The Aristocracy Of Obscene Wealth

Sunday morning, Digby was riffing on the place of aristocracy in this nation founded as a democratic experiment-- and she was looking straight at the Romneys who had managed, through a little-used loophole for the extraordinarily wealthy, to leave $100 million tax-free to their brood of sons.

Aristocracy is inherent to conservatism. For all the talk about individual freedom and liberty, what matters most to conservatives is property and inheritance:

People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

The defenders of aristocracy represent aristocracy as a natural phenomenon, but in reality it is the most artificial thing on earth. Although one of the goals of every aristocracy is to make its preferred social order seem permanent and timeless, in reality conservatism must be reinvented in every generation. This is true for many reasons, including internal conflicts among the aristocrats; institutional shifts due to climate, markets, or warfare; and ideological gains and losses in the perpetual struggle against democracy.

In some societies the aristocracy is rigid, closed, and stratified, while in others it is more of an aspiration among various fluid and factionalized groups. The situation in the United States right now is toward the latter end of the spectrum. A main goal in life of all aristocrats, however, is to pass on their positions of privilege to their children...

Mitt is an aristocrat. And he's making sure that his children are aristocrats too. And, like all aristocrats, they believe their aristocratic privilege is a result of natural superiority. As Steve Forbes says above, they believe it's exactly the same as being born with talent or intelligence. It's God-given.

God-given or government-given? If you think government policies don't entrench the wealthy, you are completely deluded. And an OpEd in yesterday's NY Times, More Help For the Wealthy, goes right to the point. It's just another version of Paul Ryan's class war that the GOP is desperately trying to codify before they're kicked out of office. The point the Times' editors were making is how "the Republicans’ latest effort to tilt the tax code in favor of the wealthy, and starve the government of needed revenue, is particularly cynical" this year. Their so-called "Small Business Tax Cut Act" sounds safely mom-and-pop but is "designed so that nearly half of the tax cut would go to people with annual income over $1 million, and more than four-fifths would go to those making over $200,000."

The bill’s proponents, led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, say that lower taxes would lead to more hiring. But the economic reality is that employers, big and small, are hesitant to hire because of slow or uncertain demand for their products and services, not because of their tax burden. And companies would receive the tax cut even if they did not hire new workers-- making it a windfall, not an incentive.

The bill is predicated on an overly broad definition of “small business”-- one with fewer than 500 employees, which can include multimillion-dollar partnerships and corporations. It is also based on a willful denial of the reality that small businesses are not the big job creators politicians often say they are.

If “small” were set at 50 employees, small businesses would be credited with creating less than a third of the new jobs over the last 20 years. And many such jobs are soon lost as small businesses struggle or fail. The best way to encourage their success is with continued government spending to support demand and by building a well-regulated banking system that is not prone to the busts that devastate small businesses.

As for the broader economy, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed 13 policies last year for their potential impact on economic growth and job creation in 2012 and 2013. The option of a business tax cut along the lines of the Cantor bill ranked next to last in bang for the buck. More effective options include fiscal aid to states and increased safety net spending, which create jobs by bolstering consumer demand-- and which Republicans fiercely oppose.

Perhaps you watched Obama advisor David Plouffe on Political Capital over the weekend. He made the point that the Romney's ought to release their tax returns over he past 2 decades or so-- the ones he showed McCain when he was begging to be on the doomed 2008 ticket... only to have McCain go over them and quickly choose Sarah Palin instead of him.

[T]he American people want more fairness in the tax code, they want to make sure that, to grow the economy and reduce the deficit, we have a balanced approach. The president’s committed to making sure that people who are making, you know, $20 million, $50 million, $100 million, aren’t paying less effective tax rate than the middle class.

You can trust this president to fight for a fairer tax system. And the question is, is anything going to change if Governor Romney is elected president? And I think the answer is unqualifiedly no.

...You know, the stumbling block to solving this last year was too many Republicans here in Washington were unwilling to ask the wealthy to do anything at all. And so there’s a big difference here. And so this is an important principle. Whether it’s later this year, next year, at some point, the country’s going to have to muscle up here and solve our long-term fiscal challenges and do the smart things to help grow the economy. You’re not going to do that unless you’re willing to ask the very wealthy to do a little bit more in revenue.

...[W]e went through the worst recession this country’s ever had, except for the Great Depression. And there were reasons for it. There were policies in place. So those are the same policies that Romney wants to bring back and that the Republican Congress wants to bring back.

So the middle class has been through a lot here. This is a president - whether it’s our tax policy, investments in things like education, investments in things like student loans, trying to rebuild this country so that our construction industry gets back to work, this president--that’s how he views the economy.

The president views the economy through the lens of middle-class families, people that are trying to get into the middle class. And that’s going to be the central challenge, not just-- not of this election. This is the central challenge facing the country, because eventually we’re going to recover fully from the recession, but are we going to have the economy that works for the middle class?

...You’ve got a few dozen people who are going to write $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, $50 million checks to try and purchase the White House on behalf of Governor Romney. That is a terrible, and that’s why we opposed the Citizens United decision.

But the real problem for the obscenely wealthy isn't really Obama and the conservative Democratic establishment with their basically moderate Republican agenda. The only serious problem for those folks are what deranged neo-fascist Allen West referred to as "the communists," the Progressives. Tinkering around the edges, Obama-style, is no threat to the dominance of the aristocracy. The kind of sweeping changes the Congressional Progressive Caucus would like to make, that's the kind of thing billionaires and even quarter billionaires could lose sleep over. Take, for example, the whole idea of mortgage principle write-downs. CPC co-chairs Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison have renewed their calls for DeMarco, the Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to write down mortgage principal amounts for homeowners, nearly 28% of whom are currently underwater.

"Decreasing the amount owed allows struggling families to stay in their homes and will begin to stabilize the overall housing market. Earlier this year we joined hard-working families and a strong group of CPC Members on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to call on Mr. DeMarco to reduce foreclosures, protect investors and communities and permit mortgages to be written down.
 
“Underwater homeowners need relief. Too many of them were victims of predatory loans or fraudulent practices that did not fully disclose the cost of their mortgage. Write-downs will help many of the 3.3 million mortgage holders whose loans are guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and are currently underwater to preserve their homes. Simple, straightforward principal reductions are a good way to prevent the foreclosure crisis from dragging down the U.S. recovery. The CPC will be holding a hearing to examine this issue further.”

Blue America never raised a dime for Obama-- and never would. People may decide to vote for him as the lesser-- even far lesser-- of two evils. But Blue America is not about lesser of evils; it's about helping elect far better than what we've had, men and women like Norman Solomon, David Gill, Franke Wilmer, Alan Grayson and this week's newest Blue America endorsee, Trevor Thomas. The people on this page are not garden variety DC Democrats. This is the best there is running for Congress, the people who will move the ball forward. The alternative, when the white gloves come off, is this: