Pitching in to help raise the GDP

Pitching in to help raise the GDP

by digby

Representative Stephen King speaks for the Tea Partiers:

“There are more and more people that are looking at others saying they shouldn’t be making that much money because I’m not. And they don’t feel as much guilt about the 72 different means tested welfare programs that we have.

Today it’s almost a government guarantee of a middle-income standard of living from all these [government safety net] programs we have. I like an America where people feel some guilt about that and they want to step up and help and carry their fair share of the work.

There’s a number approaching 100 million Americans of working age that are simply not in the workforce, and that includes the 13 million that are unemployed. Some can’t do anything about that, some aren’t willing to do anything about that. When you add that all up, roughly a third of Americans of working age are not contributing to the gross domestic product of the United States.

They should do their fair share.

One of the things is, people are told they don’t need to create opportunities. It’s up to somebody else to offer them a job.

I don’t think I need to tell you how sociopathically deluded that is. Is he advocating that people work for no money in order to contribute to the GDP? We did that. Fought a war over it as a matter of fact.

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