Wednesday, October 08, 2008

More Word News

'Hard working'. This has been widely used in the American election - hard working taxpayers/middle classes etc. Now I notice Guido has fallen for it - 'the hard work of Britain's 28 million taxpayers.' This is empty flattery. Any large enough human sample will contain approximately the same proportions of hard workers and soft slackers. Being a taxpayer or middle class does not mean you are necessarily hard working. Rhetorically, it's a way of smuggling in a consoling sense of entitlement, as in, 'I am middle class, therefore I work hard, therefore I am entitled...

4 comments:

  1. Under the fiat currency system the unborn get the bill, which is even more immoral.

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  2. what's the point of being middle-class if you still have to work hard? they don't know what hard work is - a few late hours at the office, I expect. (is that dash all right, boss?)

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  3. The Japanese have a weird and wonderfull work ethic, if a department head works untill midnight, so does the entire department, even though they have nothing to do and sit around reading newspapers, this to save the face of head poobah.

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  4. Except in America the middle class actually does work hard. But it's really just a way of saying "working" voters, since if you work, the default mode is hard.

    This doesn't apply to socialist economies, of course.

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