TL;DR: American Conservatives have spent millions of dollars since the 70s studying language and ideas and figuring out how to frame every issue from a conservative, pro-capital, pro-business perspective.
Well, you see, back during the 1960's and 1970's there was a huge push in the US against war, against white supremacy, against fascism, against the draft, against segregation, and many other things. Many of the people who currently hold US political offices today were either in the universities and colleges when these protests were ongoing, or were already working as staffers for conservative politicians. They saw what was going on and became determined to never let these things happen again. In 1971 when then Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell mailed a confidential memo to his friends in the US Chamber of Commerce titled: "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" and outlined Powell's concerns re: the youth of the US and the growing sentiments against the Vietnam War. He was worried that our nation's best and brightest were becoming anti business because of our involvemnt in Vietnam. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.
And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.
Now, you might be wondering why progressives haven't done the same thing. There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system has as its highest value preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.
Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.'
And by "senior" we mean actually senior. Like, wrinkles, gray hair, liver spots; etc. Of course, if you're that old, you're too old to be a flight attendant, so sorry, you're not hired.
This is the same state which said it was perfectly legal for them to seize border checkpoints from the federal government. They seem to be making "states rights" arguments all over the place. So, apparently we're sliding backwards.
A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers....
It’s a combination of things, really. Global markets and the Internet has changed how firms compete. They no longer compete to have more customers. Thanks to globalization and the Internet, the customer base for any given company is essentially infinite, or at least much bigger than firms need. What’s scarce is investment capital, and equity markets are growing more and more speculative as time goes on. Investors are buying, not on the expected dividends they’ll receive as a share of the profits, but on their ability to flip the stock to sell at a higher price, to another investor who are themselves expecting to flip the stock, there’s absolutely no regards to the fundamentals of the business. It’s like watching a group of house flippers buy all the properties in a neighborhood and flip them a little, then sell them to one another, and the property values just keep going up.
We saw this with D&D Beyond and Wizards of the Coast. A whistleblower from within the company said that the executives see the customers as an “obstacle to their money”. Under that mindset, you don’t have customers to serve, you have assets to monetize, and customers are preventing you from monetizing said assets.
I’ve since heard people try to walk it back as a flawed model,
That’s interesting. Who is trying to walk Maslow’s Hierarchy back? And to what end? I mean, I can think of a few motives, but I have no way of knowing if I hit the mark. Perhaps to convince the poor that having more money won’t meet their needs?
Every damn day ( programming.dev )
The starting salary for a new American Airlines flight attendant is low enough to qualify for food stamps in some states ( fortune.com )
Riot cops line up next to a sign at University of Texas at Austin. ( slrpnk.net )
Edit: Name of University fixed.
Louisiana lawmakers vote to remove lunch breaks for child workers, cut unemployment benefits ( www.nola.com )
A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers....
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I'm not asking to be rich. ( lemmy.world )