"I don't care about that."
That is what Rick Perry said in the New York Times when John Harwood told him his tax plan would increase income inequality. Give Perry credit for his honesty. After all, he just articulated out loud what is the accepted dogma of the modern Tea Party-owned Republican party, which is completely dedicated to protecting the wealthy and corporations on the backs of the (rapidly shrinking) middle class, by way of a religious adherence to far-right free market principles.
But there is a danger to Republicans adopting a "Let them eat cake" approach. By dismissing income equality as a key issue, the GOP is headed for a trip wire the party doesn't seem to see coming.
We see it in their approach to Occupy Wall Street. The GOP strategy seems to be that if they can dismiss the protesters as a bunch of crazies (or "human debris," as the always vile Rush Limbaugh put it), then Americans won't notice the issues underlying the protest.
In the short term, the Republican strategy will probably work. By highlighting the elements that look and sound the most out of the mainstream, average Americans won't be able to relate to the protesters and will be wary of being grouped with them.
But what the Republicans are missing is that the anger underneath the Occupy Wall Street protests isn't limited to the dedicated individuals sleeping in a Lower Manhattan park.
So long as the GOP can frame Occupy Wall Street as an attack on the rich or an attack on capitalism, its appeal will be limited. No matter how tough things are with the U.S. economy, Americans don't hate rich people. On the contrary, they aspire to be rich people.
But the middle class can't become wealthy if the government is, through action and inaction, helping the rich get richer while keeping the middle class down, as it has done for the last 30 years (something Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate in "Winner-Take-All Politics").
And Americans have no use for unfairness. They want there to be a correlation between hard work and success. For the financial executives who caused the 2008 financial crisis, there wasn't even a correlation between success and success. Wall Street bankers made billions of dollars for recklessly devising and selling financial instruments they knew were junk, resulting in a near financial collapse that required a government bailout from the Bush administration.
The resulting recession and economic stagnation hit the middle class hard while leaving the wealthiest Americans untouched and corporations flush with cash. (Paul Krugman provided a great recap earlier this month of the abuses that led to the financial crisis.)
The bottom line is that income inequality has been skyrocketing since Ronald Reagan took office (and accelerated under George W. Bush) behind policies (like massive unpaid-for tax cuts for the wealthy) that had the effect of redistributing income from the middle class upward.
Mother Jones recently compiled some staggering statistics on income inequality:
The AP recently did a study that found that the recovery from the 2008 recession has been the most unequal of any recovery since the 1930s. The money did not find its way to the middle class. The percentage of the economy made up of workers' pay and benefits hit an all-time low, all while corporate profits surged, as did CEO compensation. And the stock market recovery put money in the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, even as the middle class continued to struggle and lose ground. In fact, the New York Times ran a front page story today noting how there has been a 53 percent increase in poverty in the suburbs since 2000, with the bulk of that coming after the 2008 financial crisis.
The key to why the Republicans are miscalculating in dismissing income inequality lies in a telling piece of data Mother Jones provides: The actual distribution of income in the United States is far more unbalanced than Americans think it is, and, as importantly, far, far above what they think it should be.
The Republicans want to claim that the Democrats are engaging in class warfare by trying to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, but the Republicans have been waging a class war on behalf of the top ten percent against everyone else for the last 30 years.
It's not about hating on the rich. Nobody begrudges entrepreneurs and hard-working visionaries like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet their successes. No, the anger underneath Occupy Wall Street is about fairness. And income inequality fostered by government policy is not fair.
As unemployment continues to remain high, the economic situation remains murky, and Americans start to see the redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, anger will intensify. And when the anger moves from more easily dismissible protesters in Lower Manhattan to a larger swath of the American citizenry, comments like Perry's "I don't care about that" will not be received well.
The participants in Occupy Wall Street may not look like Middle America, and they may not have a polished plan to rectify the problems they are seeking to publicize, but that doesn't make the anger they are expressing less real. More importantly, that anger is shared by more Americans than would make the GOP comfortable.
So Republicans should ridicule Occupy Wall Street at their own risk. They may be able to belittle the protesters, but they can't hide income inequality from the American people.
Follow Mitchell Bard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MitchellBard
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"Mr. Bush's people have never actually refuted independent estimates that about 40 percent of his tax cut goes to the richest 1 percent of families."
Guess he had that one right too.
http://www.pkarchive.org/column/4401.html
If hindsight is 20-20 what is foresight?
I was fed up well over a year ago when these Wall Street rip-off artists had the nerve to tell us that they needed a bailout or the financial system would collapse...a collapse brought on by their, "Let's make more obscene anounts of money on top of the obscene amounts of money we already have", games. Then a year later, they are rewarding themselves with over a BILLION dollars in bonuses? Excuse me there, Skippy...But isn't the money you are using to play with the property of the US taxpayer that was LOANED to you so your firm wouldn't go belly up?
That's like someone coming to you and asking to borrow a dollar to buy a lottery ticket. Without your dollar, there is no ticket. Then they win the lottery for $10 million and the next day, they hand you back a dollar and say, "Thanks for the loan".
Now, they sit on trillions of dollars in profits but won't hire people that desperately need jobs, or if they do hire a few here and there, it's for a fraction of what that same job paid a little more than two years ago. Yet, THEIR compensation never seems to get a penny lower no matter how many bad decisions they make. Lost $10 million in revenues? No problem, we'll just go down and lay off about 250 workers so our bottom line stays healthy.
Too much greed, too much inhumanity, too much arrogance....
Only a few are rich Stock Traders like Rothchild's, Rockefeller, DuPont, Mellon, Morgan, and the newbies form Hedge Funds etc.
We need the Poor Left and Right or Neithers for OWS to get the Capital to Labor in balance and the injustice of unprovoked war, drones back to justice for all mankind and start evolving toward peaceful coexistence once again.
Public, Worker and Capitalist should all be the same in What is Right but can disagree with HOW to get it there.
Supply Side Economic of cutting supply to raise prices and receiving 60% of the Fruit of Labor for no contribution and Military-CIA foreign policy is Anti-Constitutional and Anti-American. We must drive the Evil Doers fom America
If votes are meaningless because of Left/Right 50/50 we are self defeating our cause, JUSTICE
They BOTH mistakenly think their divide and conquer nonsense will split us up, the anger and sense of injustice transcends party lines, people of every affiliation are affected by this system and we are not being represented by EITHER party
Second, democrats control the house, senate, and presidency during and post financial crisis while the so called "Wall Street" made it like bandits. Obama raised more money than anyone in HISTORY so far from Wall Street. So why do you blame republicans?
Third, look at the people now in top 1%: most were in middle or lower income class in the 1970-2000s: Jobs, Gates, Ellison, Geffen, Speilberg, Bren, Allen, Omidyar, Zuckerberg, Dell, Oprah, and on and on and on it goes.
Forth: you assume there is a certain amonut of wealth and these guys in top take it away. No. Most of these people create wealth.
Fifth: Bill Clinton, Bob Rubin, and Larrry Summers pushed and passed the banking modernization act which allowed these risky financial transactions. Last time I checked they were democrats and advisors to Obama. Yet you blame republicans!!
Stop going to the medical marijuana clinic, its not helping you!!
http://www.flixya.com/blog/3201910/Beautiful-Butterflys
Most of the business managers I have worked for are...Republicans. It is the "Management" Party.
Nobody is entitled to a good job, nobody is entitled to other peoples property and coveting others success will not make you successful!
The stock trader (OWS) on the Secondary Stock Market (NYSE and ASE) where all the money is made and lost. Contributes nothing to the Corporation Business (main street).
A free ride to make Riches without an initiall investmest or job creation.
New Issues (IPO) or Secondary New Issues (primary stock market) happens only once in the life of corporation stock. Thinking you can have new corporation after new corporation to hire all of America or the World is pig headed and ignorant. Only propaganda want you to give more to the rich in Tax Cuts which cause DEBT and perpetuates the RECESSIONS and DEPRESSIONS
Police cannot stop peaceful protesters they should not be police. If mayors, goveners and Presidents cannot protect their own citizens they should not be in office.
We can only give Tax Cuts to the rich that are making more than anytime in history which only make it worse.
We cannot let protestors demonstate against this injustice. If you do not want a civil war and maybe a OTAN from somewhere. Then treat with this domocratically. Politicians and Stock Traders go down or ask the protesters to sit down and discuss the problem for a Just solution.
Or simply tax the Rich to BALANCE the Capital to Labor and it over the Rich get 10% instead of 90% and the worker who does ALL the work gets 60% instead of 6%
30 years ago, a worker with a high school diploma earned above the average and was only 25% behind a college degree worker. Today, the differential is 80% and a high school graduate earns less than 70% of average. With 1/3 of the workforce with a high degree or lower and only 30% with a BA+, it reflects the change is what is valued.
Further, the % of income paid by the top 1% has increased in the last 30 years. Top 1% pays 40% of federal income taxes, bottom 47% = 0%. Top 10% pay 70% of income taxes.
This is a GREATER % than 30 years ago.
OWS is asking not for opportunity but for hand outs.
You're absolutely right in your argument. Today it's the unskilled that make up by far the greatest proportion of the unemployed. Going from unskilled to skilled is the best way to get out of poverty and stay out of it - much much better in every possible way for everyone involved than a governmentally forced redistribution of income.
The corporations have eliminated that "upward mobility." OWSers are just asking to start their careers:
http://www.flixya.com/blog/3201910/Beautiful-Butterflys
At some point, the supply of points begins to run out. Printing more points doesn't help because all of the point collectors benefit in proportion and they get less (status) per million points than before. And when the rest of us have no way of earning points to exchange for life support, we will find a way to "spread the points". The 1% would do well to understand this and voluntarily agree to allow the 99% to have some of the points before the 99% takes *all* of the points.
Stock Market margin of Credit of 2 to 1, Commondity Market margin of Credit of 80 to 1 and Future Trader Market margin of Credit of 80 to 1. This means a $1,000,000 gives you a $2,000,000 stock investment, $160,000,000 Commodity investment and a $1,280,000,000 (trillion) investment in the Future Trading Market for only $1,000,000 to invest or lose Some Kind of leverage the Tax Payer got for MORE DEBT.
I got a Post (not sup-prime) loan to finish my house for my existing rate + prime (to 27%)
And this does not even account for the 300 Trillion the tax payer is on the hook for all Forclosures with 80% of the AIG Insurance of SWAPS and DERIVITIVES
G.B.A.