Nancy Folbre: Conservatives and the Zombie Apocalypse - NYTimes.com - 1 views
economix.blogs.nytimes.com/...ives-and-the-zombie-apocalypse
metaphor conservative liberal narrative political US
shared by Javier E on 26 Sep 12
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two competing horror-show narratives that increasingly dominate political discourse in this country
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The basic right-wing story line evokes zombie apocalypse: The shambling, diseased living dead — Obama Zombies — are threatening human civilization.
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A forthcoming book by Nicholas Eberstadt is titled “A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic.” Charles Sykes contends that we have become “A Nation of Moochers.”
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the left-wing narrative of vampire threat, which warns of a small group of powerful, almost immortal beings who invest in blood funds, suck out the profits and stash them in Transylvanian tax shelters.
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Zombies and vampires represent archetypal middle-class fears: the fear of being pulled down by the needy or stomped on by the powerful.
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They are not those who paid no federal income taxes last year, because many of these can point to a record of hard work.
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They are not those stuck at the very bottom of the income distribution: When all taxes (rather than merely federal income taxes) are taken into consideration, the share of all taxes paid by different income groups corresponds pretty closely to their share of total income
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They are not those who get more in government benefits than they pay in taxes in a given year, because many of these families include children, elderly people, or adults who are eager to resume wage-earning as soon as they can find jobs but for now are unemployed.
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Maybe the zombies are those likely to receive more in government benefits over their lifetime than they have paid in taxes. At the top of this list would be seriously injured military veterans in need of continuing care, along with those receiving costly Medicare-financed interventions in the last two months of their lives.
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Alternatively, one might point to all those who have received means-tested public assistance. If so, Mr. Romney’s father George, who received public relief at one point, falls under suspicion.