This week's 'foot in mouth' award goes to Herman Cain.
In an interview with the wall street journal, Herman Cain, hopeful republican nominee for president, said: ""Don't blame Wall Street," Cain said. "Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."
What an idiot. Yes, personal responsibility and determination play a huge role in becoming successful in life. Yet, they do not guarantee success. Basic supply and demand is a huge factor. Corruption plays a huge factor. The basic math - not everyone can be rich (if they could then being rich wouldn't mean anything) - plays a factor. Becoming 'successful' in life is not a linear process and there is no guarantees even if you do everything right (read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for a better understand of how success plays out for various folks).
If anything, I'd argue it's actually because so many people have worked hard and gone to school for training that it's become harder to succeed. If we had less of an educated population, willing to work manual labor jobs for five dollars an hour, unemployment would be near zero (stnadard of living would suck, but unemployment would be low).
The problem is we have so many successful professionals that any little shock to the economy and even successful people start getting crushed. One day someone is making 80k (ie. they are successful) the next day they can't get a job.
Cain could have easily made his point about the virtue or hard work, determination and resiliency without condeming the masses as being lazy failures.
It was an idiotic thing to say, even considering that he is pandering to the republican base. While republicans are for small government and against the 'Nanny state' they aren't so disconnected as to believe that the current unemployment levels and hardship of the American people are the result of said people being lazy or failures.
If that were the case then they'd have been failures in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. If that were the case we'd have a shortage of engineers, software developers, accountants, etc. (and we don't, we currently have an over supply in relation to demand).
While his comments may attract compaign contributions from Wall Street, I think he basically just destroyed his campaign. You won't get elected during the worst recession since the Great Depression by telling those suffering that they are to blame.
Cain's appeal is that he's outspoken, but as I pointed out in a post on Chris Christie recently - Chris Christie: Why he resonates and what we can learn - for said type of politicians you have to go out of your way to make them aware of potential land mines. It's less about telling them what to do and more about telling them what to make sure they DON'T do.
In Cain's case his handlers obviously failed to impress upon him that he should avoid attacking segments of the America population.
In an interview with the wall street journal, Herman Cain, hopeful republican nominee for president, said: ""Don't blame Wall Street," Cain said. "Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."
What an idiot. Yes, personal responsibility and determination play a huge role in becoming successful in life. Yet, they do not guarantee success. Basic supply and demand is a huge factor. Corruption plays a huge factor. The basic math - not everyone can be rich (if they could then being rich wouldn't mean anything) - plays a factor. Becoming 'successful' in life is not a linear process and there is no guarantees even if you do everything right (read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for a better understand of how success plays out for various folks).
If anything, I'd argue it's actually because so many people have worked hard and gone to school for training that it's become harder to succeed. If we had less of an educated population, willing to work manual labor jobs for five dollars an hour, unemployment would be near zero (stnadard of living would suck, but unemployment would be low).
The problem is we have so many successful professionals that any little shock to the economy and even successful people start getting crushed. One day someone is making 80k (ie. they are successful) the next day they can't get a job.
Cain could have easily made his point about the virtue or hard work, determination and resiliency without condeming the masses as being lazy failures.
It was an idiotic thing to say, even considering that he is pandering to the republican base. While republicans are for small government and against the 'Nanny state' they aren't so disconnected as to believe that the current unemployment levels and hardship of the American people are the result of said people being lazy or failures.
If that were the case then they'd have been failures in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. If that were the case we'd have a shortage of engineers, software developers, accountants, etc. (and we don't, we currently have an over supply in relation to demand).
Cain's appeal is that he's outspoken, but as I pointed out in a post on Chris Christie recently - Chris Christie: Why he resonates and what we can learn - for said type of politicians you have to go out of your way to make them aware of potential land mines. It's less about telling them what to do and more about telling them what to make sure they DON'T do.
In Cain's case his handlers obviously failed to impress upon him that he should avoid attacking segments of the America population.
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