This quote was true for the wealthy monarchs and aristocrats ruling Europe in Hugo’s day, but no longer so. In fact, I ran across a column from the Los Angeles Evening Herald from 1918 which eloquently explains why this no longer applies. Written at a time when the standard of living was much lower than today, but when sane perspectives were still found in newspapers.
Some excerpts:
🔹”In India you might see a rajah sleeping, and a miserable slave awake all night moving the “punkah,” or fan, to keep the air running. There the misery of all-night labor inflicted on a poor man gives pleasant sleep to a rich man. But in the American Pullman car, in July, the commercial traveler sleeps by night—and an electric fan, representing human intelligence, keeps the air moving, and nobody suffers.”
🔹”When the Queen of Sheba went to see Solomon, a camel probably carried her jolting on his back. And slaves ran beside her keeping off the flies, tiring themselves out. Later, in fashionable Paris, the rich man going to his dinner was carried in a Sedan chair, with poorly paid human beings running and carrying the weight of his body.”
🔹”There the comfort of the rich was based upon the discomfort of the poor. But today the prosperous gentleman rolls along in a large limousine car on the air which fills rubber tires. A chauffeur, paid a hundred dollars or more a month, well clothed and well fed, turns a little wheel.”
🔹”In tropical countries slaves brought down snow and ice from the mountain tops to cool the drinks of their masters. Now a cheap little refrigerating device, run by a small engine, supplies ice and ice-cold water and even the poorest workman drinks it.”
🔹”Fortunately for the world the number of those who enjoy luxury or comparative luxury is constantly increasing. And the extent to which the happiness of a few is based on the torment of many is diminishing every day”
🔹”But it is not wise to tell any man, rich or poor, that his troubles are all based on the crimes or heartlessness of somebody else, that he is a being without faults, and would be absolutely happy if somebody would kindly get off his back.”
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=LAH19180402.2.856&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------
▪️The left keeps using this meme but they don’t actually believe it. If you believe SNAP subsidizes companies to pay below a “living wage” this implies that if you take food stamps away they would suddenly pay a higher, “living” wage. So why not get rid of food stamps, then?!
▪️Except they know, and everyone knows, this isn’t true. Wages are set by supply and demand, not some mythical “living wage” metric. Absent food stamps there would actually be downward, not upward, pressure on wages, because the reality is food stamps subsidize the poor to not work as much as they might otherwise need to.
▪️Without SNAP, some low income people would need to work more hours to make ends meet, increasing the availability of low-skilled labor and lowering wages (all else being equal).
▪️Plus, we all know the left loves and supports food stamps. Which means, by this meme’s logic, they love to subsidize corporate profits. But they don’t really, they just think this ...
▪️Wait, this is the guy libertarians and the new right rave about being a great historian?! This sounds like a clueless meme from The Other 98%, except they wouldn’t add in the bizarre defense of feudal lords. Feudalism didn’t deprive peasants of their livelihoods for abstract goals? This is total fantasy.
▪️Amazon employs 1.55M, so this is less than 2% of their workforce, although these cuts will be to corporate, which employs 350k, so 8.5% of that. The CEO says there is an excess of bureaucracy at Amazon, and AI can automate certain repetitive tasks. Also, much of the cuts will be to HR, which is expected shrink by 15%, yay. Managers and HR are peasants now?
▪️I don’t know the inner workings of Amazon, and neither does Darryl, but this seems to be normal management practice to keep a company efficient and competitive. Given the immense size of Amazon the numbers look large, but far bigger shakeups happen all the time in the private sector. Apparently, under the new ...
▪️This statistic is just made up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a real study on this since 2013, when Pew did a poll. They found that Democrats were actually more than twice as likely as Republicans to report ever using food stamps (22% vs 10%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
▪️Obviously, those percentages could have changed over the past decade, but it’s very likely that Dems still receive more SNAP benefits. Certainly, without an actual study or poll the claim should be thrown out, as it wildly contradicts a previous study.
▪️The meme probably comes from a 2024 analysis by Social Explorer, which found that 78.7% of US counties with the largest increase in SNAP since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020. But that tells us nothing about the actual number of Republicans (or Democrats) who are receiving benefits, just county-wide trends.
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