Winners and Losers

As I was thinking about the differences between the two major parties it occurred to me that one party was focused on winners and the other was focused on, well, losers for lack of a better word.

Take the republican viewpoint which is generally forged by middle to upper middle class backgrounds.

In this world if you do what you're supposed to do, go to school, stay out of serious trouble the odds are that you will end up living a middle class lifestyle.

The ones who don't succeed generally have some sort of flaw, drug addiction, inability to conform or other that results in them falling in status.

The other factor is that the people who fail to succeed actually disappear, either moving to poor neighborhoods, going to jail or just vanishing so to speak, while successful people from the lower classes who succeed end up joining the neighborhoods.

Their world view is that whether you do well or don't, its pretty much up to you and they ignore the fact that in their world, success is almost guaranteed to those born and raised in it.

The Government is in fact more of a problem than a help, taxing you and using those taxes to help undeserving needy people.

On the other side you have people born in lower to poor areas where in general the expectation is similar in that you expect to emulate your parents, its just a much lower bar.  Schools are worse, affording higher education is difficult, you might have to help pay some bills around the house, and when anything goes wrong, financial support is not available.

Of course some of these people succeed, meaning they ignore the widely available temptations around them, study, go to college and get a good job.  Of course one of the first things they do is move to a better neighborhood.

So for the majority of these people the norm is a struggle to survive with many becoming addicts, criminals or homeless and failure is all around while success isn't.

If you are lower middle class and see what happens when you lose your job to you and even worse your family, you are fearful.

In this world you need some help from the Government,  health care, unemployment insurance, food stamps, student loans to give you a chance.

Success is hard and requires some help, at least sometimes.  Yes, some can succeed on their own, but many live on the edge and are in real danger of falling even further.

The divisions are getting worse, not better and you either want to help the less fortunate do better or you want to help the successful stay that way.