The Great Isolation of the 1%

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/great-isolation-1



***SNIP

Wealth and its discontents

The latest glimpse into the Oz-like mind of the superrich erupted when Perkins fired off a screed to The Wall Street Journal on January 25. His letter to the editor was sparked by anger at San Francisco’s anti-gentrification protests centered on Google’s private bus network used to ferry employees to the company’s campus 35 miles away. In his note Perkins railed against “progressive radicalism,” and declared that there were “parallels” between Hitler’s Germany and “the progressive war on the American 1 percent, namely the ‘rich.’” Even though Perkins gave a partial apology for some of his words days later, the damage was done. In response to his screed, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman penned an op-ed titled, “Paranoia of the Plutocrats.”

The problem with Perkins’ paranoia is that he is not alone in it. Despite the fact that the top 1 percent has captured nine out of 10 dollars of all the wealth added to the economy since 2000, there is a pervasive sense that they are the ones facing persecution and denigration. As wealth therapist Jamie Trager-Muney told Politico, “I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger.” But as Krugman points out the real danger in America is poverty and inequality. There is “strong evidence that high inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality,” he writes. Being poor, rather than being rich, is what kills.

Regardless of the facts, the issue is that what the rich actually believe about themselves and about everyone else has an excessive impact on American society. As was laid out in a report last year by the think tank Demos, wealthy individuals are far more likely vote and contribute to political campaigns. Those making over $150,000 showed up at the polls nearly twice the rate as those making less than $20,000. In 2012, just 41,000 Americans — out of a total population of 310 million — gave $2,600 or more to presidential campaigns that year. But these contributions made up nearly one out of four dollars raised that year meaning that these individuals’ impact on presidential fundraising was 2,500 times greater than their actual percentage of the population.

Given that there is a sense amongst the wealthy that they are America’s losers, it makes perfect sense that they would use their disproportionate political power to steer greater assistance their way. According to research by the Russell Sage Foundation, the wealthy are twice as less likely [PDF] to support a minimum wage that guarantees income above the official poverty line and almost four times less likely to support to the Earned Income Tax Credit which helps keep 10 million people out of poverty; half of them children. But they are more likely to support “a society where the government does nothing except provide national defense and police protection, so that people would be left alone to earn whatever they could.”

[postulater]

1. That explains some of the goofy politicians like Walker

selling their positions.

He thinks he's a 1%er.

[hobbit709]

2. The privileged class never gets the point until they are running for their lives.

[another_liberal]

3. Sadly true . . .

They believe god has chosen them to be an elite class, far above run-of-the-mill humanity. They will likely continue to believe it even as the cart hauls them through jeering crowds, on their way to the guillotine.

[bvar22]

14. More than anyone really knows.

See:
The Family,
C Street Center,

....and don't be surprised when you see the names of well known Democrats
who circulate with those who believe that WEALTH is a sign from God that they have been "chosen"
to rule the World, and the Poor don't matter.

[sofa king]

4. Hitler relied entirely on the rich, and they fucked him, too.

He adopted the ultra-wealthy and their politics, and, largely to show his rich friends (including Henry Ford and Prescott Bush) where his loyalty lay, he murdered most of the actual socialists who had been suckered in by the "national socialist" lies with which the Nazis padded their platform and their name.

"Socialist" in Nazi parlance was as empty a term as "compassionate conservatism" was to the most recent Nazis who once again set back the course of world progress by decades and condemned millions of their own people to an early demise.

Hitler was still kissing ass to rich people in 1943, when they stood to profit from the financial collapse of the German automobile industry in the middle of a war that was destined to completely defeat Germany in less than two years.

So rather than save the companies which made the vehicles that transported his troops, Hitler let those companies be liquidated, and 95% of German soldiers shuffled to their fates without vehicle transport. Lack of mobility led to the isolation and destruction of German divisions, then German corps, then German armies, and finally German army groups, giving Hitler and the Nazis the distinction of losing most of the largest battles ever fought in human history.

We need to know this because conservatives are deeply conditioned to hate themselves, in their mirror reflection form of Nazis, who resemble Republicans in every major way right down to the lapel pins. If we can make conservatives realize that they are the fucking Nazis, we have a much better chance of reforming some of them.

[Laelth]

10. Excellent post. n/t

-Laelth

[jwirr]

12. Thank you for the history lesson. I agree with your conclusions.

[jsr]

5. They ought to see Dr Guillotin for some therapy

[marmar]

6. k/r

[nikto]

7. If the top 1% don't show some TRUE flexibility...

Things will get so bad,
THEY will be the only fresh meat around.


Stock up on the Kingsford!!

Personally, I prefer the matchlight.

[awoke_in_2003]

15. Now seating the Donner party. nt

[nikto]

16. Hawaiian sauce is great with "long pig"

Although some may prefer the irony of using a Corporate BBQ sauce...

[riverbendviewgal]

8. The rich and international corporations days are numbered

for getting away from paying taxes. Good .. I look forward to it. and Obama is helping.... OECD

http://taxpol.blogspot.ca/

[Laelth]

9. They are right to be frightened.

If they keep squeezing labor for every penny they can, the people will eventually revolt.

-Laelth

[L0oniX]

11. I hope they are isolated, scared, uncomfortable and unable to safely walk around in public.

It's only karmatically right that being a millionaire makes you less free.

[Doc_Technical]

13. Mark 8:36-37

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

The world would be a better place if the people who call themselves
Christians would actually read their Good Book.