When Will the Sparrow Get Pissed Off?

"Instead of resorting to tired old class warfare rhetoric, pitting one working American against another, the president and the Democratic leadership should start working with us this week to ensure a fair and open debate to pass legislation to cut spending and freeze tax rates without any further delay.”  -- John Boehner

"We will not compromise our economy to accommodate the class warfare rhetoric of this administration." -- Mike Pence (R-Ind.)

"I don't think Americans should be pitting Americans against each other.  Americans agree with President Kennedy's formulation that a rising tide lifts all boats.... We all aspire to be in the very top groups of whatever we're talking about. And because of the kind of country we have, we have that opportunity and people do move from one income tax bracket up to the next one for example, as we increase our incomes.” – Jon Kyl

In 2009, the last year for which we have accurate figures, the income gap between the very-rich and the poor ballooned to an all-time high in this country.  The top 20% (those making $100,000 a year or more) got almost 50% of all income generated in this country, while those below the poverty line (about 6.3% of the population) received 3.4%.  The U.S. income disparity between rich and poor is the highest among all Western industrialized nations.  There is now greater income concentrated in the ends of the wealthy few than at any time since 1928.  You may recall what happened in 1929.

The not-exactly-progressive Wall Street Journal reported that in 2008 the richest .01% of the population had 22.2% of the wealth.  That’s 14,000 American families.  The bottom 90%, or about 130 million families, had just 4%.

Now the Republicans want to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone – including the super-rich.  The Democrats say no way – extend them maybe, but only for the lower and middle classes.  The Republicans say that when the super-rich have low taxes, that translates into more jobs.  The Democrats say no way: There’s no evidence that Reagan’s massive tax cuts and Bush’s comparatively modest ones did much to create jobs or grow the economy.  They point to the significant growth of jobs and the GDP as a result of Clinton’s tax hikes.  The Republicans say that what’s good for General Motors is good for America and that our economy depends on making the corporate moguls happy – and richer.  The Democrats say that with these guys a few million simoleons isn’t going to make a big difference in their wealth, happiness or the good of the Republic.  And on and on and on it goes.

I’m not an economist, and I confess my eyes glaze over when I try to make sense of all the detailed statistics that are bandied about as Democrats and Republicans chase each other around the room.  I’ve read a little Keynes, a little Galbraith, and a smattering of Marx.  I keep my eye on Krugman.  But I’m like a monkey in the operating room: You wouldn’t want to hand me the scalpel.  Still,  that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few thoughts on the matter.

It makes me angry, I admit at the start, that discussions on topics that affect large numbers of real people, with real (more or less) lives, so quickly reach a point where no one can understand them.  Which, I suppose, is where most politicians probably prefer that they stay.  We, the citizenry, are flummoxed and befuddled by the most basic issues affecting us.  We can’t help but feel we’re missing something.  So, unable to come up with a reasoned opinion based on “the facts,” we do what we hope is the next best thing: We take a position.

But positions, unless they’re being described in an illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra, are not really the next best thing.  They fall into the category of what Plato would call doxa – in other words, a rough guess based on appearances and prejudices and emotions.  For Plato – and he’s not a bad guy to be reminded of from time to time – the only road to the truth was reason.  (Well, there was the divine madness of the poets, but that’s another blog post.)

But who among us is free enough of his prejudices to heal his ignorance with the pristine balm of reason?  Not many, I can tell you.  So, if reason won’t help us figure out an opinion on this question, where oh where can we turn?  I say we won’t go too far off-track if we trust our instincts.

Now, I realize that with us humans there’s a fine line between instinct and prejudice.  When I gaze slack-jawed at the Neanderthal chest-beating of the Tea Partiers, for example, I feel sure that they’re going with their gut.  Maybe Jim Jones was going with his gut.  For all I know, so was Genghis Khan.  So, let’s add some qualifications.

If you are not insane or psychotic; if you’ve had some education (even if it’s in the school of hard knocks) and actually try to think about things critically and independently of all the horseshit that you hear on the tube; if you have some passing familiarity with some of the major events in human history; and if you are self-aware enough to be leery of your own knee-jerk reactions to things, then I think it’s not a bad idea to trust your instincts.  Instinct tempered by a modest amount of good judgment.

This is important, because it means you don’t always have to know allthe gory details; you don’t have to listen to every last pundit and read every last web article and carefully weigh the details and nuances of every argument to know where the truth lies.  In a world that bombards us with so much data, opinion and sheer verbiage, we can cut through it all and come to a point of view based on an intuitive grasp of right and wrong, truth and bullshit.  In other words, we don’t have to be deer caught in the headlights of the modern information machine.

And so I come to the debate about extending the Bush tax cuts, armed only with a brain (such as it is) and my instincts.

Extending the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich is supposed to be good for us all.  If the super-rich get to keep more of their profits, they will use it to create jobs and buy more expensive shit (whatever it is that rich people feel they still need to buy).  They will open up more factories and retail stores and laboratories and massage parlors with all this extra cash, and we will all be the beneficiaries.  The economy itself is an engine fueled by the energy, innovation and investment of the private corporate sector.  Take away these massive incentives to be energetic, innovative and investment-happy, and the princes of corporate America will feel the wind go out of their sails, the lead go out of their pencils.  They will become grumpy and morose.  They will start to gaze wistfully out the window.  They will settle for just “pretty good” and not strive for “excellence.”  And all this corporate ennui will trickle down to the rest of the economy, the rest of the nation.

Further, to question the right of the mega-rich to hold onto every nickel is to plunge a stake into the heart of the American Dream (see the quotation from the ever-entertaining Jon “Stop Making Fun of Me” Kyl above).  The American Dream, or so I am told, is that anyone, armed with nothing but effort and ability, can rise to the highest echelons of social and economic success.  This is of course a very enticing idea.  So enticing that it deludes millions of Americans every year into voting for the party of the oligarchs even though the oligarchs have been screwing them every which way till Sunday for ... well, for a really long time.

"It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."  -- George Carlin

You may have asked yourself every now and then why Mr. Double Wide with the raggy-assed mullet has been voting Republican every chance he gets and helping carry bubble-heads like George W. Bush into the White House for two terms, when he is the direct and incontrovertible victim of Republican domestic and foreign policy agendas since time immemorial.  It’s partly because he dreams, in his dreamy chucklehead way, that he will some day enjoy the fruits of the American Dream.  For Mr. Double Wide, it’s not that the system is rigged so that he’ll be still trying to take out a second mortgage on “Ol’ Southern Cross” when he’s 92; it’s that he just hasn’t quite gotten there yet.  The check is the mail.  It’s only a matter of time.

And this is why we’re hearing so much lately by these Republican con artists about “class warfare.”  The Democrats are trying to stir up class warfare.  They don’t realize that this is a nation founded on the ideal of total class freedom and radical vertical mobility!  They are striking at the very heart of this great nation!  In fact, they are starting to sound positively Marxist!

Well, I won’t be the first to point out that class warfare is here, and it wasn’t the teeming masses that started it.  When you have a small group of people with all the money and they won’t let anyone else have any, that’s class warfare.  Well, it is if the victims of this massive theft are smarter than rocks and more courageous than sheep.

We’ve seen it time and again.  Royalty and aristocracy accustomed to getting all the dough, middle classes who want a little more, and poorer classes who want something anything.  A system of the kind we have in place, with tax breaks so transparently unfair that General Electric can pay NO TAXES, and lobbyists and PACs in place to make sure that that politicians know which side their bread is buttered on, can only tend to piss off the people who are getting the shaft.  And rightfully so.

One does tend to wonder why we who do not belong to the super-rich class have put up with this for so long – and why some otherwise intelligent-sounding people actually seem to support low tax rates for the wealthy.

“No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”  -- H.L. Mencken

So, if in fact the super-rich can be said to be waging class war on the lower classes (and if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that’s exactly what I’m saying), then maybe their stooges in Congress can just stop making it seem like someone in the White House is whipping the Third Estate into a frenzy.

Now we come to the question of whether extending the Bush tax cuts will help the economy.

It’s been pretty well established, I think, that when they get a little extra dough, rich people do different things with it than your average person.  While you and I may use it to pay down our credit debt or get current with our bills or patch a leaky roof, rich people just tend to put it with the rest of their diamonds and rubies.  They’ve pretty much already got all the toys any human could possibly use.  Their purchasing does not increase.  Moreover, the notion that the moguls will somehow use the money they save by not having to pay their fair share will be put into higher salaries for their workers, better working conditions, improved environmental safeguards, or even more jobs (in this country, at least) is ludicrous.  I was searching for a better word, but ludicrous will have to do.  Okay, how about breathtakingly stupid?  If the Wall Street bailout taught us anything, it’s that there is no selfishness too shameful for a corporate executive – why these immense bonuses continue to be paid in the face of new revelations every day about how the country was ripped off by these Armani-clad snakes is incomprehensible.  No, Virginia, corporations and their executives will not take a pay cut, forego a bonus, pay fair wages, be responsible stewards of the environment, do the right thing in any of the many ways they could, just because they are nice guys.  (And by the way, they’re not.)

Which brings me to the horse and the sparrow.  Trickle-down economics, it turns out, we have always had with us.  Wherever there are a bunch of rich people who want to keep every last cent of the money that rolls into their coffers, there is some greasy rationalization put forth arguing that all this greed is really benevolence in disguise.  They are only doing what’s best for the country, and it truly pains them to have to make all this money and pay so small a tithe.  Trickle-down, supply side, Reaganomics.  It has many names.  In the late 19th century, it was called the horse and sparrow theory.  The idea is that the food you feed your horse eventually comes out the other end as something the sparrows can eat.  You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the shit falls.

But others have seen this “theory” for what it really is.  John Kenneth Galbraith called it a cover for paying off wealthy campaign contributors, and said it had contributed to a late 19th century depression in this country.  Even David Stockman, a reliable cheerleader for supply side economics during his years with Reagan, has repudiated the idea.

Many smart people have pointed out that if you want to increase consumer spending, maybe you should leave the average consumer with more money to spend.  Maybe we should be talking more about trickle-up economics.  Shouldn’t we be saying that if the great mass of people are doing well, then the corporations do well, not the other way round?

And here is where instinct comes in.  People with fancy suits and fancy degrees can appear on TV and tell you that sparing the wealthy their fair share of responsibility for funding our national work is really the best thing to do.  And smug pundits can assure you that if you just understood a little better how economics works, you’d get why this is the right way to go.  And CNN anchors can continue to pummel us with he said / she said stories that basically say, “Who the fuck knows?”  But deep down in your heart, you know the truth.  You don’t need any more information than you already have.  You know that to tax someone who makes $300 million a year at a higher rate than someone who makes $80,000 is the intuitively right thing to do.  They have gotten the benefit of living in this country in ways they probably don’t even recognize.  They’ve lived with relatively clean air and drinking water; they’ve been educated; they’ve had utilities that mostly work; they’ve been kept safe from warfare (except maybe the class kind) on our shores.  They owe this country a tithe. 

They owe it because we are, or should be, a people, and not just a collection of individual persons.  Because we have the resources in this country to take care of our wounded, sick, broken, starving and impoverished.  We just don’t do it because we prefer to put it into people’s private treasuries.  So now we have a choice.  Either we decide we’re going to try to lower the deficit on the backs of the people who need our help the most.  Or we decide to take just a little more from the people who need it the least.

So here’s my gut opinion: No one needs more than $50 million a year.  Not while people are starving and living in shitholes, when there’s no money for real education reform, no money to clean up our air and water, no money to fast-track research into alternate energy sources, no money to finally cure AIDS and cancer and make affordable health care available to everyone.  It’s obscene.  If we are a nation, we should be able to make sure that all segments of our country have a shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Otherwise, who knows?  A little class warfare could be right around the corner.  At this point, I’m thinking that might not be such a bad idea.