The Republicans have kicked off the latest attempt to snatch defeat from the shoe-filled mouths of its candidates for Prez and Vice-Prez by leveling a charge that has always worked in the past - that the Democrats under Demon Obama are embarking on a proram to "redistribute wealth."
Unfortunately, Forbes magazine had just come out with its new, revised list of the top 400 richest people in the U.S. and revealed that, in the last year, they'd gotten about 17% richer.
The last time I looked, my net worth hadn't grown anywhere near that much, so I explored the article at greater length to see what I had done wrong.
Turns out that it wasn't me as much as them. Seems as if their tax rate isn't as high as most. Mr. Romney's latest figure was about 14%.
"The combined net worth of the 2012 class of the 400 richest Americans is $1.7 trillion, up from $1.5 trillion a year ago. The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is a staggering $4.2 billion, up from $3.8 billion, and the highest ever, as two-thirds of the individuals added to their fortunes in the past year. Another factor: the gap between the very rich and the merely rich is widening. Only two in the top 20 are poorer, and as a group they are worth $73 billion more than a year ago." says Forbes. That means that the top 400 folks own about seven percent of the total wealth of the United States.
Now I don't quite go along with the old communist tag of "the ruling class," but I wish somebody would come up with a better term. After all, these are the people who finance our presidential campaigns, influence our legislature, control our employment, manipulate our markets and, yes, own our media. If this isn't "ruling," it sure is pretty important.
After all this, the Republicans are still accusing Mr. Obama of waging "class warfare." My own personal reaction to this is, if asking our friends in the 400 to pay more taxes and close the loopholes that enable them to gain 73 billion dollars in a year is a class war, then maybe we should bring it on.
I think we've been bamboozled by so-called conservative BS long enough. Raising taxes on the rich does NOT cut employment. Making it more expensive to ship business overseas does NOT cost American workers jobs. Asking us to choose between giving the wealthiest more tax breaks and feeding the hungry is NOT only unfair, but crooked. By the way, this isn't just a message for Republicans. This is an American problem and it demands an American solution. We tried it in 1776 and it worked pretty well.