The most asinine belief I see from conservatives is this belief that someone else’s progress is inherently detrimental to them.
Take living wages.
A lot of Republicans counter that fast food workers are mostly teens and retirees. This is false, of course, as the average age of minimum wage workers is actually 35, but lets analyze their statement at face value.
Why does it matter? Why does it matter, to you, if fast food workers of any age get paid well? Or “low skill” workers of any profession? How does their pay affect you? It doesn’t, but I understand their failed logic.
To them, it somehow inherently devalues their own work/job/life, or it devalues the system as a whole. Same thing with gay marriage. They see it as somehow being a threat to the concept of marriage, and to their own probably very fragile and loveless marriage to their cousins.
If every fast food worker in the US started making 50k a year, the very worst that would happen would be the cost of your Big Mac going up a bit, despite the fact that it wouldn’t need to as the company could easily eat the cost.
The emphasis on cost cutting that started in the 80s has been the worst thing to happen to strategy theory…other than Six Sigma.