Forum Post: A plan for winning against conservatives/Tea Party

(☭ = hammer and sickle; ♻ = recycle symbol; ⚖ = scales of justice)

1) Give friends, family members, and conservative taxpayers a way to create jobs without more government spending or even more spending by the rich, through an accelerated work week.

2) Convince people who are concerned with other issues, like global warming, that people are less likely to care about other problems or "believe" in global warming when unemployment is high and nationwide unemployment and the economy are seen as the most important issues.

3) Apply pressure until conservatives give in, by encouraging more people to use government money like food stamps. One of the Republican candidates for nomination wanted people to have jobs instead food stamps but right now, food stamps are still being abused (apparently it's at record low levels of fraud though) and something like 1/3 of those eligibile for food stamps aren't even using them.

It isn't just by increasing government spending that we win. That money is pretty insignificant when it comes to the overall budget; a single military contract probably leads to more spending than we could encourage through food stamp use. The true victory comes by insisting that Republicans are willing to force people to use food stamps. Republicans do not like being called Social Darwinists yet by not supporting job creation this is exactly what they are. From some random conservative:

[Plenty] of people call themselves socialists — not President Obama, to be sure, but estimable figures such as Tony Blair and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Members of the British Labour Party have been known to sing the socialist anthem “The Red Flag” on the floor of Parliament.

But no one calls himself a social Darwinist. Not now, not ever. Not Herbert Spencer. The term is always used to label one’s opponents. In that sense it’s clearly a more abusive term than “socialist,” a term that millions of people have proudly claimed.

The "defense" against this strategy consists mainly of accusing the unemployed, or underemployed/malemployed of being unfit to do work. This is refuted here but there is also a nice explanation for this in psychology:

Essentially, we evaluate how we really are by looking at our best performances, but when we evaluate others we tend to focus on their average performance.

Also see "You're Not Special", a speech to high school graduates.

OWS must have confidence or there wouldn't be protests. It is time to translate that confidence into an effective proposal to fix inequality and unemployment.