Recent quotes from Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley make it clear that the GOP’s disdain for impoverished slackers is definitely alive and well. Some commentators assume this is purely for racist reasons (here’s looking at you, Mr. Coates), and there is undoubtedly substantial truth to that, but there is plenty of evidence that it applies to shiftless white people, too. If you don’t believe me, just read “Hillbilly Elegy.”
I would find this line of argument more compelling if it also applied to wealthy slackers, but it doesn’t. The GOP tax bill, for whatever reason, creates a clear preference for the ownership of capital over wages. It would appear that unemployed wealthy coupon clippers are morally superior to their poor counterparts; I just don’t see how.