Too good not to front-page (h/t commentor Trollhattan). Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly got together with filmmaker Bill Simmon to remind us what’s at stake. Great clip for email forwarding to the faint of heart:
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This post is in: Election 2010, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Assholes, Bring on the Brawndo!, Clap Louder!, Flash Mob of Hate, Seriously
Too good not to front-page (h/t commentor Trollhattan). Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly got together with filmmaker Bill Simmon to remind us what’s at stake. Great clip for email forwarding to the faint of heart:
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Comments are closed.
Jennifer
Hah! I got there first and pimped that video this morning!
You’re slipping, Balloon Juice.
Corner Stone
Had a shouting slapfest argument with a wingnut friend of mine a couple days ago.
He was defending to the bitter end that earning $250K per household per year did not qualify as “rich” and that for the D’s “class warfare” was always on the menu.
I told him he was G-D right it was class warfare, and the rich had won it.
Asked him how being in the top 5% of all earners, and making 5 times the national median income, with 46M people in poverty didn’t make $250K qualify as rich? If being in the top 5% didn’t make you “rich” then WTF was the point to it all?
And if that wasn’t rich, then where was the line? A million? You’re still middle class if you make $1M a year?
He never would say where the line was. Just kept calling me a communist. At which point I told him we should have a graduated tax rate with 90% being the top rate.
The propaganda is strong in wingnut land.
And trust me, in most places in TX, and specifically where we both live, if you earn $250K a year you are living a damn good life.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: My McEstimate is that there are about 150 square miles in the US where an income of $250k would not both give you a good life and higher income than most of your neighbors.
JAHILL10
Almost too true to be funny, but I’ll facebook it anyway because these factoids cannot be said enough this year.
beltane
@Corner Stone: Tell your friend that if he has his way, the conditions will be ripe for an actual communist movement and he rue the day he was scared of a little weak-tea liberalism. When the top 2% have everything and the bottom 98% have nothing, why on earth would it concern the have-nothings if the have-alls are lined up against a wall or forced to flee the country with nothing but the clothes on her back.
What would have happened to their darling Ayn Rand if she had not been welcomed into the US?
General Stuck
Don’t tempt me to link the Divinyl’s masterpiece again.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Probably more than 150, but not a lot more. Even here in SoCal, the neighborhoods with >$250K household income are pretty small. Corona Del Mar and Newport Coast both come in well below that. You’re looking literally at single streets to keep the median above $250K.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Okay, it was too accurate to be a McEstimate.
John O
@Corner Stone:
I’ve had that discussion with several highly paid, generally analytic, completely intelligent business people. I’ve gone so far as to show them where they stand on a curve.
It’s a frustratingly surreal waste of time.
beltane
@Martin: The problem is that people making over a $250,000 a year only socialize with other people making $250,000 a year. It is like a closed society. At least in the old, pre-suburbia days the rich were fully aware that they were rich. Now you have millionaire Wall Street traders who think they’re ordinary working stiffs.
Corner Stone
@John O: Most are.
He also scoffs at the idea that GWB or the Repub rule have any blame left for the current situation.
We go round and round about most things, which is fine.
I will just never understand how someone can claim a top 5% earner isn’t somehow “elite”.
We can argue about a lot of things but G-D, what the hell? The top 5% are “middle class”?
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
I love it!
Corner Stone
@beltane: Exactly. Somehow, if you make $9,999,999 a year or less you are a good old boy and a hard working middle class slob.
John O
@Corner Stone:
Right. It seems it could be reasonably argued that, say, the 40th to 60th percentile is “middle class,” or even 30-70, hell, 20th to 80th. But top 5%? That’s just definitionally “rich.” Even if it won’t afford you three houses and a yacht.
I sort of go by one standard deviation in terms of trying to define the “middle.” I am an elitist.
Dennis SGMM
@beltane:
And they commiserate with each other about having to drive last year’s Porsche, how the decline of the dollar has made vacations in Europe soooooo expensive, and the lack of affordable household help. They make my knuckles itch.
burnspbesq
@Dennis SGMM:
Bullshit, with a hefty amount of fuck you sauce on top. The conversation is much more likely to be about topics like how expensive it is to support declining parents, how they couldn’t take vacations at all if they couldn’t use frequent flyer miles and hotel bonus points, how being a partner doesn’t give you any job security if you don’t keep bringing in new clients, and (my favorite) “I have enough saved up to pay for UC, but God help me if the kid gets into Duke.”
You have no idea.
beltane
@Dennis SGMM: When Feodor Dostoevsky was imprisoned in pre-revolutionary Russia, he was stunned to discover the depths of hatred the commoners felt towards the nobility. “You have no idea how they hate us”, he wrote to a family member. The experience turned him into a conservative who clung to God and Czar, but he could still see the writing on the wall.
The intransigence of our elite is infuriating for the rest of us, but is especially dangerous to them. Greed coupled with abject stupidity doesn’t tend to lead to happy outcomes-for anyone.
Martin
@beltane: Yeah, that’s true to a fair degree. I do socialize with a number of people that make over $250K, though and I make ¼ of that, when the state deems me worthy enough to pay my full salary.
Those really are exceptions, however, and even then they’re awkward. How do you socialize with someone with their own Gulfstream jet and personal chef when you’re just really, really excited to have a new car for the first time in your life? Getting together, they want to fly everyone over to Hawaii for the weekend to their vacation home, and the best you can offer is ribs and beer in your back yard.
Even less wealthy friends are awkward. Just picking a restaurant is a dance around obvious truths – we aim for at most $20 per person meals, and only on special occasions, and our ~$250K/year friends tend toward $50 per person meals, which is a $200 bill for my family of 4. Yeah, not gonna happen. Hell, we only do the $20 meals when the kids aren’t with us.
Yeah, there are LOTS of basic social problems caused by income disparity, and that translates into things like health care, jobs policy, etc. It’s quite literally a cancer on the nation.
AhabTRuler
@Omnes Omnibus: Even here in Tommy McFriedmanland, there are many places where 250k will do quite nicely.
Although I did see an advert on the Metro for some new townhomes in NOVA “nicely priced, starting in the 600s. . .”
Bob L
The real problem is the rich are as big as suckers as the rest of us. More money means more debt. So they look at their disposable income after all the loan payments, credit cards and bills for various services and go “OMG” only $100, I am poor!
I work with people who are easily into the $250K salary range and they have debt collectors after them. Unbelievable.
Martin
@burnspbesq: FWIW, I’ve saved enough for my kids to go to UC on my $60K salary. If someone making $250K can’t do better than that, they’re either fucking idiots, or they have unspoken priorities.
They may talk like that, but it’s bullshit. They can afford Duke with only mild changes in lifestyle.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
Ha. I don’t think you’re going to make too much headway on this issue counselor.
I have a very good friend who, on the day he made equity partner went and bought a Mercedes Coupe convertible.
Nothing wrong with earning your money, and nothing wrong with spending it where you choose.
But don’t come whining to me about how tough life is when you have a guarantee base of high six figures and with bonus make between $1.2M and $1.5M
Don’t buy the fucking $90K car if you have concerns.
And I have another friend who isn’t an equity partner who just put his son through Wharton. At the cost of a new car every year.
So stuff your sorrys in a sack mister.
Hiram Taine
@burnspbesq: So, what do you suppose the conversations are like in the median income gatherings?
How about the bottom quintile gatherings?
God help me if the car has a blowout, I don’t have the money for a tire.
You are the one that has no idea.
Martin
@Bob L: Yeah, that’s true more than people want to believe. One of my friends is a financial planner for the upper-income set. He constantly reassures me that I’m financially far better off than most of his clients living in ocean-view Corona Del Mar. Most of them are living paycheck to paycheck. They claim they’re poor while living in a $2M house.
My dad was CEO of his tiny credit union for a few years. They only had a few thousand members, but he’d have to sign off on any loan over a certain size, mainly because a default could pose a serious problem for the health of the credit union. He turned down loans for every executive of his company that applied for one because none of them were financially sound enough for even a car loan. These were people that ran a company with financial services products.
So, I understand why these people say they’re poor. Problem is that they aren’t poor. They’re either idiots or feel entitled. They deserve to get fucked. Even if they went bankrupt, they earn enough that they could be back on their feet in a single paycheck. They could be back in a house in 3 years on a cash purchase. They have NO idea how easy they have it.
beltane
@Martin: This is the situation I have with members of my family. Over the years we have completely drifted apart, not because of any hostility or because they are horrible people (they are not), but because our stations in life are so different. I buy my kids used clothes, do not have cable, keep the thermostat at 50, and have not have not gone away on a real vacation in over a decade, and we still have it much better than many of our neighbors. It simply becomes hard to relate to people who gripe over the cost of this resort over that resort, or their kids’ summer camp, or even all the lovely restaurants they get to eat at. Wealth is another country.
burnspbesq
@Hiram Taine:
I know exactly what those conversations are like, idjit.
The reason I make as much as I make now is that I worked for the Federal Government for a number of years, investing in my career. I’ve lived in OC, with an unemployed spouse and a baby, on a GS-13 salary. So don’t you dare tell me I don’t get it.
beltane
@Corner Stone: I know, the comment you responded to kind of proved everyone’s point.
Corner Stone
@Martin:
Before he moved, and back when I was married, we were friends with a pro baseball athlete. He and his wife invited us out one evening with some other pro prospects he was friends with and his agent and a couple others. We went out, had pre dinner drinks, dinner, and then just split up. About 10 or so of us. The bill comes and I’m not really sure what’s appropriate but I don’t mind paying our part.
$200 for us. $100 a piece. This was a guy who at the time had a $750K contract and went on to have a few $1M+ contracts.
I never minded paying my part but that was a good lesson for me. If we weren’t BBQ’ng at someone’s house, I was not joining a dinner party we were invited to, except for a special, special occassion.
Southern Beale
It’s the mother of all IOKIYARS: Tea Party candidate for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District seems to have a past as a Nazi re-enactor and yes there are pictures.
Woopsies. All that’s missing is the Sarah Palin endorsement!
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Beale: WTF? I didn’t know that SS re-enactors even existed.
Litlebritdifrnt
Eat the rich. There was a woman calling into Dave Ramsey’s show last night who said that they earned about 100K per year and yet they are “struggling” Why? Because they are trying to live the lifestyle of someone who makes 250K per year, so they slam it all on their credit cards, they buy a McMansion, they own a Lexus, they send their kids to private school and then they bitch that earning 100k a year is not enough? Please, buy a 1200 SF house, drive a Kia, send your kids to public school and quit buying shit from Ikea. I mean really you can’t get by on 100K a year? Talk to someone who gets by on 14K a year and get a fucking life.
Southern Beale
@Omnes Omnibus:
Me neither. Apaprently they have a website and everything. Videotape themselves goosestepping around.
Iott said he joined as a “father-son bonding experience.” Right. I’m sure I could find some of my neighbors down here in Tennessee who will say the same thing about joining the KKK.
Un fucking believable.
I have a new theory about Republicans: it’s always opposite day with them. Call Obama a Nazi and sure enough, the one doing the talking has a Nazi fetish. The homophobic Republican is always a closeted gay.
marcopolo
Yeah, well, I would like to agree with the whole class warfare idea that at some point wealth will be so concentrated that the lower 98% will get a clue; however, I just look at the current political climate where it seems the average braindead/brainwashed ‘murkin blames the guvment for all of the ills afflicting them–not the corporations that have a vested interest in their remaining cheap labor and docile, impressionable consumers (with the caveat that corporations and moneyed interests have captured substantial portions of the government). I don’t think it helps matters that when folks nowadays think about what constitutes a decent lifestyle they reference what they see on the telly where even slackers like the cast of Friends (yeah I am dating myself) reside in nicely outfitted living spaces and never seem to need to go without or face bankruptcy from unexpected medical issues.
And here I wasn’t gonna rant at all tonight.
Hiram Taine
@burnspbesq: I’m privy to your life history and CV?
Who’s really the idjit here counsellor?
When you defend arrogant, privileged, clueless assholes you should really expect to get a little blowback.
There are plenty of people who have “invested in their careers” that are currently members of the long term unemployed and likely will never work for anyone else again in their lives.
AhabTRuler
Mr. Mosley on line one for you, sir, and the son of the Prince of Wales is holding on two.
Corner Stone
@marcopolo:
Do you remember the one episode where Friends dealt with income inequality?
The 3 that were “poor” rebelled against the 3 that were better off. The “wealthy” ones wanted to buy the poor ones tickets to events, or pay for meals. They were tired of being hemmed in by the lower dollar values of what the poor 3 friends could accommodate.
I always found that an instructive episode.
General Stuck
Well, we’ve had ideological wars here, generational ones also too, gender conflicts, PC/Mac kerfluffles, and even a Duck tape war. No reason not to include a personal income war as well. In fact, I would say it’s long overdue. I will add for my own self, when I was making a bundle, I was more unhappy, than just barely enough to live on. It’s all relative, and the trick is managing what matters, and what doesn’t in your own pretty heads.
Kyle
@beltane:
Hence the Repig project to propagandize the commoners to idolize and identify with the rich, and to hate and despise the weak, the unsuccessful, those below them on the socioeconomic scale; and inoculate them with religion, militarism and nationalism against questioning the way things are. It’s the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings.
Southern Beale
@AhabTRuler:
Don’t know who Mr. Mosley is but in defense of the Prince of Wales he was wearing a costume for a dress-up party. Not quite the same as marching around in formation in the woods pretending to be SS. On top of which, it turns out this guy had a German alter ego named “Reinhard Pferdmann,” to help him better get into the whole Nazi vibe.
I mean, really. No comparison. I dressed as a hooker for Halloween one year, doesn’t mean I was turning tricks. This guy, it appears, was turning tricks.
Omnes Omnibus
@AhabTRuler: Max Mosley was playing with hookers, right? I see that as a kink, especially given his family. As far as the other goes, I know nothing about it.
Southern Beale
By the way in case tonight hasn’t gotten crazy enough, Glenn Beck says he’s having medical problems and will need to step away from his show. He says his medical problems are rooted in “spiritual wounds.”
I can’t take any more, I’m going to bed. G’night.
Martin
@marcopolo:
They won’t. A study was completed early this year which determined that as income inequality increased, the population at the top and bottom becomes more conservative. They vote for more of the policies that made them rich and poor.
Destroying the middle class is a feature of conservatism.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, that was kink.
(F1 fan, so I caught all the news. Tonight hoping the rain in Japan salvages Lewis’s race and his championship hopes.)
Martin
@Southern Beale: Oh! He’s gonna turn himself into an Obamacare martyr!
j
And Ann Coulter will vote wherever she damn well feels like voting. (Again.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/ann-coulter-to-face-vote-_b_753671.html
trollhattan
@marcopolo:
For quite awhile I’ve thought the true “genius” of the Republicans is their talent for getting people to vote against their own self-interest. There must be, what, forty-million morans who are dependable “R” voters across the board and who are getting screwed with an orange-hot poker by the party to whom they pledge their undying allegiance.
I have in-laws (okay, most of them) who fit the bill, and it’s a truly mind-boggling task to try and figure out how they form opinions.
Mnemosyne
@AhabTRuler:
Every time I hear the Mosley name, I think of the PG Wodehouse character of Roderick Spode (who was a loose parody of Mosley) and Bertie Wooster’s classic takedown of him and, by extension, fascism:
morzer
@Southern Beale:
Any interest in setting up a Nuremberg Trials re-enactment society? I am sure our friends the SS re-enactors would be happy to participate…
morzer
@Southern Beale:
First time I’ve heard alcoholic dementia called a spiritual wound.
Corner Stone
@morzer: Normally I just hear organ music.
Bernard
all these years the Propaganda has been Free Lunch. the way to get rich has been to vote with the Rich and then one day you will be “rich” like them. through osmosis, i gather.
After all, we can all be Rich if we do what they do. the Path to Riches is through the Republican party. the Democrats give our taxes to the Blacks for their votes, so why not vote for the Rich/Republicans. such effective PR.
the insane idea that the Rich will “make” you rich by voting for them is the Free Lunch Association Party. Do what the Rich do.and you will be rich. Wishing it were so.
There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home. there’s no place like home and i’ll be damned if i vote Democratic so they can give my money to Blacks who are…. fill in the blanks here.
after reading how the average/poorly educated Whites think Obama is so anti white in the latest poll.
who could ask for a more pliant, receptive audience.
LBJ was wrong. The Civil Rights Act lost the White vote for ever.
Geoduck
Since John originally called for some music links, here’s a seasonal offering with added Lego goodness.
Emerald
@Bernard: You’ve hit on a bit of it, I think. My Mom was a die-hard Republican, and it was mainly because she needed to think of herself as one of the Rich. My family was comfortable, but nowhere near well-off.
But Mom had to think of herself as Rich, and therefore supported Republicans, greatly to her own economic detriment. Her emotional need, though, trumped everything. She’d started life dirt poor and had risen a bit. She needed to believe that she’d risen all the way.
RadioOne
I can’t say I love the video. Relying on the “Get a brain morans” picture to get liberal voters excited this year seems lame. We need to do better.
mslarry
@Dennis SGMM:
but it’s sicker still b/c these freakin’ assholes don’t understand we have a PROGRESSIVE TAX… they’re only getting taxed more than middle class on anything over 250K. They’re a bunch of ignorant, selfish asses… and screw folks who are in the 95% majority who are defending these top 5 % a-holes… i mean it, screw them all with a rusty pitchfork.
aimai
@Hiram Taine:
Good point, Hiram Taine, very good point. I was just thinking about that yesterday–anyone with enough money to have someone come to their house to clean it? They know someone who can’t afford that box of strawberries out of season (six dollars a pound) that you just threw out because it got moldy. Anyone who can afford a cleaner through at service (fifty dollars an hour to the service/5.50 an hour to the cleaner and she better not use your bathroom) knows, but doesn’t know, someone for whom disaster is just around the corner.
The middle and upper classes are surrounded by people for whom “I lost my toothbrush/my child outgrew her shoes/the car broke down” is a disaster but the times, and burnpespeque, only have sympathy for the kind of person who can hire the help.
Burnpesque bit of special pleading includes “taking care of aged parents.” Well, yeah. My husband and I also have to worry about our aged P’s but you know what? So does my daughter’s babysitter who for the last 13 years has been the sole english speaking person in her family who is able to accompany her crazed, ill, mother to the doctor or administer her meds. While working two jobs simultaneously–hell, while the mother is working two jobs simultaneously–you really have no idea if you think that life issues are harder or more sigifnicant for people with 250,000 a year than they are for people making 20, 30, or 60.
aimai