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There Is Class War, and Rich Are Winning
A University of Chicago law professor created a firestorm of controversy last month when he blogged that he and his wife are barely making ends meet with their $250,000-plus combined salaries.
The 80-year old billionaire said: “There’s class warfare, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Professor Todd Henderson was protesting President Obama’s plan
to let the George W. Bush tax cuts on income above $250,000 per
couple expire at the end of the year while extending the cuts for
everyone below that threshold.
Needless to say, the good professor didn’t get much sympathy. As well he shouldn’t.
The couple live in a nice house, send their kids to private schools, employ a nanny and a lawn caretaker plus have compiled a sizable retirement account. Lots of folks -- 97 percent of American taxpayers, in fact -- would love to be in that position and most probably wouldn’t mind paying the tax rate they were paying back in 2000 before the Supreme Court made George W. Bush the president.
Yet, thanks mainly to a united Republican minority in the U.S. Senate and a handful of nervous Democrats, Congress cannot bring itself to vote on Obama’s plan that would lock in the tax cuts for a huge percentage of the people and begin tackling the budget deficit by raising taxes on the rich. Republicans claim it is important to reduce the deficit yet hypocritically oppose the Democrats’ effort to do so by letting the Bush tax cuts expire for individual incomes above $200,000 a year and couples’ earnings over $250,000.
Everyone should get their tax cuts extended, insist Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, yet they offer no plan for how they would make up the $700 billion the treasury would lose over the next 10 years if the cuts for the upper echelon are allowed to continue.
Some insist that increasing taxes on the wealthy would hurt job creation in this economy, but that ignores the simple reality that the Bush cuts didn’t do a thing to help the economy the past several years. George Bush left office in 2009 with the number of working Americans essentially the same as it was when he took over in 2001 -- roughly 137 million -- and the economy in a shambles. During Bill Clinton’s eight years the tax rate on the top income bracket was increased, but millions more people went to work. By the end of his second term, the budget deficit had been essentially eliminated.
Perhaps it’s all coincidental, as many Republicans argue, but there is not any more proof that the GOP’s formula of lower taxes on the wealthy creates more jobs and spurs the economy than there is for the Democratic formula seeking to have the wealthy pay progressively more.
Besides, the rich should pay more because they get more from the government. All those Wall Street and S&L bailouts, the funding of regulatory agencies, and the public school training of workers aren’t services used by the middle and lower classes. There are some studies that have estimated that the tax breaks and services that benefit the wealthy add up to $400 billion a year, compared to the $116 billion spent on programs for the poor.
Class warfare?
One of the richest Americans, Warren Buffett, replies to that notion:
“There’s class warfare, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
As Richard Thaler, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed: “The question comes down to whether we want a society in which the rich take an ever-increasing share of the pie, or prefer to return to conditions that allow all classes to anticipate an increasing standard of living.
“Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief to others is simply elitist.”
But, hey, as his colleague professor Henderson pointed out, it’s tough getting by on $250,000 a year.
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121 Comments so far
Show AllDepends to a large extent, I suppose, on whether one equates coercion with violence. It's a lead pipe cinch that some form of coercion would be required as the 'elite' sure ain't gonna give up their privileges willingly and without major resistance -- very probably including violence on the part of their defending forces.
Even Gandhi wasn't the meek little pussy cat that he's sometimes portrayed as being and his 'passive resisters' weren't either. Furthermore, I don't think his opponents were nearly as tough as the current 'elite' powers. One thing is certain. The same system that creates and sustains the problem cannot possibly provide its solution.
People on the Left are not advocating violence, although claiming that they are is a common way to smear us and call for people to ignore and dismiss us.
People, such as yourself, who are advocating some sort of slow "changing hearts and minds" program, as though politics were about belief systems, are actually the ones advocating continuing violence by the ruling class, and are making violence more likely once the working class does start seriously fighting back and resisting.
You are arguing for surrender and calling that "peace," and dismissing self-defense and resistance and calling that "violence."
Maybe a comparison is worth making between revolutionary violence and counter-revolutionary violence. In the Great French Revolution that started in 1789, the much denounced "Terror" killed about 3,000 over period of about a year. In the revolution of 1871, aka, the Paris Commune, only 2 ("elites") were killed during an otherwise peaceful revolution. During the counter revolution, coming 2 months later, 29,000 men, women and children were gunned down in the streets of Paris in a 2 week period. The Bolshevik revolution was also largely bloodless, however, the counter-revolution led by the White Army and supported by many Western capitalist countries including the US, killed hundreds of thousands of Russian people.
This little history does not address at all the violence of past capitalist wars as well as the ongoing violence of US imperialist wars (overt and covert) to maintain US capital's global hegemony. There is also capitalism's everyday violence of poverty for billions of people, of worldwide environmental degradation leading to the violence of global climate disruption, of early death from a toxic environment or lack of basic healthcare, the violence of the overwhelming majority of the world's population never having a chance of reaching their potential...etc. etc.
So, Alan, let me ask you that famous hypothetical question: if you had the chance to kill Hitler (knowing what he would do) before he visited upon us the horrors of WWII, if you could have saved 60 million lives, would you have done it?
Maybe this will help you decide - just who's side are you on?
Tom, regarding your "famous hypothetical question: if you had the chance to kill Hitler (knowing what he would do) before he visited upon us the horrors of WWII, if you could have saved 60 million lives, would you have done it?"
Of course if I "knew what he would do", then killing him would be a no brainer.
But once we venture into killing people on a 'preemptive basis' (like Bush did, in bombing Iraq and killing tens of thousands because he 'dreamed' or 'guessed', as Kurt Vonnegut characterizes all arrogant insane elite throughout history of doing), then we put ourselves in the position, since we are not omniscient, of claiming to be omnipotent, and that is generally not a sustainable path forward.
However, a hypothetical question that I think makes more sense is to envision a simple choice to all people who are or want to live in America to determine whether they believe and function as 'democracy-thinkers' or 'empire-thinkers':
"Do you think that you are superior to others and should have more of everything?"
A question somewhat like Humphrey Bogart posed to Edward G. Robinson (as Johnny Rocco), "What's Rocco want? More".
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=221312
And if they answer yes, "I want more", then they would be faced with two doors, sort of like the "Lady and the Tiger". One door would go outside the American democratic Republic. Perhaps to St Andrews New Brunswick, British Empire territory, and they would be deported to an Empire. While the other door goes to American 'democracy -thinking'.
Anyway, Tom, that's how it could turn out in the movies.
Or it could turn out as it does in the Sydney Pollack/Redford film, "Havana", when Redford asks Raul Julia why the revolutionaries against the American corporate fascist stooge Batista "actually have to fight", and Julia answers, "They will not leave by asking NICELY".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NJw-oKHT1M&feature=related
If they (the ruling-elite) are not smart enough to leave when offered the 'nice' option of going to St Andrews, then, Tom, there might have to be more of what some CDers are suggesting.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
About killing Hitler, I was watching a new TV biography on History and it seems to me a small endowment to the Vienna Art Institute to take Hitler in and let him learn painting and art would have made all the difference. When he was turned away it crushed his soul, his words. So he turned to the only other skill he had, manipulating people.
It have been so much better if he'd been allowed to become an artist. He never would have been big but thats all he wanted. It's not too much to ask, to be able to fulfill your dreams. Or have them sour and turn dark and pull the world down with you?
>^^<
Alan, I would agree with you, though I also understand the sentiment that causes people to want to react in a violent way, as they do not see any other way out of the mess.
Personally, however, I feel that history should have taught us now that Empires Fall.
The problem is that all too often, as people in general were not prepared for the fall of the Empire, and the people had no experience in self-governance, they generally turn to "leadership" to whoever tells them what to do loudest. This is generally not a desirable long term outcome.
The question then becomes, as the Empire will Fall, what should we have in pace to prevent a situation that will allow something just as bad if not worse from rising into place?
The Walrus and the Carpenter.
I agree, somewhere around WWI when it changed to Fight along-with your King to "Fight for your King" (Wheres the King gonna be?)
>^^<
Buffet's comments prove that if you have enough money you can speak the truth and at least some part of the MSM/pop culture trash factory will pay attention. "Class warfare", the idea and the words themselves are strictly verboten, unless, in one of history's great ironies, you are a reactionary, pro-ruling elite class warrior. Then you use "class warfare" as a kind of empty bag into which you throw any effort to impose the least, little restraints on the absolute domination by capital of the entire world. But we are not allowed to speak the words or acknowledge their literal meaning or their logical intent. If we do, on TV, they won't call us back. If we do in college David Horowitz or some other virulent authoritarian sends out a squad and tries to get us fired. If we say it in the streets, sooner or later, the police come to move us along or round us up. So, I'm saying it online, but I am fairly certain that an army of sociopathic minions in one of America's vast array of "security" agencies is trolling for this stuff and logging it all somewhere.
Hi minions! Are you over the $250,000 income limit? Looks like you won't have to worry. Because we (98% of the population) will not be able to make "class war" on you. The Democratic Party is taking care of that. They're doing what they are paid to do and anyway you look at it, it won't harm you. As for the rest of you, shut up and get back to work violating the 1st, 4th and 10th amendments. Work shall make you free!
There certainly IS class warfare.
But it is being waged from the top down.
All the body bags are stacking up on the poor and getting poorer side.
Real Class Warfare with the other side pushing back?
France, 1789 to 1799
Why look that far back?
Same city, May, 1968.
A better test would be the last Watts riots, where the poor-fools were buring their own homes and neighborhoods when the elite were a good walk up the hill in Beverly-Hills.
More like; Let them eat each other!
>^^<
Bush's tax cuts were to bribe the public into accepting his long long war.
If the public becomes aware of how the war economy has worked for us, maybe the pain of higher taxes will shock the public into rethinking this long long war since debt is how they screw us.
something that this article failed to mention is that Buffet made the quoted "we are winning" remarks about 10 years ago.
I stumbled across a discussion on this whining professor on a job board. The blogger was flummoxed as to why lawyers did not have a "tea party" protesting the expiration of the 250K+ tax cuts.
http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/2010/10/lawyers-tea-party.html
The discussion re: the high price of Manhattan penthouses really brought a tear to my eye.
Remember how the Republicants kept the cost of the tax cuts below some legislative restraint on the budget by having them expire?
If I recall correctly they would have been illegal without the cutoff.
So if they're extended will they be retroactively illegal?
This article utters a phrase I have been longing to hear:
"RAISE TAXES on the RICH"
YES!!!!
Let us hear that over and over, and ACT upon it. Now there's a populist stance for progressives to seize!!!
"RAISE TAXES ON THE SUPER WEALTHY" - YES!!!!!!
Now that is a campaign slogan to take you far!!!
Many people don't know that US income tax rates for the super-wealthy were at in the 50-70% range (and higher for super-wealthy corporations) all through the 1950's-1970's. The Reagan and Co. brought them down down down....
"RAISE TAXES on the SUPER RICH" to 1970 levels!!!!!!
YES!!!!
the top margin rate was 70% through the 1970's In the good times of 1950's to 1960's, the top marginal rate was 91 percent.
You're right, income taxes on the wealthiest were 91% all the way through 1963! See US income tax chart: http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html And it was "good times" economically for many Americans during that period.
Spread the news and repeat and repeat and repeat (and maybe get elected):
*** "BRING BACK HIGH TAXES FOR THE SUPER RICH"!!!" ****
Amen!!!
how about having own public currency
edweg
That'll get you killed.
the (colonial scrip) American Revolution, Lincoln (greenbacks), JFK (Executive Order 11110)...
Some cities have instituted a syttem of informal local curency. The Ithaca Hour is one that I'm familiar with.
"Some insist that increasing taxes on the wealthy would hurt job creation in this economy"--this IS getting tiresome. The wealthy are NOT going to create more jobs, at least those that can adequately support workers. Better for the government to tax the wealthy (who are precisely rich because of their exploitation of the workers) so that jobs can be created by the federal government with this extra revenue in direct competition with the exploiting class. Also, the plug needs to be pulled on the war machine which destroys the lives of so many working class and poor people while simultaneously forcing them to pay for these wars through the higher taxes they pay. It is old news that the only job creation which has been going strong is in the military.
next you gonna argue sky is not green , cheers
edweg
Right you are. We have a perfect illustration during the last few years. We cut taxes on the rich and lost jobs. Just the facts, ma'am.
Joe
I have two comments: The title of this piece should be "There Was a Class War and the Rich Won" and my very long standing view that the rich should pay a greater proportion of their earnings in taxes because they are successfully "hunting" in the greatest business/game preserve in the world. Or, in effect, dining in the world's greatest fine restaurant, as you will.
Interesting article, but a bit superficial and not nearly as enlightening as the comments on this post.
I listened to Robert Reich talk about the wealth inequality in America today and it mirrors the exact kind of causes and conditions that produced the Great Depression....should be no surprise to most of you all. But what I find absolutely fascinating is the precise data compiled from the studies of IRS information/tax returns from the period just prior to the Crash and recent data prior to 2007. What is so amazing is that just prior to '29, the wealthiest 1% had garnered 23% of the wealth and just recently, that same ratio of wealth is once again concentrated in the top 1%.....then comes the crash. Mere coincidence or deliberate creation/manipulation? Well, there's always a tipping point when the lifeboats of the Titanic get swamped and the rich sink with the poor.
Reich made the point that it is in the best interest of the wealthy to share the wealth just as it is in the best interest of the poor and ripped off workers to have an honest chance to get a decent job or earn a viable and honest wage. Regardless of the size of one's bank account(s), without economic and social justice there will be no peace and that will affect the profits of any company.
I agree with some of the other posters here that violent revolution will not bring about the desirable changes that we need or want. But civil disobedience; divestment in businesses that promote warfare for profits and other non- sustainable industries that pollute the environment and disenfranchise workers; taking your money out of the bloodsucking financial industry: and the reinvestment in socially conscientious businesses that put people before profits can and will have a positive impact and improve our society. There are many other advocates such as Catherine Austin Fitts, Robert Reich, Johann Galtan, and many others who have talked about this opportunity.
This is not a time to get resentful, become cynical and pessimistic.....this is not the '30's although the pattern may seem the same. We must push for a Newer Deal, screw the Tea Baggers, the Repubs and the spineless Dems, put your money where it does the greatest good and encourage others to educate themselves about alternatives to the "acquisition by dispossession" that is the current mode of wealth acquisition. Support enlightened candidates running for office ( I know, it's a challenge), get out and vote, and get active in countering the blathering noise of the Fox network clowns. As one of the other posters here pointed out...the solution to this problem can't possibly be found within the same system that created it. That means we all have a great deal of work ahead of us.
Isn't it about time to read Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto"? That will tell you about class struggle and warfare among the classes.
To illustrate how times have changed:
In the 70s, I had a friend who flew a C-141 (USAF, Pilot), from California to Vietnam during the War.
I recall a time he appeared bleary-eyed, and pissed.
A few days before, he had been awakened in the very early morning hours, with orders to report at once, to carry out an emergency cargo flight to Saigon.
He took along Mao’s LITTLE RED BOOK to read during the long flight.
He found out upon arrival that he was carrying a supply of mostly Dixie Cups for the Officers.
He wondered why they couldn’t have allowed him to ‘sleep-in’. That lack of ‘Patriotism’ would no doubt get him in trouble today. Besides, he used a vocabulary that is no longer allowed at the Air Force Academy.
I sometime wonder if it was because of people like him that we lost the war.
Never. He did his duty.
Dixie Cups lost the war.
Wishful thinking.
At any rate, to pursue my suggestion, I would also recommend reading Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book." But Karl Marx is more important.
And, of course, John Perkins's "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," a book that gives an inside view into the mechanics of the economic warfare that the U.S. has been waging for decades against third world countries.
This economic warfare is related to the class situation in the United States in that it was able to hold domestic class antagonisms at bay for a few decades. But now that the global economic system is wobbling, the chickens are coming home to roost, and class conflicts are flaring up again in the homeland.
I'm sure all this economic collapse stuff (and the inevitable peasant revolt) came as a total surprise to the elites. I mean, there's probably zero chance that any insiders in global finance saw it coming as far back as, say, August of 2001. And all the chips that have fallen into place to suppress that peasant rebellion, and to 'take a spoil' were just happenstance. Right?
That is forbidden.
"There's class warfare, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
Of course they are winning because we are so stupid! We playing THERE GAME... you know MONOPOLY. The game is rigged! When you are on start field as new born, during your live you'll come soon to realization that all the properties are already sold. They've build like crazy hotels over hotels, villas over villas; even worse, they also own all the train stations and the utilities as well. Good luck making the round but mabe you make it on the community field. Ups, you need a severn. At least there is one safe place, the prison. Could this be why America has the biggest prison population in the world? Nobody seams to get it...
STOP USING MONEY IDIOTS! We don't need it!
Forget Buffy, the richest man in the world is linked below, and is my favorite capitalist (I know it is blasphemy to say that, but he is the least evil capitalist in his class, he makes Buffy look like an... well you fill the blank)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvar_Kamprad
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - fünf - 8 – 19 – 138 – 339 – 500 – 1,666 - 2,700.
Some say, a lone, crazed guillotine-man, yet to be certified nut-case individual, would not pose a feasible threat to our financial ‘leaders’ and their Whores; yet, I know this guy, who lost his job with Homeland Security - and, who like the Germans believes (erroneously, of course) that the Banksters have always been the problem.
He looks pretty fucking nuts to me; I sometimes worry that our have and have-more fellow Americans Patriots might be unable to control their 'troops' when the blade hits the tan.
(I mean, this guy looks pretty menacing. Anyone who can lug around a 88-pound guillotine blade all day could cause some trouble; or, he could sell-out and run for governor of California.)
Perhaps, now that Warren Buffet has realized at the age of 80 that his class of super rich are warring on humankind and directly or indirectly financing the mass killing of millions of humans, then he should finance a revolution for economic justice around the world. It wouldn't harm also if he commisioned a few Guillotines, and open air song and understanding concerts on the French Revolution. There is absolutely no humane reason why billionaires who steal food from babes have any right to life.
One public example of prompt dispatch of the most fiendish of the lot to the Netherworld will put the fear of god in the rest. Thus they will circulate money at a fair price rather than hoarding it as they are doing right now and limiting economic opportunity for billions of humans.
My My, I am "shocked" by your opinion here after reading your opine that the gentleman in TN deserved to have his house burn down. But then again, you are one of those all too common people who say one thing when it pertains to others and the opposite when it's about you. Based on your own opinion, you should realize that you are not worthy of wealth or power because you did something wrong somewhere along the line. Suck it up
I don't know if they are winning. They certainly are the agressors.
Yes, that's a very good point.
In the long run, the tiny minority of haves is losing as much as everyone else, since large-scale industrialism, if left unchecked, will destroy most life on Earth. The fact that the haves are plundering the coffers of the State and decimating the middle class and further impoverishing the lower class will not help with the ecological crisis since it deprives people of means to act in the face of the crisis and its long-term consequences.
This started with "Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad" and ended with the Roberts Court.
Furthermore, most people who have a taxable income of, say, $200,000 make significantly more than that before deductions.
People need to quit comparing gross income to the amount under discussion.
Even if Joe the Plumber finds a gig paying $200,000 per year, he'll probably come out claiming less than that after he deducts his personal deduction, home mortgage interest, etc.
After reading the post & the 58 (so far) comments to it, what stands out in my mind is RV's "The same system that created the problem can't possibly provide the solution" What's missing from this thread? A sense of urgency for the creation of a mass popular movement to defeat Empire/create a better world. Urgency, because perpertual wars + global warming = doomsday, and time's running out.
Yourstruly, you are right in saying there is a pressing need for a "sense of urgency for the creation of a mass popular movement to defeat Empire"
Such a global peoples' ANTI-EMPIRE Movement has been founded by Kevin Zeese and Ralph Nader ---- join it, and tell all you know to do the same --- then it will become as broad as the Anti-Empire League in the Progressive Era.
The other thing to be done is the development of a UC Berkeley School of AntiEmpire Studies.
Alan MacDonadl
Sanford, Maine
Through out history this is how revolutions have sprung forth, the powerfuls parinoid facinations lead them to trample on the needs of the middle and lower class to the point that the only recourse is to strike at the oppressor. Many will say this is only tripe, but it is true, history tends to repeat itself. The lower class will rise up at some point and demand justice, as an older person I don't know if I'll be around to see this glorious happening. Thats my aonly reget, but continue to keep the faith and organize.
There is a new, very recent long interview given by JOHN PERKINS...former CIA "Economic hitman".
he barged right into the billionaires and very rich , naming names, liek Bill Gates, Buffet etc...
criticizing their so-called "philanthropy" by saying (paraphrase)...
"if these billionaires and very rich folks find late in life that they want to share their wealth ..perhaps having realized and having a change of heart that at least partly..their own wealthmaking may have caused loss to so many....why then did they not just do things in a way that did NOT result in so much suffering to many?"
you can find it in Alternet.org
another MUST READ from John Perkins.
another good question that will never be answered by the overlords.
I normally watch Law & Order: SVU. It's the new season right now. Last night I had nightmares after it, and fear, and a lot of anger. If you didn't see it, you should go to the NBC website or Hulu and I'm sure you could watch it for free.
What made me angry, you ask? Well, it has not been uncommon for comments to be made at the end of a particularly-compelling SVU for a comment to made on the subject matter just viewed.
Last night's episode had to do with a family becoming homeless -- father and four kids -- after his wife died from cancer and they lost their home due to the medical bills. They were living out of an old station wagon, and the story goes on from there and deals with another very tragic issue that apparently occurs daily where I live on Long Island: human trafficking and vicious abuse, and often killing, of, not illegal kids, but poor kids (whatever their color), who start out as cheap labor on small farms (I've been typing all night, so if you're interested in more, like I said, watch the episode).
NBC had touted this episode as being explosive, very important. They should have added painful and terrifying, because millions of us are one serious illness and/or one lost job away from this plight.
What added to the pain was the Obama's smiling mug coming on a couple of seconds after the close of the show doing the "The More You Know" spot (you know, the one that celebrities on the various shows do) I don't even remember what he said, but it sure has heck wasn't about health care or human trafficking, or my ears would have perked up. Seeing the face of Obama after a show with this subject matter, a man whose HCR will not address any of these issues, was a really sick joke.
gotta give it to buffett. he's at least honest about the reality.
actor jack nicholson some years ago said to an interviewer who apparently asked why he wasn't politically active,
"let me know when majority of the people are serious about change."
one can relate to his bitterness, as one can only take the donkey to the river but can never make the donkey drink the water until it is thirsty enough.
The wealthy know all about class warfare - they have to, in order to successfully wage it. Most minority people and blue collar working class people know it, as well. It is only a small percentage of the population that denies it - the so-called "middle class" of educated and successful people in white collar professions. Denying class struggle is what they are paid for doing, no matter their specialty, it is why they are allowed to be "middle class," and as soon as they rock that boat they are out on their ears - ostracized, banned from the better neighborhoods, at risk of losing their professional careers or management jobs. Unfortunately, but not accidentally, it is people from that group who dominate and control the political discussion, especially including the discussion among liberals and progressives.
The wealthy are not afraid to talk about class warfare. Most of the working class people already know about it, but are powerless. The ones who deny it, the apologists for the ruling class - the liberals and progressives - are safely in the fold and thoroughly indoctrinated into their role and their comfort and status and security depend upon staying in that role, so they are no danger to the ruling class.