Our wealthy elites really should start reading history books about the 1920’s and 1930’s. There’s a reason why we call them the ‘Roaring 20’s.’ A small elite was making a lot of money. Income disparity reached gigantic heights. Regulation was lax. Southern European (Catholic) immigration had caused a backlash and tens of thousands of KKK members marched on Washington. Then the world’s stock markets crashed and sent everyone into a Great Depression with truly staggering levels of unemployment. Right-wing (fascist) parties gained traction in Europe, and the stage was set for the most inhumane fifteen years in modern human history.
The horrible tragedy in Norway appears to have been carried out by one man. But his political beliefs are widespread and can lead quite naturally, and almost logically, to murder or even genocide. Similarly unrestrained reactions from the left can lead to violence against elites or even, in their view, confiscatory tax policies.
Rich people would be well served to remember that people will not stand by while they’re living the high life if they have no jobs and are losing their homes. Our people are pretty well hypnotized by our televisions, so complacency has worked in our elites’ favor even during this economic recession. But there is a snapping point. Like popcorn, at first it’s just one or two kernels exploding. But the first kernels to pop are a precursor of what’s to come.
Rather than grabbing their wallets, they ought to, you know, spread the wealth around. We’d all be better off in the long run.
Well written, but you are wasting your time if your are waiting for elites to voluntarily start “spreading their wealth around”. The great Depression was resolved because a Government restored democracy and reasserted the demands of the majority for a measure of social justice. In the following decades, inequality was much reduced and even Eisenhower was to the left of Obama.
Of course you will get the odd headlining philanthropist intelligent enough to understand that the current situation is unsustainable without more redistributive public policies, and even many on Wall Street will prefer Obama to the Republicans.
The big failing, however was that by Democrats before and after the mid-terms to show any backbone and to develop a narrative which challenged the confiscatory policies of the kleptocratic elite. Even Obama, for all his rhetorical skills, has challenged that narrative preferring instead to attempt to find a common ground between the robber barons and their victims. You just get caught up in the crossfire when you try to do that and end up antagonising both.
Unfortunately, rich people fought tooth and nail against FDR’s attempts to save their bacon along with the rest of the country’s. Whether or not one believes the claims by Gen. Smedley Butler that there was a plot to overthrow FDR by force, there’s no doubt that the ruling class wanted the New Deal stopped dead, rolled back, and extirpated.
Sure, there’s the occasional Warren Buffet out there, but he’s a voice crying in the wilderness. If the uber-wealthy contemplate social unrest at all, I daresay they assume (a) it will be ruthlessly suppressed before it reaches their gates, and (b) a little fascistic reorganization of things might be a darn good idea.
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New York Times article is not very helpful and offering any insight. Similar to saying Islamic terror is on the rise in the Middle East and South-East Asia. The Marxist Hunter and Templar Knight is bred in the school of thought by a Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Geert Wilders. Breivik’s right-wing pro-Israel line, combined with his antipathy to Muslims, is just one example of the European far-right’s ideology.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Did anyone see this in the Telegraph? Pretty surprising…and not just because the words “intelligent conservatives” make an appearance. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8655106/Im-starting-to-think-that-the-Left-might-actually-b
e-right.html#.TisiVAR3404.facebook
We need to shift the arument away from deficits and alll that Reaganesque BS, and start using language about inverstment… investing in America’s future. In a recession or depression,like the one we are in, the government should spend precisely because other sectors do not or can not. Banks and Big Business refuse to be entrepreneurial and invest in the economy. The people can’t. Yet, when spending pulls back, that only makes the problem worse. Somebody needs to spend something, and the government is the only entity that is capable.
Conservatives will say that it wasn’t the New Deal that pulled the country out of depression, but rather World War II. Let us put aside for the moment whether or not this is true, and recognize that this very point concedes the argument.
How did World War II help the economy? By massive government spending. The resulting deficits were paid down after the war by having more people in more jobs. Moreover, additional government spending on great national tasks, such as defense, the interstate highway system, and later the space race, helped.