Post-Peak Liberal: Class Warfare

Post-Peak Liberal

....... Life on the Downslope

Class Warfare

A letter submitted to the Boston Globe:

Jeff Jacoby's analysis of Barack Obama's tax policies ("Seeing through Obamanomics," Sept. 14th) should tell us all we need to know -- about how out of touch Jacoby is with reality. Citing Bill O'Reilly's interview with Obama, and drawing on an old conservative saw, Jacoby whines that taxing the rich is class warfare, that it's "extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn't." To further drive his point home, Jacoby calls taxation "confiscation at gunpoint," and tells us (gasp!) that the US already forces the top 1% of earners to pay 40% of all income taxes.

Well, Mr. Jacoby forgot to include a few points. First, "class warfare" has already been declared; and in fact it's been won, by the rich. The richest 1% of US households may pay 40% of the income taxes, but that's because that group now controls 35% of the country's wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90%. We have the worst economic inequality since the 1920s, so Bill O'Reilly and Jeff Jacoby crying about class warfare is the ultimate hypocrisy.

Even more offensive is Jacoby's assertion that rich people have earned their money, while the less well-off are trying to get "something for nothing" through government policies. First of all, taxes have paid for all kinds of things that help the rich get to the top: roads, bridges, a public-educated workforce, copyright laws, and government-funded R&D that gets transferred to the private sector in a wide range of industries. The idea that wealthy people have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps without any help from general public coffers is absolute bunk. Secondly, the reverse implication is that those who are less well-off are just not working hard enough, and thus don't deserve any more of rich people's money. Well, these lazy freeloaders would include the entire middle class, which has seen its household income remain virtually the same since the mid-1970s, despite worker productivity increases of almost 65% and the frequent addition of a second breadwinner.

So let's get real: class warfare is already upon us, and the rich are winning. If the government cannot tax the incredible wealth accumulated at the very top of an amazingly unequal society, to help out those who are playing by the rules and still getting screwed, then I'm truly afraid for our future as a nation.