No, I'm not talking about the Tea Partiers. I'm talking about the rich.
These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can't find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they'll never work again.
Yet if you want to find real political rage - the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason - you won't find it among these suffering Americans. You'll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don't have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.
The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled "The Wail Of the 1%," it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses. When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.
Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts - will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? - the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character.
For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It's one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It's another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, "anticolonialist" agenda, that "the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s." When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.
At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable.
Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.
These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts don't really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class - the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.
And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it's their money, and they have the right to keep it. "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," said Oliver Wendell Holmes - but that was a long time ago.
The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world's luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.
You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It's partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it's also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain - feel it much more acutely, it's clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.
And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they'll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.
But when they say "we," they mean "you." Sacrifice is for the little people.
Reader Comments
The working class has been making sacrifices since Kennedy was assassinated. Wages have gone down relative to inflation, working more hours, and less protection by having unions. Also, a lot more dependence on credit to pay the bills, which is a modern form of indentured servitude to the banks.
There was a severe shift from measuring prosperity by looking at how Main St. was doing to looking at how the casino we call the stock market is doing. Funny when they look at the GDP per capita as a measure of prosperity as the small group that owns more than half the wealth artificially inflates it.
Michael Moore explained it well in his Capitalism, A Love Story movie when he said, what good is democracy, when there is no democracy in the economy!
How sad that those that own most of the world; that have institutionally enslaved the middle class and the poor; that promote the death of 40,000 plus people without healthcare in the US and millions more with inadequate coverage; perpetual war and torture; and force predatory, psycho-pathological practices on all governments and peoples, how sad they are angry, NOT.
For those that think we have a democracy and that 'the people' even exist in the reptilian minds of the rich and narcissistic, are having poisoned tea with whatever party they are affiliated.
The only sacrifices that are being made by the plutocracy are in the temples of commerce where the fires are stoked with the lives of middle class and the poor.
The prostituted political pundits have bent over to be repeatedly willingly violated in the senate and house of ill repute. They don’t feel the pain of mere mortals, yet they inflict pain with whips and chains of lies, propaganda and constrictive intransigence.
The rich and their evil empires will always fight the tax war as long as they are paying taxes. In their minds, They are really not citizens of the US or any other country, so they show rabid disdain for any measure of filial connection with others that do not share their in-breeding.
How sad for us all!
That is the standard in political speech. When the politicians say "we" in terms of reaping rewards. They mean the rich. When they say "we" when it comes to sacrifice. They mean the poor and middle class.