What I did was challenge her with a few facts. She was a housewife with a mentally challenged son. Her family's combined household income was at or below the poverty level. Her husband had spent much of the last year on unemployment. Her son was receiving a disability check and health assistance from the government and since she was not working, she was not paying into social security and medicare that she would one day receive.
I am retired military, work in the nuclear power industry and my salary is in the top 10% of wage earners. I have been married for 29 years to one wife. I am a democrat but do not agree with every democratic idea. I am a Christian who pays the maximum into social security every year and being solidly in the middle class, I get no extra benefits from the government. I don't make enough to get the massive tax cuts and loop holes of the rich but I also make too much to benefit from the tax breaks of the poor.
So, I was really the "conservative" that my friend visualized that she was. The person that she was focusing her anger at was herself. Much of the time, most of the nation is actually arguing with itself about itself. If you were to do basic research and look at who is actually benefiting from social programs you will find that the recipients fall into two categories. Those categories are the poor and the very rich. The money is funneled to the rich directly from the hands of the poor. You can argue that we spend too much on medicare, but you can't do it without acknowledging that medicare recipients are overcharged for services by some very wealthy companies. My father is being charged $6000 a month (standard charge) for a stay in a nursing home and they still bill medicare for his medicine. Since politicians benefit from campaign contributions, they point their fingers only at the poor. It is silly to refer to political affiliation when talking about the poor since they live all over the nation with a majority of funds going to southern states that tend to vote conservative. A large share goes to the poor in urban areas because jobs are leaving the area. Another portion goes to rural areas that never really had jobs in the first place. Another budget that is abused is the defense budget. As a nation we spend more in our defense budget than most of the world combined. The defense budget is a large jobs program which provides jobs in states building military equipment that the military acknowledges that it does not need.
I actually pay attention and think that republicans come up with some good ideas. The problem is they haven't mastered delivering good ideas without imposing their morality on us all and aggressively trying to restrict some one else's civil liberty. I can say the same thing about liberals. It would be nice if we could just drop those words and go back to calling ourselves republican and democrats because most people tend to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
What I am talking about is the irony of politics and the fact that people don't understand that they are often arguing about themselves. That is why it is easy for politicians to talk about the need to make cuts and not actually make any. It is a duality that is a waste of time. The lesson that I have learned is prior to entering into a political debate with anyone I should at least find out if we are talking from the same perspective. $100,000 is a huge amount of money for some and a pay cut for others. Two people need to understand how each of them value things before they can get value from a conversation.
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