Scorn for the Working Poor (washingtonpost.com) And now for some news from the stalled economy: Scorn is trending a wee bit up.
Not that long ago, scorn and its handmaidens -- disdain and neglect -- were pretty much reserved for the welfare poor. The working poor, by comparison, were publicly praised as Americans who "played by the rules." They were folks who warranted a helping hand.
But now the rules have officially changed. The line between the deserving and the undeserving poor has moved up a couple of notches on the socioeconomic scale. You can now be unworthy even if you're employed. Indeed, by some accounts Americans become deserving -- of political attention, that is -- only when their wages rise enough to make them eligible for income taxes and therefore income tax cuts.