I saw the article that follows below and it got me thinking. Folks, it is not about class envy. It is about the survival of the country. We have been programmed to believe that any commentary about the wealthy’s disproportionate share of our nation’s income, wealth, or political power is either class envy or class warfare. Fox News constantly pushes that line as well as Right Wing radio and practically every Right Wing Republican. This is a well-designed and poll tested attempt to give you pause.No one that I know is envious of the wealthy. No one that I know wants a class war. Yet, the policies of our government and the behavior of many of our corporations and our titans of finance have been effecting a class war on us.
If it is class warfare against the wealthy when we ask a private equity firm member to pay the same rate as the middle class, then was it class warfare against the middle class when lobbyist bribed politicians to effect that special rate on them only? Is it not class warfare on the middle class when wealthy owners of corporations can file for bankruptcy to get a fresh start while middle class student loan recipients cannot do the same? Is it not class warfare on the middle class when they must pay north of 15% tax on all their income while the wealthy pays 0% on all their income north of $110,000?
Let us stop believing the misinformation. Those that would continue policies to pilfer the working middle class frequently state the true fact that 47% of Americans do not pay federal income tax. What they fail to state is that they don’t because they make so little. Yet most of those that do not pay federal income tax do pay their full social security tax, their gasoline taxes, their sales taxes, their property taxes, and many other taxes. What is ironic is that the tax dollars collected by the government from the working middle class is immediately used to provide services to us all that are purchased generally from the corporations owned by the same wealthy class that is complaining about taxes and class warfare.
We must not succumb to fallacies. We must for the largest union of them all to get our voices heard. We must form the WORKING MIDDLE CLASS UNION. Consider visiting the Coffee Party now and help us help ourselves? Are with me?
Author Peter Edelman: Middle Class, Poor Should Unite Against The Rich
Dan Froomkin – [email protected]
WASHINGTON — The doctrine of Bain Capital — as outlined by former managing director Edward Conard — is that the super rich got that way because they “earned” it.
The logical corollary is that financially battered middle-class Americans deserve what’s happening to them, too. And that the poor deserve to be poor.
Peter Edelman, a Georgetown University law professor and longtime anti-poverty advocate, takes the exact opposite view in his new book, “So Rich, So Poor.”
At an event for the book Monday hosted by two leading liberal advocacy groups — the Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society — Edelman urged action by, and on behalf of, the broadest possible coalition of the 99 percent, against the 1.
“We need to have the largest ‘we’ we can get to defend what we have,” he said.
The goal, he indicated, should be to raise taxes on the rich and strengthen the social safety net — even as GOP leaders try to take it away.
“The first task, ” Edelman said, is to “stand up and say broadly” that the Republican budget proposals calling for austerity and cutbacks to social service programs “are just destructive. And the rhetoric … is just weird.”
Author Peter Edelman: Middle Class, Poor Should Unite Against The Rich
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