Microblog Memes

Yes, that is what I'm saying. When I say that this idea of a property tax that is oriented toward increased property value exclusively runs the risk of satisfying more affluent young middle-class people who are really just expressing aggrieved entitlement to the way of life that their parents and grandparents enjoyed.

A common liberal tactic to disarm broader wealth distribution and social welfare movements is to satiate an element of their criticisms for a substantially powerful group within that movement. Think about how the New Deal disproportionately benefitted white labourers and effectively dissuaded broader socialist and anticapitalist sentiments that had grown in the previous decades, or how queer marriage rights afforded security to property-owning gay men who are now the most conservative-voting queer demographic.

That there is such a risk of victimizing vulnerable elderly people, a group that has BTW been increasingly devalued since COVID started, means that if this policy satisfies enough voters specifically -- which is to say suburbanites -- it could effectively disarm the accompanying reforms that recognize the interlinked issues of shelter unaffordability and insecurity, healthcare services, education, and food insecurity while simultaneously normalizing policies that disproportionately harm specific groups. Programs exactly like what you referenced here were eroded by those same means, and the luxury of suburban home ownership itself was an immenseley effective tactic in disarming labour unions in the mid-twentieth-century US.