Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Something new: Angry Rich

    1. Paul Krugman: The Angry Rich 
    2.  To read Paul Krugman's New York times editorial on the "Angry Rich" click "Paul Krugman:The Angry Rich" above.
    3. There is something new this year. The rich are really angry and to some degree this is even more dangerous than the middle class and the poor being angry because the rich tend to put their money where their mouth is. The poor don't have any money and the middle class are trying to keep their homes from being foreclosed so they may have money but none that they can afford to spend. But since the rich are the angriest of all it seems then maybe everyone needs to take note of what the rich are angry about. Because when the rich get really angry in a culture sometimes people disappear never to be heard from again or information tends to get very strange and bent in the media so rationality and logic is lost. Take for example, Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. Or the Koch Brothers influence on California politics through the million spent trying to bring down AB 32 in California this fall or their well financed war against Obama.  
    4. The rich are scared and angry. And you know that cannot be a good thing for the middle class and poor of this nation or any other on earth.
    5. Begin quote from above editorial: The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.
      You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.
      And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.
      But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.end quote.

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