At the end of the day it boils down to that fact that the poor as a class, are easily abused and manipulated -- by governments, private entities, even the poor themselves.

One of the most perverted ways they are abused is they are convinced to vote against their own interests. For example thinking back at Obama's healthcare reform and the fate of the single payer option vis-a-vis the "get your socialist government outta my Medicare" crowd. Even further up the line, gutting education also pretty much ensures a future crowd of uneducated easily manipulated crowds for the next generation to abuse and take advantage of. So the system is already set to self-perpetuate.

As a side note, speaking of manipulating, a good example is always Bush Jr. using evangelicals in his campaigns in early 2000s.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/evangeli...

I think that was a brilliant move to use them, because they were a lot of them (1), they were relatively wealthy (2), they were easily reached, as they already congregated in large clubs i.e. megachurches (3), they are easily brainwashed with the right words (4).

Why is it that when rich people vote against their self interest and vote to raise taxes, that's considered noble. But when poor people vote against their self interest and vote for the government to take less money from people other than them, they're being manipulated?

I don't know, I haven't thought about their motivation and interest yet too much. But talking to a few of them in the past (one was worth probably $100m+) I undestand they want to pay more taxes to maintain infrastructure and and not push the poor too much over the edge. Prisons are already full, crime is high, inequality is high, enough kids are already starving. So it seem the more forward thinking of the wealthy can see the current course of action might not be end well for everyone.

But I have a hard time believing that each poor person with less than a month in savings, working for some fast food chain, is making a rational decision voting against nationalized health care or rasing taxes, just in case they reach the American Dream, and become a successful owner of a small busininess who will be strangled and starved by high taxes from Uncle Sam when they do.

One of the biggest lies is that the rich got the poor to think of themselves as not poor, but pre-wealthy. They are just a few hard working years ago from being Donald Trump, if they just worked a bit hard (because if they don't they are just a lazy and deserve it). So as such, they sure wouldn't want to vote against the interest of the future successful selves...

Maybe they are being manipulated but I just think its a little classist to second guess the beliefs of those in lower socio-economic classes. Just as you may rightfully reject the idea that the poor are poor because they're stupid, I equally reject the idea that the poor vote against their self interest because they're stupid or easily manipulated.

The alternative to believing that you are pre-wealthy is believing that you are stuck in your current socio-economic class and don't really need to strive for anything. Working towards a goal is a benefit in it of itself. Explains why those that are handed everything in life are often unhappy.

The ironic thing is people angered by inequality and also angered by the belief that social mobility is even possible.

> I just think its a little classist to second guess the beliefs of those in lower socio-economic classes

I am second-guessing based on their actions not just beliefs. After talking to wealthy acquintances and poor ones, I can see why the wealthy might not mind paying more taxes longer term. After talking to more poor acquintances and how they justify how and why they vote, I don't a good rational explanation often.

> Working towards a goal is a benefit in it of itself.

That's a good point. I believe in that as well. I just think it is better if goals are realistic and it is important to understand how the world works and how power is distributed, should they want to make any change or affect or change it, they'd be able to.

Education. The rich are informed and therefore its noble. The poor are uninformed are therefore its manipulation.

I live in a small town and most of my poor friends voted for Obama. Now they are all furious because they're getting fined for not having health insurance. They don't make enough (or don't manage their money well enough) to pay for Obamacare every month. It doesn't provide great plans either - one person I know pays $130/month for a plan with a deductible of several thousand.

Exactly it was a typical bait and switch program. It should have had a single payer option but that was gutted pretty quickly in the beginning (one can argue it would have never passed without).

I was on the other end of the spectrum. I had a good insurance through a small company and because of Obama care also kind of got screwed insurance company raised our rates 50%+ in a couple of years before the whole thing started to go into effect.

My husband and I's rates have skyrocketed as well - and they were already close to $300/month per person.

The amount paid to corporate subsidies is pretty obscene:

http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA

Is this accurate? It basically says that middle class people spend six times as much paying for corporate subsidies than they spend paying for things like defense, welfare payments, medicare, etc., combined. The fact that the information is conveyed using a poor-quality jpeg screenshot of an unattributed infographic from two years ago, however, does not inspire confidence.

The two sources at the bottom of the graphic are redirected to the following:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/2014-taxreceipt

It looks like this claim is based on aggregating direct subsidies, inflated profits enabled by government mandates and protections, and lost tax income resulting from preferential tax policies and tax shelters.

No it's not accurate. I mean hell, $7 of your $50k goes to welfare? That's 0.014%. In reality, depending on what you want to call welfare (republicans like to call everything welfare and pretend it's bankrupting the country in order to scale it down, for example, so you have wildly different definitions in the political spectrum) it's around 5-8% of GDP. So this is just laughably inaccurate. Defense spending of $250, in reality it's closer to $2k.

Then there's the corporate subsidies, they're more interesting because they're not necessarily wrong. Perhaps this number is but in general they're very high, but not in the way people normally think about subsidies. I see numbers thrown around all the time with murky definitions and it's misleading.

For example, the IMF did a study that showed $5.3 trillion in oil subsidies worldwide. Gigantic number, consider world GDP is $75 trillion, US a little under $18 t.

Now I'm sympathetic to the study, agree with it, and think we should take that number seriously and do something about it. I also think it constitutes a form of subsidy.

But it's a bit misleading to say this means we're all paying thousands of dollars to corporate subsidies on this basis from our actual paycheck. There are different forms of subsidies and there's value in not muddying the semantics too much.

What the study measures are externalities that aren't priced in. A person dies in motorised traffic? You can combat it by pricing that into the price of oil. A climate change related natural disaster happens, or we have to pay for CO2 cleanup, or healthcare costs rise due to oil-industry fumes causing lung cancer somewhere, you can price all of that in. Not pricing that in is a form of subsidy, but it's not like we take thousands of dollars from our pay check and send it to the companies to support them, very little money goes to these companies, the issue is we don't extract enough from them that we should once we look at the damage they cause, and this is technically a subsidy. The IMF measures the missed revenue from taxing fossil fuels at a lower range than it should if it prices in all externalities.

Yet I've seen renowned green energy pundits in my country (the Netherlands) talk about these $5.3 trillion subsidies as if we're sending that money to corporations every year. I'm completely on their side, yet I don't think this is helpful, there's too much misleading information thrown around.

You bring up many excellent points. There are worthwhile corporate subsidies, just like there are worthwhile social "welfare" programs. I've known many US citizens who criticized "welfare" (i.e., food stamps for the urban poor), who were perfectly happy to pick up unemployment checks. My original point wasn't really to criticize all corporate subsidies per se, but simply to point out that when US citizens criticize "welfare", it's often a result of their having been cynically manipulated away from focusing on their own real interests.

Actually I opened the source: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-...

Here're their largest points:

1. $1268 - for overpriced medications

2. $1231 - for revenue loss from tax havens

3. $870 - for corporate tax subsidies

All of them are very questionable.

Are you sure that all these corporate subsidies are that bad? Do you have information of breakdown of the target of subsidies by companies?

For example, Tesla receive about 5b$ of government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... This, I think, is investment which really worth it, it's the most innovative automotive company in the world, and it would be impossible without this.

Nitpick: the $4.9 billion figure is for Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity combined.

People talk about "corporate subsidies" as though a corporate tax number was sent down from the heavens and any amount collected less than that number is somehow equivalent of taking tax payer dollars and sending them to shareholders.

No one likes a complicated manipulated tax code that favors certain firms/industries, but equating a complicated tax code that sets a higher tax rate than is normally collected to transferring tax payer dollars to shareholders of corporations is dishonest.

Also, the sum $4000 sounds too round for me, especially taking into account, that other numbers provided doesn't contain so many zeroes in them.