That one was easy but a little more than several of the questions were uncomfortable choices foe me.

Perhaps this is why the reactionaries have always persecuted the artists, as they now do the scientists. And perhaps that is the real reason that access to education is becoming so economically restricted, precisely at a time when training and skills have become so essential to the economy.

After WWII, the GI Bill and cheap public colleges brought education to the working class. That is a mistake they seem determined not to repeat.

Feasible? It’s reasonable to doubt whether the 99.9% could ever exert so much influence on an establishment owned lock stock and barrel by the 0.1%.

Speaking of revolution, a few months back Rob brought up the movie “Elysium”. Watched it recently, while reading Piketty, and found that it was almost a visual aid to the book. Rob thought it an unreasonable liberal (naturally) fantasy, but I see it as a reasonable visualization of the world at the end of Piketty’s extrapolation: By 2100, 0.1% will own 90%, a return to conditions the world last saw in the 18th century.

If you were a member of the aristocracy in that kind of world and you had the means to build an orbiting habitat to get away from the peasants, wouldn’t you? Every member of the 0.1% has done so through history, no reason to think that in the future the rich will behave any differently. Gated communities in the sky. Of course they will.

A similar situation exists today. Ask any wage slave today what his ambition in life is, he will usually answer it is to “own his own business”. Except for those with a skill, profession or education, owning a business is the only way the exploited worker can move ahead, by having workers of his own to exploit. They feel they are entitled to it.

To the Conservative wage slave, the Babbitts, Bunkers and Bubbas, indoctrinated since birth that becoming an exploiter was his only path out of wage slavery, it was the path Providence guaranteed, the road he bargained for, what he sold his soul for. “Keep your nose clean, follow the rules, work hard and one day you’ll own your own business and have workers of your own to exploit. And they’ll deserve it, too, because they don’t have the courage, ambition, creativity, work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit that you obviously do.”

Its always been this way, it just wasn’t as noticeable because in the past there WAS more opportunity, more possibility that starting your own business, or at least, self-employment, could lift you out of wage slavery. The economy was growing, the country was rich, and there were still some empty seats left at the front of the bus. And even wage slavery was tolerable, because of unions, benefits, white-collar work, good salaries and retirement, and the welfare safety net. And the kids, of course, could get off the treadmill, go to public college, and become doctors or lawyers or MBAs.

It didn’t work out that way, though, and now its starting to become obvious it is never going to work out. And rather than admit to themselves they’ve been conned by the very class they had aspirations to someday join, they have little choice but to look for scapegoats they can blame it all on.

Stand by for heavy rolls.

And yet that contributor was unemployed, and lived off the earnings of a handicapped spouse whose employment was in a Union job made possible by government regulations forcing the employer to accommodate the handicap.

That Libertarian/Conservative would seem to be hypocritical and an ungrateful wretch busily biting both hands which fed them. So watch what is done, not what people say.

(By the way, if employers were willing to accommodate the handicap, no laws would be necessary.)

It’s not (necessarily) because they’re evil, but because corporations aren’t people my friend, and they harbor no illusions of responsibility for public well-being. In fact, they often show a distressingly cavalier attitude to the damage they can do to the public.

GM, for example, openly prefers to dole out some cash to the families it destroys rather than make a safer product. Could there be a plainer example of how corporations value profits over the well-being of its customers, or of people in general?

So who goes too far, government or corporations?

But I don’t think the answers are deliberately rigged. A and B really are honest statements about the respective beliefs of liberals and conservatives. A wasn’t even controversial until the last few decades of rightwing propaganda; but now, at a time when the right is showing its contempt for science and rationality and its hatred of anyone or anything different, B has become frighteningly widespread.

The chasm between left and right has become enormous. The more I’m presented with the kind of stark choices represented by A and B, the happier I am to call myself a liberal.

…Amen

Thanks Friend.