The irony of the people who vote conservative because "Someday I might be rich too!"

For every one middle-class person who manages to move up the wealth ladder and become rich, there are thousands of them that move DOWN the ladder and become poor. The average person is infinitely more likely to benefit from welfare, Food Stamps, and/or HUD someday than they are to benefit from a lower top-bracket tax rate. And yet--they vote for people who want to utterly dismantle the social safety net--the only thing standing between them and starvation if a crisis happens and everything falls apart.

It's like living on the Gulf Coast and choosing to buy blizzard insurance instead of flood insurance. It's like buying bulletproof glass for your car, but ripping out the seat belts and airbags. It's like raising the money to pay for your boob job by selling your kidneys.

Even if they lack a shred of human compassion, do they not at LEAST have some rudimentary sense of self-preservation? How can anyone be THAT stubbornly clueless? The American idea that any kid from the slum can grow up to be incredibly wealthy is a fraud, but it keeps the system going. People run up huge debts on their credit cards because the know they are going to make a lot more money tomorrow. There are a lot of people who buy lottery tickets for their retirement plan. They have no idea what 117 million to 1 odds means. The odds of dying in a meteor impact are much better than the odds of winning the lottery jackpot, or of starting out in the slum and making it into the top 10% income group.