A Typical Republican...

Herman Cain to the Occupy Wall St. protesters: If you're not rich "you have only yourself to blame."

A fairly narrow-minded point of view, that demonstrates one of two things:

1) The speaker has a a very limited understanding of how things got this way, or:

2) It's an attempt at demagoguery, assuming the listeners will swallow this sound-bite, and spew it back, without a clear understanding of its meaning and background.

I have seen both things, sometimes in the same utterance, by all of the GOP hopefuls.

It is particularly frustrating for me because when all the recent "banking" issues hit the fan, (mortgage crisis, pension crisis, banking crisis) these people seem to want to blame the little guy with the bank account and the mortgage and the pension, rather than the Wall Street-ers who were entrusted with the ethical and legal handling of them.
Is it my fault that BoA needed a bail out? If not, then why were MY tax dollars used for it? Since I pay more per year in taxes than ALL of the BoA board of directors combined, I can safely say they contributed very little to the bail out.

I understand Capitalism. I understand what the freedom to fail is all about. What I don't understand are:

1) The unfair tax laws that give enormous loopholes to "hide" income,as well as the uneven tax percentages that put the burden on the lower earners.

2) The Stalinist tactics being used against those that say: 'Hey! Wait a minute! What are you doing with MY money?"

And, to address the specifics of Herman Cain's statement about how the unemployed have only themselves to blame:

One individual that spent the requisite years learning a trade, in say, commercial architecture, works for a few profitable years, when suddenly, the bottom drops out of the market.
New construction nearly halts, renovation is put off until the consumer spending can support it, and the company he is with can't get enough work to support itself.

Job goes poof.

The market doesn't change just because he changes employers.

To add insult to injury, there are several other companies in the same situation as his former employer.

Now all of THOSE employees are competing for the rather small number of jobs left.

So, the market failure is his fault, according to Cain, and so is the fact that he isn't related to, or friends with someone that IS hiring to fill a VERY limited number of positions.

And, then we have those that say: "You have to take anything, in today's economy" while true to an extent, there are certain factors that mitigate:

The money is no longer available to re-train for another field, either from personal savings, or State sponsored programs.

There are only so many hours in a week, and most jobs only let you work for a certain number of them. (Legal restrictions put in place to protect the worker...)

The jobs available without retraining pay far far less than what was earned before, requiring in some cases, a 120 hour work week in order to meet the financial obligations that have either not changed, or gotten more onerous.

(Examples: States have increased the fees for many licenses and registrations. Gasoline prices have increased more than 2 fold in the last 10 years. And for you foodies, the cost of bacon has gone from 2.99 per pound to 5.99 for the same 15 slices in less than a year. For those with children, clothing and all child rearing costs have increased.{Current average "out of pocket" cost of raising ONE child from birth to age 18 is $250,000. That is the AVERAGE from ALL economic profiles, across the United States.})

It is, unfortunately, all too typical of the GOP to take this stance.

Despite the fact that a great preponderance of its constituents are poor, undereducated, and emotionally/religiously/sexually conservative, the "party" line is "blame yourself for the things done by those we told you could be trusted." It's never, ever, ever "We told you that you could trust them. It's our fault." Nor is it "They abused our collective trust, and will be held accountable for what they did."

I've encountered similar attitudes in many people who are what was once called "Born Again" Christians. If Something Good happens to you, God did it. If Something Bad happens to you, it's your fault.

"I bought a house for $???,???, and then my mortgage was sold to another institution, the interest rate went up, costing me more, while my pay rate went down to help preserve the company I work for. Then the Mortgage Collapse happened. Now my house is only worth less than half what it was when I bought it, but the mortgage value remains the same. That must be my fault. I must have sinned, somehow..."

While this might make sense to some, its just not the way the real world works.

Its "magical" thinking. The same thinking that blames fairies for sour milk, and gremlins for mechanical failures.

I could go on for pages and pages, but I have to draw this to a close somewhere... Here's as good a place as any.