I was thinking about something earlier today.
When Obama was President, the way to oppose domestic spending on constituencies, that you didn’t like, was to complain about debt and deficit.
Now that Biden is President, conservatives still do trot out unctuous concern about debt and deficits but the new tool for opposing social spending is inflation.
I realized that when you only complain about debt and deficits, you can only demonize people who receive low income benefits. With inflation!, you can now demonize younger people, poor people, people of color who have jobs and earn too much to qualify for public assistance.
Conservatives just pull a number out if there ***, e.g “fast food workers should only make $9/hr” then they see a story about how McDonalds is offering $13/hr and suddenly conservatives can blame high gas prices, high rents, big price increases on many types of food, on the working poor.
It’s devious as hell. It’s no longer the case that “welfare queens” are people who are unemployed and/or collecting public assistance, it’s now the case that people, who work and collect no benefits at all, are also “welfare queens.”
