Why do liberals hate poor people now?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why do liberals hate poor people now?

SimonCat: Aug 12, 2016; by Nyc_Tattoo; College Slice

Talmonis posted:

The second part of the quote addressed those folks who agreed with that messaging, what little of it there was. The same people, who ignored blatant race baiting, promises of a Muslim registry and other swaggering idiocy that won him his primary. They're people who should have known better, and are more culpable than the morons screaming for Clinton's arrest.

Sorry, statistical evidence is no longer a means of determining the truthiness of a subject, according to our new regime. I mean, I'm sure some are good people, but they're not the ones we need to worry about. And come off it. It's blatantly obvious to anyone watching that his are the people demanding a wall to keep "Mexicans" out.

It might be racism, it's also fueled by the fact that companies have exploited Mexican workers to the detriment of American workers. "They took our jobs!" is a cliche thrown around D&D, but it is something that has happened. The most stark example I know of is the IBP meat packing planting in Sioux City, Iowa. Circa 1980, IBP locked out the unionized work force, built a shanty town on company property, and imported Mexican workers to do the jobs a a greatly reduced rate of pay. Eventually the union was broken and even if the American workers were hired back, it wasn't for the same wages and benefits they had enjoyed before.

Obviously the villain here is the company, but if you're someone who was displaced by imported labor, it's completely understandable that you would be angry at the immigrant. And the solution to that is not to just point a finger at the American worker and call him a racist.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 17:31

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 18:36

SimonCat: Aug 12, 2016; by Nyc_Tattoo; College Slice

Talmonis posted:

Agreed. It just astounds me that anyone would trust the idea of protectionism or worker protections coming from the Republican Party. The party who killed their unions, pushed NAFTA, cuts their benefits, openly calls them lazy for being poor and gives the world to the Trumps in the country. Why would you trust a man known for not paying his workers, cheating his clients and being a general shitheel with bringing you prosperity instead of lining his own pockets as he always does? You wouldn't if you were paying the slightest bit of attention. But you might if he "knocks down them uppity scientists a peg or two" and talks poo poo about all the people that sub-rural bumfucks hate. Spite and hate for the educated and progressivism in general were big factors.

And the Democratic party was hand in hand with passing NAFTA and rolling back protections in the name of compromise. If the Democrats don't protect a worker's livelihood, and otherwise have different values and norms, what do they offer?

The people get it too. Here's a quote from a 1987 article about the strikes. IBP started as a "small business", it disrupted the the status quo of the meat packing industry, made money for the company, and hosed over the workers.

NY Times posted:

Iowa Beef was started in 1960 with a $300,000 loan from the Small Business Administration and a strategy for transforming the staid meat-processing business, in which most of the principal cost is labor.

The concern began by moving its plants out of the big cities, away from the terminal stockyards and into cattle-raising areas like Dakota City. By contrast, the old-line companies like Wilson, Armour and Swift tend to be situated in big cities far from the cattle range, and for years they continued to ship the carcasses, which still had to be cut up by local high-paid butchers.

What aroused deep discord among workers, though, were Iowa Beef's efforts aimed at increasing productivity by introducing assembly-line butchering. By getting each meat cutter along the line to make the same cut over and over again - say, removing the hoofs or tail, or slitting the abdomen - Iowa Beef was able to argue that its workers were not skilled butchers handling whole carcasses but semi-skilled laborers, and should be paid accordingly.

The company's money-saving techniques helped render obsolete major stockyards and packers in Kansas City, Chicago and elsewhere and made it the industry's pace-setter. But success in the marketplace did not trickle down to the workers, according to union officials and rank-and-file members.

''We made them a better living then they ever thought of giving us,'' said Fred Norstrom, a weighing-scale operator who has worked at the plant here for 15 years. ''They want to steal it back from us. No place else ever gets nine years of wage freeze. There's no place else that a man can work for $7 an hour anymore.'' 'It Makes You Like Dirt'

# ¿ May 1, 2017 18:22

SimonCat: Aug 12, 2016; by Nyc_Tattoo; College Slice

Condiv posted:

can't wait for time travel to exist so we can have temporal immigrant workers

"us from 15 years ago took our jobs!!!"

Not sure what you're getting at here.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 19:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why do liberals hate poor people now?