The entire situation is highlighting the profound differences in vision that the left and right have for what government and economy is for. I think that it really gets to the heart of it, actually. The left generally seeks a society with widespread middle class prosperity, where all people have access to the good life, defined as having roughly these things:
* Decent housing with some privacy.
* Education.
* Useful employment with a fair wage.
* Health care.
* Enough free time to pursue some pleasures in life and have a family life.
* The ability to retire.
* The right to free and equal participation in society.
* The right to self-determination.Of course to have these things, we can’t have an elite hoarding all the wealth (generated by the workers, mind you) for themselves. We can’t have Enron holding entire states hostage so they can charge grandmothers $400 a month for electricity. The elite will have to suffer sharing some of their wealth with the people who actually create it. It’s this point that is up for contention.
This is the vision the right has for the world:
Are there even a thousand really poor people in all of America? Really poor. Dying-on-the-sidewalks-with-open-sores poor?
There you go—anything less than reducing the population to a bunch of people dying on the sidewalks with open sores while the rich blow by us in armored vehicles is spoiling America.
TBogg has more on the writer whose skepticism Amanda highlights. Turns out she’s Canadian, and a beneficiary of the health care system there. If there is a God, at least we know s/he has a fine sense of humor.