Nicholas Kristoff, in today's New York Times lets loose a few broadside cannon blasts which, by themselves, ought to sink any Republican Man O'War in the water--if they are true:
1. The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans. (Remember the country has only a little over 300 million Americans, so that means 400 rich guys own more than half the country owns.)
2. The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90%. When he says "bottom 90%" that's a bit of editor's glitch: he means "the other 90%" or 90% of all the rest of the population. Any way you slice it, that's a pie graph which ought to knock your socks off.
Even in at the height of the British empire, when kings had multiple castles and estates, there were barons and knights and other wealthy people who, I would bet added up to more than 400 people and their families. The rest of the population may have lived in huts and squalor, so that is different from now, when the other 90% likely has hot and cold running water, electricity and television, Pop Tarts and dinner four times a week at McDonalds or Godfather's pizza.
But still.
I showed some pie graphs to some friends and I was surprised to hear from two of them that if they had the choice of living in a country where the pie was divided evenly into 5 parts or in a country which had a slice only 1/10 of a pie thick which owned 40% of the wealth and another slice 1/5 of the pie which owned another 50% and the rest of the pie was the people who split the remaining 10% of the wealth, these two people said they'd choose to live in the country with the uneven division of wealth.
These two immediately recognized the even division of wealth, where the 1/5 richest part of the population owned 1/5 of the nation's wealth could only happen in a country which had laws which redistributed the wealth, a socialist country, like Sweden. And no matter how you sliced the pie, they didn't want to live in no socialist country.
They said two things: 1/ The uneven distribution between winners and losers is the price you pay for a vigorous capitalist economy 2/ The losers in the capitalist economy were still better off because the whole pie is so much bigger being poor in the capitalist country still leaves you richer than being in the top 20% in the socialist country.
They also doubted the truth of the numbers and asked how they were derived. Could we look on the internet, say at the Internal Revenue Service website and see where these numbers came from? And even the IRS website would have data on only income, not net worth because some of that may be in forms for which no taxes are owed.
On the other hand, when I pressed them with assertions (which I cannot back with numbers any better than what Rick Perry makes up as he goes along) that this wealth grab is not the result of hard working, risk taking tycoons who have succeeded because they were willing to gamble but because the tycoons have bought themselves tax loopholes and the banks have gotten away with privatizing profits and socializing risks, well they simple reject all that as being untrue.
The rich are rich because they deserve to be rich and, conversely, the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor--they aren't as smart or as hard working or as brave as the rich.
So here we have one of those it comes down to what do you want to believe propositions: The slave owner wanted to believe he was a great hero for taking care of the poor, incompetent, stupid and lazy slaves who were in his "care." He fed them, clothed them, gave them work and a place to live and heat in the winter.
That was his comforting delusion.
That the rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve their lot is the comforting delusion of the Republican party.
They should be easy to beat, because you can only sell a mass delusion for so long.
As Democrats, we ought to be handing out T shirts with pie graphs, and T shirts with Got Medicare? Thank Democrats on one side and Got Social Security, Thank Democrats on the other and we ought to be handing out those same words on bumper stickers.
You are probably wondering about the picture and the title.
The picture is a class of American kids, at a public school in 1927, New York City, first generation kids mostly, born in this country to families of immigrants. Most of them grew up to buy houses, cars and to contribute to this country in industry, science, medicine, law and the military. The government paid for their education and got back that investment a thousand fold.
As for the title, it's not a quote but an allusion to the opening scene from The Wire in which a white policeman is interviewing a black teenager who describes how Snotboogie, a local kid, would join the daily game of dice and every day, he would wait until the pot got big and then he would scoop up all the cash and run away with it, only to be chased down and beaten up. The policeman asks him, well if Snotboogie always stole the pot, why did the local kids even let him play in the first place? The teenager looks at the policeman, a little indignantly, and says, "Got to, man. This America."
That's what the Republicans count on: Got to let those rich guys steal us blind; can't kick them out of the game. This America, man.
No comments:
Post a Comment