Why would anyone vote for the guy?

I don't get the impression that many people are actually all that excited about Romney. I think it's really more of anybody-but-Obama. If the economy was strong, I think the election would be like Clinton's 1996 run.

I think people do stop trying eventually. Because small economies like you describe might not fix the whole mess, people get discouraged. Even I do. And look for dumb little ways to comfort themselves, etc.

If the economy was strong, I think the election would be like Clinton's 1996 run.

I think so, too. And it drives me batshit crazy that people are going to vote for that horrific piece of shit Romney because Obama couldn't work a goddamn miracle and turn around a truly terrifying economy in less than 4 years (while dealing with a Congress whose majority has the stated purpose to obstruct him at every turn).

BUT THOSE PEOPLE ALWAYS HAVE iPHONES AND DRIVE NEW CARS AND HAVE BRAND NEW SNEAKERS!!

And according to certain relatives of mine on facebook, who are currently blocked, they spend all of that money on smoking, drinking, getting tattoos, getting cable TV, getting manicures, and doing drugs.

AND they buy strawberries and steak and birthday cake with their foodstamps!

It is also true that the human brain has a limited capacity to make decisions. If you are constantly faced with hard choices every minute of the day, your decision making skills will deteriorate. I'm on my dying computer, so it would be too much work to link to the peer reviewed literature, but it can be googled. Basically you have a limit on the number of good decisions you can make in a day, say n, so when you have to make decision n+1 you probably wont exercise great choices. Why routine and rules of thumb are so important. Non-routine decisions,decisions you cannot make automatically or semi-automatically are spoons, spoons you can run out of like any other spoons. (Maybe we should add "spoons" the FAQ?)

Also, I just read "Off the Books", which was a study on a particular Chicago neighborhood, and how there is a whole second shadow economy going on in poor city neighborhoods that was varying degrees of "shady". I wanted to read it because after I started taking the bus and interacting with a really wide range of people, I noticed how hard some people were working just to make a few dollars-- selling DVD's, selling pies, selling lunch, running day cares, selling cigarettes by the each, doing odd jobs, collecting cans and bottles, selling their bus passes and food stamps etc, etc. There are people working all day just to scrape by, with or without assistance, and I would not call them lazy. Now, I am not sure they would all want a "regular day job", because it really takes a lot of energy in my city to use the bus to be on time for a job- I am lucky, my job is more flexible if the bus is late. But not really lazy!

ETA: Seriously-- taking the bus is one of the best decisions I ever made-- I love seeing all different people instead of just the same people all the time, and although I was a far left leaning person in the first place, and I think I understood "country" poverty, this has helped me understand "city" poverty and working class-ness.

Hey, it stopped raining! And the sun came out!

Right? It was a torrential downpour when I took Emmett to school this morning.

Sophia,

in neighborhood parlance that's called "hustle." no income group has a monopoly on people who work hard. that's the myth the privileged perpetuate in order to keep income equality at maximum levels.

I think people do stop trying eventually. Because small economies like you describe might not fix the whole mess, people get discouraged. Even I do. And look for dumb little ways to comfort themselves, etc.

OMG yes THIS.

Related to which, I wish I could track down my favorite Chesterton essay ever, which was about the asshole attitudes of the well-to-do toward being spare-changed by drunks and addicts. He pointed out that as long as you're rich enough to do it on your own dime in your own house, you can drink yourself into stupor and bodily ruin with no social consequences as long as you manage not to lose your fortune or kill everyone else; but if a combination of being dealt a lousy hand at birth and making lousy guesses and poor choices with that lousy hand has led you to the point where you're sleeping in a doorway under a smelly blanket and your shoes are lined with newspaper, how DARE you spend one penny of the charity anyone should unwillingly give you on any substance that numbs the misery and puts the bleakness at bay for an hour. If your life is that utterly shitty, apparently you owe it to the entire universe to keep yourself totally sober and hyperaware of that shittiness.

Not that he thought a permanently alcoholic permanent underclass was a good idea -- he hated it -- but he just thought it was hypocritical bullshittery of the highest class to benefit from a society that creates those rigid social strata, complain about every effort to change that societal structure to make things better for the people at the very bottom, and then act the moral scold at those whom you've just ensured can never escape the bottom for not wanting to spare themselves one small temporary comfort that won't make a damn bit of difference to the bigger picture.

no income group has a monopoly on people who work hard

Indeed.