Last entry of the night! Yes, I spent the evening browsing the Web instead of finishing my thesis project! No, this isn’t the first time that’s happened!
Growing up, my family lived in a modest townhouse, and often I found myself arguing with liberal kids whose parents’ fancy German cars were worth more than my home. Most of them had all the money they wanted for designer clothes. Meanwhile, in order to pay for my share of the family car insurance, I was earning two bucks an hour after taxes to sling popcorn and clean out theaters at the local movie house.
As a Republican, I didn’t care they they had it materially better than we did (and I still don’t). However, it did gall me to be lectured about “the poor” by another teenager who never lifted a finger in her life. That reminded me of this post by Sarah of Trying to Grok:
When I sat down at our office Christmas lunch, I immediately remembered that I don’t like any of the people I work with.
How could any paragraph possibly live up to that intro?
…The table conversation would’ve been funny, I suppose, if it didn’t make me want to throw up. One woman was complaining about health care in the US and about how much better it is in Germany. She said that German doctors weren’t motivated by money like American doctors and that they earn the same salary as schoolteachers. “Then what’s the incentive to become a doctor?” I asked. She got all flustered and condescending. “But that’s thinking like an American! You can’t think like that!” “But I am an American,” I responded. “I’m an American to the bone.” “But life isn’t about money!” she whined. So here’s where the fun began. “OK,” I said, “then since we all work equally hard in our education center to help soldiers, why don’t we pool our money and all get paid the same salary?” “Oh, but that’s different because we work under the American system…” she trailed off. Different, really, how? Oh, because she makes $61,000 a year and I make $12,000. It’s her pocketbook now, so it’s different. “Germans aren’t motivated by greed like everyone is in the US,” she continued. Her mental gynastics were simply stunning: this is the woman who gets an outrageous housing allowance from the American government, illegally rents part of her house out, and uses the profit to buy up property in Germany and re-sell it. I suppose she does all of that out of the goodness of her heart and not for profit or anything.
Sarah, you and your soldier husband are welcome in the Johnson home anytime.
Thank you for the invitation. I’m sure the dinner conversation would be better than that at my office party!
I can assure you that the story from your childhood is not exclusively a liberal or a conservative Democratic/Republican phenomena…I have run into very giving and very greedy, very poor and very rich people of both political stripes.
Oh, I don’t mean to say that all Republicans are generous and all Democrats are stingy. And I’ve met many Republicans whom I thought were perfect bastards. It is a fact that the poor give a greater percentage of their income to charity than the rich.
The analytical side of me says that must be partly explained because the elderly tend to have lower incomes but greater wealth (which makes sense, as they’ve had more time to accumulate it). When higher-income workers reach their peak earning years in their 40s and 50s, they’re often paying for their kids’ college educations, so they don’t give as much to charity because their incomes are squeezed. (I don’t have any stats to back that up, but it’s a nice theory.)
That being said, I have no trouble believing that the poor are more generous because they know what it’s like to be poor, and they want to help alleviate others’ pain, or donate to their churches to help others’ salvation. Just like the widow and her mite.
“And I’ve met many Republicans whom I thought were perfect bastards.”
Hey, at least I’m a perfect something.
Erik:
You’ve touched on a phenomenon that I have picked up during my career.
I work in the end of my profession, where entry level wages are six figures. Frankly, I’m always nervous talking about it (even with believers) because I know that talk of money makes many people very uncomfortable. Plus, I grew up in a blue collar automotive family, so my mindset hardly matches my income.
But the thing I noticed is that the vast majority of my colleagues who are Democrats (and that’s about 90% of my colleagues) are very materialistic. Office talk will be about the latest upscale car, summer homes, huge screen TVs, lavish vacations, etc. Then their politics will be staunchly about how they are for Democrats because they are for the poor, the needy, etc. And I just have to wonder (leaving aside for now their stereotype of Republicans) if this is their way of dealing with the fact that they don’t do much of anything for the poor themselves. Almost (and I admit this is a crass characterization) like they are saying, “I don’t need to personally help fight poverty, I vote Democrat, and that fulfills that responsibility”. I really have no other way to explain the disconnect between their voting habits and their personal lives.
Anon, the late Richard Grenier had another explanation: because America doesn’t have titles of nobility, we use wealth as an indicator of class. If you’re wealthy, you have the best of everything — “best” being defined as “things the Great Unwashed don’t have.”
Well, the Great Unwashed are very patriotic and, unless they’ve had too much college, socially conservative. So if you’re going to pick an ideology as a status indicator, you should pick the one that’s socially “progressive” and skeptical of patriotism. Then you can feel smugly superior toward your fellow man, while never having to admit that you’re smug, because your ideology purports to help the poor and downtrodden. And if you have the right attitude towards them, who can call you smug?
I don’t think this theory cancels yours out; rather, I think it compliments it. Also, I wouldn’t rule out simple guilt at having plenty of material things when some do not.