I’ve noticed that libs tend to focus on economic metrics like “intergenerational economic mobility” instead of class when they discuss economic inequality. Basically instead of getting rid of classes altogether they want ‘‘increased mobility between classes,’’ or, more accurately, since they don’t really focus on the relationship to the means of production at all, and instead they just focus on “income brackets” regardless of whether you own capital/land/means of production or not, they actually want ‘‘increased mobility between income brackets.’’
So they want it to be easier for a high earner to become low again, and a low earner to become high again. They view ‘‘increased volatility’’ in an individual’s earnings over one lifetime as an ‘‘indicator of a healthy society.’’ because when so-called “economic mobility” is too low, class status becomes set in stone from birth to death, like slavery or serfdom, and it is harder to sell the prole on the “rags to riches” story that is used to justify capitalism as “free” and “full of opportunities for those who work hard.” But how is this increased volatility of rich becoming poor and poor becoming rich an indicator of health? Doesn’t that make society way more unpredictable? You wouldn’t want that kind of volatility in the stock market, so why would you want it for “economic mobility?” Even from a capitalist perspective, wouldn’t it make more sense to want either consistent ‘‘growth of wealth’’ across ‘‘all income brackets’’, i.e. poverty reduction, i.e. “rising tide lifts all boats”? This is what China aims for, for example.
They imagine a society where the rich often descend into starvation and the destitute often become rich. They see that as a system where people are properly rewarded and punished for their individual virtues and faults. That’s all they’re really thinking of
Calvinist brainworms. Hard working people will be rewarded by God with great wealth, while the indolent, lazy, disabled, etc will be punished for their sinful ways. Never mind that this is totally inconsistent with their other beliefs as well as being deranged, they’re not really self-reflective people.
It’s in their whole “Equality of opportunity” thing. They want people to have an equal chance of not starving to death. Sure, lots of people will starve to death, but as long as the chances are equal, and people who generate a lot of profit for their masters don’t starve to death, that’s good or something.
Idk, it’s fucking stupid, they’re idiots, their ideas generally don’t need to be taken seriously unless you think you can convert someone.
The economic mobility thing is just meritocracy BS. They imagine that smart poor people will get rich, dumb rich kids will lose their money, and eventually everyone will settle into the class that they “deserve” to be in. It’s why libs are so two-faced when trying to help disadvantaged groups - only socialists explicitly reject the logic that social and economic classes should exist at all, libs and conservatives both believe that their own group should be on top.
I remember first being made to understand this issue kind of from reading an Existential Comics tweet that social mobility – despite the vaunted place it gets in neoliberal rhetoric – is an absurd thing to be worried about. It’s plainly more important how conditions are at the bottom than the rate at which who specifically is at the bottom changes.
But to answer your question, the real reason is that normal liberals have much more in common with fascists than they want to admit and they fundamentally want a “meritocracy” where the skilled are saved and the inept are condemned, without ever asking why anyone needs to be condemned in the first place.
And capitalists of course prefer this model because it obfuscates things like their use of poverty as a tool of worker discipline (see “reserve army of labor”) behind fables of hard work and hope.
without ever asking why anyone needs to be condemned in the first place.
It’s Protestantism, if anyone is wondering. Their completely unexamined belief that some people will succeed because of hard work and some will fail because they’re bad and lazy is just Calvinism. Purely religious belief, but they’ve secularized their Protestantism to the point where they’re completely unaware of it.
Our rulers are rich, not smart. They operate on what they want to happen, not what is realistic.
Also they think poors are genetically inferior and don’t want them tainting the rich gene pool
If you want to understand the rich westerner mindset, you have to start thinking like a deranged evangelical eugenicist. Similar to old monarchs that truely believed that the blood of god ran in their veins and that made them special.
To them, if it’s what they want then it is a good idea. After all, they’re the chosen ones of society. Also they’re used to every problem they have being solved by them being rich, so they have that sheltered mindset to deal with too. If they don’t like the result of something they will pay for the result they do want, reality be damned.
“Your own personal Jesus”, ie believing your internal monologue is literally god telling that whatever libidinal crap is flowing through your brain right now is the divine will. The mindset that gets people asking for the divine power that created and governs the universe to reshape the laws of physics so their sports team wins.
