Howard Dean highly disappointed me with his statement about Senator Warren.

[Fumesucker]

73. Anyone who is talking about "don't soak the rich" is referring to Trickle Down

The theory that if the rich are allowed to keep all the money they will then shower largesse upon the rest of us.

No one actually believes that.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/why-americans-all-believe-they-are-middle-class/278240/

Why Americans All Believe They Are 'Middle Class'

A taxonomy of how we talk about class and wealth in the United States today

<snip>

Poking into usage also confirms that Americans are relatively skittish about mentioning class. Contrasting databases of text from U.S. and UK sources, we find that Brits use “upper class” and “lower class” more readily; we prefer “wealthy” and “poor.” Yet we grant “middle class” plenty of airtime. This suggests it’s a frozen phrase, no longer rooted in the meaning of component parts that ought to designate economic status between two others. Instead, middle class has become a status, a brand – a label you opt to adopt.


From Real Housewives to pop stars, extreme wealth is on display all around us. Seeing this, Americans imbibe ideas of what life as a rich person means. And most folks, even in the 1 percent (that is, with incomes above about $500,000), can’t keep up with the Kardashians. They conclude they are not wealthy, so they tag themselves middle class. We’re far less keen to have the poor in view. Nevertheless, whether via images of bread lines or real life panhandlers, we have some sense of life without means. If homelessness is the salient exemplar, people are unlikely to say they’re “poor.”

Cognitive science teaches us that we learn to make sense of the world by putting things into categories. From the simplistic (edible or not) to the sophisticated (possible spouse or casual fling) grouping elements is part and parcel of our processing. In order to determine what category something fits into and thus what it is, we often rely on considering what it is not. Sometimes, these designations are easy: A smart phone and a rotary dial both count as telephones. But categories of great social significance are subject to interpretation and change with the times. Is that boy “spirited” or “ADHD”? Labels, once stuck, can change perception and policy.

Not finding popular depictions of wealth and poverty similar to our own lived experiences, we determine we must be whatever’s left over. Picking “middle class” is easy enough to do because, again, the language doesn’t present much to go on in terms of what this label describes.