Quote:
Originally Posted by Kael
This is primarily a Straw Man, wherein the rhetorician sets up an argument that only superficially resembles the views of the opponents, differing in ways usually intentionally chosen to make the argument weaker. Attacking this new, fabricated, weaker position will be, the perpetrator hopes, viewed by the audience as a successful attack on the actual positions held by the opponent.
There is also a dash of a particular rhetorical tactic whose official label, if it has one, I am not familiar with. It is similar to reduction to absurdity, only instead of actually stating what would result in the absurdity, the position itself is simply stated with an attitude of absurdity, as though both the fact of and the reason for the absurdity is obvious and unquestionable. This particular use is intensely amusing to me, since the statement meant to seem absurd on the face of it (10% raise every year) is exactly the kind of absurdity that Capitalism relies on; only instead of wages growing indefinitely and without limit, it's wealth, profits, and productivity! But obviously expecting wages to keep up with the same growth expected in every other aspect of the economy is just absurd! Silly liberals, perpetual growth in wealth and productivity is for owners, not peasants…
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Considering as well that the straw man of everyone working for the government is belied by the reality that the government sector has been dropping jobs for the majority of the current administration.