{"id":56357,"date":"2020-04-12T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=56357"},"modified":"2020-04-11T11:56:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T15:56:14","slug":"self-interest-in-the-clothing-of-idealism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/04\/12\/self-interest-in-the-clothing-of-idealism\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-interest in the clothing of idealism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.continentaltelegraph.com\/health\/quarantines-and-those-idealistic-young-people\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Esteban<\/a> wrote at the <em>Continental Telegraph<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Much has been made over the past year of the fact that young people in America approve of Socialism in rather large numbers, and quite a lot more than their elders. Some explain that this is because they are more idealistic than the older crowd, who have become corrupted and &#8220;sold out&#8221; now that they have a mortgage and expensive lifestyle. Others argue that this supposed idealism is actually naivete.<\/p>\n<p>It seems fair to point out that if you are 24 with negative net worth, a modest paying job and no reasonable expectation on the horizon to make serious cash, it isn&#8217;t idealistic to support redistribution, it&#8217;s self-interest. And you don&#8217;t change this fact by saying &#8220;Well, if I made that much money, I&#8217;d be happy to pay a lot in taxes&#8221;. If you ever get to that point we&#8217;ll see, until then this statement doesn&#8217;t fly.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, if you&#8217;re 55 with a couple of million dollars in your 401(k), a big home and an income well into six figures your view may be biased against &#8220;sharing the wealth&#8221; based on your wallet, not principles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Esteban wrote at the Continental Telegraph: Much has been made over the past year of the fact that young people in America approve of Socialism in rather large numbers, and quite a lot more than their elders. Some explain that this is because they are more idealistic than the older crowd, who have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28,53,13],"tags":[1020,76,315],"class_list":["post-56357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-progressives","tag-socialism","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eEZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56358,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56357\/revisions\/56358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}