Harold Meyerson has another excellent, albeit long, think piece in the American Prospect that is worth reading in it’s entirety. The thrust of the argument is well known. FDR was, like a certain other recent President, supported by big business and brought in largely as a result of the disastrous predecessor he had. Over time though, he realized these tepid remedies weren’t actually putting people back to work. He then, unlike a certain recent President, pushed through the largest expansion of government assistance, government jobs, and government regulation ever passed before or since (with maybe the exception of The Great Society). And FDR was unafraid to call out his opposition for the class war they were waging. As Meyerson notes:
On the election’s eve, secure in the knowledge that he was about to win an overwhelming victory, Roosevelt struck back. In an address, broadcast on national radio, to a screaming crowd at Madison Square Garden, FDR singled out “business and financial monopoly, speculation, [and] reckless banking” as enemies of social peace. “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob,” he continued. “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”
He goes on to note that no Democrat, before or since, had to contend with a similar economic situation, and could enjoy the Fordist/New Deal consensus for the next four decades. Then came Reagan, the rise of the Reagan Democrat, and the cultural divisions that tore a party apart-a party still largely defined by that economic consensus.
Now of course, we have lost the Southern wing entirely to the GOP (and for the most part, good riddance!) and have a party totally unified in support of choice, marriage equality, and racial harmony. We also have a more diverse and growing coalition than our opponents. Yet we keep electing triangulators, who, be they union busting technocrats like Andrew Cuomo, or ostensible progressive addicted to the Big Money Big Business can net campaign accounts (a certain recent President and Secretary of State come to mind). Meyerson’s solution is to double back against regressive trade initiatives, work outside the party in alliance with labor or other groups (like the Socialist Seattle Councilor who got a highest minimum wage passed, or the labor alliance that elected a new city council in LA, or a certain local Mayor in Boston). It’s not just good politics, but good policy, the only way we can regain a near permanent majority is by winning it over.
How this conflict affects the 2016 presidential race, the more-likely-than-not Hillary Clinton presidency, and the larger future of the Democratic Party remains to be seen. Despite its demographic advantages, the party cannot indefinitely retain its electoral edge if it fails to address the falling power and income of ordinary Americans—even if such policies cost the party the backing of financial elites at a time when elections are more driven by money than ever before. It’s time for Democrats to disenthrall themselves from their routine conciliation of interests that have become profoundly opposed. It’s time for them to welcome more hatred from the successors to Roosevelt’s forces of selfishness. Harder choices than those Clinton chronicles in her new book await them.
They just use racial, cultural & religious biases to get poor voters to vote with the interests of the 1%. See:
What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
See: Cuomo, Andrew. He has a free pass to fight unions, cut corporate taxes, stop banking regulations, stymie De Blasio-because he got strict gun control, marriage equality, and abortion rights passed in the New York legislature.
Tom Frank is an entertaining writer, but he’s just wrong. Poor people vote in their economic interest everywhere, it’s only rich people in rich states that ‘betray’ their class. Everyone should read Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State and throw out your copy of What’s the Matter with Kansas and your back issues of the Baffler.
Gelman has, for example, a chart (p. 8) purporting to show that support for George W. Bush in 2004 went up as you go up the income ladder. All well and good. But the point at which Bush hit 50% was at income around $50K. He had 40% support at about the $25K level. There’s no way a candidate like George W. Bush should be getting 40 to 50% of votes in the $25K-50K range.
Likewise, after Bush’s complete debacle, John McCain got about 40% of voters Gelman deemed “poor” (p. 13, no clue about the numbers he used for that) in Conn. and Ohio, closer to 50% in Mississippi. Considering that many “poor” in Mississippi are black, and voted over 90% for Obama, the percentage off poor whites in Mississippi voting for McCain must be huge. Similar phenomenon even here.
Bottom line: nearly half of “poor” people voting Republican in presidential races, which would not be happening were we winning the debate on economic issues. In my experience these people were lost long ago based on cultural issues and, since then, have been enveloped in a right-leaning world where any liberal positions on economics are viewed with suspicion if not hostility. God knows I’ve seen it knocking on doors in various communities in Massachusetts.
Certainly, in Conn. or Mass. the well-off are more likely to vote Democratic, which isn’t happening much in Mississippi or (sorry, Tom) Kansas, but I don’t know how important that is in the big picture.
I know Frank’s book was somewhat debunked, but I live in a working class town where many people are employed by the government as police, nurses, and correction officers. Their careers and benefits, particularly after retirement, would be much safer if they supported more progressive taxation and historically, fewer tax cuts. But they don’t. I know others who don’t make very much money who are staunch Republicans, not because it’s in their best interests, but because they hate the programs that they think are in THOSE PEOPLE’S best interests.
People don’t always vote their interests because they don’t know their best interests. They also need to be disaggregated. There’s a large amount of diversity amount classes.
I will say that Thomas Frank is a good polemicist.
It’s amazing how many Republican arguments I hear in a room full of unionized public school teachers.
Was wrong in terms of suggesting that the top group vote Democratic more than they vote Republican. Although plenty of former Rockefeller Republicans feel comfortable in today’s Democratic Party. He was right that too many low-income people vote Republican. Given that today’s GOP is working to create a pre-FDR America, they should get 1936-level support among working folk. That they’re not I ascribe to the success of the GOP in wooing them and the failure of the Dems, especially since Clinton, to advocate their interests well.
GOP success here I’d lay at the Reagan strategy of seeming just-folks and painting Dems as Harvard and San Francisco elites. David Brooks, who is not sincere, has built a career on apologizing for the snobs in his “class,” whom he defines as liberal. A useful polemic approach, but one that adopts the real “error” of Thomas Frank. Most top 2% people are not liberal. For every Duck Dynasty guy the GOP has 10 Mitt Romney clones. We all know Mitt Romney doesn’t like Nascar or Skynryd whatever David Brooks likes to claim.
I think we have to bear in mind that Fox News and talk radio are the primary source of “information” (much of false) that this segment relies on.
Global warming is just one of a multitude of subjects where the various right-wing media outlets actively lie. Given the power of television (especially) to sway attitudes, we should not be surprised that the lies and disinformation of Fox News and talk radio are effective at moving public opinion.
It’s not like those are the only available sources of info. They choose to watch Fox and listen to radio. It seems those sources work because people tune in to get their pre-existing opinions confirmed.
The “fairness doctrine” stopped (or at least reduced) this for decades before the GOP dismantled it. Broadcast channels are still a restricted public resource that is perfectly appropriate for government to regulate.
The fairness doctrine could and should be re-instated.
…though Fox News is cable and I’m not sure how the satellite radio stations come into play.
There is still limited bandwidth, and channel assignments must still be allocated by government authority.
But I think we need another term.
Another term of Warren in the Senate, so she shouldn’t run (notice the post doesn’t endorse her as a candidate), or another term for the Democrats in the White House, so we shouldn’t be running as populists?
Or did you mean something else entirely?
It works as an insult, but I’m not sure it works as a rallying cry.
We HAVE to reclaim liberal, it’s what we are.
Liberals fight for the working class, bemoan the fat cats, fight bad trade deals, and focus on improving government so it can serve more people. How is that not fighting for the interests of one class (the 1%) over those of another (the 99%)? Instead, Clinton-Obama felt like trickle down worked, so long as they redistributed a little better, expanded the welfare state a little, and used the market to help society. Unfortunately, the simply put a band aid on the wound Reaganomics and globalization unleashed on the country. And now, the victims, that hallowed out middle class that is increasingly living at or near the poverty line-are seeking real substantial cures, not more triage. The candidate that tells it like it is:
is the candidate that wins in 2016. I don’t see Hillary, who earns so much personally and politically from that very class, doing anything to change the underlying system. How do we expect her presidency to be anything other than more of the same? Especially when her people, her advisors, and veterans of her husbands administration caused so much of what we despair in this President and his lukewarm administration?
To me liberalism is “The government can and should have a role in helping people.”
“Class warfare” distracts from that. Not everyone’s on board with occupy. The average American likes what he/she has and resists change. War brings loss. I don’t want to alienate moderates.
I think we do better with terms like “economic mobility.”
I am not saying class warfare is our platform, I am saying it’s our guiding spirit. We should be populists at heart, helping the people against the powerful (Gore won the popular vote with that phrase) or, as Berwick is saying “all means all”. This is about a community and about a government responsive to the community instead if business integrates. The public interest not special interests. Another good slogan.
Obama and Clinton are aligning themselves with those special interests. We won’t be able to break the grip of big money on politics, Wall Street criminals paying fines while poor blacks are incarcerated at higher rates, won’t be able to get single payer, won’t be able to re unionize the workforce without actually taking the fight to these guys. Would you rather the Cory Booker approach of total capitulation, the Obama approach of accommodation, or the Warren approach that forces these assholes to play by the same rules as everyone else? To the extent the latter approach is class warfare than I welcome the hatred of the monies interest. If America clearly sees one part arrayed against big money and another that isn’t, the people will vote against the money party. One of the reasons these elections are so damn close is you have an anti abortion corporate party and a pro abortion party which makes culture the decider. By going back to our roots as the party of economic populism we can create a broader coalition. Otherwise we are just Rockefeller Republicans in democratic clothing.
In any case, I agree with most of this.
The right wing has been waging class warfare on the rest of us for decades. The longer we deny that reality and duck its implications, the deeper the right wing will bury us.
The class war has already cost consumers trillions of dollars in home equity and retirement savings. Several generations of young people have had their future robbed in order to enrich the offshore bank accounts of the upper 1/2%.
The consequences of “not alienating” moderates is to participate in stripping them of what little they have left.
i don’t see how anyone can be alienated by the notion of liberalism. However, I do believe “class warfare” is an alienating concept. Do they do it? Yes, and it hurts them. Look at how much hay we’ve made in recent years just by being better.
The war metaphor breaks down if it gets too literal. Their attacks on the middle class should get a strong defense; things like union busting should be called out. But why are they attacking unions? Because they can — union membership has declined to historic lows. Unions are weaker. We should do things like boost union membership in places where they don’t exist — places like the tech industry.
I’ve said this before, but it’s our job to make government work. If government is the friend of the people, we win elections. That’s why things like bridges that need repair are so damaging, and even things like the NSA — the more we are like them, the less we are like us, and the harder it is to say that Democrats are better.
We ARE better, right? We care about this stuff. Calling it warfare may fire up a few of us, but it doesn’t win us any votes.
I agree that there is a line. I think we’re well short of it.
I think we can and should do more to sensitize the 99% to the ways they are being screwed by the right-wing that too many of them support. I think we can appeal — even pander — to some emotions beyond the venal greed that the right-wing so often exploits.
I envision things like:
– Stop stealing my home
– Stop stealing my retirement
– Stop stealing my children’s future
– Stop dismantling the regulatory agencies that keep my family safe
The right wing attacks unions because unions make workers strong. The 1% has ALWAYS attacked unions. Unions are weaker because the rest of us stopped fighting back, and because too many of us believed the “silent majority” lies of the Vietnam era.
In my view, the fundamental idiom that we MUST change is the image of the 1% as gentle, kind, loving, paternalistic (our images are almost exclusively male) uncles, grandfathers, or fathers.
It is time we help the 99% see the wealthy for what they too often are: selfish, rapacious, vicious, exploitative plunderers who have taken and will continue to take as much as we allow them to remove from us.
This isn’t really about “warfare”, or even about liberalism. It is about who the robbers, thieves and even rapists (our working-class daughters are much more at risk from well-to-do young men flashing rolls of cash than from bad guys on the Esplanade) really are.
The real issue is what policies we, and top elected Democrats, will fight for. We don’t have to use the term “warfare” in the message. We should, in fact, have a stock answer to the whole issue.
“Aren’t you just engaging in class warfare?”
“Sue, people can make labels like that into anything they want them to be. I believe that America is best when prosperity is broadly shared. I believe our people are capable of great things and that meaningful employment, with a decent wage and a chance to get ahead, should be available to all Americans. I believe our country is weakened when increasingly large numbers of Americans struggle just to make ends meet while a very few people at the top grow wealthier than any people in human history. And I believe that current conditions are the result of political choices we have made in recent decades, and that there is a better way forward.”
Again, I never said our message should be ‘we <3 Class Warfare', my point is, when FDR was accused of engaging in class warfare he said he was being critiqued by masters of finance and economic royalists and he 'welcomed their hatred!'. Nowadays, when the right throws around terms like 'class warfare' we surround ourselves on a stage with CEOs, appoint some of the worst corporate tax cheats to Presidential commissions, and otherwise cower in a corner saying ‘stop don’t hurt me’.
I am saying let’s take a page out of the Roosevelt Warren playbook, and stop pretending that America wants what David Brooks and Morning Joe thinks it wants, and do what American voters actually want.
“Aren’t you just engaging in class warfare?”
“Sue, I don’t care what label anybody wants to put on it — I think the already wealthy have taken enough people’s homes, enough people’s retirement savings, and most of all enough people’s peace of mind. We’ve tried all these GOP ideas before, and they’ve always failed. The first time we tried them, we ended up with the Great Depression. At least Congress allowed FDR to do the things needed to repair the enormous damage done by these failed policies of greed. We tried them again, and we ended up with the Great Recession of 2008, when the middle class again lost trillions of dollars in their homes and retirement plans. This time, though, right-wing GOP extremists in Congress did all in their power to destroy Barack Obama — even if they destroyed America in the process.
I believe that America is best when prosperity is broadly shared. I believe our people are capable of great things and that meaningful employment, with a decent wage and a chance to get ahead, should be available to all Americans. I believe our country is weakened when increasingly large numbers of Americans struggle just to make ends meet while a very few people at the top grow wealthier than any people in human history. And I believe that current conditions are the result of political choices we have made in recent decades, and that there is a better way forward.
I believe that “America” is a vision — a vision of freedom, generosity, community, shared responsibility, and family. I believe that we must leave behind the siren songs of selfishness, scapegoating, overbearing intrusions into personal choices, and most of all unmitigated unrestrained greed.
I believe we must leave behind the failed dogma of the past, and embrace the promise and prosperity of our future.”
.
When out on the campaign trail, there is a pointed question, frequently asked my way about whatever candidate I am working for: “What’s in it for me?” Policies should be explained in that context. I call it or borrowed it from somewhere: The Ripple Effect. Why is Social Security protected? Why is Medicare sacrosanct? Answer: Because it helps everyone. Those that don’t have and those that have. People survive and spend dollars they didn’t have so the recipients also make out. We must pay attention to a Societal Contract that means our survival is dependent on helping others to thrive so we may enjoy the benefit of their doing the same for us. It must be shown that rugged individualism or libertarian views are a recipe for disaster. I spent 2 weeks in Haiti, a country where too many citizens have to use individual initiative to exist. They can not depend on their fellow countryman. If anyone wants to know what extreme individualisms brings, I offer that country as a case in point. Our success as a country depends on laws and attitudes that understand that we need each other to be better off. To be clear I am talking about basic proper survival, not interfering with someone’s march to success, monetarily or otherwise. Taking care of basic needs should empower individualism, not its opposite. I prefer Country Welfare(it’s in our preamble) versus Class Warfare.
whatever is proposed as a change should benefit the .1% as much as it helps the 99.9%. Anyone should be able to go anywhere in this country and feel damn proud, and be happy to spend their time and money there.
When criminals commit crimes, we do not craft punishments that benefit the criminal as much as it benefits society.
The starting point must be a tax clawback that, sooner or later, applies ONLY to the 0.1%. That clawback must be large enough to get the nation’s GINI coefficient back in line with the rest of the civilized world.
I reject your premise here (I usually agree with you). The top 0.1% have stolen the accumulated wealth of everyone else. They’ve done so legally, mind you, because they long ago bought the government that would restrict them. They have, nevertheless, stolen it.
I understand the constitutional prohibitions against ex post facto prosecution, and so I use “criminal” in a metaphorical sense here.
Nevertheless, in my view the narrative that should frame our response is more appropriately a crime-and-punishment story.
They have stolen from us, and we must (1) stop additional theft and (2) recover our stolen wealth.
This is not about criminal activity. Every law abiding citizen understands they must obey laws. However this is a question of attitude, and understanding the economy should be trickle up, down, and sideways because we all benefit if all these mechanisms are active. You will have heavy opposition trying to make the other side criminals. In fact you are playing right into their hands. Again unless some proposal can be shown to help everyone, even criminals, it will keep the divide going. I would rather have parties argue I help more people than you do, than I want to help this particular group of people. People don’t vote because the extra energy to do so, both in understanding benefits and its relevance to their lives is missing. Being a class warrior will only turn them off even though what you are working for makes a better world. If you support certain laws that will define the behaviors you want to make unlawful, then we have to have legislators who will carry this out. To get elected they will have to show how their positions benefit the society as a whole in order to garner enough votes to sit in any legislature. You will be almost tarred and feathered in some states, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, for example if you set the political debate as fighting for your own class. Americans may have an odd sense of fairness at times(they call it individualism), but also a talented politician can bring them out of their closed communities to think about others to their advantage. Obama had that message prior to his election, but did not have the LBJ talent of making people see he was offering a good deal. He heavily compromised instead because he could not get beyond their biases.
I agree with Tom that there has been “class warfare,” waged for decades by people at the very top against everyone else. I also agree with you that it’s a hard political sell. For well over a century this has been a country where even the brokest of manual laborers is, in his own mind, a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
Even if I think (and I do) that many people at the top have behaved in ways that are morally criminal, and often actually criminal, I’m not looking to make that the focus of my pitch. It’s a distraction from a positive vision of a more just economy and too susceptible to rebuttal by those plutocrats, who often got there by being cagey and charismatic.
Hell, John D. Rockefeller’s goons killed old ladies and young children in Ludlow and he was able to hire a PR guy and become a kindly old man by giving urchin kids shiny nickels. Best nickels he ever spent. For all the nastiness in America today, the people are generally sentimental and will be swayed by some high-profile charitable donations. So I don’t make it, per se, a moral crusade about those people. I do make it about bringing back opportunity.
As far as everyone benefiting, I guess it depends on what you mean by benefiting. I don’t see how we can have the kind of economy people are talking about here and still have the top 1%, or the top 0.1%, continue to take home the kind of wealth they’ve been getting, let alone grow it. So, yeah, they’re going to be taxed more. And steps will be taken to boost wages. And if it works right, they’ll have less money.
But the top group still will be doing very, very well, and they’ll live in a better and more stable society. If it works for the rich of Canada and Europe, if it worked for the rich in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s, it can work again. Politically, if we can convey the benefits – to themselves – of such a platform to the bottom 80% and they come out and vote for it, that’s enough.
The top 1% will in no way have their lifestyle ruined by what a more progressive tax will bring. They will get a safer America, a more educated America, and an open welcome wherever they roam. So will everybody else. They’re stuck in a funk that their status depends on sucking more out of the economy without giving back to people who have earned it. The classical zero sum game. Too late in life they realize they should be better citizens ala Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Some alternative approach to economic wealth must be substituted to the hoarding mentality that exists by some substantial number of the 1% of the population because this is where they think their prestige lies. They actually believe they are lesser persons or become fearful if they do not keep pursuing more dollars for themselves. Watch this video if you haven’t seen it before.
that everyone, top 1% included, would be “better off” overall, if not in cash terms. And I’d be quite happy to see those people tweak their definition of “success.” But I’m not willing to delay remedial action until such time as they come to Jesus.
In the meantime, I’m going to stick my head in a bucket of cold water 100 times to wash away the sadness of reading the YouTube comments defending the obscene wealth of those who are ‘successful” because of their “hard work.” There are many dupes out there.
Bill Gates makes John D. Rockefeller look like an amateur when it comes to spending a lifetime screwing people and making a fortune while doing so — and then rehabilitating his image by giving away a pittance (and it should be noted that even that was motivated by estate and gift tax consequences rather than any humanitarian goal).
Bill Gates should, in fact, be the cover boy for how the 1% screws everyone around them in a way that is, literally, sociopathic. I encourage you to become more familiar with the behavior, statements, and publicly-professed attitudes of Bill Gates while he was accumulating his fortune. He is the canonical 1% bad-guy. I did business with him, I competed with him, and I worked for and did business with his two chief competitors in the early years of the PC industry (Steve Jobs and Mitchell Kapor).
In the hotly competitive hard-nosed bare-knuckle professional baseball game that the PC industry was in its first two decades, Bill Gates was the bean-ball throwing villain who took personal pleasure in not just winning, but in personally destroying anybody he chose. He’s the guy would throw a 100MPH fastball at your head, kick you in the face while you were down, and poison your Gatorade on his way to the dugout.
I, frankly, don’t think we should CARE whether the “lifestyle” of the top 1% is affected. I can’t think of any other national priorities for which we allow a 1% (or less) share of the population to dominate the policy for the rest.
my quote: “Too late in life they realize they should be better citizens ala Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Some alternative approach to economic wealth must be substituted to the hoarding mentality that exists by some substantial number of the 1% of the population because this is where they think their prestige lies.” After a lifetime of wheeling and dealing, the turn to charitable wipe out their misdeeds. We are again in agreement.
…that there is no legitimate way to attain great wealth that does not involve stepping on other people? I’d certainly like to think that there is and I must admit I would have been inclined to put Gates and Buffet in the category of the “good rich”. At least for as long as I have been familiar with their activities they have stood in stark contrast to someone like Mitt Romney in this regard. If you do have examples of people who have “made it” without making people suffer I would like to know.
Even in his later years, Bill Gates is NOT “good rich”.
Bill Gates is Bill Gates. He uses his foundation to impose his view of good and bad, right and wrong, successful and unsuccessful, on recipients who don’t get a vote. The “Bill Gates Foundation” (and similar personal foundations like it) are not necessarily welcomed by professionals who prefer that grant money and charitable funds be awarded on the basis of scientific merit or demonstrated need.
The money that Bill Gates throws around is blood money. Mr. Gates has more in common with Papa Doc or Whitey Bulger than anybody else. The notion that Bill Gates is “good rich” is a marvelous example of how dishonest our media is — and the extent to which the 1% controls our culture.
currently buying his preferences in education policy. Ours would be a better world without philanthropy.
But the idea is class war, not a war on individuals, as egregious as they are.
When you’re talking a billion or more. Maybe a Powerball winner or an athlete who just shows up and does the job will attain “great wealth” relative to the average person, but when you’re talking about Gates-Buffet types of wealth, it’s achieved by crushing others in your path or pocketing the return on investment from entities that specialize in just that.
Warren Buffett has more awareness than most, but let’s look at how he makes his wealth his wealth. Berkshire Hathaway owns $22 billion worth of Wells Fargo, which is horrific but had net profits of 26% last year. They also own over $16 billion in Coca-Cola, $13 billion in American Express stock, almost $13 billion in IBM stock, $4.5 billion of Wal-Mart stock, $4.25 billion of Proctor & Gamble, $4.1 billion of Exxon-Mobil, $3.25 billion of US Bancorp (only $6.6 billion in TARP for those guys), $2.94 billion in Direct TV (one of the worst consumer records in the nation), $2.55 billion in Davita (why not skim off the top when people need dialysis?), $2 billion in Moody’s (not like they were complicit in the crash or anything), $2 billion in Goldman Sachs, $1.28 billion in USG (the Alberta-based oil company with the horrific environmental record), a quarter of the Washington Post’s holding company, and a billion in GM stock (while they’re declining to recall cars that kill people because it would hurt the bottom line).
Gee, any bad actors there? Buffett and Co. determine if the company will profit and the stock will go up, and then buy it. They don’t give a rat’s ass about what these companies’ behavior means for the American people or for the future of the planet.
…AND you have to sell it. It’s interesting you brought up athletes because they tend to be my punching bag when it comes to unearned wealth. I hate that some people can earn that kind of money for a job that requires almost no formal education and working only part of the year to perform a task that doesn’t make much contribution to making the world a better place. As for powerball winners, we all like a good rags-to-riches story, but that’s not earned either and the vast majority won’t be so lucky. When Mitt Romney complained that out side seemed to have a problem with success my response was I DO in fact have a problem with HOW you became successful, but not with success per se. However, we really do open ourselves up to charges of being anti-success if we start proclaiming the beliefs you state above. What it sounds like we need is more transparency and better accountability laws to prevent the worst aspects. For the corporations you list above most of them I am not aware of their bad acts.
I told you the bad acts for half of them. I didn’t think it necessary to specify the bad deeds of Walmart and Exxon-Mobil, or Wells Fargo, who fabricated thousands of foreclosure documents. You’re talking about people who start out with capital, identify the entities most likely to screw workers, the environment, and the consumer, and invest in them, switching up any time a more lucrative possibility comes along. This does not even address the economy-threatening shell-game aspect of today’s more “exotic” investments. I do not consider making obscene piles of money in that game a merited “success.” I consider it sociopathy to be regulated hard.
Atheletes, like movie stars, are in an unusual position. They have a particular talent most people don’t have that a mass market of millions are willing to pay for. Your take on them appears to be based on a snobbish judgment of them as people, but the alternative is giving an even larger share of the sport’s pie to the 30 or so fat cat billionaire owners in each major sport, who already take 50%. I actually count athletes as among the few people who make a lot of money without aggressively making the world a WORSE place.
Yes, you did make notes on some of them and some of those I was not aware of without those notes. However I could not tell you without looking it up the sins of Coca-Cola, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, or the Washington Post.
You’re right about the market supporting athletes, but I say shame on us. The alternative is go to a Spinners game rather than the Red Sox, for example, or pay professional cheerleaders more than a minimum wage. I also think we have our priorities as a society messed up when we complain about teacher salaries because they supposedly work part time and actually provide a necessary service, but we buy season tickets to professional sports so obscene amounts can go into that industry. We also turn around and say don’t you dare raise my property taxes to allow us to hire more teachers because I can’t bear to sacrifice said season tickets.
It’s the system that needs to change. I have a bit of retirement from a company for which I have worked and may again. I don’t know how it’s invested, but I’m not sure how responsible I should be held either. Laws are what really need to change. Even something like Walmart that notoriously pays minimum wage is adhering to the law by doing so. As much as we like to paint them as the boogey-man if we really want them to pay more, and I certainly do, we need to require it. Even Elizabeth Warren, in the viral video that started all, said if you built a business God bless, keep a big hunk of it. It does not sound like she disparages success, even in business, but the social contract side she segues into must be enforced rather than assumed. I still cannot abide by there being no way even in business to attain great wealth without hurting people.
it’s the system that needs to change. Of course we need to require Walmart to pay more. Without even touching their international practices and the way they force factories in Asia to even lower wages and labor standards while doing all they can to crush unions here. That’s what the post is about. At the moment Walmart is “adhering to the law” passed by legislators bought and paid for by Walmart.
Legal, in any event, does not mean “moral” or “not hurting people.” I don’t think it’s moral in the least to squeeze everyone along the chain for the benefit of a small group of people named Walton. Nor to make billions off investing in Walmart stock. I think it’s plainly obvious that making money from Walmart, and really success in business on a large scale – with very, very few exceptions – involves hurting other people by minimizing labor costs, avoiding taxes, and lobbying for policies that improve the corporate bottom line to the detriment of democracy and other interests, all to maximize profit for shareholders. This has been the case since at least 1870. Or maybe earlier: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle…”
I can concede that capitalism is very effective at generating products and wealth, and that other systems have brought inefficiency and political repression. That does not mean that those who succeed the most in the world of business are anything other than sociopathic. They exploit any possible means to maximize their own wealth regardless of the impact on everyone else. Having decided apparently in the 1890s or so that big business was here to stay, we need a rigorous regulatory state and a highly progressive tax system to remedy the profoundly anti-democratic disparities of wealth the system creates. To his credit Warren Buffett argues for just that, but he still puts billions in blood money in his own pocket.
Who is this “we” of which you speak? I go to Red Sox games (Spinners too) but I’ve never once advocated anything other than hiring more teachers and paying them well. Athletes are an easy target because they’re so visible and it’s easy to compare them to other workers and say they don’t deserve to make so much more. But they’re a tiny blip on the radar of our economic problems.
It does not include me and I’m not surprised it doesn’t include you. I have encountered that attitude way too often, though.
is defining class.
I know I’m middle class, but the trouble is so does everyone else. I was at a colleague’s house. She teaches, her husband owns a company. Their garage could fit most of my home. Their basement has a putting green. It’s probably an $1,000,000 home in a neighborhood of similar caliber. Are they middle class? Am I fighting against their class? Their kids went to public school.
How about blue collar people? They are becoming more rare, replaced by white collar people of a similar income level. Customer services reps and such. I know blue collar people sending their kids to private school.
The very, very rich–the 1% and above–are an indentifiable class, sharing incomes that all but eliminate the chance that they are friends with their plummer or went to school with the police. But we’re at a loss when it comes to delineating class in a clear way that everyone can understand.
The GOP understands that its hard to identify class and has done a great job demonizing liberals and intellectuals and people who believe in equality and support a greater social safety net. Until the 1%, we couldn’t even name an enemy. Yet corporations are at least as big a problem as any conglomeration of the very, very rich.
However, it also means it’s easy for the other side to demonize talk of class as somehow un-American, since only feudal Europe had true classes in their mind.
Not having rigid social classes based on birth is, of course, a good thing. But it has led to a myth of classlessness. We’ve always had wealth disparities in this country, particularly egregiously from about 1870 to the 1930s and, of course, today. To a fairly large extent, those disparities have been accompanied by other markers of “class” like the Porcellian, Mrs. Astor’s 400, the Social Register, country club culture, etc.
Mark-bail’s observation is a particularly astute one, in my view.
It has the corresponding problem that one’s “class” shifts based on the practicalities. During the election, everyone is middle class, uniting against the “rich.” After the election, the definition of “rich” changes in order to include a lot of people who don’t think of themselves as rich, because that is what the need for tax revenue requires. The result is suspicion of this sort of thing from what is left of the middle class, which happens to vote a lot.
I’m calling for a platform that increases the marginal tax burden on very high incomes, say over $1 million, with a smaller marginal increase on income over $250K, net of all deductions; discontinues preferential treatment of income derived from investments; contains incentives to create stable and well-paid jobs here; strengthens the bargaining power of workers by re-empowering organized labor and updating our labor laws for the 21st century; addresses the crushing debt problem facing those who would obtain higher education; and regulates financial markets to prevent the kind of crash we had in 2008.
I’ve already written here specifically about not increasing the burden on people making $60K or $75K or even $100K. The Act to Invest proposal didn’t do that, and when Gov. Patrick suggested eliminating deductions that would have had that effect I opposed those changes. Federally, there’s plenty of room to move forward, just not the political will. In Massachusetts I’m increasingly convinced that an amendment to allow a graduated tax, perhaps with specific provisions to protect the real middle class, is necessary.
But I am saying that these goals– noble as they may be– are completely divorced from budgetary reality.
The best example of this in recent times was the “Bush Tax Cuts” expiration in 2010. The tax benefits of those cuts were focused on the very wealthy. But even so, the benefits reaped by the very wealthy was only 24% of the cost of the tax cuts.
So the very few got a tax break of tens of thousands, and many more got a tax break of up to a few hundred bucks. But the tax cost of the big benefit to the 1% was small compared to the tax cost of the small benefit to the 99%. (If 100 people share $100, and one gets $24, the total received by the other 99 still far exceeds the $24 by the lucky guy.)
The upshot of all of this is that even if one accepts as true that doing all of what you describe (such as eliminating the lower rate on capital gains, etc.) will not have any negative economic effect, it is still the case that these policies are for ideological and symbolic value only, and will not have much of an impact on tax revenue.
So if one wants to have, say, a somewhat fiscally responsible government, that, is able to, say, pay for Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, and to repair the bridges before they fall down, the “smaller marginal increase on incomes over $250K” quite quickly becomes a much larger marginal increase on incomes significantly lower than $250K.
I think most people who fit this economic demographic are well aware of this reality, and are therefore exceedingly wary of the type of rhetoric in the original post.
The complete expiration of the Bush tax cuts would only have returned to Clinton-era tax rates, which themselves were historically low. Given that and considering that the pre-tax incomes of the top 1% have gone up dramatically since the 1970s while the median income is actually down, I’m talking about much, much higher taxes than the Clinton-era rates on income over a certain point.
With nearly half the income going to the top 10%, a category that doesn’t kick in until $155K, there’s plenty of room to generate revenue with increases on that group. The top 1% alone is getting over 20% of the total income in the U.S. while the bottom 90% has dipped below half of the national income for the first time in recorded history. An effective federal tax rate of under 10% on Mitt Romney’s $20+ million in declared income is just criminal. Just collecting 2% more of that income would generate as much revenue as a $5,000 tax increase on oh, say, 99 other people.
In the meantime, it may be time for the rest of us to stop being so adamant about refusing even the few hundred bucks’ worth of higher taxes to which you refer. Do we want a functional transportation network or not? If there is any success in increasing wages via the other part of the platform, people will recoup the money. Overall they’re better off. They’ve been falling behind for four decades. It’s like putting the cheapest possible gas in your Mercedes to “save money.”
From today’s Atlantic
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffet
America’s 99% have been getting eviscerated by the wealthiest for three decades. Republicans started the thing, but it became bipartsan under Clinton.
Enough!
Parasites die either when their host perishes (no more food), or when their host figures out what’s going on and eradicates ’em. One or the other will certainly happen soon. It’s our job to ensure the latter, or else the former will happen.
Republicans, clearly, will not help us. They have never stood for the 99%.
Today’s Democratic Establishment won’t lift a finger for us either. Our union-bustin’ “free”-tradin’ Democratic president describes himself as a 1980s Republican, and they sure didn’t stand for the 99%.
We need a new Democratic Party. Starting with the precious few Democrats whose actions indicate unambiguous good intent, such as EW and Bernie, we need to rebuild the thing from scratch. No more sensible suckling at Wall Street’s teat, no more sensible votes for wars that other people’s kids die in, no more sensible attacks on Social Security and the social safety net. Any Democrat observed in pleasant conversation with either Messrs. Simpson or Bowles should be launched from the party after being tarred and feathered.
Enough!
Wachet auf!