jobs fast enough to re-employ the 8 million-plus who lost jobs in the Great Recession of 2007-09.
“People blame the chronically unemployed when, in fact, they’re the victim of a much larger economic calamity that’s beyond their control,” said Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.
September 2, 2011 at 12:05 pm
<I>”Two years is a long time. At some point you’ve got to provide more incentives to get people to do things,” said Frederick Tannery, an associate economics professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania</i>
Ahem. Find a mid-level prof at a small formerly state teachers college known mostly for degrees in p.e.
Anyway, the response has always been linked to a culture of scapegoating, which is globally universal, I think, something to be fought but hard to suppress. The US brings it out in people now. We’re particularly suited for it because having money is associated with virtue, and the lack of it, with sin. Another factor — Paul Fussell discussed this thoroughly in a book called “Class,” is the national middle class tendency to kick down on the people below you on the ladder because you are afraid if you don’t suppress them, you’ll get dragged down to. Fussell pointed out, ruefully, there’s always plenty of room at the bottom.
Plus it’s really hard in the US to get people to admit they’re in a class war and that the uppers have been winning it. It’s kind of a conditioned affect. A lot of people just don’t want to believe they’ve been victimized by the upper tier because — boy, if they just get lucky or show the right kind of talent, they could be there too. OTOH, it’s a lot easier to think you’re being victimized by alleged lazy parasites at the bottom.