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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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The Limbaugh bit was specifically "Screw-ells" based on the claim that big-name schools were screwing over their customers/students by encouraging them to take on increasingly unrecoverable amounts of debt. He also coined the "you'll own nothing, and you'll like it" line years before software as a service became a thing.

He also coined the "you'll own nothing, and you'll like it" line years before software as a service became a thing.

Do you have a link? "You'll own nothing and be happy" is from a 2016 WEF video based on an essay by Danish politician Ida Auken (which went viral in part because it did not make clear that the future depicted wasn't nessesarily supposed to be desirable). If Limbaugh had a similar line before, that implies that either the video creator got it from him (directly or indirectly) or that they coincidentally used a very similar phrase.

Do you have a link?

Not on hand, but I'll see if I can dig something up as I distinctly remember it being a thing within the right wing/tea party blog/talk-radio sphere during the whole "Life of Julia" kerfuffle circa 2012 or so.

That said, and not knowing otherwise, I strongly suspect Auken's statement is a case of either coincidental infection or convergent evolution. IE different people describing the same thing similarly.

I'm sure I remember a sentiment like it in one of the utopian satires I read as a teen. Erewhon maybe? Also it's a natural extension of communist expectations.