Replies

They don't percieve this as robbery.

It's actually worse than that. Many of these otherwise honest people have been conditioned to think that a private business or even a public corporate interest using a human being as a source of labor is somehow robbery or a transgression against the human.

It's as if they don't grasp that said resource is being compensated (sometimes on several levels) for their labor. Their conditioning concludes that the business/corporate interest is taking advantage of them almost to the point of calling it 'slavery' (many do), because the fruits of the individuals labor can enrich other individuals, who are also laboring toward the same goals. They fail to grasp that those fruits also enrich the individual who is performing the labor, and who in many cases is given room for growth and advancement in both their compensation and social status, provided they perform to a level that pleases their employer. This self direction and ownership by the individual is another aspect that many of these people are conditioned to recoil against.

It's a conditioned anti-capitalist response that only the state can properly service the needs of the citizen. Therefore, the labor must enrich the state, not individuals, because only the state can properly redistribute this from those with ability to those with their percieved 'need'. If a state uses the back of a laborer for gain, that's OK. The mentality is that this contributes to the collective. Even though the state is likely (as history has shown) taking even greater advantage of the laborer, and compensating him even less (if at all) than a private interest would. Since in this type of society, the importance of state is elevated above the individual, the labor is looked upon as something necessary for the state to survive, almost like a discardable consumable for the leviathan There is no room growth or self direction in such a society, because the state must control these aspects of an individual. It needs to suppress these qualities of humanity, to ensure uniform, predictable production for the purposes of planning the redistribution.

This sad and hopeless mentality can permeate among citizens only if the state has become the only means of compensation and survival for the individual. This is why (as I and many others feel) this Administration is working around the clock to destroy the value of our currency, and enact anti-business policy and law, so the system can be thrown into a tailspin, and the state can take it's rightful place (in their minds) as the sole, benevolent provider and redistributor of all things.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here!

That was a big battle lost in the 1930s with Obama’s hero Roosevelt. O wants to repeat Roosevelts successes.

This conflict which is stated as black and white was muddied greatly by Social Security and Medicare. Because now seniors, a great part of the conservative Republican base are convinced it's OK to 'steal' (as the post puts it) , as long as they are told they have 'earned it', or as posted here ‘a verbal contract’, or ‘a promise’. So the socialists will always use that as an example why there really is no private property. And the seniors will be told that to keep their vote.

Fortunately this democrat strategy failed on health reform.