Ruling Class Spokesman Can’t Understand America’s ‘Obsession’ With Inequality
Holman Jenkins, like any good upper class white male member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, is absolutely perplexed by America's "Inequality Obsession." Look America, the whole "I am concerned about the alarming levels of income inequality in America" thing? Yeah. It's getting to be kind of... how can Holman Jenkins put this politely... an obsession. Not cute.
"Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least to the extent the obsessives focus their policy responses on trying to adjust the condition of the top 1% rather than improving the opportunities of everyone else," writes Holman Jenkins. You're looking at this the wrong way, old boy. Give me your money, Holman Jenkins. That would improve my condition. The effect on your condition is merely incidental. Stop being so self-centered.
Why are the 99% of Americans who are not in the top 1% of American income so obsessed with the fact that they find themselves rather poor while others are fabulously wealthy? Holman Jenkins has some theories:
That goes doubly for the inequality obsessives. How society stimulates the creation and distribution of income is an important topic-so important that one could wish it were less infected with the pathology Freud diagnosed as "group spirit" and which he said was ultimately founded on envy.
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http://gawker.com/5903060/ruling-class-spokesman-cant-understand-americas-obsession-with-inequality
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)just before the masses rolled out the guillotine.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)approval.
It just balances out.
justgamma
(3,660 posts)I don't think we are using the right language. I don't really care if the rich get richer.
I do care that they get all the breaks. They need to pay their fair share of taxes.
Most of the ultra rich got that way because ordinary laborers actually created that wealth.
It's when the CEO's get huge bonuses for laying off people. If they can get the workers to take less money, it means a big bonus for the bosses.
Making record breaking profits, then have the workers take a cut in pay. That's what irks me.
The 1% just do not want to give credit where credit is due or compensate the ones who are working their asses off to make the rich richer. Make all the money you want, but let the workers share some. How much money do they need anyway.
90-percent
(6,828 posts)I'm not jealous or envious of rich people. I could give a rats ass about all their stuff.
What pisses me off is the concentration of wealth and how they have used their money and power to simply extract the money out of every enterprise they end up owning.
Vulture Capitalists, Predatory Capitalists. Sociopaths that gladly wipe out a company town in the name of ever more profits above all else.
The distribution of wealth figures for the last thirty to fifty years clearly show that their ever increasing slice of the pie is being taken from the share of the bottom 99%. Middle class income has grown 2-3% in the last 30 years while the wealthiest has seen their incomes grow in the neighborhood of 50-100% in the same time period.
They're already wealthy and want even more and have figured out a way to take it from working people.
Thom Hartmann has a clear understanding of how this came to be. Progressiveism and Progressive Taxation is the way out of this and all us lefties should school up on the principles of progressiveism as it relates to tax policy.
A return to progressive taxation will be welcome for all of us in the bottom 99%.
And it's due. Like Rachel says on her radio commercials - Trickle Down Economics has had a generation to work, and it simply DOESN'T! Enriching the already rich is asinine and stupid and hurts our country and our people..
And we now have one of the most outstanding Vulture Capitalists running for President and he's actually beating Obama in an occasional poll!
Just how fucking stupid are us average Americans, anyway? There should be riots in streets all over America from the filibuster of the Buffet Rule last week. I would guess 90% of Americans don't even know it came and went.
I really can't fathom why the Presidential race is even close. Romney should be utterly repellant to all but millionaires.
-90% Jimmy
MMJjestic
(34 posts)the more you have, the less I'll be keeping for me
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I can easily envision Mr Jenkins in his sleek, calf's leather upholstered tumbrel on the way to a meeting with Dr Guillotin.