Chait's savage and very good takedown: Do Liberals Want to Kill Iron Man?

[cali]

Harvard economist, occasional Republican economic adviser, and avid social Darwinist Greg Mankiw has produced the latest in his series of passionate defenses of the financial prerogatives of the ultrarich. In his most recent New York Times column, Mankiw begins with the relatively sympathetic case of gazillionaire actor Robert Downey Jr. Nobody is upset that Downey earned $50 million to appear in The Avengers, he posits. Therefore, Mankiw proceeds to argue, nobody should be upset with the incomes of other extremely rich people.

One sleight of hand in Mankiw’s column (as Paul Krugman points out) is his easy leap from the relatively unobjectionable way Downey earns his fortune to the way other executives — especially those in finance, who represent an enormous chunk of the very rich — earn theirs. If you don’t like Downey’s movies, you can choose not to attend them. If you don’t like the financial industry siphoning off your 401(k) or plunging the world economy into a massive crisis destroying trillions of dollars and ruining the lives of millions of people forever, you don’t have as much recourse.

Mankiw wants us to ignore the serious moral problems embedded in the rentier class – such as the Wall Street titans joking in secret gatherings about their reliance on bailouts – and think of the one percent as Iron Men, to whom we owe admiration and gratitude. But even if we consider Mankiw’s chosen example on its own terms, the Iron Man problem does not take us where Mankiw wants to go.

<snip>

But there is somebody who considers Downey’s income a great injustice: Greg Mankiw. As Mankiw has insisted time and time again, Obama’s tax policies unfairly seize too great a share of Downey’s income and spend it on people less deserving than Downey. Indeed, Mankiw’s work suggests he believes society’s cruel exploitation of Downey and his economic peers is the single most compelling social wrong in the world today.

<snip>

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/liberals-want-to-kill-iron-man.html

[Scootaloo]

1. It's not the wealth. It's the means of acquisition, and the impact it has on politics

We know it and they know it, this is just an attempt to sway the ignorant who dream of lottery tickets and inherentences from long-forgotten uncles.

[AnnieBW]

2. Actors actually WORK for a living

Yes, actors such as Robert Downey Jr. make lots of money per film. If they have a good agent, they make even more on residuals, merchandising, etc. But they WORK for a living. What other profession has only 10% of their active membership working at any given time? And, in the grand scheme of things, they don't make as much as people like Greg Mankiw do. Actors, while no longer tied to the studio system, are working for "the man" every bit as much as you and I. The real money is with the studio heads - Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, etc. Even George Lucas is only the 109th richest person in America (source: Forbes Magazine, 2013). The richest entertainer in America (not counting Donald Trump), is Oprah Winfrey - and she ranks 184th. No actor or actress shows up in the Forbes 400.

So yeah, some actors make a lot of money. But not a LOT of money.

[jmowreader]

4. The other thing is an old Hollywood saying

"You're only as good as your last film."

Unless you're some sort of celluloid god, make one picture that bombs and they don't let you make another.

[tblue37]

3. From a comment on his article:

". . . wealth has been hoovered into fewer and fewer pockets, and to get a rate of return these ridiculous agglomerations of money cause crisis after crisis.

Remember S&L? Black Monday? Once Reagan chopped top-end tax rates in half, suddenly we had financial crashes for the first time in half a century <emphasis added>.We've been lurching like drunken sailors ever since."

[Chathamization]

5. You need $50 million salaries to get talent like RDJ (A Scanner Darkly does not exist) N/T

[Scuba]

6. I don't mind people being rich, so long as they don't use their dough to buy our government.

I very much object to people being poor.