6 Ways the Rich Are Waging a Class War Against the American People

[Tennessee Gal]

Denying the very existence of an entire class of citizens? That's waging some very real warfare against them.

The American Right has decided that returning the tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans from what it was during the Bush years (which, incidentally, featured the slowest job growth under any president in our history, at 0.45 percent per year) to what they forked over during the Clinton years (when job growth happened to average 1.6 percent per year) is the epitome of class warfare. Sure, it would leave top earners with a tax rate 10 percentage points below what they were paying after Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, but that's the conservative definition of "eating the rich" these days.

I recently offered a less Orwellian definition, arguing that real class warfare is when those who have already achieved a good deal of prosperity pull the ladder up behind them by attacking the very things that once allowed working people to move up and join the ranks of the middle class.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/152512/6_ways_the_rich_are_waging_a_class_war_against_the_american_people/

A long, but very good read.

[Tennessee Gal]

1. The six.

Smearing those who face real structural barriers to achievement or who will inevitably face real and random misfortunes in a “dynamic,” capitalist society – that's some real class warfare. Here are six excellent examples of the form.

1. Registering the Poor to Vote is 'UnAmerican'

2. Unemployment Benefits Have Created a 'Nation of Slackers'

3. You Can't Really Be Poor if You Have a Color TV!

4. Food-Stamps: 'A Fossil That Repeats All the Errors of the War on Poverty'

5. 'The Main Causes of Child Poverty Are Low Levels of Parental Work and the Absence of Fathers.'

6. Taxing Working People Less Than the Rich Is 'Perverse'

[BlueJazz]

2. To the Rich>>: I know there are about 640,000 of you. But there's 310,000,000 of us.

Do you REALLY want to keep fucking with us ???

[Major Nikon]

3. The items listed are really just recent battles in the overall war

The 1% have already won much of the war already. In my state, the lowest quintile pay 12% of their income to state taxes. The highest quintile pays 3%. My state is by no means a statistical aberration either, most other states (even blue ones) have a big divide between what the rich pay and what the poor pay.

Most people don't take the time to understand the complexities of the tax code. The rich take advantage of this ignorance to screw everyone else. If anyone tries to question their motives with logic and reason, they throw back even more obfuscation like "class warfare", "supply-side", and "job creators".

[Tennessee Gal]

4. It is class warfare, but the rich are the ones waging it.

They have been for decades.

I once had the owner of a company where I worked complain to a small informal group of us about the taxes he had to pay. I said to him: "I will switch incomes with you and happily pay the taxes you pay." He never said another word about it in my presence.

[Honeycombe8]

9. Even if lower middle class and middle class could employ someone to

take advantage of tax loopholes, it wouldn't matter. Those loopholes really only apply to the monied class. We generally don't have significant income from capital gains, own big businesses (LOTS of deductions), huge charitable donations, and so forth. Not that I think those sorts of deductions are not worthwhile. I do. (It's the ones that the big corporations use that are unethical...carrying losses forward and such.) Then there are some loopholes geared toward special businesses, like the oil industry, that wouldn't apply to other businesses, much less middle class people.

Middle class people mainly have a modicum of charitable donations, their mortgage interest deduction, and property and sales taxes. That's about it.

And the upper class is feigning reluctant agreement to considering doing away with the mortgage deduction. I say "feigning" because they are really VERY much in agreement with that, as a pretense to budget cuts and tax reform, because IT WILL AFFECT THE MIDDLE CLASS TO A MUCH GREATER DEGREE THAN IT WILL AFFECT THE MONIED CLASS. Doing away with that deduction would take away the key deduction that the middle class taxpayers have, leaving many unable to itemize and take ANY deductions other than the standard deduction that the government allows.

[Major Nikon]

11. I should have been more clear with my point

You are right in that it wouldn't help the middle and lower classes much to better understand the tax code when it comes time to figure your taxes, but it would help when it comes time to visit the ballot box, or at least have a good understanding of what effect total taxation has on each quintile of income earners.

[truedelphi]

5. And how much will Homeland Security and all the other

agencies and police protocols help the Uber-rich keep the rest of us in chains?

What sort of information will the DHS develop on each of the protesters who are now "occupying" Wall Street?

How much money and power has the Surveillance State of America got to use against We The People?

http://saynotocorporateamerica.blogspot.com/2011/04/usa-unspeakable-secrets-of-america.html

[jwirr]

7. That is the question. Yes, we are numerous but do we have the

courage to persevere?

[shanti]

8. yes

:thumbsup:

[DJ13]

6. K&R

[Honeycombe8]

10. Education. Rich Republicans have been aiming at education for a couple of

decades now. Why? Because (1) it's not good to have the public educated; they're not as easily fooled, and it makes it possible for one of them to get into the White House or Congress; and (2) That is a way for a middle class or poor person to work his way up, not something the monied class wants to see happen.

So...cut student loans, especially cut grants, and work toward privatizing schools so that wealthy people and companies will own and control those schools and thus control the students' education.

[truedelphi]

12. Herre is a video showing how much money now heads for the "Security State" needs of

Our republic. And those who are extremely rich benefit from this security far more than the working class stiff.

http://saynotocorporateamerica.blogspot.com/2011/04/usa-unspeakable-secrets-of-america.html

Homeland Security and associated agencies now employs one million people, with the number growing every day.