(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
If three stories on the same day indicate a trend, even the WaPo is getting tired of listening to the One-Percenters snivel. Barbara Ehrenreich snarks on Super-Rich People Problems:
The latest group to claim victim status is the rich. Actually the super-rich, whose wealth ordinarily exempts them from pity. While they are not yet subjected to airport profiling (except for early boarding and club access), they sense that the public is turning subtly against them — otherwise how could President Obama propose raising their taxes?
__
Admirers of the rich, led by pundits and politicians on the right — from Laura Ingraham to Larry Kudlow — have long derided the victimization claims of African Americans, women, gays and the unemployed, but now they’re raising their voices to defend the rich against what they see as an ugly tide of “demonization.”
__
At a time when poverty is soaring, unemployment hovers grimly above 9 percent and growing numbers of Americans suffer from “food insecurity” — the official euphemism for hunger — this concern may seem a tad esoteric. At a time when executive compensation is reaching dizzying new levels and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing as fast as the federal deficit, it may even seem a little perverse…
__
You would never guess from all the talk of demonization that the rich enjoy perhaps the strongest PR machine on the planet, far beyond their entourages of agents, publicists and assorted image-makers. The mainstream media, for example, are not owned by collectives of busboys and taxi drivers, and even the “liberal” outlets among them are not pitched toward the impecunious. They may snicker when the occasional hedge fund manager is brought to justice, but they’ve been equally snarky about populist actions against the rich, such as the ongoing occupation of Wall Street, which is newsworthy if only for the levels of brutality it’s elicited from the NYPD. Or did you know that the Transportation Security Administration just won union representation this summer? Probably not, because that’s “labor news,” which has been all but supplanted by “business news.”
Greg Sargent, at his Plum Line blog, highlights Warren Buffett:
QUESTIONER: Are you happy seeing your suggestion, this new Buffett Rule, becoming more of a basis of a political battle that really has turned into class warfare?
__
BUFFETT: Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won. We’re the ones that have gotten our tax rates reduced dramatically.
__
If you look at the 400 highest taxpayers in the United States in 1992, the first year for figures, they averaged about $40 million of [income] per person. In the most recent year, they were $227 million per person — five for one. During that period, their taxes went down from 29 percent to 21 percent of income. So, if there’s class warfare, the rich class has won.
And in the ‘Most Popular: Business‘ category, we’re told that the “Mental toll of extended unemployment looms large“:
… A recently released, comprehensive study of the long-term unemployed by Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found that 32 percent were experiencing a good deal of stress and another 47 percent said they had some stress associated with their joblessness. Moreover, at least 11 percent reported seeking professional help for depression in the past year.
__
One in two of the respondents in the two-year national study said they have avoided friends and associates, largely out of a sense of shame and embarrassment — a self-imposed isolation that hurt their ability to network to find employment.
__
Many of these unemployed Americans cannot afford to seek professional help because they lost their employer-provided health insurance with their jobs. At the same time, federal, state and local governments have cut back on spending for mental health clinics and outreach in response to budget crises spawned by the bad economy.
__
It could get even worse if Medicaid funding of mental health services is put on the chopping block later this fall, as a congressional “supercommittee” hunts for spending cuts to help reduce the federal budget deficit. Medicaid is the main source of funding of public mental health services for young people and adults, accounting for nearly half of state mental health budgets, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. […] __
Tim Jansen, executive director of Community Crisis Services, a crisis hotline in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, said that in the past few months there has been a sharp rise in the volume of calls that he and his 40-person staff have fielded from people experiencing unemployment-fueled mental breakdowns. His staff is hearing more and more about people draining their savings and losing homes after they lost jobs.
__
“We used to be able to be more of a cheerleader on the phone for people struggling to get work and buckling under that stress,” Jansen said. “But the challenges have piled on top of each other over a series of years and the government’s [role is] fading from view . . . it’s hard to know what to say.”
Well, there’s always Joe Hill’s famous last words: “Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!”
beltane
I’m really enjoying the #OccupyWallStreet Twitter feed, if only for the opportunity to laugh at conservatives. They keep insisting that the protest is 100% white when even the most cursory glance at the protesters says otherwise. Are they always this divorced from reality?
Southern Beale
These are the assholes behind the Tea Party/Republican Party/ALEC/Corporate takeover of America. Lovely patriots:
Calouste
@beltane:
As usual, more projection than a cineplex on Harry Potter opening night.
Baud
@beltane: I’ve heard this before. Why would conservatives want to portray the protest as white? I would think it would be just the opposite.
Mike G
Republicans moan and Republicans bitch
Our rich are too poor
And our poor are too rich.
Violet
@beltane:
Is there a link to the “conservatives are saying protestors are white” claims?
@Baud: I don’t get why they want to claim they’re white either. Maybe to portray them as spoiled, rich, upper class college students whose parents are paying for them to waste their days protesting? Or something along those lines?
Sly
1) Barbara Ehrenreich is all flavors of awesome.
2) The nobility of France also engaged in a woe-is-me pity party when they heard rumors that Louis XVI planned on taxing them for the first time in, like, forever, to help pay for all the wars and the palaces and the costume parties that the nobles loved so much.
But that wasn’t class warfare. Class warfare was when the peasants got tired of paying all the taxes and getting stepped on all their lives, and started taking the nobles’ shit and gleefully bludgeoning them to death in the streets of Paris and Marseilles. That’s when you’re supposed to go Galt.
Violet
@Sly:
The video last week of the rich drinking champagne while on their balcony overlooking the protestors was very reminiscent of the French Revolution. I kept waiting for the “Let them eat cake” caption.
gnomedad
They’re just trying to create jobs for us, but without more tax cuts their hands are tied.
Cat Lady
@beltane:
The righttards are trying to mimic the characterization of the teatard protests as consisting of nothing but stupid old fat white racist scooter riders with misspelled signs. They think that focusing on the race of these protesters innoculates them against the racist charges (they’re ok with being stupid and fat apparently), because these protesters are young, their signs are all spelled correctly, and there isn’t a scooter in sight. Shorter righties: don’t believe your lying eyes!
Sly
@Violet:
The modern version would fall more along the lines of “let them eat predatory consumer credit.” Why, if the middle-class thinks they have it so bad, we’ll just give them the opportunity to be debt slaves! Aren’t we nice!
Most myopic group of people in human history, our master class.
handsmile
Ah jeez!, now you’ve gone and made me indirectly contribute a few kopecks to Kaplan Test Prep Daily in their tabulation of page clicks.
At least you refrained from enticing us to click on this laff-riot “Cain is able to shake up the GOP race,” now listed as the #2 most popular current Post article.
Barbara Ehrenreich’s column, “Rich People are being ‘demonized’ for flaunting their wealth. Poor dears!”, now has 3000+ comments. Anyone brave or foolhardy enough to wade through that swamp?
The Mike Luckovich cartoon that illustrates your post is superbly apposite.
J
Love that ‘questioner’ quoted by Greg Sargent. One of the many things wrong with our country (and not only ours) now is the set of perverse incentives that reward cretinism like this–anyone who could take in an regurgitate plutocratic propaganda about ‘class warfare’ like this must have–very likely through sedulous effort–no critical faculties at all.
MikeJ
@Baud:
White people are limousine liberals and don’t count because they’re just trying to feel good about themselves.
Black people simply don’t exist unless they’re committing crimes against white people.
Bago
A subsection of Seattle. http://twitpic.com/6ub3r1
Spaghetti Lee
@Mike G:
I like it!
Spaghetti Lee
@Cat Lady:
Thing is, I don’t think they’d be doing it if they didn’t know that our criticisms were true, on some level. They just won’t admit it. If you want to catch a wingnut telling the truth (a rare beast under any circumstances), look at what they’re saying about others, and apply it to them.
handsmile
@MikeJ: #14
I would amend the second of your pithy statements to read: “Black people simply don’t exist unless they’re committing crimes.”
While reportage of black on white crime is most coveted by the media, black on black crime will do to promote fear and misperceptions of a rising violent crime rate, as well as to confirm prejudices of the intrinsic brutishness of non-white peoples.
Kay
One would think they’d be figuring out that they aren’t, actually, super-rich.
Stands to reason they’d be the next to hear they’re over-paid and useless and not “producers” or “job creators”.
Cacti
@MikeJ:
Or are one of the “good blacks” who puts down other black people for the approval and accolades of a white audience (looks in Herman Cain’s direction).
SiubhanDuinne
Hmmm. FYWP is eating my comments again.
It’s beginning to feel like a judgment on quality.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
If that were true, I would have been banned a long time ago.
JPL
@Southern Beale: definition for the Koch brothers …a person who advocates the abolition of government and a social system based on voluntary cooperation….
what else is that a definition of? I wonder…
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Baud:
My guess is that supposedly going after the bankers actually hurts minorities and by not embracing Economic Calvinism, the hippies are actually the real racists trying to keep everyone not-white down.
Linda Featheringill
@Violet: #8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaygjF9aHa0
For people [like me] who had not seen the video.
suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nevah. Don’t take it personally. FYWP!
I’m sure that the fRight really wants the Occupiers to be a group of white trust-fund revolutionaries. But, if that’s really what they were, they’d be Rethugs.
(To be fair, I do indeed know that the left wing does indeed have rich white boys in it.)
beltane
@Violet: Michelle Malkin appears to be the originator of this claim and it’s being re-tweeted by her followers.
Keith
@Southern Beale: That would explain the noises recently from the right about making bribery of foreign parties legal.
Violet
@Linda Featheringill:
Thanks for posting it. I should have searched for it and posted it, but I was on my way out the door. It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? They couldn’t have illustrated the issues more plainly if they’d tried.
MikeJ
@Keith: They’ve hated the FCPA since it was passed. They argue that bribery is just the way business is done in those place full of non-whites and we would be punishing the job creators if we didn’t let them violate the law.
JPL
Anne, I think “The Given Day” by Dennis Lehane would be a good read for BJer’s. It’s fiction but there are so many parallels between what is happening now to 1918 that it’s relevant. The book takes place in Boston and ends with the police strike. In order maintain the class system it is necessary to cause havoc among those with less means. There is one section that talks about the direction of the country and how they are giving away the keys. My goodness Lehane quoted Bloomberg and his reaction to the occupation of Wall Street but of course, that’s impossible since he wrote the book and published it 2008. The first few chapters might turn off a few because it’s about Babe Ruth but the rest is excellent. The anti-union sentiment is so prevalent and the story is a prime example about history repeating itself. Anyone want some liberty sausage?
(frankfurters)
Violet
@beltane:
Thank you. I hadn’t seen the original source. No surprise there.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
FTFY. They try to make the rules up as they go along.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud: @suzanne:
I’m not really taking it personally. FYWP is so whimsical and arbitrary that nothing it does much surprises me. I’m rarely put in moderation and AFAIK I’ve never been banned. This was a mild, laudatory comment about Mike Luckovich which contained a mild, unlaudatory comment about the local newspaper in which his work appears. No forbidden words or anything of the kind. Just . . . vanished into the ether.
Davis X. Machina
@JPL: Rest assured there’s at least one copy of that book, well-thumbed, in Mr. Governor Christie’s entourage.
Governor Calvin Coolidge figures prominently. Just sayin’.
THE
What? The super-rich in America don’t have private jets?
No wonder they feel so exploited.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I just realized to my horror that for years I’ve apparently been conflating Dennis Lehane and Tim LaHay or LaHaye or however he spells it. The Left Behind guy.
The book you mentioned — now that I know it’s not about the Rapture — sounds interesting.
JPL
@Davis X. Machina: At least Coolidge wasn’t a fat coward. just saying
Davis X. Machina
@Sly:
Until the flood comes, the tall guys are tall, and get all the girls.
And even when the flood comes, the tall guys drown last if they drown at all.
And just before they drown, if they drown at all, the tall guys get to go through the other victims’ pockets.
They don’t just drown last, they drown rich.
Of course, they still drown.
It’s good to be a tall guy. They’re not necessarily myopic. There may be no flood at all.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Lehane is known for his crime novels and although I found this book a crime against humanity, it didn’t fit in with the rest of his books.
Litlebritdifrnt2
@Linda Featheringill:
Is there some organization that is collecting pitch fork donations for OWS? I would gladly go to my local hardware store and purchase several to send.
B W Smith
@JPL: And Cal was silent. I wish Christie would pick up that habit.
Elizabelle
Watching Ken Burns’ Prohibition. About to fire up a Chivas and water to do so.
Interesting comment about how passion can override commerce. (Although not in the long run.)
Anybody else watching or commenting on same?
Cheers.
AA+ Bonds
It’s true – high unemployment costs and costs and costs.
Hard for Americans to see this, because promoting this line of thinking leads inevitably to the conclusion that it’s actually cheaper for the country to pay out unemployment benefits and spend money on job creation when wealthy investors fail.
And the wealthy in America have overwhelming power, and it’s against their short-term interests to save any of the rest of us money.
Kristine
@Linda Featheringill: I hope stills from that video become iconic images that the people in them never live down. I hope they’re tracked down and interviewed in coming years, so we can read that they weren’t really laughing at the protesters and that it was ginger ale, not champagne. I also hope they come to feel at least some regret, but I doubt they ever will.
JPL
@B W Smith: Yes, he was bright enough to hire his own mouthpieces.
Anyone beside me, glad the white shirts came out during the march, just speaking of style, brown shirts are passe.
Spaghetti Lee
I’m not comparing it to the amount of shit that women and minorities get hurled at them by right-wing goose-steppers, but there does seem to be a unique, at least, type of hate directed at rich white liberals, and it can be summed up in two words: class traitor. Or race traitor, but the meaning’s the same. Black people protesting can be painted as scary or threatening, but wealthy white liberals are invariably classed as naive sheltered idiots. I guess the undertone is that if they weren’t naive sheltered idiots from a right-wing perspective, they’d be standing with their brethren and cheering for the Tea Party, instead of wasting their time on these Lesser People politics.
PurpleGirl
@Elizabelle: I have it on as background to blog reading. It’s interesting.
AA+ Bonds
Posit this: it is the job of the wealthy to provide prosperity through investment.
But they aren’t doing so. They’re failing at their most basic social task, and doing so with will, foresight, and complete knowledge of their failure and its effects.
Thus, they are layabouts, laggards, vagabonds, if not criminals.
They even have the temerity to whine about it through their hired mouthpieces.
They must be sharply corrected by the rest of society.
barath
There’s a more fundamental dynamic here, which is that a) we’re entering a new recession and b) economic growth may no longer be possible. I just wrote a diary at dKos today to try to capture the issues all in one place. Basically, we need to factor these fundamental economic constraints in any activist game plan we have.
AA+ Bonds
@barath:
I’m not in the business of making excuses for the rich. They want to claim themselves as the beating heart of our economy?
Fine.
I’m charging up the paddles right now. CLEAR
Geoduck
@handsmile:
Doing a quick pass-through, the right-wing troll level is surprisingly low.
barath
@AA+ Bonds:
I don’t follow what you mean.
My post goes more into detail on the fundamentals, but as far as it relates to activist game plans, we need to focus not just on ending corporate malfeasance, but on establishing a sustainable economy. It does us little good to kick out the plutocrats while leaving a broken unsustainable economy in place. And I’ve heard almost nothing about making a sustainable, steady-state (non-growth) economy to replace the corporate, growth-based system we have today.
Mike G
@AA+ Bonds:
And they are — in China and India. Just not here.
Linda Featheringill
@Litlebritdifrnt2:
Maybe:
http://www.pitchforkdonations.org
:-)
Linda Featheringill
@barath: #52
I agree.
a) we’re probably entering new [or continuing] recession
and
b) the kind of growth we used to see might not longer be possible.
Cat Lady
At the risk of sounding like the turd in the punch bowl, at some point sooner than later it will have to be determined from the long list of demands what can be met, and who can meet them, and why it’s in their interest to do so. Energy and anger is great, but then it has to transmute to determination and a plan of action. This is where I see it all going to shit. Wall Street is the right target but knowing your target isn’t close to being enough. There’s a great scene in the movie Gandhi where he’s finally forced the Brits to the negotiating table, and he knows exactly what he wants and he knows exactly what he wants them to do, and they know they’re going to have to reluctantly comply, but a lot of people died before that happened. Power never gives up without a fight.
Sly
@Mike G:
FTFY
The #1 reason why the bond vigilantes are a myth in the present economic environment. There’s few places that guarantee a return like the government of the United States, even if it is a crummy return. Not to mention that the investor classes in other countries are also investing in U.S. debt, and this despite the fact that a crooked ratings agency that magically commands the respect of the financial press issued a downgrade.
It’s cheaper to borrow half a trillion dollars at 1% interest, use it to immediately rebuild infrastructure, and pay it off over the next five years than it is to do the same thing, only slower, with half a trillion dollars that is raised over the next five years through taxation. Not exploiting that advantage is like taking crazy pills.
As for investments in China and India, within two decades those countries will have a better established middle-class, high tech manufacturing sectors, and domestic capital markets. Especially China, so long as they don’t burn themselves out or we don’t collapse before their need for our interest payments subsides. At that point they won’t need U.S. investors as much anymore, and the Masters of the Universe won’t realize it until its too late. So instead of making domestic investments with a sustainable return that will benefit them in the long run, they’ll have sold their own future out for pennies on the dollar.
Myopic is as myopic does.
schrodinger's cat
@Cat Lady: @Cat Lady:
A lot of people died even after that happened. India won its independence but British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan and millions died in that partition. The subcontinent is still paying the price in many ways for what happened in 1947.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
I’m playing catch-up, but this
is just awesome.
Just like Papa Koch got his contracts from Joe Stalin, now his boys are getting theirs from the Ayatollah. Oh, what a fine patriotic family they all are…
B W Smith
@Sly: This leads me to ask if investment has always worked this way. In all honesty, I have paid very attention to the financial sector prior to the last ten years but I just cannot believe they have always been this short-sighted. I have a facebook friend who fancies himself as a Peter Schiff acolyte and is always saying things like “money knows where to go for the best earnings,” as if money has a mind of its own. But then he’s also a goldbug so I discount everything he says. Has drive for the most earnings in least amount of time completely driven away the cautious investor who plans for long term survival?
Chris
@Sly:
They did better than that in the past.
The same thing happened after Richelieu died and left a bankrupt country behind him. New taxes had to be levied, but the nobles threw enough of a hissy fit that they didn’t have to shoulder most of the burden – that was the Third Estate. Then, when the Third Estate started complaining, the nobles whipped them up into open rebellion against the throne, and used that rebellion to try and re-establish the privileges Richelieu had started to limit.
It was called the Fronde, and it was in essence the Tea Party Movement astroturfing of its day.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
It’s also the one class of liberals they feel they can absolutely unleash on. There’s always some risk of getting bad press or backlash or whatever if you go after minorities or immigrants or unions or poor people. Rich white liberals are not an oppressed group, so everything they didn’t use up on these other groups, they unleash on them.
Combine that with the “class traitor” and “race traitor” thing you mentioned, and you can see why hippie-punching is such a national pastime.
handsmile
Chiming in to comments of Elizabelle (#44) and Purplegirl (#50), I just finished watching the first episode of Ken Burns’ three-part series on Prohibition; parts two and three will be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday.
Featuring the hallmark production values of a Burns’ documentary, it is a finely-crafted overview of the religious and moral campaigns and later political machinations that led to the adoption of the 18th Amendment. It presents strikingly topical resonances with our current political landscape.
Also, in light of much debate here on the organizational principles and tactics of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, the program offered an instructive primer on the efforts of such groups as the Womens’ Christian Temperance Movement and the Anti-Saloon League. One factor in the success of Prohibition advocates of which I was unaware was the anti-German sentiment in the US during World War I.
Subsequent episodes address the unforeseen and unintended consequences (often criminal) of Prohibition, and its ultimate Constitutional demise.
I suspect the first part has not yet aired on the West Coast, and there will likely be rebroadcasts on PBS stations during this upcoming week. American history on American television at it finest. Strongly recommended!
Keith G
@Cat Lady:
All in its time. Like a middle school dance, even though there is music playing, few want to join the small group on the floor. During this time, our protest inhibitions need to fall as our protest muscles build.
Madison was one step. This is another. The more cerebral elements of this process will come to the fore eventually. Right now, the ice is just being broken.
magurakurin
There definitely are some parallels to the French Revolution here, but there is a big, big difference. In the case of the “nobles” looking out on the protesters in New York, they are probably more accurately described as the descendants of the “Third Estate” of the French Revolution. The revolution in France in 1789 was a revolt of the bourgeois, who were actually really fucking wealthy business men. What the lacked was legal rights in a society that was based on aristocratic privilege. So the events right now, sort of bring us back to Marx and the inevitable excess and inequality that capitalism produces.
Either way, fuck those rich assholes.
Keith G
@handsmile:
Many false starts and efforts gone awry until that misbegotten effort had its desired impact.
People seem to expect a social movement “in a box” that is just opened to set out to do its thing in a smooth and trouble free path. It has never worked that way in the past.
edited
SiubhanDuinne
I just posted this in the Brooklyn Bridge thread, but that seems to have gone moribund so I’m re-posting here. Can’t provide attribution, as this is from something someone put up on Facebook recently, but I can’t find it now. Anyhow, seems relevant to some of the current discussions:
Mark S.
This article on the problems of space travel takes a turn to the goofy in the last few paragraphs:
Another thing we’re bad at: interstellar space travel. I mean, as long as we’re in the realm of pure speculation.
Quit whining, put your grown-up pants on, and genetically modify yourself! Isn’t that at least as hard as terraforming a planet or traveling dozens of light-years in less than a couple hundred thousand years?
Spaghetti Lee
@Mark S.:
Well, we could just send Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and Andrew Breitbart into space. I suspect that they’re more vampires who feast on hatred and strife than humans.
Chris
@Mark S.:
Genetic modifications on humans. That is the single worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life, and I used to read PJM on a daily basis.
Sly
@B W Smith:
CEO culture in general is short-sighted. Regulation of the marketplace through government oversight exists to contain the excesses, while certain features of the tax code exist to channel that myopia into some kind of long-term planning. A good example of the latter is the ultra-high top marginal rates prior to Reagan. They existed so that it was more appealing for management to reinvest profits into the business rather than pocket it in the form of bonus compensation, not so much for the revenue they generated for the government.
It should also be noted that, prior to the Great Depression, massive and systemic crashes caused by the excesses of investor myopia were treated like natural disasters; just a normal function of an organic process. The Invisible Hand needed to crack its knuckles. Much of this was done to shield those responsible from scrutiny and blame.
Yeah, trust your instincts. The gobs and gobs of money Charles Ponzi made didn’t magically find a way into his pocket. He stole it. And he stole it by convincing others that he had a guaranteed way to make them gobs and gobs of money very fast.
The investor’s primary imperative is to maximize return while minimizing risk. In terms of the impact they have on other operators in the market, there are good ways to minimize risk and bad ways to minimize risk. The latter generally fall into the fraud category, but they will make you very rich, very fast. And then very poor, very fast, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t think that far in advance without the possibility of a stint in prison hanging over their head.
TenguPhule
In the end there will be two kinds of rich in America.
Tax paying Buffets. And a lot of headless dead.
TenguPhule
One man’s shit is another man’s looting and burning spree.
YoohooCthulhu
Re Prohibition on PBS:
First thing I couldn’t help thinking is Anti-Saloon League=Tea Party.
Comrade Kevin
@YoohooCthulhu: I have not seen the show, but in an interview on Olbermann’s or Maddow’s, can’t remember which, Burns said essentially that.
Kathleen
@PurpleGirl: I’m enjoying the program very much. Statistics on history of drinking in this country provides perspective. We need to pay close attention. Those are the days Rethugs want to bring back.
BrianM
@Chris:
Dogs are heavily genetically modified from their original configuration. Cows, too. It was just done the slow way.
clinched person a/k/a harlana
What can I say about that last excerpt, which I lived? I am just now re-learning how to behave as a normal person again (as normal as I can manage, anyways), coming out of my cave and being social, unwinding, learning to live again. Simple things mean so much more to me now, all the things I took for granted before I began walking into the cold wind that never , for one moment, ceases blowing raw into your face, that is long-term unemployment. I am so grateful I have a chance to live again before I die. Because I thought I was going to die both toothless and alone.
Speaking to mental health issues, I would not have survived it had I not received psychological help and meds because I had to have them before I was unemployed. I did not qualify for Medicaid, my family subsidized my existence and treatment for a while, for which I am eternally grateful.
And how can one look for a job, go on interview after interview, being rejected over and over again, without some sort of mental health assistance to get you through the agony of feeling like a worthless, unwanted piece of shit? Employers can smell fear and you’ve got to keep your head and present the most professional, positive attitude possible and respond to tricky behavioral questions that have NOTHING to do with your experience. To be honest, I felt like some of the HR people I interviewed with actually enjoyed the process of watching your confidence break down bit by bit. They were digging it. How do you manage that when you’re emotionally and mentally beaten down over and over and over again for a period of 2 years at least? These folks need what support and help they can get and believe me, cuts to social programs distress me partly for that very reason! Just suffocate the middle class until they can’t fight anymore. That’s the ticket.
Stephen Rowe
First, I am by no means rich, although, based on Washington’s definition, I am not on public assistance, do not belong to a union and believe that I must live within my means, I am by definition a conservative.
That being said, this is so much clap trap. The top 10% of wage earners pay 70% of the income tax revenue as individuals in this country. I could only wish to be amongst them. I would ask Obama and the administration to, before raising their taxes, not mine, define exactly, what is their fair share? Also, as almost 50% of people either do not pay any taxes, or going even further, derive income from, without working for the government, what in fact should we consider their fair share? Face it, they use the infrastructure and services that the government provides. Should they not be paying something?
I keep hearing how Warren Buffett says that he should be paying more in taxes. Before I hear another word about Mr. Buffett, I think he really should pay the government the approximate $1 billion in back taxes that he already owes them and is refusing to pay.
It is not the super-rich that are deriding the administration concerning their attempt at class warfare, it is anyone who has honestly tried to open and run, by the sweat of their brow, a business in this country.
Montysano
@barath:
Excellent diary, barath. The possibility that we have indeed reached the end of growth is, for every politician, the Thing That Must Not Be Spoken. So, onward we hurtle, into the wall/off the cliff with the pedal to the metal.
Stephen Rowe
I see a lot of garbage concerning who or what the Tea Party is or is not in the comments. While I am not a member, here is what they are, in their own words. So what part of this do you guys find so evil? That our government should be fiscally responsible or that they should be following and obeying the Constitution? I think what you really find so evil is that someone who puts their heart and soul into creating a profitable business should actually personally profit from their labor in a larger degree that the guy who sweeps the floor at night.
The Tea Party Movement Principles
Mission Statement
The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.
Core Values
• Fiscal Responsibility
• Constitutionally Limited Government
• Free Markets
From: http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=af49c010-5dab-4fca-8c06-921181d52b37
JasperL
@Stephen Rowe:
In fact the bottom half do pay “taxes” but not income taxes, because they are poor and make too little income. Many are seniors getting SS and drawing a bit from their meager retirement plans, or getting a few dollars from their bank accounts. Others are students, or those who lost their jobs and scrape out a bit of a living working part time, or they work full time, for minimum wage. Which of these moochers and leaches should we raise income taxes on?
And they do pay taxes, the highly regressive ones – sales, excise, and payroll taxes. Furthermore, since conservatives tell me corporations just pass through their tax burden to consumers, they pay corporate taxes with every purchase. But it’s not enough, so we need to get some more blood out of that bottom half. They make plenty of money as a group – the bottom half makes just a bit more than the top 1/1,000th – $1,087 billion in 2007 for the bottom half versus $1,049 billion for the top 1/1,000th.
And complaining that the bottom half pays no INCOME taxes, as their wages are dropping, and they face 16% unemployment, demands a solution to this terrible “injustice.” So how would you raise INCOME taxes on the poor? Take away the standard deduction? How about exemptions for children, or being OLD? Those affect middle class taxpayers, too, so it’s a tax increase on you AND the depraved poor – are you good with that? Maybe we should have a ‘Poor Man’s Minimum Tax’ – every worker just hands over the first $1,000 in wages as income tax?
FWIW, Buffett doesn’t have a bill for $1 billion laying on his desk that he’s refusing to pay. Those who claim the amount “owed” is a $billion are simply ignorant of basic financial accounting for income taxes, or they are liars, or both (my choice is ‘both’).
BRK is being audited, and the IRS has proposed adjustments, and BRK has obviously disputed some, and they are working towards a resolution. That’s THE WAY IT WORKS for large companies, who are almost all under constant audit. BRK has an obligation to its shareholders to dispute any assessments it believes the IRS made in error. Buffett/BRK doesn’t have an exemption from this basic corporate obligation. And BRK’s total tax expense for 2010 was $5.6 billion, with $3.7 billion current.
lou
@Stephen Rowe
JasperL gave an excellent response. but it’s not like people on Balloon Juice or any other liberal leaning blog haven’t heard that tired, incredibly stupid argument before. Word of advice: Learn new talking points.
TenguPhule
FAUX Troll Detected.
And Rejected.