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View Full Version : Personal responsibility canard.....



RadioRaheem84
13th October 2011, 19:19
I am in the middle of writing a polemic against the personal responsibility canard right wingers love to use against the poor.

Apparently, someone posted a disgusting picture of a college student holding up a sign that lists the many wonderful things he did to keep himself in school, everything from two jobs to taking five courses, and how he doesn't blame Wall Street for his situation.

This ticked me off beyond belief, especially since the comments section was full of praise for this libertarian self made man.

Are there any articles written by socialists or leftists that smash this personal responsibility myth? Anything that talks about the phenomena where people think to have to eek out a living is a sign of a tough working American and not the sign of a weak economy with dwindling living standards?

Catmatic Leftist
13th October 2011, 19:32
I don't know of any, but I found some studies on economic mobility:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/kopczuk-saez-songSSA07short.pdf

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

Some of them are liberal sources, but all of them have a few charts and graphs about probabilities and intergenerational mobility/socioeconomic status, etc.

Empirical Evidence>Hearsay and Anecdotal Evidence. Every time. The numbers speak for themselves.

Zealot
13th October 2011, 19:46
TheAmazingAtheist made a hilarious video about this.

iN2LZ8N2uj0

Art Vandelay
13th October 2011, 20:01
That video posted above me is pretty hilarious and spot on to tell you the truth. I might have to look up more of his videos, never seen him before.

Catmatic Leftist
13th October 2011, 20:19
That video was funny, but I'd like to see actual objective factual evidence and real arguments.

ckaihatsu
16th October 2011, 21:25
TheAmazingAtheist made a hilarious video about this.

[YOUTUBE]


He should get a 10-year contract for a 3-hour daily prime time talk show on CBS and Fox News. He's got the energy and passion, if that's the only requirement for such a pundit.