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Stephen Gottlieb: Who We Work To Support

We've all seen bumper stickers that complain, "I work so welfare queens don't have to" and other complaints about taking care of people in need. Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Partiers all tell us the problem is “entitlements.” And people are mad. They do not want to work to pay for other people's entitlements.

Except it is impossible. The richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.[i]  And the top 20% of American households, whose average income was around a quarter million dollars get the majority of Americans’ yearly income from all sources.[ii] So, yes, we work for others, but not for the people who are poor, unemployed or disabled. We work to support the wealth of the people who get all the money. They claim not to need our help, but only because they already took our money.

They want us to believe that's just “natural,” that they have that money because they sold us such useful things, and whatever the market does is perfectly proper. But actually it's because of all the tax benefits they have, so that Warren Buffet properly pointed out that his secretary pays a larger percent of her earnings than he does. As Buffet understood, that's not natural. It's the kleptomania of the rich, the people who control the lobbyists for themselves and their businesses and who finance the political campaigns of the lackeys we call congressmen and senators.

Their forms of income are protected – the top tax rate is no longer high but they still get a break for capital gains, deductions for all the lobbyists and accountants they pay to make sure they don't pay their share of the tax burden, and the privilege of moving their money to tax havens. Of course they will lend back to government, at interest, the money they aren't investing in job creating activities, the money they have protected themselves from having to pay as taxes like the rest of us.

It's also because they convince their lackeys that their companies shouldn't be regulated either; they should be allowed to monopolize markets so we'd fill their pockets faster, and they should get government help for the very financial vehicles they used to wreck the economy, instead of helping the people that they took advantage of in scams called derivatives, credit-default swaps and subprime mortgages. It's all rigged and it isn't you and me that are taking advantage of the system.

But their lackeys say they're the job creators – indeed even while they are sitting on money they don't think it worth their while to spend. That's called chutzpah!

What's worse, this is a vicious cycle – the rich control the politics so they can get wealthier and control the system ever more tightly. When does it reach a point when we no longer have a democracy? Indeed, what kind of democracy is it if all the candidates have to get the blessing of the enemies of the people.  Is that the democracy we fought for? And can we get it back?

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[i] Nicholas Kristof, An Idiot’s Guide to Inequality,NY Times, July 23, 2014. See also Tom Kertscher and Greg Borowski (March 10, 2011). "The Truth-O-Meter Says: True- Michael Moore says 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined". PolitiFact.

[ii] The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2011, Congressional Budget Office Report, November 12, 2014, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440.

Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran.

 
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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