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by ryanwaggoner 3504 days ago
the kind where people band together to defeat the global elite and the upper class / 0.1%, instead of letting them divide-and-conquer us (Red States vs. Blue, white vs. black, immigrant vs. native, Boomers vs. Millennials).

Why is this kind of us vs them against "the wealthy" acceptable to you? The upper class / 0.1% constitutes millions of people, some bad, most good. Just like every other group. Would you be comfortable putting any other words in your sentence above instead of upper class? Like men, women, the elderly, the poor, minorities, etc? Why is bigotry against the wealthy ok?
1 comments
LBXrRkxx 3504 days ago
Not all wealthy are greedy. But enough of them are, like not all blacks are criminals and not all Hispanics are illegal, and actually to a greater extent. Language is imprecise and trying to police it belies a fundamental lack of respect or empathy.
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ryanwaggoner 3504 days ago
But enough of them are, like not all blacks are criminals and not all Hispanics are illegal, and actually to a greater extent.

You're making my point. Presumably you wouldn't generalize "blacks as criminals", even though some are, but it's OK to generalize wealthy as greedy, even though not all are? Not saying you've generalized that way, but OP did.

Thanks for the lecture on respect and empathy, but I'm not trying to police language. I'm trying to understand why some people who are otherwise quite empathetic and respectful think it's OK to generalize and stereotype other groups of people.

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orthecreedence 3504 days ago
In this case the wealthy, good or bad, man or woman, black, white, brown, or otherwise are using their resources to artificially drive up prices in a marketplace where they do not have to live with the consequences of their actions. Essentially, they are using a place where people are trying to live as a giant real-estate pump and dump scheme and completely screwing up the local economy in the process.

Individually, each of these wealthy persons are just looking out for their own interests, as they should, but as a group they are causing harm, and as such are garnering ill-will from the locals. So the GP's words could have been better chosen as "defeat the global elite who are using our town as a get rich quick scheme" instead of using a blanket statement, but I honestly think that was kind of implied here.

Also, I don't really think an us vs them mentality is extraordinarily harmful at a time when wealth disparities are so astronomically high. In fact, I think ignoring the issue is what's causing us (and not "them") great harm.

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