Anybody know exactly when did it all get so ugly - the hatred for government and public employees?

[The Magistrate]

14. Set In In '64, Sir, Blossomed Out In '80, Went Toxic around 2000

Last edited Tue Apr 24, 2012, 04:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Vilification of 'big government' necessarily bleeds onto its workers. Beginning with the Civil Rights laws, 'big government' came to stand in many minds for 'giving my tax dollars to shiftless Negroes', and this drove things like the Wallace and Nixon campaigns, and continued as a basic Republican and rightist theme. In the early sixties, Wallace would tout 'big government', boasting of all the things he saw to government helping Alabama citizens with ( white citizens, of course ), and portrayed the hostility of 'race-mixers' and 'communists' to him as really being motivated by anger at all benefits his government gave to the poor ( white ) people of his state.

Reagan blended this with anti-unionism, and did so in a period of severe recession. People tend to forget unemployment went up to ten percent during Reagan's first two years in office. Unionized workers, particularly unionized government workers, withstood these ravages a bit better than most. But there is a 'dog in the manger' spirit that animates many people, a feeling of 'If I have it bad, why shoudl you have it better?' and this Reagan appealed to skillfully in breaking the Air Traffic Controllers Union.

BY 2000 or so, secure employment had become so rare, and wages had been stagnant so long for most people, that the spectacle of government workers with job security and good insurance and pension benefits roused jealousy, so that this dog in the manger spirit gained ever wider and deeper footing. People do feel a drive towards equality, and if they feel there is no way to level up, will express it in angry desire to see a leveling down. Since government employees are paid from tax revenues, people readily feel they are paying for people to enjoy things they cannot have, or even may have lost not too long ago, and it rankles.