Mitch Albom, "Compassionate" Chronicler of Sickness, Bashes Health Care Reform and Defends Richest 1%

Mitch "Tuesdays with Morrie" Albom has made millions of dollars writing books about sick people and death. His writing tends to be a bit sappy and cliche for my taste, but I've always assumed that because his writing comes into contact with the most gut-wrenching parts of health care system, and because he portrays himself as a shining beacon of compassion and selflessness, that he is, in fact, a somewhat compassionate human being. Unfortunately, his new column in the Detroit Free Press (yes, in the newspaper of quite literally the most economically devastated city in the United States) proves me wrong -- and proves that Albom is a run-of-the-mill royalist and right-wing psychopath.

In this, arguably the most important week for health care reform in decades, Albom could have written about the need to expand health care coverage to as many people in his economically destroyed city as possible. He could have written about the human tragedy of a health care system that currently allows 22,000 of his fellow countrymen to die every year for lack of coverage. Instead, he opts to devote his entire column to bewailing the plight of the top 1 percent and attacking the tax proposal that would finance universal health care with a tiny levy on millionaires. I shit you not:

Those high income earners currently shell out around 35% in income taxes, the highest rate, plus state income taxes, local income taxes, property and other taxes that likely chew up between 45% and 50% of their money. If Obama's tax-related plans all go through, it could, for some, approach 60%...

Look. It would be one thing if we had a flat tax in the United States or if you could shelter your income or hide it offshore. But most wealth experts will tell you tax shelters for individuals are long gone, and offshore is a rapidly disappearing corporate trick.

For the most part, if you earn a lot of money in America today, you have to pay your taxes on it. Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate, but in most cases, before you have money to buy and sit on stocks, you have to earn it and therefore pay taxes on it.

So let's see -- The richest one percent earn the largest share of America's income since 1929 and pay the lowest taxes they've paid in 20 years. Meanwhile, two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes at all; the IRS says most of the more than $300 billion in unpaid taxes (ie. the "tax gap") is from individual tax evaders; there's a huge and well-known problem with offshore tax havens; and IRS audits of millionaires have plummeted so precipitously that President Bush repeatedly admitted in public that it's almost impossible to collect taxes from the super-wealthy because they can evade taxes. On top of this, tax, regulatory and corporate welfare policies are literally handing away trillions of taxpayer dollars to the richest 1 percent at a time that 22,000 Americans are dying every year because of a lack of health care.

And yet, Albom -- the guy who has made his pile by trumpeting his alleged compassion for the plight of the sick and dying -- is spending the most crucial week in the health care debate insisting that the superwealthy pay too much in taxes and never avoid paying what they owe. And more importantly, Albom spends this week insisting the major problem facing America is a "class warfare" that would ask a Goldman Sachs executive making $1 million a year to devote just 9-tenths of one percent more of his taxpayer-subsidized income to a universal health care program. And he's doing all this in the flagship paper of the city that has been most devastated by the economy.

Promoting oneself as a compassionate chronicler of end-of-life issues, and then penning right-wing diatribes defending the richest 1 one percent...these are the tell-tale signs of a truly disgusting human being.

UPDATE: Albom is not just a disgusting human, he's also a fool. You'll note he asserts that under the surtax proposal, "a family earning a million dollars a year" would" now have to "cough up $54,000 of that -- in addition to all the other taxes it pays -- to cover health care for people who may not pay a penny of new tax themselves." That's factually inaccurate as a two-second Google search shows. Because the 5.4% surtax applies only to income above $1 million (and not on the $1 million in total), someone making $1 million a year would pay just $9,000 a year more in taxes, not $54,000. Here's FAIR's dispatch nailing Albom for his idiocy.

Comments

[DemocraticVoter]

This summarizes Mitch Albom's argument:

(1) Because representatives of you the American people have made it difficult for we with money to unethically and illegally avoid paying taxes, we should not have to pay any additional taxes.

(2) Instead of increasing taxes on me and my wealthy friends, we prefer you moderate income earners lose your insurance, go bankrupt, and pay 50% of your income on health insurance on top of the 25-30% in income taxes you've always paid.

(3) We would further like to continue to offer balloon payment loans that we can still bundle and pretend they are triple A rated financial instruments.

[Daveopp]

As I recall, Albom was also one of the first to cross the picket line during the last Detroit Free Press strike.

[Walterben]

Sure was. Even then, while his colleagues were trying to sustain their union and livelihoods, he showed contempt for their reasonable cause.

One of the most painful ironies for everybody else is that a newspaper strike figures in the story of his first runaway success, "Tuesdays with Morrie." The strike frees him to visit his old professor, Morrie, who tells him things like "Love is the only rational act." Which, as is apparent, Mr. Albom interpreted to be self-love. Everybody else be damned.

[Walterben]

Mr. Albom has always been given to facile moralizing. He, like many of his colleagues whose job it is to manufacture opinions, traffics in conventional wisdom and the implicit assumption of a consensus of what is right, good and unifying, and what is baleful and divisive.

Without reference to his short shelf of superficially life-affirming and nostrum-filled books, he has always exhibited a terrific ear for unassailable platitudes of positivity. Which is what makes his July 25 column so stunning in its deafness to its own class bigotry and resentful divisiveness.

To use this closing characterization, "Let’s not imagine that all poor people are noble single mothers with two jobs, three kids, good credit and an ailing mother. Unless you’re naive enough to believe that all wealthy Americans are greedy pigs" both nourishes a stereotype that the rest of the column weakly lays claim to debunk, and creates a false equivalency between the powerful and the powerless in our meritocracy. While claiming "All of us are in this together," he exempts himself and his class from what he considers unfair participation.

It's repulsive that Mr. Albom, a writer so reliably careful never to offend, surprise, or enlighten, would make so violent a case on behalf of the wealthy by presuming the basest motives of the disenfranchised, whose power to affect their own fates is degraded every day by circumstances out of their control and in an economy destroyed by the best-compensated and least responsible among us.

[tlgeiger62]

Well there's a few books I can take off my "must have" list.

[hbr17]

The problem with taxing the rich to pay for health care is not the additional burden it puts on them. The problem is that if we truly believe in national health care we literally have to put our money where our mouth is. If national health care is a value we adopt as a country then we all have to pay for it. So unfortunately, we would have to start with an additional social security-like payroll tax of 2-4%. If everyone is going to have health insurance everyone must have skin in the game. Paying for health-care on the backs of the rich is a narow-minded approach.

[Scurvybro]

I don't hold out much hope for meaningful health-care reform (i.e., coverage for everyone, regardless of ability to pay) because we as a society have decided that health care should continue to be a market-based, profit-driven enterprise. To receive adequate health care in this country, you must have insurance because of the exorbitant costs involved. The majority of Americans who have insurance receive it via their employer, again because of the high costs.

The alternative to this system, as hbr17 points out, is for America to "put our money where our mouth is." Yes, I understand that this will be excoriated by some as "socialized medicine." Perhaps it is, but I don't think that necessarily would be a bad thing. Our current system leaves millions without health insurance and, therefore, without access to health care.

I find it shameful that some Americans cannot receive medical care simply because of their financial status. Others are OK with that, and the majority rules in this country. I accept that reality. However, let's not pretend that we haven't made a choice.

[sdskelton03]

Sheesh

A guy disagrees with you about how our government should run and he is a "disgusting human being?"

Thank you for raising the level of discourse.

[clevelandchick]

No...he's a disgusting man because he's made his millions hawking stories about what a compassionate man he is towards the sick and the dying, yet he's not willing to cough up a few extra bucks to help the sick and the dying.

Sheesh, does everything have to be explained to conservatives as if they're 4 year olds?

[robinhood1]

"Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax the man behind the tree." - Senator Russell Long
It is always easier to support a tax increase that someone else will have to pay.
Did you know that the maximum Federal income tax rate in Canada, with its single payer insurance system, is only 29%? In Ontario, the largest province, the maximum effective provincial rate is 17%, for a total of 46%. Under Obama care, the maximum Federal and state rate would go to about 57%, for California, NY and NJ and several other states, assuming the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire for the highest income Americans. A 57% top tax rate is a good way to lose many of the nation's most productive people to other countries. If everyone is going to have access to health insurance, everyone should pay for it. A Federal VAT (sales tax on goods and services) would be better tax policy. The rich would still pay a lot more tax on their yachts than the poor would on their bicycles. In Europe, VAT rates go as high as 25%, with additional taxes on gasoline, alcohol and cigarettes. In Canada, the most common Federal/provincial rate is about 13%. Of course, it would help matters if we cut back on defense spending as we improved health care access for the poor and the not so poor.

[clevelandchick]

What you have written is patently false. The tax increase literally restores the tax rate to what it was during the Clinton years which is even less than it was during the Reagan years.

A sales tax disproportionately affects the middle-class and lower income, who by the way pay a larger share percentage-wise in taxes than the top 1% income earners of this nation. That is when the top 1% isn't evading their taxes altogether.

[TremoluxMan]

One thing many forget is the difference between the nominal tax rate and the effective tax rate for a particular bracket. Someone may, indeed, fall in the 35% nominal bracket, but after all deductions, allowances, credits, exemptions, etc., may effectively pay only 5%.

Same applies to business tax rates. Just because they may fall into a nominally high bracket doesn't mean they are in reality paying the full amount.

[fabricnthreads]

Almost NEVER paying the full amount.

[Hope Lives]

This one's for you David... my favorite story about Bush (link below) and a quote for fun:
George W. Bush immediately reversed Clinton’s policy in order to revive Reagan’s, once again showering an embarrassment of riches on the already most embarrassingly rich, his “base” as he calls them. He ladled out some $630 billion in tax cuts to the top 1% of income earners. In true Republican fashion, they returned the favor by investing over $200 million to ensure Bush’s re-election. Do the math. A $630 billion return on a $200 million investment: $3,160 for $1. I’ll give you $3,160. All I ask is that you give me $1 back so I can keep the goodness flowing. Do we have a deal? Republicans know return on investment.

But the cost to the public has been a return to the exploding deficits of the Reagan years. Bush blew through Clinton’s surplus in his first year. The 2004 deficit reached $415 billion, a record. Still, its real size is masked by the fact that Bush has shifted $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund in order to make the shortfall look smaller. It’s like pretending you’re richer when you move money from one pocket to another. Both sums have to be repaid, so the real amount borrowed is the $415 billion “nominal” deficit plus the $150 billion from Social Security or $565 billion.
Link to the article is next:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1022-26.htm

[noneIn2008]

The current bill is loaded with deals for special interests.

12 million of those listed as uninsured, are actually insured by Medicaid. They can use it when they need. 20 million of those listed are young men and their families, at 250% of poverty, who choose to not buy insurance. They choose, that's in interesting idea. Now you will take money away from those people by forcing them to pay.

The bill is also partially paid by $622 billion cuts in Medicare. The seniors will really be unhappy when they read this.

The current bill will just reward the special interest at the cost of the people.
Quit pitching for the special interests. Demand debate to get a bill that really helps people.

[kwright]

Ah. Mitch Albom, the delicate genius. As a former Detroiter I used to enjoy his articles many years ago. Now he uses material from previous articles and tries to pass them off as new.

[johnashman]

PS - why is it, that as soon as a liberal, let alone anyone else, questions the extreme edge of their party, they are viciously attacked, called names such as 'disgusting', rather than simply debated? If the left is truly 'right', it doesn't need to name call.

[Gidster]

When anyone intentionally fudges facts, inflates numbers or in any way misleads their readership for their own gain, their behavior becomes disgusting.

It is hard to separate the man from his actions.

[BlueFloyd]

who cares if needed to name call or not: he WANTED to.

deal with it.

if the right is truly 'right', it doesn't need to make up stuff.

[johnashman]

The rich also had a great run in Cuba. Now there are none, so there's no one to envy, no one to tax and the 'middle class' gets a kit in the mail with things like razors and soap. Economic slavery is the new form of slavery and Obama is now the head slave master. Well, he did promise change....­..

[Nooneyouknow]

Amazing how the wingnuts only fear "socialism" when government might actually help Americans. It's not socialism when corporations get huge tax breaks, it's not socialism when the rich get the estate tax killed, it's not socialism when corporations get fat on illegal wars--it's only socialism when poor people might get a hand with their own tax money.
And then the wingnuts claim they're christian.

[BlueFloyd]

do you always deal in sweeping generalizations and absurd comparisons in an ATTEMPT to make your point? oh, that goes along with irrational fear-mongering, so yes, you probably do.

[quindy]

How about those of you who bought and read his book take few pages out and send it to Albom?

[thebirdstheword]

a large percentage of detroiters cannot stand albom.