Real Class War Is Working to Keep Those Below You Down

[dajoki]

Real Class War Is Working to Keep Those Below You Down
by Joshua Holland | September 20, 2011 - 8:27am
Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not a meritocracy, and amid cries of class warfare, Americans are getting the worst of both worlds.
http://www.alternet.org/news/152470/real_class_war_is_working_to_keep_those_below_you_down/

That conservatives are greeting the deficit reduction package Barack Obama presented on Monday – one that includes a new minimum tax on millionaires – with howls of 'class warfare' is as predictable as the sun rising in the east. It's a poll-tested talking point, after all.

But it obscures a far more pernicious form of “class warfare” being waged from above – a war of attrition against the upward economic mobility of ordinary working people. We live in a country where most people believe their opportunities are limited only by their innate talents and appetite for hard work, but over the last four decades, while decrying a wholly imaginary class war from below, conservative policies have undermined many of the ladders by which working people once achieved a middle-class lifestyle. Taking pot-shots at another class isn't war, nor is imposing a modest tax increase on those who have been showered with tax cuts for the last decade. Genuine class warfare is those at the very top working to keep everyone else far beneath them.

That's a story that doesn't fit neatly onto a bumpersticker. The standard reply to right-wing bloviating about “class warfare” is essentially an appeal to the authority of billionaire investor Warren Buffet, who famously said, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

It's an undeniably true statement: in 1979, those in the top 10th of 1 percent of the American economic ladder took in 1.11 percent of the nation's income, but by 2008, they were grabbing 5 percent. Those extremely wealthy few didn't become five times smarter and aren't working five times harder than they were in the late '70s, and the seismic shift in our economic structures wasn't an accident: the upward redistribution of wealth in this country has been a direct result of policies for which those at the top have lobbied hard – labor policies, trade deals, cuts to the social services that lifted some of those at the bottom out of poverty and a tax structure that shifted a big chunk of the burden from corporations and the wealthiest to ordinary working families.

Yet that retort only scratches the surface. Conservatives wage a far more damaging form of warfare when they attack the means by which people were once able to move up the economic ladder. They've done so with gusto, and as a result, the upward mobility that once defined America's great economic experiment is now little more than a fond memory, undermined by the Right's knee-jerk anti-governmentalism and an almost fascistic hostility to organized labor.

Most people aren't even aware of that reality. The belief that we live in a perfect meritocracy remains widespread. Around 3 percent of Americans are actually millionaires (or were before the crash of 2008), but in 2003, almost one in three told Gallup that they expected to be millionaires at some point in their lives. A 2006 poll found that more than half of those surveyed believed “Almost anyone can get rich if they put their mind to it.”

Conservative discourse about the “undeserving” poor being where they are because of some inherent personal faults might make some sense if we were all born with the same opportunities to get ahead. Tragically, however, in today’s economy, the single greatest predictor of how much an American child will earn in the future is how much his or her parents take home.

<<snip>>

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. ...and those above you.

Extremely ironic header.

[Hoosier Daddy]

2. K&R

Class warfare is real, all right, but it has always been waged AGAINST the poor.

[RKP5637]

3. Exactly! I find it sooooo strange when the wealthy/Rs cry class warfare. It's ridiculous. n/t

[Cool Logic]

4. "...with howls of 'class warfare' is as predictable as the sun rising in the east."

Indeed...it is just as predictable as the howls of "tax the rich" from those who believe that will solve all of our problems.

However, 1% is not a large enough demographic to create the Utopia that many believe this policy would effect.

[Blue Meany]

5. I'm not looking for Utopia, but I am looking for a country and a national

economy that is run in the interests of the majority of its citizens. Were it not for their wealth, the wealthy would not be making economic decisions, such as shipping jobs to China, that have a deleterious impact on their fellow citizens. Nor would they be influencing government policy in ways that help them and hurt everyone else.

They should not be in a position to do these things. Getting money out of politics would be one way to mitigate their influence in politics, but they would use their influence to block this. Instituting an element of employee democracy in corporations would mitigate their influence there, but they would block that too. The only way left to curtail their power is to limit their wealth. Taxing them at a higher rate would be a small step in the right direction.

They may or may not be able to bail out the economy with their wealth. But the building a sustainable economy that supports the needs of the population is surely contingent on reducing their influence on the both the economy and the government, so that a rational course can be pursued that does not kow tow to their short-term parochial interests.

[Cool Logic]

10. I agree that the rich and powerful have far too much influence on our government; however...

money will always find its way "in." For not only do both sides beg for it, the 1st Amendment guarantees it by means of free speech and "the right of the people...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

However, there is nothing that prevents the disclosure of who gives and who receives. Thus, I say let it in and let the People to assess the situation and cast their votes accordingly.

[Hydra]

6. That's funny

Considering that they basically destroyed the economy, and are sitting on roughly $46 Trillion.

But no, taking them to task for it couldn't possibly have any positive benefits for the rest of us. After all, laws are for the little people.

[harun]

7. Since when does advocating fair tax policy mean demanding a Utopia?

[TheKentuckian]

8. Within milliseconds of accepting Turd Way (aka Republican) ideology

That makes neocon powered, semi-theocracy oriented Reaganomics and Pax Americana the official state secular religion.

[lsewpershad]

9. How

do you think they became rich? Without labor?

[Kaleko]

11. Show me one person who believes that "tax the rich" will solve all of our problems.

And who are the "many" that are supposedly expecting a Utopia if the rich were taxed a bit more?

Cool Logic? You should make at least some preliminary efforts to live up to that name instead of dangling strawmen in the bulk of your posts.