rodmanstreet: girl genius

heygirlheyyyyy replied to your post: Biggest problem with the article? Written by a…

why is that a brit thing? not being snarky…i’m genuinely curious.

Eh, it’s not totally a Brit thing, necessarily, but I just felt like he was fundamentally missing the point by continuously asking people about what they think of richer people. An American would have known that if he wanted strong opinions, he would have asked about poorer people than them, and the way he seemed so surprised by the way the billionaire talked about bus drivers leads me to think that he hasn’t sat through all the hundreds of conversations with uncles and grandparents and brothers and moms and dads talking about “those people” and “they’re taking my money” and “why should I pay for them.” He was feeling envious of the woman above him on the ladder and he was angling to hear these other people express similar emotions, but he wasn’t getting it. He was thinking of the economic disparity talk in terms of people being jealous of the rich, but I think most Americans experience it as resentment of the poor. An American would have sat through hundreds of conversations - like the ones I have with my family and greengrey with her dad - of “why should I work my butt off and then they take my money and give it to welfare queens?” That’s a fundamentally American, I think, viewpoint, and it’s the core difference between Republicans and Democrats. He totally missed it.