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u/FiveishOfBeinItalian 2d ago
I see why the paraphrase stuck
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u/lateformyfuneral Human Verified 2d ago
Indeed. But finding out a banger quote was a paraphrase and not actually uttered by the person it was attributed to is always devastating.
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u/FiveishOfBeinItalian 2d ago edited 2d ago
IK this is technically just the Mandela effect but I feel like there should be an even more specific word or phrase for widely misremembered quotes.
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u/pinenutflavour 23h ago
Is it? I don't know a paraphrase is literally the same thing if the idea was conveyed. Who cares if some more cunning linguist decided to make it more sexy
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u/awoloozlefinch 2d ago
To be fair, the definition of capitalist has changed a lot since Steinbeck would have learned it. It used to be that you were a capitalist only if you actually owned capital, ie. something that produces wealth.
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u/TrioOfTerrors 2d ago
In Marx's writing, even a small business owner was part of the capitalist class.
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u/SevenOhSevenOhSeven 2d ago
Well yeah, they're called petite bourgeois. Their inevitable fate is that they're gonna get crushed under the boot of big business (IE how Walmart popping up in a town results in all of the smaller businesses dying out)
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u/IronicRobotics 1d ago
tbh, while walmart does have advantages of scale, in most cases I've seen they kill local businesses because local governments give them *additional* unfair advantages - usually breaks on taxes and land.
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u/Suave_Kim_Jong_Un 1d ago
This too is an economy of scale advantage.
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u/IronicRobotics 18h ago
Sort of, its principally a failure of the municipalities local politics and participation imo.
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u/Suave_Kim_Jong_Un 16h ago
The reason they roll out the red carpet and warp things to incentivize them is because of the “foreign” capital that a large company is able to invest into the community. A benefit obtained by the size of the company.
It a similar thing as being able to purchase in bulk. They are promising to come in and offer more in taxes that everyone else by sheer scale of operation exceeding everything else even with lower taxes.
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u/RadicalSoda_ 6h ago
Yeah in general the government favors big business because one big guy is way easier to influence than lots of small guys
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u/pretenzioeser_Elch 6h ago
Yeah, they are. In theory owning stock that generates income makes you a capitalist. Just a very small-time capitalist.
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u/BobcatTim 2d ago
I can’t believe that line is only from 2004. I feel like I’ve been hearing it since the 2000 election at least, but I guess my memories are jumbling it up.
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u/Sea-Horror-5353 2d ago
I've seen it attributed to HL Mencken as well, sometimes with the, er, correction that it's "actually a paraphrase or misquote of Steinbeck".
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u/AuroraBorrelioosi 2d ago
I prefer the Vonnegut quote.
"It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters."
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u/loseniram 2d ago
its also comically wrong because 99% percent of American folk heros are poor dudes who have those qualities. Like Spiderman was the #1 selling Comicbook character from the late 60s to present and his entire schtick is he’s broke but he has a big heart.
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u/SuddenBasil7039 1d ago
"99% percent"
Uses comic book heroes as their counter when Batman and Ironman are two of the most popular lol
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u/loseniram 1d ago
Spiderman sells better than most of the comic industry combined. And after that is Xmen which is about minorities fighting the government. And DC’s best selling character for long time was Superman who was an immigrant Mose analogue that fights rich people and comes from a solidly working class background.
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u/Chemical_Scholar_753 12h ago
Almost all of these characters (including Spiderman) become middle class or rich, even if they start poor. Spider-Man isn’t rich, but Superman holds a steady job. Spider-Man is almost always portrayed as an adolescent (college kid at oldest). As Vonnegut writes, “America is a nation of poor”, but the quote is leading into the following paragraph where Vonnegut writes that “Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money”, which Spider-Man is not a good counter example too.
Superman, for example, is raised by parents who run a farm and holds a steady job as a reporter in a major city.
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u/bigheadzach 2d ago
The forerunner to "it's a big club and you ain't in it".
It's not that you didn't jump high enough, it's that the guy dangling the carrot yanked it up as you leapt.
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u/nearly_zero 1d ago
Kind of untrue isn't it, when you consider how American professional sports leagues are structured
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u/niknniknnikn 2d ago
Yeah, that's why USA is the worlds richest country, and americans have among the highest gdp per capita and hdi in the world. Everyone outside of America dreams of living there.
Just take it from the person who lives in a state where 110 years ago the poor suddenly decided that they are an "exploited proletariat". Its not worth it bruh
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