Bill Moyers has a pretty good article analyzing the histrionic outrage from the right wing in reference to the ACA subsidies. It truly does expose the conservatives willful ignorance on the issue and underscores how once again the conservative movement, just like when they railed against the creation of Social Security and Medicare, are behind the historical curve of human progress.
It's a good read and not too long and there are several links to supporting articles. Here's an excerpt:
It also dovetails perfectly with the overarching mythology that animates today’s conservative movement: the belief that there exists a large group of shiftless people whose lifestyles are subsidized by an increasingly overburdened class of hard-working Americans. It’s the ‘makers versus takers’ narrative that animates the movement – from the lowliest right-wing blogger to Mitt Romney’s claim that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes and refuse to take care of themselves.
It’s also complete nonsense. The reality is that virtually all Americans are, at various stages in their lives, both “makers” and “takers.”
Americans subsidize each other all the time, in dozens of ways, and the biggest beneficiaries are not the poor, but the middle class and the wealthy. But as Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell University, found in her research, many of those receiving taxpayer subsidies don’t realize it. In fact, according to Mettler’s 2008 study, “94 percent of those who had denied using [government] programs had benefited from at least one; the average respondent had used four.”
In other words, many of those hardworking “taxpayers” outraged at the idea that they’re now being asked to subsidize health insurance for people with modest incomes themselves enjoy mortgages, health insurance, retirement accounts and other social goods that are being subsidized by other taxpayers, including those at the bottom of the income ladder.
It is one of the reasons why The Gadfly has had such a caustic disposition toward the Tea Party flim-flammers. They don't even bother to take the time to study the issues that they bitch and moan about. Their whole shtick is based solely on the precept that if a Democrat proposes a policy - and especially if that Democrat is the negro, Kenyan usurper, then they just knee-jerk oppose it. No critical thinking, no sober analysis, no debate, -- just obtuse no. And to top it off, they have no ideas themselves and they don't care that they have no ideas or vision. As long as they can stifle progess, then they feel that they have won the battle. Their demeanor is, quite frankly, childish and heedlessly destructive and with real-life consequences for people.
Go read the article - you will learn something - guaranteed.
----TFG
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