The Economic Double Standard

We all know that despite the rhetoric that fills our political debate, there are two standards in this country: The standard for the very wealthy, and the standard for the Rest of Us. That's nothing new - but what is new is how obvious it has become. As I document in my syndicated newspaper column this week, there's no effort to hide the double standard anymore.

The discussion about the sanctity of contracts really shoved the double standard right up in our grill. The government at once insists it had zero power to revise contracts at a company it owns (AIG) while asserting almost total power to revise contracts at companies it merely lends to (GM and Chrysler). Then, in a reversal, the government insists it has total power to renegotiate mortgages for vacation homes that the super-rich own, but zero power to renegotiate mortgages for primary residences that the Rest of Us own.

I guess the good news is that in becoming so overtly hypocritical, the government is educating the public in a more effective way than ever before. Whereas there used to be the pretense of "fairness" and "equal protection under the law," those platitudes are being debunked by very clear, very easy to understand actions. And that's where the populist anger is now coming from - America is finally awakening to the fact that this is not a democracy, it's a kleptocracy.

Some say realization is "dangerous" - but that's the same thing the Establishment was saying when the country demanded transformative change from the Roosevelt administration. Indeed, the term "dangerous" is an epithet routinely thrown around by the staunchest defenders of the status quo. What this moment really is, IMHO, is a huge opportunity - and if progressives shirk that opportunity and use it for our positive agenda, you can bet conservatives will seize it and use it for their negative one.

Read the whole column here.

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Comments

[racetoinfinity]

I call it the "plutocracy," but "kleptocracy" is even more descriptive; how about the kleptocratic plutocracy?"

This is a cliche, but unless we have complete public financing of Congressional and Presidential campaigns, we don't have a chance at real reform. The majority parties are bought. We learn this lesson again and again, and now once again with Obama's Wall St. economic team. Let's see what regulations they favor, and soon.

[IsaacKuo]

What's actually new is that the chips are down. People didn't mind that the wealthy were becoming the super-wealthy as long as times were good.

But when times are tough--and they've been tough for us "normal" people for a lot longer than the global meltdown--that's when gross inequity becomes offensive.

The double standard has never been hidden; it has always been brazenly openly flaunted in front of us. All that's different is that the bread is running out (and the circuses don't matter when the bread runs out).

[blaqntelligence]

Thank you.

[knowBuddhaU]

Thanks for your leadership, raising the alarm. "Dem keep hiding our truth and rights/ But we goin' ta find 'em!" --Thievery Corporation (I've been listening to "Radio Retaliation" and "Babylon Rewound" all weekend.)

Are these typos?

@ "Some say realization is dangerous" vs. "Some say this realization;" typo, or are you going all Buddhist on me? ;-]

@ "and if progressives shirk that opportunity and use it" vs. "and fail to use it"?

At any rate, we're being taken to the cleaners, taken for a ride, jacked to hell and stuck with the bill, by what look like, to me, the same damn NSA-type fiends described in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article describes them perfectly, doncha think?

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/132859/the_big_takeover%3A_how_wall_street_insiders_are_using_the_bailout_to_stage_a_revolution/?page=entire

[goodneighbor420]

yep, it's the old 'let them eat cake' syndrome