I’m tired of hearing people on the right talk about class warfare and people envying success and hating capitalism and all that nonsense. I’ve run a progressive website for seven years and I’ve read a ton of progressive comments and opinions. There are always a couple of people who want to cap income or radically redistribute wealth, but they make up about two percent of the American left. The other 98% don’t have any problem with Bill Gates or Steve Jobs making a cajiillion dollars. If you made a ton of money, that’s great. Good for you. You want to buy a fancy car and seven or eight homes? Fantastic.
What people overwhelmingly object to is the idea that we need to balance our budget by cutting our Social Security benefits or our Medicare benefits or entirely by cutting programs that help people in need or that help people get ahead. Federal, state, and local income taxes haven’t been this low since Harry Truman was president. I’m not kidding about that. They went up because of the Korean War.
Now, maybe you think the government is doing too much and you’d like to see some programs eliminated. I can understand that. But back in 1950, we didn’t have an interstate highway system yet. NASA lay eight years in the future. The National Security Agency (NSA) did not yet exist. Medicare hadn’t been created. Almost no government offices had computers. The Food and Drug Administration was too pitiful to prevent things like the thalidomide tragedy. We had no Environment Protection Agency. I could go on listing many more ways in which we all are benefiting from the federal government doing more than it was doing in 1950, but my point is that we really should expect to be paying more in income taxes today than Americans were paying in 1950, but we are not.
If you want to argue that we don’t need some program or that some benefit is too generous or that some perverse incentive is created by a poorly constructed law, then more power to you. But don’t tell me that we need to raise the retirement age because we can’t afford to pay for Social Security.
Just two days ago, Business Insider reported that corporate profits are at an all-time high while wages are at an all-time low. Do you think maybe people ought to get paid a little more money or should we cut taxes on corporations some more and let the wage-starved middle class pick up the difference?
Here’s a little factoid about the results of the Reagan Revolution:
The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay between CEOs of the S&P 500 Index companies and U.S. workers widened to 380 times in 2011 from 343 times in 2010. Back in 1980, the average large company CEO only received 42 times the average worker’s pay.
Did you get rich because you sold a billion personal computers or did you get rich because you paid yourself 380 times what the average America worker earns? Why are CEO’s making nine times more money than they did, relative to average workers, in 1980?
And, hey, maybe people on the left wouldn’t be too concerned about all that extra pay if average workers were doing great, too. But people on the right are coming after our earned benefits with a meat cleaver. They’re telling us that our government can’t afford to keep its promises. And they’re telling the poor to drop dead. We try in make sure people have access to health care, and the right tries to take that away.
So, this isn’t about class envy or caring that someone has nice things that we can’t afford. It’s about a sustained period of U.S. history during which rich people changed the game so that they could keep more of their money and we would all lose out on the things our parents enjoyed.
You can talk all you want about the effects of globalization or the expense of an aging population, but if rich people paid taxes at the rate they paid them before 1980, we wouldn’t have any budget problems at all. So, rich people have three choices. They can pay more in taxes; they can stop trying to gut programs and benefits for the poor and middle class; or they can continue to have people say nasty things about them.
And, you know, if you made your money by inflating the housing bubble or by doing leveraged buy-outs, people are going keep hating you no matter what you do.
Alternate headline: “Stop Whining About Taxes, You Crybabies.”
that’s not strong enough.
I could handle whining about taxes if it wasn’t accompanied by demands that balance the budget entirely on the backs of working people and the poor. It’s the combination of those two things that I find appalling.
And the whining I can’t stand is about people being mean to rich assholes on the right.
See, that’s what I always hear when Republicans gripe about taxes. “Make THEM pay for it, not me.”
Well, I hear that and ye olde “Fuck you I’ve got mine,” too.
I completely agree with your post tonight, Booman. It’s what I yell about all the time.
Ding. Perzactly.
BTW, we have 16 intelligence agencies in the federal “intelligence community” — all sprung from the WWII OSS, which didn’t exist before the war.
Not to mention the tax subsidies of fossil fuel, highways (fossil fuel), airports (fossil fuel), and military adventures in Middle East (fossil fuel). Koch Industries taps every one of those and the National Forest Service as well (for Georgia-Pacific).
If you want to talk about eliminating agencies, there are bunches of Department of Commerce and Department of Agriculture programs that could go.
And then there is the nuclear program of the Department of Energy, the mine non-regulation of the Department of the Interior, and all of below-market-rate leases of public lands in the western red states.
Willard and his wealthy wife want all of us to wallow in pity because their dancing horse caused them to lose $7k, which they deducted from their taxes.
Of course, there is more to the story, specifically that their dressage horse became crippled or lame, or some similar malady, so they sold it for a loss. But then there are some triffling details, such as the inconvenient fact that veterinary blood samples show that their dancing horse had been doped with a cornucopia of drugs to mask the fact that it had become lame and otherwise unable to dance on command as required prior to it’s sale. So, the obvious explanation is that they had their poor lame horse doped up to sell at a higher price than it would otherwise bring. That’s how Willard does business.
In a way, we the public are also just like the unwitting buyers of a lame horse when the Rmoneys took a $7K deduction on their taxes when they doped up their horse to fleece a buyer at an inflated price.
I see a pattern in Willard’s behavior which augers poorly should he ever again hold public office. It is indicative of a sociopathic personality.
As much as I despise Romney and all he stands for, I feel compelled by fairness to partially defend Ann in this. I’ve read up on the case as much as possible, and from that, and what I know of the horse world (quite a lot), it appears to me that her longtime trainer and the horse’s vet were more likely responsible for the pain-masking drugs that fooled the purchaser’s vet in judging the horse’s soundness. I doubt they briefed Ann on every detail of the scheme; from what I’ve read it appears that Jan Ebeling, the German-born trainer, is a typical Teutonic dressage control freak and dominates his clients. He’s far more likely to dictate what will be and only tell her what he thinks she needs to know.
I could, of course, be wrong. But everything I’ve read on it points that way.
Oh, and you could riposte that hiring that kind of person says something about the Romneys; but I gotta tell ya, the upper echelons of dressage are chockful of control-freak Europeans (and Americans), not to mention drugging, abusive training, and lame horse selling. Even nonabusive training takes years and is physically tough on the horses.
Thanks for the informed opinion and insight into the dressage world of Ann Romney.
It seems clear that there was a fraud committed by the Romney/Ebeling team which sold a lame horse whose condition was hidden by a cocktail of drugs. The buyer sued, and was apparently paid off by the Romney/Ebeling team. The degree of involvement by the Romneys in the drugging of the horse is not public knowledge, however, the trainer, Ebeling and the Romneys are still partners and have another dressage horse with which they are continuing to compete. This leads me to believe that the Romneys are not so shocked by the horse drugging scandal that they terminated their relationship with Ebeling. Why that might be is a curiousity.
Well, I’ll tell you what, Booman: I constitute that 2%, but it wasn’t always that way. These asshole rich fuckers have radicalized my opinions, drastically. So blame them.
The reason for the huge increase in inequality is the death of the social democratic parties in Europe and new deal Democrats in the USA. They’re all “third way” centrists now. And the reason for their decline is even more disconcerting: it is the defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. After that, western elites had no more reason to fear “Socialist revolution”. They had no more reason to play nice to the masses or buy off the trade unions. Now capitalism could be red in tooth and claw without fear of the consequences.
There is a class war in Western societies: it had been fought and comprehensively won by the ruling elites who have globalised their capital and infantilised national democracies. Now any idiot with money has power handed to them, and their wealth is, ipso facto, their self justification as a “success”. I don’t have a problem with a Steve Jobs making a fortune. I do have a problem with them and their corporations not paying their taxes and breaking all manner of human rights laws in their Chinese factories.
But what I have the biggest problem with is the infantilisation of the left: The notion that ou can defeat the global financial elite without a class war. Do they think the rich are simply going to start playing fair out of their generous natures? Do they think democracy itself was established without a fight? The problem is we have a Left which can be bought off for a song. The wealthy do what they have always done. It is the lack of any moral fibre that has destroyed the so called left.
great points- particularly the “socialist revolution” nonsense. However, the powers that be have attempted to replace the “commie threat” baloney with “Islamic terrorist/fundamentalist” propaganda, but it hasn’t worked as well.
I suspect after fifty years of anti communist propaganda, the citizenry has “evil threat” fatigue. they just don’t buy it anymore.
Very well said; your entire last paragraph should be plastered all over progressive Bloggo world.
The other problem is time-frame. many progressives think we’ve got 25-30 years to solve our problems. Try 2-5 years, tops. the reason we’re out of time is because we’ve allowed the bullcrap to go on too long.
Progressives seem content wasting time with the daily, Orwellian “Two Minutes Hate” partisanship– which is also embraced by the reich wing. the whole thing is pointless and is getting us nowhere. ZERO.
Ditto what seabe said. I’ll bring the pitchforks if you bring the torches.
Fallows had a piece in The Atlantic yesterday that was originally titled “5 Signs the United States is Undergoing a Coup.” He changed it, probably due to complaints from on high. But the original title was exactly right. And if Romney wins and brings the House and senate along with him I truly think the game is over. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/5-signs-of-a-radical-change-in-us-politics/25890
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Hey Booman:
Here is an Idea form you, send this to the Democratic National Committee. They obviously need help articulating the Democratic message. You just provided it, concise, to the point and complete with short factoids. Get too deep into it and you lose folks. Nice job Boo!
Agreed. our system is totally unfair and absurd. when that happens, the system loses credibility and won’t survive long term– I suspect this is why fifty percent of eligible voters don’t vote.
Problem: Conservatives are not actually fiscally conservative. bush started an entire new federal department (Homeland Security) which which costs us how much per year? and two unfunded wars of choice cranked up under bush. we finally just left Iraq, but according to Panetta, we’re not leaving Afghanistan.
and now we have a troop build up in Kuwait, and bases around Kuwait, to the tune of 40,000 troops.
We have Billions in legacy health care costs for our military personnel injured in these fiascos, tons of PTSD, etc.
check this; TWO billionaires in Wisonsin paid ZERO taxes in 2010.
I agree, people should be allowed to make as much money as they want– but they cannot be allowed to evade their tax responsibilities.
Again, congress = FAIL on this one, because they refuse to revise the laws to close all of the loopholes, deferrments, etc.
http://www.jsonline.com/business/2-wisconsin-billionaires-enjoy-state-income-taxfree-years-k95sagh-1
60131345.html
This is a great post, and thank you for spelling out exactly what bothers so many of us. I don’t begrudge people their millions if they’ve worked for it and earned it fairly. But with great fortune should come great responsibility, and a fair tax to be paid. I resent the knee-jerk response from Republicans to complaints about the 1% that we, the 99% are just jealous, or that we don’t work as hard or aren’t as intelligent as those pulling down the massive money.
A level playing field isn’t even close anymore; that’s so far in the rear view mirror that it’s a dot on the horizon. It would be nice to have some balance, though.
Wow! I can’t imagine that you wrote this, Booman. It’s so so … Left!
But count me in the 2% for one reason. Money isn’t speech. Money is power. And in a democratic society, the maximum power of any individual must be limited. Even those that had the “spark of genius” and created whole industries should have a limit to their remuneration. Beyond some point all possible pleasures that money can buy are exceeded and more money can only be used as power to crush opposition whether business rivals or political enemies.
Even Warren Buffett conceded that with security measures, taxes, necessary expenses to protect and preserve capital, he just couldn’t find any way to spend more than $117 million. And Buffett does earn his money by risking his money. My real objection is to vampires like Jamie Dimon that are just employees that are raiding their employers, the stockholders, and often violating their duty to act in the stockholders’ interests instead of their own interests.