I saw one the other day excited about laying people off from the forest service, and saying that we should just hire homeless people to take care of parks.

Just so fucking stupid.

I’ve heard this so many times when talking to my conservative relatives. Why do they care so much about what other people do? If they want to sit and do nothing, how is that a bad thing? Why do they think they have the authority to dictate how other people live? It might even be a good thing if more people sat and did nothing. There are too many people out there doing damage to the world that it would be an improvement if they stopped. They put so much emphasis on being productive, which is good, but I don’t care if you’re not productive as long as you’re not destructive.

Another example of conservatives’ disdain for the poor causing them to horseshoe around into Keynesian economics.

The core assumption of this argument is that individuals owe their lives to the State. That people are only justified in existing as long as they contribute to the group.

It’s a totalitarian vision that would embarrass Stalin. But modern conservatives take it as gospel.

I’m not pointing this out to say reactionaries are hypocrites. I don’t think they’re lying when they say they love freedom. For them freedom means freedom for the powerful to make society better. For the less than deserving, the best way to contribute to society is to serve the deserving.

This is literally the core idea of the green new deal which is somehow now a conservative boogie man.

How to UBI without calling it UBI, while also making it worse than UBI for no reason.