Crosstalk

One of the things that gets me about American politics is it's tendency towards "let's you and him fight." Especially when social media enters the picture. The following was posted to LinkedIn, but I'm sure that it's popped up in any number of other corners of the Internet:

For the record, I don't have much faith that either of these men are being quoted accurately here.

According to the picture, Dave Ramsey believes that poverty comes from poor choices, whole Jon Stewart sees the cause as predatory financial policies. Fair enough (maybe). But my first question was: How are these men defining "poverty?"

The Federal guidelines for poverty are listed in terms of annual income: $15,960 for a single adult and $33,000 for a family of four, for instance. Nothing in what Messrs. Ramsey or Stewart say have any bearing on people's actual incomes; expenses, including frivolous ones and housing costs, don't reduce a person's income as paid to them by their job(s). So whatever understandings of "poverty" the two of them are referring to, it's not the Federal poverty level.

And since there isn't any other context, there's no indication that whatever other definitions they using align with one another. Or, for that matter, that one of them is responding to comments by the other. It's just Dave Ramsey going the "personal responsibility" route, while Jon Stewart is leaning more into the "systemic factors" side of things. I suspect that their placements on the right and left side of the image is not a coincidence.

This is the sort of social media post that's designed to produce an emotional reaction where one person is cast as a sinner, and the other a saint, based on the reader's own political (or maybe simply politicized) viewpoint. And I don't really see the utility in that.