i've been having an exchange with a friend concerning class warfare, stealing from one to give to another and the large gulf of ideology that keep us apart even though we actually agree.
Class warfare in the past was relegated to the fight for decent wages, working conditions, health insurance and pensions. This was a hard won fight that has slowly been chipped away over the past 30 years. No longer are workers confident that any of those provisions above will be available to them or their children. But that is not what this piece is about.
The term class warfare is now being used to take the focus off the extreme wealth disparity that has occurred recently. One side claims that asking for shared sacrifice is class warfare because we are asking the wealthy to chip in and share the burden. The idea that no new taxes means the Bush temporary tax cut can never expire seems to escape them. Its not a new tax just a reinstatement of an old tax that was never meant to be a permanent reduction.
We all agree that spending has gotten out of hand but focusing on cutting so called “entitlements” and not including cutting military spending or government subsidies just doesn't cut it. Just the word “entitlements” brings up “welfare cheats” that makes the blood of conservatives boil. The idea that someone is sitting home using your tax dollars to live in a crappy house, living month to month, probably not having enough money for food by the end of that month is more abhorrent than the corporate big wigs using your military and taxes to fight their wars, using your taxes to subsidize their companies, using your taxes to get back rebates when they have already made billions. Isn't there something grossly wrong here. Instead of focusing on the “dons” that are doing all the stealing, the right wing focus is on the “petty thiefs” the poor single mom that can hardly make ends meet.
The idea that hard work will result in riches is a fallacy. As George Monibot says “If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”
Print out these statistics and read them over and over. Does this seem right to you? Who is doing the stealing?
Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.
“Their acolytes, in academia, the media, think tanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.” George Monibot. He means the wealthy manipulated events to make sure money flowed up.
The theft has not been accomplished by the petty thief's, who most refer to as the welfare cheats, the theft is going on daily by the dons at the top who have manipulated our system of government and the media in such a way that wealth has streamed upwards and not trickled down at all.
The problem today is that all of us really want more representative government. We don't want money and influence controlling the process. Today Washington is a revolving door of legislators and lobbyists changing jobs as the tide turns, one year a lobbyist the next lets work for a legislator so we can write the laws.
Jack Abramov, a DC lobbyist, who was convicted of fraud and corruption and who has just gotten out of jail is doing the rounds of the talk shows. He details how lobbyists use their influence to write legislation that serves their clients not the nation. He details how the whole system is one big bribery scheme and how both sides are in over their heads. He claims the only way to clean it up is to take money out of the equation.
The problems in this country are not related to the poor or entitlements, they are centered around money and its outsized influence in our government and how it operates.
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