3. A well-dressed, stylish man in a business suit, ranting about how the government needs to give more free benefits to the poor.
My gut reactions are … (3, compassionate guy with good intentions)
My gut reactions are the same, except for #3. Empirically, my gut reactions have been trained to feel “self righteous hypocritical twit.” They outnumber the compassionate guys with good intentions.
I think the poor should get more, but they shouldn’t be put in a sadistic universe where working doesn’t benefit them. (See earlier comment http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/83b/a_signaling_theory_of_class_x_politics_interaction/51jx.)Their money should go to them, not funneled through government bureaucracy and crony capitalism which destroys or siphons off most of the money. Compassionate people with good intentions care about the actual results of their actions.
Interesting. My gut level reactions were the same as the OP except for 2, because of encountering too many people who buy some version of the just world fallacy, even among the lower middle class. Failing to recognize that some people try hard and still fail doesn’t make me think “honorable salt-of-the-earth” at all.
I pictured a basically decent guy with a job, making little money, justifiably resentful of a system where his work doesn’t make him much better off than people who don’t work at all, who aims some of that resentment at the first guy, who I took to be not working in distinction. I don’t think his generalization about the poor was meant to be absolute, and don’t think it necessary for him to qualify his statement with somebutnotall.
The one line description leaves a lot open to the imagination. But I picture the salts of the earth a bit tidier than this guy. I’d call him the salty of the earth.
What I’d picture the salt of the earth guy saying is that “The government should make sure families have enough to live on, but not so much that they don’t want to work to make more.”
My gut reactions are the same, except for #3. Empirically, my gut reactions have been trained to feel “self righteous hypocritical twit.” They outnumber the compassionate guys with good intentions.
I think the poor should get more, but they shouldn’t be put in a sadistic universe where working doesn’t benefit them. (See earlier comment http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/83b/a_signaling_theory_of_class_x_politics_interaction/51jx.)Their money should go to them, not funneled through government bureaucracy and crony capitalism which destroys or siphons off most of the money. Compassionate people with good intentions care about the actual results of their actions.
Interesting. My gut level reactions were the same as the OP except for 2, because of encountering too many people who buy some version of the just world fallacy, even among the lower middle class. Failing to recognize that some people try hard and still fail doesn’t make me think “honorable salt-of-the-earth” at all.
I had some of that reaction too.
I pictured a basically decent guy with a job, making little money, justifiably resentful of a system where his work doesn’t make him much better off than people who don’t work at all, who aims some of that resentment at the first guy, who I took to be not working in distinction. I don’t think his generalization about the poor was meant to be absolute, and don’t think it necessary for him to qualify his statement with somebutnotall.
The one line description leaves a lot open to the imagination. But I picture the salts of the earth a bit tidier than this guy. I’d call him the salty of the earth.
What I’d picture the salt of the earth guy saying is that “The government should make sure families have enough to live on, but not so much that they don’t want to work to make more.”