The Conservative political ads on the radio regularly piss me off. Their pitch this time around is twofold: First, Justin Trudeau is awful. Really the worst. Frankly they oversell the point, but I do have huge issues with JT. I am mostly angry about his broken promise about electoral reform and grumpy about him being part of a political dynasty. The Conservatives aren't critical of those things - they like dynasties and want to keep our archaic system that props up their party.
The second thing they have to say is that they are going to give everyone more money. Also balance the budget. They will spend lots of money on new things too! It sure is great that Conservatives can produce money from nowhere, unlike other political parties.
Of course when they had to finally produce a platform it included enormous, crushing cuts to services. Anyone who is surprised by this is delusional. Money isn't free.
The thing that really got to me about this new set of ads though is that they are pitching their giveaways by talking about how much money they are going to give *per couple*. Not per person. Not per adult. Per couple.
That happens to work for me, but it is a crappy way to put it. Many people aren't part of couples. Many people's financial setup isn't a traditional one with two people married to each other. This isn't a useful way to talk about how tax cuts will work. It shouldn't be any surprise though that the Conservatives manage to erase people who aren't in standard couple type financial arrangements. They want to make it clear that this is how they think, and that single people are doing it wrong.
I wonder if it is deliberate. Did they have a strategy session where they hashed out their ad campaign and decided that they could say 'this tax cut will give the average adult X more dollars' but went with 'the average couple X more dollars' instead? Did somebody decide that their base would be happier with some extra enforcement of norms on the side? Or did they not even think about it at all and just wrote it that way because they didn't even consider what it meant?
Tricky to say. They aren't stupid, so I am inclined to think that they are evil and did it deliberately. On the other hand every intelligent person has huge blind spots, so maybe they did this without even realizing it because they can't see out of their own situations.
In any case it is business as usual for the Conservatives. Hand money to the rich, strip away services from the poor, and, just for fun, take a steaming dump on anyone who doesn't follow the standard life plan.
They said, "hmm, saving $100/person sounds less good than saving $200/couple, so let's use the higher dollar figure".
ReplyDeleteThen someone said, "it's even better than that due to income sharing - it's $300/couple vs. $100/individual".
I doubt the motive was evil, it just marketing.
And possibly, more couples vote on average, so it's targeting the people that matter to what they're trying to accomplish.
I think all political parties will do this. Most talk of "middle-class families", which isn't single people either. Or poor people. Or students. But they are people who vote.
I take issue with your stance that marketing isn't evil.
DeleteAll political parties don't do this. The one with a priority on doing good for people instead of a priority on getting power in whatever way works doesn't. The NDP does sometimes mention families but by and large their messaging is about people. The Liberals talk about the middle class, mostly in terms of families.
Married people do vote more on average, it seems, but if I had to guess I'd say that's more because older people are more likely to be married AND more likely to vote. As a result I'd also guess married people are more likely to vote Conservative. So, yes, probably good marketing. Still evil.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-001-x/2012001/charts-graphiques/11629/cg00c-eng.htm