gracchusdixit

One of the country’s richest men chose the week of the President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to complain that progressives, when they worry out loud about the growing level of income inequality in our society, are engaging in a form of persecution against what he called the “successful one percent”.  He went so far as to compare this supposed persecution with the fate inflicted on the victims of the Holocaust.

All comparisons with the Holocaust are inescapably tasteless, because that uniquely dreadful event is commensurable with nothing else.  This particular comparison, however, was worse than tasteless.  It was a grotesque juxtaposition of two things that are not only unrelated but at opposite ends of the moral spectrum: at one end, a true and terrible tragedy; at the other, a trivial and pathetic expression of self-pity.

It took the clueless billionaire who made this gaff several days to realize his mistake.  He apologized in the end, but he did not retreat from his basic point.  Hard as it is for most of us to believe, “persecuted” is precisely what he believes himself and his billionaire buddies to be.

The rationale offered by the whining wealthy for this self-serving claim is almost as grotesque as the impulse to compare their situation with that of the millions of helpless Jews who went to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.  The rich contend that any attempt to raise their taxes is a form of class warfare, waged by greedy and resentful “takers” against hard-working and productive “makers”.   They dismiss the motives of those who make such proposals as a “politics of envy”.

Let us be clear.  There are, without doubt, Americans who have made their money by dint of talent, hard work, and entrepreneurial skill.  Such people deserve to be rewarded.

Let us also be clear about something else.  Most of the top one percent do not come close to meeting that threshold.  Few of them are particularly talented.  Many of them have never worked a day in their lives.  And whatever entrepreneurial skills they may possess have been directed toward persuading and, on far too many occasions, bribing public officials to do their bidding.

In the last regard, America’s rich have succeeded fabulously, because, since the election of Ronald Reagan, they have been subsidized by government to a fabulous degree.  The percentage of income they pay to fund Social Security and Medicare is no more than the poorest of their workers.  The money they make from financial investments rather than real work—and virtually none of their money comes from real work—is taxed at a lower rate than simple wages.  Many of the businesses they run or own would not exist, let alone make a profit, if the government didn’t underwrite the inadequate medical care their employees get, the education they receive, or the unemployment benefits they are paid when they are, all too frequently, laid off to boost profits even further.

Corporate executives—who now constitute a majority of America’s wealthiest people—“earn” nearly four hundred times the average income of the people who work for them, and their compensation rarely has anything to do with the profitability or investment returns of the companies they manage.  Hedge-fund managers, who contribute exactly nothing to the real economic productivity of the nation, are allowed to treat their multi-million-dollar bonuses as capital gains, a tax dodge that no sane or responsible person has ever pretended to justify.

We subsidize the rich even when they are dead.  Thanks to our rigged tax code, they can park their money for eternity in trusts and foundations that pay no taxes, and even without such subterfuge, we allow them to leave vast sums to their worthless children, without those children ever having to pay a penny.

As if all this were not enough, the poor, pathetic, persecuted rich now want us to feel sorry for them.  I suppose that, no matter how rich you are, there’s never enough; you’ll never be satisfied until you get it all.