[ExI] rugged individualists

[Dan]

I'm not surprised. I used to debate with Republicans in the US who believed they were not being subsidized by the government (in other words, by stolen goods) when in fact they were overlooking the vast interferences of the government in the economy.
 
But what does this ultimately mean? Government is good and everyone should support robbing everyone else?
 
And what's the "implied contract" here? How does one opt out of it? Since one can't, it seems calling it a contract is self-deception at best.
 
Regards,
 
Dan
From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
To: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 3:43 PM
Subject: [ExI] rugged individualists

Far from the whole story, but worth considering (since we've been discussing political perceptions):
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Half of Americans Who Get Govt Aid Say They Don’t
KRISTINA CHEW

<Half of Americans who receive government aid in the form of social services believe that they have not 'used a government social program.” These include:

53.3 percent of those who’ve received federal student loans
51.7 percent of those who’ve received child and dependent care tax credits
43 percent of those who’ve received unemployment insurance
39.8 of those who’ve received Medicare
28.7 of those who’ve received Social Security Disability
25.4 of those who’ve received food stamps

As Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing comments,

It’s the 'Keep your government hands off my Medicare” phenomena writ large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and redistributive policies who’ve been conned (and conned themselves) into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone else is a parasite.

[...]

On GOOD magazine, Nona Willis Aronowitz - after pointing to reports of Michele Bachmann’s husband getting farm subsidies and also, reportedly, $137,000 in Medicaid money - makes a thoughtful point about what the above figures say about our culture of 'rugged individualism”:

…the point isn’t really whether or not these people are hypocrites or uneducated or ungrateful; more compelling is why they’d see themselves as exceptions. Shame about government help is ingrained into our culture, and so is the narrative of the 'culture of dependence.” It’s not only rightwingers and deficit hawks who feel this way. When my contract position ended temporarily, it didn’t even occur to me to apply for unemployment to fill the gap until my father suggested it to me. When I waved him off, feeling embarrassed, he balked. 'Are you kidding?” he replied. 'That’s what those deductions on your paychecks were for.”

We’re on the verge of forgetting (if we haven’t already) that our government isn’t just taking our tax dollars for 'its own” purposes. 'Its own” purposes are ours - we just prefer not to remember until we’re really in need. >
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To which I add: Medicare is not, of course, "aid"--it's supposed to be an investment people are obliged to make. The fact that the money has been (mis)used for other purposes (wars, subsidies for the very wealthy, etc) does not change this implied contract.

Damien Broderick
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