Class Warfare
December 7, 2011 at 5:24 pm in Blog by Steve Davies 22 Comments
Is there room in the current Administration for a business middle ground? Does the support of hatred expressed for corporations help to expand a future economy?
The Occupy Wall Street protesters, who have been assembled by unions and supported by the Democratic Party, are expressing frustrations and fears of the tremendous challenges and demands of life in a capitalist society. The extreme left is encouraging belief of unfairness and a denial that most people’s success is the result of many years of hard work.
Look around the community. The local business people don’t travel by private jet. They are not in the now famous 1 percent – a term being used to destroy achievement and hard work. The left refuses to use, as example for the American youth, those people who have struggled and worked and clawed to find a modest level of success.
Protesters, who hate the American system of self elevation, are not willing to undertake the life of a small business owner – the personnel headaches, the financial worries, and the effort to balance limited resources with quality service. They don’t understand that every business person doesn’t wear a business suit or spend their days with their feet up on a desk, enjoying two hour lunches and altering lives like the leftist spin. The Class Warfare of the left spins a belief that years of hard work for a modest level of comfort is no longer achievable – simply blame others for what they don’t have are and insist on change.
The playing field isn’t equal. Some people are born into money and affluence, but the vast majority of Americans start with the same opportunities to launch a successful life determined by a direct correlation to how hard they work.
Honest protest for taking a stand is admirable, but a staged protest to achieve unconstitutional change throws the baby out with the bath water. If protestors really want to effect change, they have to understand the movement starts with individual responsibility and commitment to hard work, not an expectation of entitlement.
- Bob Frey of Cumming, Georgia writes a weekly article for the Dawson County News and Advertiser. He is a Local Coordinator for the TPP and a member of the Dawson County Tea Party.
Excellent!
Clearly leftist socialists are attempting to claim the Occupy movement. But, it seems to me that much of the movement is made up of young people who believe in the American dream, but have been frustrated because the jobs aren’t there, and this isn’t the best time to go into business for yourself. They have become cynical because they saw both the Democrats and Republicans hand taxpayer money to some of the biggest corporations in the world in a manner that is completely opposed to the American way of life and the idea that if you work hard and do the right thing you will be rewarded. This is the point that the vast majority of the country recognizes, “too big to fail” is un-American. We, and they, need to find a solution that prevents our politicians from interfering with what had until recently been succesful American capitalism. Class warfare is not the answer, fighting an oligarchic government is, and it is a fight every American should take on.
Thank you for saying what I wanted to say. Oligarchic government is exactly on the mark. What a shame that a great republic such as ours has become so, even though great minds down through the ages predicted it out of thier own experience. What I don’t get is how the occupy message has been so smeared and blurred that now all anyone sees is a bunch of do nothings camped out in local parks eating up public services while demanding entitlement. I thought that the point was to prevent corporations from making political contributions to serve thier own ends. I thought that the idea of our republic was to defend the rights of the individual, not business. Am I lost. Is this the country I grew up in.
Excuse me Bill, but are you saying that Corporations should be allowed to function with out regulation? Are you suggesting that their Board of Directors would make sure that they do not pollute our water or air, that they would keep a safe workplace, and that they would not just send jobs overseas? Just wondering…
The Tea party movement and the right have seem to have similar ideological insanity as fanatic Christians and/or Muslims. I doesn’t matter how ridiculous the premise is they protect it because it is in line with their theology! It is insane to believe that markets and enterprise with regulate themselves as it pertains to the common good of the country. The Great Depression, The Savings and Loan bust, the crash of ’87, and the recent financial meltdown are ALL A RESULT OF NOT ENOUGH OVERSIGHT on the ultra rich, greedy, and corrupt. Any opposition to this FACT proves that logic, facts, and intellect play no part in Republican/Right wing fanatics who have simply chosen a side and decided to defend it. Blindly follow tradition because we are afraid of change is crippling this country. In addition, it is the height of hypocrisy to say they want less governement why advocating the goverment be involved in personal liberties and decisions such as abortion, FDA, education, marriage, etc.. So why can’t the right just be honest about greed being the primary motivating factor. They want to keep more of their money even if it means the debt and deficit skyrockets like Reagan, W, HW and now Obama. There is absolutely NO PATRIOTISM in disregarding the poor and middle class in defense of the rich under the guise of “limited government”. The conservative movement is notorius for lowering taxes, raising spending and ballooning the deficit. Can they at least be honest is all i am asking.
Andre – if you feel you have been marginalized in our American capitalistic system, maybe it’s because you can’t even write, punctuate or capitalize correctly. You’re obviously a religious bigot, too. Perhaps you need to deal with your own sense of fear of the spiritual unknown and the resulting resentment of those who have strong faith…? I’m not even saying that my political ideology is based on any faith of my own. What you might realize if you had focused enough attention on facts while in school, is that NO socialist/communist/Marxist society has EVER prospered! NEVER has it happened! Stop cruising the internet to spread your immature jealous-of-the-other guy nonsense and put your nose in a few history books. Embrace your own power to impact your future and your own prosperity and stop feeding off the juvenile victim mentality that permeates the mind of every one of your ilk! This is also the result of generations of kids who have been brainwashed to believe that no one gets ahead without cheating. I don’t know what kind of parents or teachers you had, but mine, while growing up in Chicago, worked HARD, didn’t cheat anyone or any situation and insisted that everybody could achieve and succeed. And based on the successes all the first generation American kids with whom I grew up, our teachers and parents were RIGHT!
QUIT YOUR BELLY ACHING AND GET TO WORK!!!!! OTHERWISE YOU JOIN THE RANKS of USEFUL IDIOTS (as Charles aptly mentioned above….)
Your grammar is good, and your punctuation is impeccable, but I notice that you too get wound up in your rhetoric and end up “yelling” with capitals towards the end of your rant. Interestingly enough to me, both you and Andre both make some valid points, and I have no doubt that you can not see that fact. Andre makes a good point that most of the major financial woe of our country has in fact been due to a lack of regulation. Not always a lack of laws (in fact not very often) but rather a lack of their diligent application. He quotes some good examples that I therefor won’t bother to repeat. You make the point that no thoroughly communistic country has ever risen to the standard of living we have, and that is also valid. However, even our society has some universally accepted “socialistic roles”, such as Police, Firemen, Military and so on. Canada is doing quite well thank you very much, but I dare say you consider them to be a hotbed of socialism.
I don’t think you will find that the majority of Americans believe that having a Social Security pension paid for out of payroll deductions is a bad idea either, however “socialistic” you may try to tar that idea with. I do know that there are a great many who have reliably paid their FICA “stipend” for many years that very much resent it being alluded to as a form of “welfare” as is often the case. And I can understand why they are a bit miffed that the FICA deduction stops applying a shade over $110K of annual taxable income. I don’t think any of them would want to see it increase as a rate, and are willing to stick with the 6.2% for everyone, but don’t think that when you top the $110K point that you should be “home free”. At that point, as I am well aware, you can much more easily afford it than the guy who would love to get his income up to that point, and busts his butt daily trying.
No doubt you have gathered that I am not a Tea Party adherent as yet. There is a lot in the goals of the Tea Party that I like, but there is one thing that I believe the Tea Party is missing, and that is the intestinal fortitude to actually become a party. What holds me back at the moment is that while in general the party seems to hold many of the same end-point goals that I do, the fact that it is not a party but just a wing of the GOP utterly turns me off. I don’t think that there is a party that represents what I am looking for in a party, namely:
1. A government that is reasonably efficient at spending my tax dollar and eliminating waste.
2. A Social Security type of safety net, but one that is paid for in a solvent manner.
3. A government that will go to considerable lengths to ensure that only the deserving get the Social Security benefits. That those that scam and/or “work the system” to get undeserved benefits will be expunged.
4. I do believe that some universally available form of healthcare is needed. Paid for, but not so expensive that only a (progressively smaller) portion of the country can afford it.
As regards my last point, We could argue all day about how to get there, but clearly the unregulated “let the business world take care of it” approach is simply not working for health care. Reminds me of the lady who was quoted as saying “I don’t want any of this government health care, and keep your hands of my Medicare”. Perhaps you could identify what is wrong and suggest a system that would work. If you did as good a job of suggesting a believable, data supportable modus operandi for your system as you do of poo-pooing the current administration approach, I would expect you to have some good result.
I believe personally that healthcare is a bit like the Military, and that it is of sufficient importance to the country that it ought to be spread over the largest base possible. That is always the best way to structure any insurance. I am, however, all for the idea of drug tests prior to government largess, and I am for the need for real documented evidence that a sincere effort to get work is happening before any financial support in the form of welfare, and so on. In other words, I suspect that I am equally as outraged by the evident abuse of the social support network as you are. I just don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the wash water.
5. I would like a balanced budget every bit as well as you. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have been equally guilty in terms of running up the deficit via spending. Neither party can “cast the first stone” there. In fact, if you look over time, the GOP has been no better at curtailing spending than the Democrats have. What they have done, however, is reduced the Federal Govt. revenues to the lowest they have been since about 1950. In 1981, the hallowed Pres. Reagan dropped the marginal tax rate on virtually everybody above the Joe Lunchbox income level of income, and the ratio of National Debt to GDP **that had come steadily down** for the prior 35 years suddenly began to go up and almost never stopped going up since. Check it out, do your own research, don’t take my word for it. Get a graph somewhere of National Debt as a % of GDP. And, by the way, you will not see any often touted bump up in the rate of growth of GDP thereafter. The trickle down effect was a fizzle.
My parting point as a crabby old 67 year old grump is that as long as your “party” doesn’t have the courage to form your own party, and continues (of needs be for $$) tries to be even more right wing than the current GOP religious right, you will not gather many more adherents than you currently have. And, you don’t need to automatically assume that Andre (or I) are some system sucking leeches just because we don’t agree with your blinkered approach. I can assure you, I am not. I sold my business, but there are 63 jobs here in TN that would not have been here if I had not started the business with German investor money. Granted, not major economic impact compared to a Home Depot, but there would have been nothing I would have liked better than to have been able to offer Health Care benefits like my large competitors could. I simply did not have enough employees during my time to negotiate any favorable group rate. I would have loved a more level playing field in the ability to provide benefits.
We must also not forget that cutting income taxes rates is, and has been, historically linked with an increase in tax receipts. When Reagan cut taxes, revenue increased. When Bush cut taxes, revenue increased. If we look at our tax brackets 2011 and wonder how we can solve the deficit, it is by cutting taxes. Spending is the problem, not that we do not have enough money.
It seems the “socialism” has replaced the curse word “liberalism” of the 1980s and most people have no clue what it really means. Will “sustainability”, “moderate” and consensus” be the next lables for bad guys?
Every great society should work as a whole and not only in part. Without regulations, employers will maximize short-term share holder profits at the expense of its employees, of our environment and its own sustainable future.
NO socialist/communist/Marxist society has EVER prospered! NEVER has it happened!
Interesting comment. Has the Chinese socialist/communist/Marxist society seen any increase in prosperity lately?
Capitalism serves capitalists first and foremost with some crumbs dropping down to the 99 percent. At least “Occupy Wall Street” is bringing attention to that 99 percent given all the focus on the 1 percent. Ronald Reagan, the shinning god of the right was never at a loss to use the phrase “trickle down economics” to justify giving big tax breaks and other benefits to the rich, while doing nothing for working people. What it means is exactly what it says – the majority of the population gets what spills out from the self engorged lips of the money-power class. In your twisted view of things, we should be happy with that. The Republican Party, conservatives and Tea Party would sacrifice the majority of people of this country for the benefit of “the masters of the universe,” because, despite all your claims as constitutionalists, you defy its very meaning in that government should serve and protect the people by assuring those rights considered inalienable.
Class warfare is the way of the forseeable future. Over the years, a growing class of indentured slaves, “the younger generation” has been created by an over indulgent “something for nothing” society and a preponderence of anti-constitutionalist politicians. The government promulgated Ponzi Scheems, ranging from Social Security to Fannie Mae’s governent sponsored financing of unqualified homebuyers, has foisted more than $100 trillion dollars of debt on a class of people who had no say, nor reap no any benefit thereby occasioned. From the point of view of the indentured slaves, there is no capitalist system. Only a system where their life, liberty and property are purloined by willing govenment officials and government monopolized institutions.
Let’s face it, the current situation provides no hope for our young people. That is why the collectivists, unions, a myriad of socialist organizations and politicians have moved in to promote caos by supporting their “useful idiots”. Given the circumstances, one can only imagine the situation getting worse. The bigger the Ponzi Scheem, the farther the fall.
Extreme income/wealth disparity is the cannon fodder of class warfare.
It’s obvious that the Tea Party Patriots just complain and slander about how the left is ruining our country. The issue is this. Our country is in an economic turmoil that actually happened once before otherwise the depression in 1929. How we pulled ourselves out of the depression was by Franklin D. Roosevelt after he invested the money into infrastructure (roads, bridges, factories, etc). Obama had the same idea, but the republicans vetoed it. What this shows is that not only the republicans and democrats wont work together, but also wont reason on a solution that would actually work. As much as the democratic party is a bleeding heart group who will tax the crap out of you and take what you have earned and give it to others, the republicans and tea party patriots aren’t any better either. After all they support that a corporation should have no regulations, which means like the big greedy business men they are they can send their jobs overseas to those who will work for cheap. As for the occupy protesters even though they aim at the right audience, they have no foundation what so ever in their message. How is any of this relevant? Because the democrats are crooks, the republicans are greedy, the bankers are corrupt, and the upper middle-class college kids are pissed of because of financial inequality. How this relates to the issue is if how can we have financial equality when all the republican beliefs in a market have our our jobs sent over seas, the democrats spend away all of our money, the bankers and lobbyists influencing our politicians to be dirty, and nobody actually doing anything about it except for bickering on and on about things that they cant find a solution for. if we are founded upon a free enterprise system or otherwise capitalism. Than we need economic competition not class warfare. What we need to do is to invest our money into infrastructure, put rules and regulations on lobbyists, rules and regulations on corporations, rules and regulations on bankers (strictly for all three of them), promote economic competition, and that is the solution. And i am not saying that it will work for sure. But if FDR made it work, than the chance of us making it work is just as good too. This makes a good economy, and a good economy is when jobs are being created, people are spending their money, and than we actually have financial equality.
….I watched My Man Godfrey and well…..even in 1932 the system needed changing and still does today! We are still without doubt the greatest nation on the planet!
Greatest nation on earth my ARSE. Most Arogent. . Yes ! Most selfish.. Yes ! Most ignorant . . Yes ! Most environmentaly destructive . . Yes ! Most obese. . Yes ! Most likely to murder 200000 innocent civilians. . Yes ! Most Racist. . Yes ! I couldn’t be bothered going on but greatest country on earth not a chance. Wake up to what the rest of the worl knows quite well. the best of the US comes from the left, nothing good comes from self serving right wing greed.
This congress and the prevailing political climate seem to signal that the ability to reason through to a bi-partisan solution is not within the realm of possibility at the moment. It’s regrettable because this B.S. going on now will only delay our recovery. Rest assured, no matter what, each individual in Washington now is only going to do what is in their best interest with no regard for the recovery of this country. I hope I’m wrong. I keep waking up each day hoping to see something that proves i’m wrong. Boehner isn’t going to make it happen…that’s becoming obvious. And now we have the tea party – sigh. Extremist god how I love em!
The OWS are not the “other 99%”. They are “the 47%” that do not pay taxes or contribute to our society. They should obey the law and rules of assembly or be pepper sprayed, fire hosed and then tazed if they still don’t get the point.
We don’t have a taxing problem we have a spending problem.
This whole Occupy Movement is just a way of pulling our attention away from Washington and what Obama is doing. It all staged for the dumb sheep public.
The real problem is that we don’t really have a two party system in Washington. It all a big shell game with the taxpayers the big losers.
Capitalism serves capitalists first and foremost with some crumbs dropping down to the 99 percent. At least “Occupy Wall Street” is bringing attention to that 99 percent given all the focus on the 1 percent. Ronald Reagan, the shinning god of the right was never at a loss to use the phrase “trickle down economics” to justify giving big tax breaks and other benefits to the rich, while doing nothing for working people. What it means is exactly what it says – the majority of the population gets what spills out from the self engorged lips of the money-power class. In your twisted view of things, we should be happy with that. The Republican Party, conservatives and Tea Party would sacrifice the majority of people of this country for the benefit of “the masters of the universe,” because, despite all your claims as constitutionalists, you defy its very meaning in that government should serve and protect the people by assuring those rights considered inalienable.
Hello everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself (this is my first post here). I’m not a tea-party supporter, in fact I’m a member of the Occupy Movement. I want to say how impressed I am at the number of thoughtful, intelligent comments I find here, on both sides of the political spectrum. I pretty much agree with what Bill Sampson and Neal Carpenter say above. And even though Kurt Epithet claims to agree with the TP in most of it’s goals, I cant find anything in his 5 points to disagree with. Although there are obviously many things that TP and OWS disagree about, perhaps they have more in common than most of us believe?
As for class warfare, “class competition” has always been, and probably always will be, an inherent aspect of american society. In itself, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It only becomes bad when the playing field is no longer level. Today, it no longer is, due primarily to a corrupt political system. Read “Winner Take All Politics” by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.
As long as the Democratic Party allows President Obama and his advisers to set the tone of Class Warfare, there will be no consideration for true ideas, debates and real resolutions to truly tackle our economy’s great problems. The moderates become a raggedy Ann with this controversial theme. Class warfare, purposely, pits one group against another, but the representatives cannot do that very easily with their own constituents. Citizens are tired of all the tactics, being used to divide this nation. They want to hear mature voices, with pride, sell the message of why less government involvement allows the private sector to provide jobs, Over time it can begin to turn economic problem into a productive, profitable, and true job growth. One thing that most can still agree upon is whether you are rich or poor, our country’s economy is not as productive as it could be. Class warfare is only profitable to the ones who rely on it to divide and conquer.