The rhetoric is working, comrades!
The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness. A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults finds that about two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.
Not only have perceptions of class conflict grown more prevalent; so, too, has the belief that these disputes are intense. According to the new survey, three-in-ten Americans (30%) say there are “very strong conflicts” between poor people and rich people. That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009 and the largest share expressing this opinion since the question was first asked in 1987.
For a little more about class conflict, please see this Wikipedia article.
Part of a series on Communism.
This “Class Warfare” BS is a creation of the media and the communists (BIRM).
Someone being successful and, therefore wealthy costs you nothing! WTF, O?
Why are these bastards making it all about the “Evil Rich”?
Is success now to be a sin?
It’s a “Good Thing” that I’m old and soon to die.
This is seriously beginning to “Chap My Hide”…
Because they are incompetent, liberals have no experience with wealth creation. Because they are dumb, liberals are unable to conceive of wealth creation. Therefore, in the liberal mind, anyone who has above-average wealth must have taken it from someone with below-average wealth. It cannot possibly be that the wealthy are more efficient at creating wealth.
Now, now, Jeff. there are some, like M. Bloomberg, T. Turner, and G. Soros, who are competent and smart enough to build successful companies and wealth. Their embrace of Liberalism disturbs me.
According to the ideology they embrace either they broke the rules and cheated the masses, don’t respect their own accomplishments, or they simply embrace it out of political convenience. I’m sure there are other explanations but none that I can think of would be redeeming.
Daryle, two of three of your examples (Bloomberg & Soros) are good at accumulating wealth. Creating it, not so much.
I don’t know the details of Bloomberg’s business history but it seems he did build Bloomberg New Service:
Bloomberg L.P. is an American multinational financial news corporation. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market[4] with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion.[5] Bloomberg L.P. was founded by Michael Bloomberg with the help of Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, and Charles Zegar in 1981 and a 30% ownership investment by Merrill Lynch.
I’ll give you Soros.
I can think of three explanations for successful liberals.
The first is my life motto: It’s better to be lucky than good. Sufficient good fortune can overcome any lack of talent.
The second is the idiot savant. Either a dumb person who is brilliant in one specific field, or the inverse: a generally smart person who is really stupid in one specific area (think Einstein and his pacifism). I think Soros is in this category, he has an instinctive understanding of markets that he cannot describe because his intellectual framework is faulty.
The last, and most worrying are those who are actually intelligent, who recognize that liberal policies will result in far greater inequality, and support them anyway because they think they’ll be on top of the system. Communism was great, if you were a member of the Politburo.
And I never hear about those exceptionally wealthy (are they the .001%?) cutting a check to share their wealth with “The Poor”™. I submit we should create and “Adopt a Poor Person™” program, where the über wealthy can have a running mate/”Little” to take around and mentor….
Oh, I forgot, actually mingling with “The Poor”™ may cause the contraction of cooties.
Carnegie would fit your bill there, xformed, except instead of only helping the poor he also created endowments that built libraries. There were over 3500 Carnegie libraries built. From the Wikipedia entry:
Carnegie believed in giving to the “industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others.”[3]
For this reason in the segregated South his endowment built libraries specifically for Blacks, who were not allowed in the all-white libraries. And that’s decades before any I Have A Dream speech!
Carnegie once explained that a man should spend one third of his life learning, one third making money, and another third giving it away.
Find me a liberal who has spent a third of his life giving away his own money to the public at large. Seriously, find one. Carnegie may have been a real SOB of a businessman to deal with, but with his wealth he improved the lives of millions and for every worker he may have screwed over in wages or benefits he used his money to ensure their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren inherited a better life.
Compared to politicians of today who have saddled our children with 15 trillion in debt, I think I’d rather have another Carnegie than another Kennedy. My kids would be better off, at least.
– Max
Need to read down for the money quote:
I simply don’t see 51% of the American people buying the envy meme BHO is giving every sign of running on – starting with his firing of Bill Dailey this week. I though Rommney’s speech last night was compelling, and will play well through November. The American people don’t hate the rich – they want to become one.
saw a reference to an article claiming SIEU had direct involvement in ramping up this circus. hmmm…something like for all the town hall meetings to discuss OCare. have to go digging in the morning (even if not true, such innuendo is God enough for TheWON!, it’s good enough for me!).
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/08/news/economy/global_income_inequality/index.htm
http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/
I don’t think you have to be a communist to be concerned about an increasingly super-rich plutocracy. One which can afford to pay for a healthy corporate lobby in Washington to protect and insulate itself legally. Money talks.
Just as there’s more heat in a warm bath than in a burning match, there’s more money in the middle class than among the super rich. The only advantage the rich have is in the ability to divert time away from making a living and toward navigating the complex rules. Simplify campaign finance and lobbying rules and you’ll decrease the power and influence of the rich and connected.
Jeff, I would say that they can divert resources (money) away from the concerns of shelter, food, etc. in order to hire people to navigate the complex rules for them.
Do you mean like the unions do?
Jeff, Joe, and dwas- all correct. But the 51% are sold on the concept and will probably vote that way again. Damnit.
So..should I sell my Jag..and buy a used Yugo?, lol
As always Facts trump Rhetoric! There is no class warfare; but there is indeed an ever growing and dangerous divergence that could lead to it. If it does, we all lose.
http://weakonomics.com/2010/01/26/the-gini-coefficient-income-inequality-around-the-globe/
Whenever there is a gross divergence between the haves and have-nots, it becomes evermore-fertile ground for internal strife, if not conflict and eventually, revolution. Read some history. Fortunately we are far from revolution; but we invite the initial steps if we are not careful.
BTW, the linked “Class Conflict” link is about the most superficial, high school, and biased I have seen. I am no lover of Communism, or Socialism, but that link sheds no light on the complexities, divisions, falsehoods and even truths of those various economic theories.
“Class Warfare” was a hotly debated issue globally in the early 1900s. The anarchists, Bolsheviks, Revisionists, Marxist, French, Fabians, Conservatives, and et al. debated it and they fractured it into pieces. Nevertheless, it was the always the divergence of the rich and poor, regardless of their politics or nationalism that propelled the everyone into WWI.
I believe in Capitalism. But I am also aware that the beleaguered workers in Europe and Russia in 1900 did not. That caused revolutions and World Wars. Anyone who today mocks Class Warfare, or protects the rich getting richer while the poor gets screwed should well do some more reading of history. Untold numbers have died as a result.
I find the constant drum beat of “income inequality” to be perfectly silly. Let’s assume that the average income of the US is $50,000. Would we be better off if the richest 1% earned $60K and the lowest 1% earned $40K? With the top earners earning only $10K more than the median, who would fund innovation and economic expansion. The privately owned company I work for wouldn’t be able to fund the construction of new high rise buildings, which costs upwards of $75 million. How long would it take for them to accumulate the equity needed for a new project? Could you really believe that it’s possible to get enough people together to pool their money to efficiently complete such a project?
The concentration of wealth in the hand of those who EARN it is never a problem. I want the men I work for to keep even more of what they earn so they can keep building this business, which would be very, very good for me and the several hundred they employ directly and indirectly.
Aha, ’tis strange survey time, everywhere.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/9007680/Half-a-million-children-unhappy-says-church-backed-report.html
Flit…”Nevertheless, it was the always the divergence of the rich and poor, regardless of their politics or nationalism that propelled the everyone into WWI.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard this argument made. Indeed, leading socialists were appalled when workers and intellectuals abandoned their allegiance to a universal working class in order to advocate for and fight for their various nationalisms. See, for example, Julien Benda’s “The Treason of the Intellectuals.”
Why do you see the divergence of rich and poor as the primary cause of WWI?
Actually only some leading socialists were appalled. At the time there was a schism between the traditional Marxists who believed in Workers of the World without borders and the Revisionists who believed in getting into politics along with the bourgeoisie and effecting change in that manner. Furthermore with growing tensions in Europe, many socialists were also nationalists, many who would rather pick up a rifle against a foreign invader far more than one for a socialist revolution.
As for the divergence of the rich and poor of the time I perhaps exaggerated. Sorry. Nevertheless while this may not have been a direct cause of WWI, it certainly contributed. Instability breeds more instability. Like a cancer, it spreads. The industrial revolution initiated great social change across many borders. The rise of Labour in the UK threatened the aristocracy and government. Anarchists and socialists abounded across Europe. Assassinations were common. The Dreyfus Affair pitted Frenchman against Frenchman. National strikes were common in many countries because of massive income disparity. Ill-advised treaties were formed. Imperialism and colonialism grew. The confluence of many things contributed. It was a time of great social instability
It also was a time a many wars… Spanish-American War 1898, Anglo-Boer War 1899, the Boxer Rebellion 1899, Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkan Wars 1912. Certainly instability leads to more growing instability and the many growing instabilities of the time finally culminated in WWI.
When the old order is threatened and great social change is in the air, the resulting instability can lead to war and revolution. Therefore, we should always guard against growing social and economic divergence, which throughout history has often had unwanted consequences.
Worth a small footnote is the fact that over the past decade, the Pew Charitable Research organization has become less and less what it’s original founder intended and more and more politicized. More of its well-publicized studies have come under considerable criticism by those who do such studies as being very sloppy, statistically invalid and essentially structured to arrive at a foregone conclusion. Kind of like certain Congressional oversight groups.
Exactly I’d take anything Pe-Ew says with a condiderable grain of salt-they have been a liberal think tank for years.
They operate under GIGO rules when they Poll.
They probably surveyed Berkeley,San Francisco, Portland and
Seattle..
The class-warfare rhetoric of the Democrats is surely in part an attempt to distract attention from the rising power, wealth, and arrogance of the government class. See my post paying higher taxes can be very profitable.
Our you could watch “Volunteers” (1985), which explains practical communism quite well…
“We will advance to VICTORY!… or until the people’s truck runs out of the people’s gas.”
Sadly, the class warfare tactics driven by the simplistic “income inequality” story line will be convincing to a huge number of voters.
Facts and logic do not work with far too many people. They simply are uninterested in them, indeed in any news at all, focusing instead on “pop culture” crap. They will respond to slogans or sound bites, regardless of their truthfulness, and if sufficiently herded, show up at the polls to vote for the politicians who promise them more “free stuff” at the expense of the other guy.
I would be all in favor of reinstating literacy tests and limiting voting to actual tax paying citizens, but that will never be. Absent that, we are stuck with fools and idiots able to vote, and encouraged to do so.
There is a very high probability that the rhetoric of the left, rabble rousing with their “income inequality” class warfare strategy, will end up in widespread violence within two or three years if the good guys win and we begin to cut back on the unsustainable “free stuff” handouts. On the other hand, if such unaffordable largesse is not halted, then the producers may rise up and resist confiscation of the wealth they have worked so hard for as it is seized to redistribute to the lazy and ignorant class.
I think most of us Lex readers are well traveled. I just wish the people who buy the class warfare meme could see what poor people live like in developing countries. I have had to walk in the street in Karachi because the sidewalks were literally covered with people sleeping, elbow to elbow. Poor people in the U.S. drive cars and watch cable TV. In Karachi THEY would be the 1 percent.
Yep…one visit to Lagos, Nigeria in 193 with the West African Training Cruise taught me a lot. They’d kill you on the street to steal your can of fruit. Yep, “we” have it bad in this country, living in Guv’ment provided housing, drawing welfare, unemployment and WIC….
1983, that is…was a not even a twinkle in anyone’s eye in 193…
I am Pol Pot and I endorse this message.
Envy. One of the seven deadly sins. It’s the foundation for Communism and Socialism, both godless ideologies that enslave people rather than free them. I think voting should be restricted. If you’re not literate, no vote. If you pay no income taxes, no vote. That would fix a lot of what is wrong.
I just don’t understand envy. I don’t envy the guy with the new Porsche in front of me. I say, “Good for him.” Besides, the stupidity of this was revealed when taxes were raised on luxury yachts. Small shipyards, employing middle-class workers, were hurt severely by the loss in orders to foreign yards. Wow, that envy did a lot of good there.
I got thinking that a few weeks back. It’s not that the guys at the top are greedy, so much as the Entitlement Society has convinced people that if anyone has it, then it had to be taken from them. It is a mindset not of “abundance,” that needs to permeate the populace.
Predictably, some here who remain in denial of facts have quickly attacked the source, i.e. Pew Research… thought to be, heavens forbid, “liberal”. So any fact they state is then worthless?
There are many indicators besides Pew who reinforce the fact that we have a large and growing divergence in income, with the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. (Not to mention the loss of our Middle Class.) It makes no difference whether they “earned” it or didn’t. And it has nothing to do with “envy.” But it does make a difference in the growth and prestige of the U.S. but more importantly our future fairness and stability.
Many use the Gini Index that shows our problems in relation to other advanced countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality#cite_note-stats.oecd.org-12
We don’t score well.
Our rising tide of GDP does not lift all boats…only the top 1%.
If not ashamed, we at least ought to be worried.
Of course it is envy. You see the guy in the Ferrari and I can read your liberal mind. “It’s not fair that the guy has 400 grand to blow on a Ferrari.”
It’s not fair. Has anyone told you life is not fair?
All of this talk of income disparity is a device to gin up envy, to make sure the right-minded politicians get elected by “the little people” eager to stick it to the rich.
Equality of outcomes is a fallacy. The only thing it makes people is equally miserable, robbing physical and human capital like a red vampire.
Everyone has different talents and abilities. Some of those are rarer than others and deserve increased compensation (difficulty, scarcity, etc.)
When the government steals the fruits of the labors of one man to give to another, you ruin the incentive for the smarter man to bring his skills to the fore. Why be an entrepreneur with the associated risk when most of your reward will be stolen by the envious and their greedy government agents of redistribution. Why should anyone work their butt off getting a MBA or becoming a doctor or a lawyer, with all of the associated debt and years of scholarship, when there is no financial reward awaiting?
There’s nothing wrong with self-interest. There’s nothing wrong with wanting material things bought with the fruits of one’s labor. But the government decides that the “income disparity” is too large and that, to be fair, some of my earnings (like the grasshopper and the ant parable) go to those who didn’t sweat to earn their keep, a lot of people are going to go Gault and say, to hell with it. Why should you work 80 hour weeks when the government is going to steal most of it to disseminate in a means to keep the political class in power? I wouldn’t.
The core argument is this: there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money. If Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Jack Northrop hadn’t wanted to make money, there would be none of those big companies that employ the middle class you claim to love.
I don’t think you or Obama or anyone should have the right to decide when I’ve “made enough money.” That’s dangerous ground. If this idea of equalization works so great, why were the communist countries not economic powerhouses? Why were they not the utopian vision of the world that people on your side of the aisle desire?
GC – Sorry. This Liberal is not at all envious. In fact I’m blessed to have the means to buy a Ferrari if I so desired, and much more. But I still have not the means to buy a personal Gulfstream V, along with mansions in several cities. But that is OK. I do happen to know a few people who do have the means and do own such things, but I am not at all envious of them. I celebrate them.
Besides I thought you would be a cheerleader for envy and greed. Isn’t that why many people are indeed successful? Isn’t that what fuels our economy, and enriches us all? Gordon Gecko-like?
Or is it only OK if the rich are envious, but not the poor?
There is nothing wrong with making money. And there is no such thing as making “too much” money, if there were such a thing…. as long it is made legally and not made unfairly at other’s expense.
But there is something wrong with fraud and corruption. There is something wrong with unfairness. There is something wrong when only the rich can buy politicians. There is something wrong when lobbyists are represented ahead of We, the People. There is something wrong when the richest nation on earth sees a large portion of their citizens sliding back into poverty. There is something wrong with exploiting others. There is something wrong when the rich get immensely richer because the system is rigged in their favor, the middle class disappears, and the poor become even poorer. (Your issue of taxes is entirely separate)
Flit, why do you state, “There are many indicators besides Pew who reinforce the fact that we have a large and growing divergence in income, with the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. (Not to mention the loss of our Middle Class.) It makes no difference whether they “earned” it or didn’t” and then go on to consider this a problem, which can only be solved by taking from the rich and handing it out to the poorer at the point of a gun for that is what the Tax Collector uses to enforce his wishes?
If only the rich can buy politicians, is that the fault of the rich or the corruption of the politicians who will sell themselves like whores to the highest bidder? In fact, if P.J. O’Rourke’s book “Parliament of Whores” is ever re-published I’d suggest it should go on the non-fiction section rather than humor.
This is no longer funny.
Fraud and corruption is why we have laws, and an independent judiciary to judge them. Of course, the Congress and the Executive control the prosecutors, who may not levy charges, but that’s no reason to consider the law as such to be broken. It merely means law enforcement is as broken as our politicians.
With luck we can have a proletariat and a politburo which will make the distinction between those the law applies to and those above the law much more evident. A man could live in Chicago for years without understanding this basic equality of the People.
– Max
Flit…one of the main causes of income inequality, and specifically in the decline in mobility across classes, is the education-based credentialism which has come to dominate so much of our society. There is the sharp high-school graduate working in a factory who once would have been promoted to shift supervisor and maybe eventually to plant manger–now, those jobs are restricted to college graduates. There is the smart bank branch manager who *does* have a college degree…but without an MBA, she won’t be considered for region manager. And there’s the graduate *with* an MBA, who won’t be considered for McKinsey because his MBA was not from an Ivy League school.
Educational credentials in our society are playing much the same role that the purchase of commissions once played in the British Army.
I disagree. Education-based credentials are hardly the problem.
When there are fewer jobs available – especially when many of our jobs have gone overseas – more people cannot work and have less income, regardless of their credentials.
When ATM machines replace branch bank jobs, people become unemployed.
When Loews and others go to automatic checkouts, people become unemployed.
This graph shows how factory employment has steadily declined, and with it high paying jobs, even while our US manufacturing output has remained the same.
When the water dries up on the Serengeti like our well-paying American jobs have done, and only the strongest survive, the problem is not that they are the strongest, just as our workers fighting for a few jobs are better educated.
No, the problem is there is not enough water, just like the problem of not enough well-paying jobs, regardless of strength or education.
Serengeti
Being thirsty and being unemployed, or underemployed and underpaid have similarities.
And did the jobs go overseas out of greed, or because the American worker demanded too much and a business saw a way to reduce overhead? Get real. If you tired to force a business to stay in the states, once they began there, you’d squash businesses starting. If they were in business and got penalized, you’d by passive aggressiveness, or pure bottom line numbers, run them out of business.
And, if that were the case, then exactly which American workers would be screwed?
Business can’t thrive, for anyone, when, after a private individual has done the hard work to create the conditions under which they can begin a business and hire people and be a consumer of goods and services, as well as a provider of same, the Feds decide who will flourish and who will go belly up. Politicians need to quit trying to be business people. They are not, for the most part, anything other than a bunch of lawyers, passing laws, and redundant laws, and regulations (think “law light”) that will ensure they are a “middle man” in the complete equation. We all know we need to cut out the “middle men” in lean times, and I say it’s time to cut them out…they are a parasite on society, moreso than a person who owns a business….like Gore, Soros and Turner and any number of rich, fat cat actors and entertainers…like Michael Moore, making a living off all of this.
I…You…Really!? You’re trolling, right? Nobody can be that stupid. Either way youre making a pretty good case for post-parum abortion.
ATM’s destroy jobs? Maybe we should outlaw them. Then we could mandate that cars break down every 5000 miles so we can employ more mechanics. Then we can boost agricultural employment by banning combine harvesters. Hell, if we ditch agriculture we can ensure everybody is fully employed gathering food.
Innovation is not the cause of unemployment. Unemployment is caused by labor resources being unable to find work in current fields. Credentialism is a factor in this because it both fractures the labor market (which is a good thing for the workers, right until thier field becomes obsolete) and it raises the up front costs of entering a field. The other major factor is the dead hand of the state discouraging and preventing innovators from hiring in new fields. To use your analogy, we’re running out of water and the government is preventing us from drilling new wells.
Flit, I think it’s safe to say that you are not one of the evil liberals.