The second assumption is that the very poor people are doing pretty well. You can see this on evidence any time any news story about social welfare appears, whereupon one is deluged with commenters about people on food stamps driving Jaguars and how unfair it is that some people get to live with these awesome safety nets while others have to work for a living.
The Jaguar thing is a bit odd, traditionally it's a Cadillac. I know Cadillac has fallen in iconic stature with the rest GM, but Jaguar ain't what it used to be either. It was bought and regurgitated by Ford, and is now owned by, of all companies, Tata Motors of India. Tata is best known here for the Tata Nano, which was supposed to sell for 100k rupees in India, about $2k at the time, but has slipped up to about $3k currently.
Anyway, the welfare Cadillac is of historic interest, celebrated in song by one Guy Drake in 1970. youtube.com This song apparently hit iconic stature when Nixon asked Johnny Cash to play it at the White House, but Cash supposedly hated it. Good for Johnny. And an appropriate anthem for Nixon's Southern Strategy, which lives on to today.
The myth didn't reach its height until Reagan pounded it into the ground, though. From wikipedia:
The term "welfare queen" is most often associated with Ronald Reagan who brought the idea to a national audience. During his 1976 presidential campaign, Reagan would tell the story of a woman from Chicago's South Side who was arrested for welfare fraud:
"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."[4]
en.wikipedia.org
The wikipedia article explores the source of that one. There were, of course, actually cases of welfare fraud, but Reagan's story seems to have been at best an exaggerated composite. Sadly, today's Republican party has moved well beyond Reagan , who would in policy terms be considered at best a RINO by current standards. Now the exaggerated fraud tales have moved on to the voting front, and conservatives have the Limbaugh/Murdoch/Koch Bro axis at their disposal to pound all their myths into the ground. It's going to be an ugly year. |
