KRUGMAN: We Live In Age Of The Angry Billionaire-Furious If Anyone Suggests They Are Not Entitled

[kpete]

Inequality and Indignity

...............

Let’s talk, in particular, about dignity.

It’s all very well to talk vaguely about the dignity of work; but the idea that all workers can regard themselves as equal in dignity despite huge disparities in income is just foolish. When you’re in a world where 40 money managers make as much as 300,000 high school teachers, it’s just silly to imagine that there will be any sense, on either side, of equal dignity in work. And one demonstration of this reality is the angry reaction people like me get when we cite facts like this; nobody, and I mean nobody, on the right that I’ve encountered seems willing simply to accept the fact and argue that it’s justified. Instead, they regard pointing out the reality of extreme inequality as somehow inherently outrageous — because they know how explosive that reality is.

As it turns out, by the way, the people who seem least inclined to value work in itself, even if it doesn’t pay very well, are the winners: we live in the age of the angry billionaire, furious if anyone should suggest that his wealth doesn’t entitle him to acclamation as well as luxury.

Now, one way to enhance the dignity of ordinary workers is through, yes, entitlements: make it part of their birthright, as American citizens, that they get certain basics such as a minimal income in retirement, support in times of unemployment, and essential health care.

But the Republican position is that none of these things should be provided, and that if somehow they do get provided, they should come only at the price of massive government intrusion into the recipient’s personal lives — making sure that you don’t take advantage of health reform to work less, requiring that you undergo drug tests to receive unemployment benefits or food stamps, and so on.

........

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/inequality-and-indignity/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[Scuba]

2. Pointing out that the wealthy have been waging war on the rest of us is class warfare.

Leave those poor rich people alone!

[kairos12]

17. The general class war was lost under Raygun, it is now a guerrilla campaign.

[tclambert]

21. You're right.

The top 20% own over 80% of the wealth. The next 20%, what I would think used to be the UMC, Upper Middle Class, own about 10%. The middle 20% own less than 5%. The lower middle class and the poor possess almost nothing at all.

This chart says so much:

[jwirr]

3. The robber barons benefited from the laborers work and thought they were entitled also. The Pope

( I am not a Catholic) is totally correct about what he said about capitalism. If anyone looks hard enough both Martin Luther (Vocation) and John Calvin (Protestant Work Ethic) said the same thing.
The Bible but it plainly: I (God) did not give to you that you might be comforted but that you might comfort others.

We need feel no guilt about making these poor greedy people angry at us. Too bad.

[bvar22]

4. Krugman should know.

He helped create these monsters by supporting "Free Trade" and deregulated "Free Markets" back in the 90s.

I am glad to see he has walked back this support of Free Markets/Free Trade by pointing out the inevitable results,
but I would really like a column condemning the FRAUD of selling the myth of "Free Trade/Free Markets" to a gullible America by 3rd way/DLC/"New Democrats"/ Corporatist/ 1%ers.

[jwirr]

6. Good point.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

19. ^

[L0oniX]

20. ^^^this^^^

[arely staircase]

5. recommended nt

[davidn3600]

7. The right wing says if you are not a billionaire, you didnt work hard enough

In their worldview, the richer you are the harder you worked for it and the more you have contributed to society. If you are poor, then you are lazy and a moocher. That's how they view rich vs poor.

Im not joking. Go look at FreeRepublic.

[bvar22]

9. The real irony is...

...that most of the idiots posting over there don't have a pot to piss in.
But like unemployed Joe the Plumber and George Zimmerman, they STILL blame all those other poor people for being too lazy to be a Billionaire.
It is only a temporary accident that is forcing them to live in their parent's basement while waiting for their Billion Dollars to fall from the sky.
It is REAL important for these people to be able to blame somebody else for their problems.

I've also seen the photos of the FR Rallies they had back during the Bush Administration,
and they would be lucky enough to pool up enough change to go to McDonalds after the big Freeper Rally.


Sadly, more subtle Blame the Poor messagry appears regularly on the pages of DU.

[reusrename]

10. It's weird when people ask me "how do you know if your poor?"

I respond with "how many meals have you missed?"

"Who's rich?" is only slightly more complicated: "those tax cuts for the rich would have amounted to over $30,000 per worker if divided equally among them, so I guess if you got more than that you are definitely rich."

[calimary]

30. Also - quite a few of America's current billionaires really didn't build it themselves.

The koch brothers, the walton family, donald trump, and even at a "lower" level - folks like the romneys and the bushes, INHERITED their lavish and enviable head starts. All you can legitimately say about them is that they're all members of the Lucky Sperm Club, because they were lucky enough to be born into already-there, already-considerable wealth, status, and comfort. SOOOO typical of these folks who flatter themselves into thinking they're self-made. As we used to say about dubya: "born on third base. Thought he hit a triple."

People like Oprah on the other hand - nope. She worked for everything she now has. Damn hard, too. People like her I can respect, and they're deserving.

[bvar22]

35. Oprah also stood on the shoulders of all those who had come before her.

She was dependent on the Publicly Owned Airwaves and that infrastructure too, not to mention the Public Schools and teachers that educated her staff, supporters, and possibly herself.
If Oprah is a product of Private Schools, then she had help there too.

Nobody...NOBODY does it ALL on their own.

[elzenmahn]

43. Or look at CNBC from the other day...

...I didn't get his name (it's better that I didn't), but one of the guests was saying pretty much what your post says, and goes further by saying that $35,000 per year is still rich in most of the world. If you make $35,000, you should be grateful, he says in essence.

Of course, he didn't take into consideration that wealth and income are relative concepts. Remember all those wheelbarrows of cash that were needed in Germany prior to WWII in order to purchase a loaf of bread?

Amazing how little understanding one can have when s/he sits in an ivory tower. Great view of the forest, but none of the trees.

[reformist2]

51. That's what they say, but few of them really believe it. In their hearts they know it's BS.

Sadly, they can admit the truth because they are deathly afraid of what that implies... that some sort of socialism is the only way to go.

[Vinnie From Indy]

52. The modern conservative has bought into two myths and like a dog with a bone,

they will not give them up. The first is that they primarily vote for the GP because they have been told relentlessly that their tax dollars go to lazy people of color. The second is that the reason they are not part of the 1% is because of the all the money being given to lazy people of color. They simply cannot restrain their inner racist enough to see the truth. This is nothing new. Since time began, leaders have thrown the red meat of xenophobia and scapegoating to the masses and a certain percentage of humankind is highly receptive to that message.

[RainDog]

8. k&r n/t

[Enthusiast]

11. K&R! Trickle down writ large.

[jsr]

12. The French used to have a mechanical device to deal with this exact issue

[MisterP]

13. the TGV!

[kairos12]

16. Bring back the National Razor.

[hobbit709]

18. A short ride in a tumbrel to the good doctor's invention will cure their sense of entitlement.

[CTyankee]

32. History teaches harsh lessons to those governments that insist on income inequality...

[CTyankee]

34. The Romanov family sure found out how the Russians dealt with it...

once they had had enough!

[AnneD]

50. JSR....

It is euphemistically referred to as the FRSP French Revolution Severance Package.....

[jsr]

53. Parfait.

[Solly Mack]

14. K&R

[suffragette]

40. Add another K&R

[YoungDemCA]

15. As Thomas Frank put it:

"Pity the Billionaire" is the Tea Party philosophy.

[tclambert]

22. But the Koch brothers worked so hard for their wealth!

Obviously they worked thousands of times harder than ungrateful normal people. And they are therefore thousands of times morally superior to lazy working people trying to support their families with three jobs. Really, don't we owe it to the Koch brothers to relieve them of any excess burdens of responsibility, like asking that their tar sands operations not poison the environment? We should all just relax and accept whatever our rich masters grudgingly give us.


extreme

[libodem]

24. .

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[tclambert]

25. Excellent sign.

Congress: We may be corrupt. But we're not cheap.

[Jack Rabbit]

29. +1

Of course, any congressman in their employ should be laid off.

[KansDem]

45. The irony is that Pappy Koch made his fortune working for Stalin!

In 1925, Fred C. Koch joined MIT classmate Lewis E. Winkler at an engineering firm in Wichita, Kansas, which was renamed the Winkler-Koch Engineering Company. In 1927 they developed a more efficient thermal cracking process for turning crude oil into gasoline. This process threatened the competitive advantage of established oil companies, which sued for patent infringement. Temporarily forced out of business in the United States, they turned to other markets, including the Soviet Union, where Winkler-Koch built 15 cracking units between 1929 and 1932. During this time, Koch came to despise communism and Joseph Stalin's regime.[11][12] In his 1960 book, A Business Man Looks at Communism, Koch wrote that he found the USSR to be "a land of hunger, misery, and terror."[13] According to Charles G. Koch, "Virtually every engineer he worked with [there] was purged."[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries

A land of "hunger, misery, and terror" but make me rich, Joey Baby!!!

[DirkGently]

23. Anger is the standard response to a threat to unfair advantage.

A rationale may or may not be invented to support it, but the heart of it is simply that those in whose favor the playing board is tilted do not like to contemplate any kind of leveling out.

The more justified the complaints, the more real the threat, and the greater the anger.

[nikto]

42. Excellent point

So true!

[aquart]

26. Treasure-sucking parasites.

Millionaires are the sign of a healthy economy. Billionaires are the sign of a doomed one. If our billionaires were taxed back to millionaires, we would have a reliable electrical grid, really fast trains, safe bridges, good roads even in Texas (revenue sharing), single-payer healthcare,well-equipped schools, homes for our veterans, homes for our homeless, and no one would go hungry in the United States of America.

But we don't have the guts to piss off a Koch.

And, if the greedy bastards thought all the money would go in taxes, they'd raise salaries and bring jobs back home. Just for spite.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

27. The wealthy don't seem to think it undignified to accept welfare themselves. Delusional egomaniacs.

[JHB]

28. Divine Right of Kings is now Divine Right of Maximum Profit

The biggest threat to these people is "Could you just slow down how fast you get more wealthy?"

[JEFF9K]

31. They need classes in BILLIONAIRE ANGER MANAGEMENT.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

33. The comfort of the rich depends on a abundant suppy of the poor. - Voltaire

[Spitfire of ATJ]

36. Someone was once on CNBC and it was asked, "Why to they hate Obama? He's made them rich."...

The answer was that the rich feel Obama has caused the rich to be less loved than they feel they deserve.

This explains the attempt to install RMoney who got rich by sucking up to the rich.

[FiveGoodMen]

37. I don't think the rich hate Obama at all.

They know they're getting their way.

But moving the country ever farther to the right while claiming that it's too far left is their MO.

Obama's a Democrat so they put on a show of being against him.

That way, the angry, downtrodden public can misread the whole thing and believe that a GOP government would make things better.

All theater.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

39. The public is starting to wake up that the Republicans are con artists.

[Name Unpronounceable]

49. I certainly

I certainly hope you are right, my friend.

[El_Johns]

46. +1

[blkmusclmachine]

38. ,

,

[father founding]

41. Goose and Gander ?

Farm managers who recieve subsidies should undergo drug tests

[Obbopp]

44. Class War

What will be the spark that leads to Revolutionary War Two?

I fear the present systems within the USA; political, economic etc. have been corrupted beyond redemption with nothing short of destroying the old and starting anew the only way to make a human-friendly USA.

[adirondacker]

47. In my best Zell voice; "I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel."

[DinahMoeHum]

48. I have a less-than-funny feeling that this year. . .

. . . a member of the so-called "1-percent" will die at the hands of an angry, disgruntled, unemployed person.

You just don't go screwing around with an everyday person's dignity the way they do without eventual push-back.