KOCH BROTHERS: THE SYMBOL OF INCOME INEQUALITY



 

…These two brothers, that never worked but inherited their vast wealth, are being made the symbol for what’s wrong in America.

 

Income inequality will continue to widen until the 99% get feed up enough to make some serious political changes.

In a recent column, for explaining America’s income inequality, a Washington Post occasional contributor, Catherine Rampell, used a different way to explain the inequality issue this way, “People don’t hate you because you’re beautiful. People hate you because they [the people] are getting uglier.  Using that logic, by substituting income for attractiveness, you’ll have a better grasp of why the 99.9% really resent the super wealthy 1%.”

Apparently, the super-rich are also starting to feel that the “little people” are getting a bit upset with them as we are hearing more and more from the 1% that they are starting to feel persecuted, vilified and begrudged because of their fortunes that keep growing.  And this is happening while the 99% are continuing to get, as Ms. Rampell put it, “uglier”.

This issue additionally has been demonstrated  by the likes of Mr. Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot, in Politico as he stated: “If you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” 

(I guess that Mr. Langone doesn’t subscribe to the concept that anyone today that uses Hitler in explaining a conversation, has immediately lost his side of argument.)

And of course, we can’t forget the Wall Street Journal letter-to-the editor quote that went viral from the venture capitalist, Tom Perkins, who made a statement that portended a potential, future “progressive Kristallnacht”, by American political liberals on the rich, similar to the famous 1930’s attacks by the Nazi Brown-shirts on the Jewish businesses in Germany and Austria.

But when will it be understood in America that income inequality isn’t just about the wealthy 1%, it’s about the effect of their fortunes on the other 99%.

To better explain just what the income inequality is that is being discussed here, you need to look at this way:

Anti-inequality rhetoric has grown in recent years. But it’s important that it’s not just the growing wealth of the wealthy that is making the 99% angry. It’s the growing wealth of the wealthy set against the stagnation or lowering of living standards for everyone else.

The polls show that Americans want income to be distributed more equitably than it is currently.  However, the 99% have shown that they will tolerate income inequality, if they are still plugging ahead with their own lives. They would care a lot less about Wall Street and the American CEO's gigantic bonus’, if for themselves, they were receiving their own raises. Even if in comparison, they were on a much smaller scale.

So, let’s look at the last 40 years.

Even though in 2008, we had the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the wealthy have not really felt more than a bump in their growing wealth. In the years since this latest Great Recession, hostility toward inequality has rebounded, mainly driven by concerns that the rich are moving onward and upward, while everyone else has been left behind.

A 2011 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the top earning 1% of households increased their income by about 275% after taxes, over the period between 1979 and 2007.  That is compared to a gain of just under 40%, for 60% of those Americans in the middle of nation's income distribution.  (This income increase was an even less for those below the 60% of the US income distribution.)

And to date, those increases for the 1% have been growing even larger, while the delta between the two has grown even wider, over the past 7 years. 

The bad blood that is being developed was shown by a recent Pew Research Center survey.  The survey found that people who believed their family’s income was falling behind the cost of living were more likely to say the government should do “a lot more” to “reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else.” 

 

Just what the government should do to reduce the gap is usually for higher taxes on the rich, and to take away the subsidies to the oil companies and corporate farmers.  But basically they are, in their own way saying, that as the character Howard Beale said in the infamous 1970’s movie, Network: “I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

“When growth doesn’t lift everyone, the rich are not seen as deserving, and income inequality can symbolize unfairness,” explains Leslie McCall, a sociology professor at Northwestern University, who wrote the book “The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs About Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution.” As long as the rising tide is actually lifting all boats, people care less if some boats are receiving a bigger lift than others.

But that’s not what has been happening in the US over the past 3-4 decades.

There is a possible way out for the very rich, but unfortunately, the very rich, such as the conservative Koch Brothers, would rather “shoot down the 99%”, than help provide a rising tide for all the boats in America.

So, this is what Ms. Rampell wrote as to what she possibly sees in the future for the wealthy 1%:

“One implication of these polling trends is that if the 1% want to be left alone, or at least not pursued by pitchforks and guillotines, they should probably support policies that promote the upward mobility of other Americans. That would include things such as early childhood education, more generous Pell grants and a higher minimum wage, for example. While some of these policies might require higher taxes, it’s not clear that marginally improving mobility or raising the living standards of the most destitute would do much to hinder the very richest Americans’ ability to continue getting even richer. So far, little else has.”

In other words, the 1% could do some things to help the 99%, but Ms. Rampell doesn’t seriously see anything that can be done to stop the current tide of income inequality.

My own personal idea is that it is going to take a serious public revolution of the masses, taking a Howard Beale approach, for making a significant change in the “status quo”.  Until the 99% finally get fed up with the process that continues to allow the politicians to depend on the vast donations from the wealthy, we will continue to become an oligarchy ruled only but the rich and powerful.  In other words, a virtual “kaput” for small “d”, democracy.

So far, that’s what appears to be in the cards for America's future.

Copyright G.Ater  2014