[I]t’s weird how disconnected the media is from the reality of the unemployment situation. It’s not that there’s no coverage, of course, but overall there’s little sense of the economic reality for so many people. The double whammy of the recession and foreclosure crisis has caused immense pain.
I have miles of respect for Atrios, but I cannot agree with this statement at all. As always the Washington Post has kept its focus squarely on the hardest hit.
LONDON — In this land of inherited privilege and celebrity billionaires, it no longer pays as much to be rich.
Hobbled by soaring debt and ballooning public spending amid the global financial crisis, the British government is joining others around the globe in tapping the wealthy to cover massive shortfalls. As a result, the tax rate here for those making more than $250,000 a year is set to jump from 40 to 50 percent, leaving the likes of Charlie Mullins — the self-made king of London plumbing — fuming. He estimates that the new bill on his $2.5 million annual income, with exemptions, will jump by no less than $236,000.
Observers say it is part of a far broader campaign in the wake of the Great Recession — including curbs on bankers’ pay and a rigorous global hunt for tax cheats from Switzerland to Singapore — that is suddenly putting the world’s wealthy on notice.
Why the assignment editor at the Post goes back to this well day after day after day is a question that maybe DougJ can answer.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with some winning the rat race and others losing. The corrosive effect that I see here is that obsessively covering the winners’ concerns amplifies their relatively mundane problems and minimizes the issues facing truly desperate people. This is not a trivial point; weighing one concern or the other would lead a low-information press consumer to support policy positions that are almost opposite one another.
A two-digit percentage of Americans fall into the terrible position of being one rejected medical crisis away from homelessness. God knows how many more once-stable middle class families the recession has pushed right to that edge. Yet, mysteriously, my WaPo RSS feed seems to filter out their narratives.
Maybe the press thinks that Michael Moore already interviewed everyone who is barely hanging on. Maybe desperate people sell fewer papers. Who knows. All I know is that that stuff like this hardly makes an effective counterpoint to the hateful drivel on FOX. In the end it seems hard to blame some Americans for thinking that Obama has no agenda other than (1) making Republicans upset (what does Newt think about this?), and (2) modestly inconveniencing wealthy people.
***Update***
I see that Atrios had this post written well before I did.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
People living in tent cities buy fewer newspapers.
People living in tent cities are harder to reach by phone for interviews.
People living in tent cities are a pain in the ass to interview- they tend to live on the outskirts of town, which is a long drive through unpleasant areas.
Rich people who lost their fourth home are much easier to reach, much more articulate, much less likely to be scary/non-white, and much less likely to use profanity.
crack
Poor people don’t buy newspapers and advertisers hate them. Rich people want to hear about rich people problems.
Zifnab
Wait, what? The wealthy aren’t just being charged high tax rates, but are actually expected to PAY them?! That’s the biggest slap in the face since Jimmy Carter suggested if we feel cold we should put on a jacket!
I can see the economy crumbling already.
DougJ
Why the assignment editor at the Post goes back to this well day after day after day is a question that maybe DougJ can answer.
The Post is nowhere near as bad as the Times about this. Part of the reason that I read the Post so obsessively is that on any given on the Times, there are multiple articles — about the dangers of yoga mats, about Susan Orlean’s dream house on the Hudson, about how hard it is to be a hedge fund manager these days — that raise my blood pressure to an unhealthy level.
Howie Kurtz makes me mad, but not as mad as real estate porn makes me.
Tim F.
Well that’s encouraging.
Stefan
Maybe the press thinks that Michael Moore already interviewed everyone who is barely hanging on.
Look, it doesn’t matter because he’s fat. Also.
Xanthippas
Now let’s be fair. That article is more about how lawmakers are reacting to the recession by blatantly going after the wealthy (in every country but ours that is.) And it’s the Washington Post that’s done article on how people in the middle class are cutting back, or how recession or not things have always been rough on the inner-city poor (I’ll be damned if I can find the links right now…sorry.)
The real target of your ire should be the NY Times, which persistently enjoys printing articles like “Extravagance Has Its Limits as Belt-Tightening Trickles Up” or “Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall.”
Leelee for Obama
If the media thinks the teabaggers were a huge turnout, wait until the pissed-off left, right and center awaken to the truth of what has been done to them. They are trying to hide it, it peeks out, now and then, anyway. Bur Ratigan went at them yesterday, today someone else. When the whole story becomes real-the size f the crowd won’t matter much-the real fury will be all. I don’t want violence, I want real insistence that things get fixed for the regular guy, no matter what their politics.
A girl can dream, can’t she?
Xanthippas
Oh, but also to be fair, I should point out that I really don’t understand why any media outlet other than E! is interested in exploring how the recession is affecting the wealthy and super-wealthy. A few articles like that and you’re asking for protesters with pitchforks, in my opinion.
Zifnab
@Xanthippas: Or a drop in subscription rates. Really, there’s only so much of this swill people can stomach for free. Imagine actually paying for it.
Pangloss
Why do you insist on engaging in class warfare, Tim?
asiangrrlMN
I keep hearing this shit on NPR, too. All these sob stories about the upper middle class who cannot go on their vacation around the world–this year. They have to sell off the third home. They can only go to the fancy-schmancy restaurants twice a month instead of every week.
I don’t fucking get it. I really don’t.
R. Porrofatto
Not to mention that a goodly number of those winners are actually responsible for the severe economic issues causing the desperation of all those “non-winners,” while being the beneficiaries of taxpayer-funded welfare that keeps them awash in stratospheric bonuses beyond the imagination of most of the rest of us. This, too, is not a trivial point.
Tax Analyst
The L.A. Times recently had a front page story on how struggling upper-middle classers were now having to rely of Food Banks to get by…except the guy they used as their example didn’t really need free food – he wasn’t broke and he wasn’t hungry – he was availing himself of the free food so he could put the cash into his business.
At first he was somewhat embarrassed, but it seemed he was managing to get over it after several visits.
Oh, the trauma.
Martin
Who the fuck wants to read about how shitty their own life is?
The editors of the Times and Post has a responsibility only to their shareholders. The reporters may have the professional ethic to deliver us news, but they don’t run the show.
Besides, how many plumbers and construction workers do you think crack open the Times every morning? Post/Times (and NPR) are middle to upper-middle class outlets, and they aren’t going to focus on autoworkers and pig farmers.
Lupin
Paraphrasing Jonathan Swift, I don’t think we should put the world’s wealthy “on notice”, I think we should put them on the menu.
IndieTarheel
They’re determined to ride that dead horse straight to the meat grinder. Come to think of it, maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea after all…
drillfork
Well this is precious:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090915/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bernanke
Bernake says the recession is over, while acknowledging that the 9.7 percent unemployment rate will keep rising…
hmd
Well, um, a “recession” refers to negative economic growth, not just generically to “bad times”, so it is quite common for unemployment to remain high or even continue to increase after the recession is over.
But I was drawn to the guy who estimates that his tax bill on 2.5 million will go up by 236,000 when the tax rate jumps from 40% to 50%.
First – he could afford it. So I’m not really crying for him. I don’t expect him to be happy about it, but have some perspective for crying out loud. I’m sure there are lots of plumbers out there that would love to have his problems.
Second – unless the UK tax system is way different from the US (and I’m sure it is not), his estimate on his extra tax bill is ridiculous. When the top marginal tax rate goes up by 10%, he’ll pay the extra only on the amount of his income that actually falls into that bracket. So the increase in his tax bill will probably be 150,000 at most. If he doesn’t think that is a significant difference, he can send me the extra 86,000 – I’ll gladly pay the taxes on it.
rock
I think this a sign of a philosophy, shared by many libertarians, that poor people are responsible for their own plight. If they worked harder, they would succeed. If they ate healthier food, they would not have catastrophic medical problems. Their trouble is their own responsibility. It’s actually very comforting to think that way. You know you will not be in that position, because you are not like them. Plus, helping them out in some way is simply rewarding bad behavior.
The flip side is that something bad befalling a wealthy person is news. Here we have a man that is self-made, works hard, and through no fault of his own will be made poorer. It’s like Hurricane Katrina hitting Greenwich, CT. It’s unjust and therefore newsworthy.
Calouste
@hmd:
The UK has 2 (two) tax brackets: 20% op to 37,400 pounds and 40% over that. So the 236,000 sounds correct.
Most countries have a tax system that is different from the US, mostly in that it is way simpler because party discipline in parliament can actually get things like tax simplification done rather than having something like Congress where each bill is littered with Representatives’ and Senators’
quid pro qou’s for lobbyistspet projects.bedtimeforbonzo
“Why do you insist on engaging in class warfare, Tim?”
Pangloss: Why are you blaming Tim? Eight years of the policies of the Bush Administration and, to some extent, eight months of the Obama Admin’s have essentially pitted the haves vs. the have-nots.
I think the story here is the death of the middle class.
Without access to credit, I know my standard of living has plummeted. I’m sure that’s reflective of other folks whose first priorty is keeping their home.
Selling cars for a living, I finally figured out why our business is in the shitter: the unemployment rate. Consumers either have lost their jobs or know someone who has and, therefore, are afraid of losing their jobs. And I’m fearful that the jobs that do come back won’t pay what one would associate with a middle-class life.
burnspbesq
But…but…the increase in the top rate of individual income tax in the UK is eventually going to destroy the Premier League!!! Because if you are a top player, and suddenly you only get to keep half of the 200,000 pounds a week that you get for playing football, you can only afford three Lamborghinis instead of four, and that simply won’t do, so you will go play somewhere else where you are appreciated.
By this logic, AS Monaco should be the prohibitive favorite to win the Champions League every year.
/snark
Bill
Obviously Bob Herbert is the last pundit to get the memo from Reason that it’s now “O.K.” to hate the poor.
HyperIon
Tim F. wrote: …my WaPo RSS feed…
My God, you are a glutton for punishment.
The NYT had a weekend article checking up on several ex-Lehman employees. The only guy who did OK was laid off well before the implosion. He shorted them and made a ton of money.
Investment strategy for rich dummies: Got a big pile of money? Take half of it and bet the other half will be lost. The catch is: you have to be happy with half. But lots of greedy SOBs want it all. So sad.
Dustin
@ Leelee
While none of us, hopefully, want violence if this path continues it’s near inevitable. It won’t be pretty, and it won’t be quiet, but eventually someone who’s lost everything because of these people will snap and do something about it.
The question isn’t if it will happen, it’s how we as a society react when it does. Do we force actual change through peaceful and democratic change, do we take up arms, or do we let them apply the boot? Me? I’m afraid we’re too complacent in out “it can’t happen here” mentality and the answer will turn out to be #3.
PurpleGirl
The powers that be want to remind us peons that our jobs and money ultimately trickle down from the rich… therefore, if the rich have it bad then we will have it worse. We’re supposed to be thankful from the crumbs. I guess.
mclaren
The assignment editor at WaPo makes six figures. He goes to cocktail parties every night with lobbyists and advertising flacks and congresscritters and White House cabinet members who make six figures. These people all eat at the same restaurants, take their kids to the same elite private schools, meet one another at the same country clubs.
To them, someone who makes $250,000 a year is the normal American. They don’t know anyone else. They haven’t met anyone who makes less than a quarter mil a year in decades.
And when you ask these people how much money they make and when you ask ’em what kind of consulting fees they get from giant corporations, what kind of speaking fees they rake in for giving post-prandial chats at GE and IBM and AIG for $20,000 a pop, why, they go berserk. “You have no business asking how much I make,” they scream. They find it insulting that anyone would question their opinions based on the fact that they make 6 figures a year.
Welcome to the American aristocracy.