Keith returns the the fascinating question of our time.
Why are people who will never be rich so adamantly defending tax breaks for the rich?
Why? Because those who support the rich... but are not rich.... are "convinced, utterly, profoundly, life-alteringly convinced, that they themselves are going to BE rich"
It's Lotto Nation, Those who are yet to win even a free ticket in the lottery literally believe that money will fall from the sky! and they will be damned if they'll let the socialists take the money they don't have and they're never going to get.
What was Keith's speculation two weeks ago has now been confirmed by national polling results.
The Reuters News Service conducted a poll of 2,000 American adults on their economic futures
16% consider themselves well off or upper class
But asked will I become "well off" in five years?, the number is 50%
While two thirds of those polled admit that they are barely keeping their heads above water right now and that economic problems will continue,
half of Americans believe that as the country gets poorer, THEY will get RICHER!
Keith finds the results, "jaw droppingly startling and stupid".
Keith finds an analogy to the minor leagues in baseball from Dirk Hayhurst in the book Baseball Gospels,
Pitching in a minor league with ten teams and three hundred players, Dirk realizes that only five of these minor-leaguers will ever make it to the bigs. The 5 prospects are the Harlem Globe Trotters bound for fame and glory and the other 295 players are the Washington Generals- the team that is hired to loose night after night.
They were the tackling dummies, the practice wives, the chorus, against which the real prospects could just test themselves. And yet all 295 players thought that they were the ones to achieve the stardom. And suddenly Dirk Hayhurst was the only sheep that realized that he was a sheep.
66% say that cutting services will make life worse
66% say that economy has yet to bottom out
but 60% think that their own economy will improve by next year
Only 16% consider themselves well off
Yet 50% expect to become well off
They are the sheep, the practice wives and the Washington Generals to the Republican Party Harlem Glove Trotters. And worst of all, they are also rooting for the Globe Trotters.
If Democrats could only discover a way to convince the Republican sheep that they are sheep, the plutocrats would have a hard time fielding a team.