Through the magic of a kind of twisted logic, the real beneficiaries of the entitlement state have labeled the working classes as the entitled. How this magic works is kinda simple, all you do is reverse criticize and presto chango, now the poor are the problem. Meanwhile the rich laugh away the days on a sunny foreign clime and the meatheads on the right apologize for the wealthy. Oh the magic of ideas.
"Reduce the deficit, they chant, by curtailing programs supporting the middle and poor classes. Quietly accept the double-trickle down process. But donÂ’t you dare touch the entitlements of the rich that put everyone else at risk."
The Contemporary Condition: The Real Entitlement Crisis
'The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer' The Conservative Nanny State
'The Basic Conservative Nanny State Mythology'
"This larger group of professionals has constructed and promoted the key myth of the conservative nanny state; they have succeeded where others have failed because they have the ability and education to succeed in the 21st century world economy. The problem with the others that have fallen behind — the autoworkers, the shop clerks, the restaurant workers etc. — is that they don't have the skills needed to compete. The remedy of the nanny state conservatives is to either tell the losers to be more like them and work harder (the Republican nanny state conservatives) or express sympathy and throw a few dollars at vocational education and trade adjustment assistance (the Democratic nanny state conservatives). The key to a real solution is to move beyond the conservative nanny state mythology.
It doesn't take sophisticated economics to understand how some professionals have fared well in recent decades, even as most workers have done poorly; it is a simple story of supply and demand. The rules of the nanny state are structured to increase the supply of less-skilled labor, while restricting the supply of some types of highly skilled professionals. With more supply, wages fall — the situation of less-skilled workers. With less supply, wages rise — the situation of highly skilled professionals.
While there are many mechanisms through which the nanny state conservatives have increased the supply of less-skilled labor, probably the most visible is trade. Trade agreements that facilitate imports of cars, steel, clothes, and other manufactured goods disproportionately displace less-skilled workers from what had formerly been middle-class jobs with good wages and benefits. Nanny state conservatives usually treat this job loss as an unfortunate byproduct of trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA. In fact, the job loss and downward pressure on wages from these agreements are not unfortunate side effects of these trade deals — they are precisely the point of these trade deals." link above
