Eric Cantor on (surprise) Fox News: "We know in this country right now that there is a complaint about folks at the top end of the income scale, if they make too much and too many don't make enough. Well, we need to both go encourage those at the top of the income scale to actually put their money to work to create more jobs so that we can see a closing of the gap. You know, we are about income mobility and that's what we should be focused on to take care of the income disparity in this country." [emphasis added by author]
Nice try, Mr. Cantor. Is there nothing that you won’t distort and dishonestly reframe into faux class warfare terminology? Is there no limit to your ability to end every discussion with a proposal for lowering taxes on the wealthy and letting it all trickle-down to the ever more needy masses? You are shameless and reprehensible.
I will concede there is palpable – and justifiable – anger toward a subset of the super-rich: the Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs who make obscene salaries/bonuses for, respectively, (i) rigging the financial system so that it’s "heads I win, tails you lose” and (ii) hauling in princely sums of money regardless of their company’s performance and/or based on systematically decimating the American middle class in the name of profit and tax breaks.
Your deceitful and dishonest characterization notwithstanding, Mr. Cantor, for the most part I don’t think people are angry with the idea of wealth per se. This is America, the land of opportunity. Becoming rich is part and parcel of this country’s opportunity; most of us celebrate that fact and aspire to take advantage of such opportunity. Answer me this, Mr. Cantor: who is denouncing those who have honorably amassed huge sums of money because they are weathy? Who is begrudging Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs, and others simply because they earn or possess too much money? Few, if any (other than those in your transparent straw-man argument).
Let me help you, Mr. Cantor. When it comes to the super-wealthy, people are angry over two big things:
1. People are angry that those among us with millions and billions of dollars are not paying their fair share in taxes (when they pay any taxes at all, that is). The current anger isn’t at the existence of honestly earned wealth itself, as you cynically assert. The anger is that the masses pay twice the percent of their income in taxes as the mega-rich. At the very least, the rich should pay the same percentage in taxes. Arguably, they should pay more. Yet you and your bought-and-paid-for cronies enact and aggressively protect the opposite.
2. People are angry that rich individuals and corporations are able to populate our government with their proxies who then rig system to benefit their patrons. Mr. Cantor, being rich is fine as long as the playing field is level and the rich pay their share of taxes like the rest of us. But that’s not our reality. Our government has been tweaked and altered and systematically re-structured to benefit only those who pay the most to re-elect those already in power (as long as they do what they’re told). It’s a vicious cycle: the 99% pay a higher percentage of their money in taxes; government “representatives” then dutifully direct those dollars to areas that benefit only their rich sponsors; the rich then keep more and more of their money due to the tax structure that they instructed their wholly-controlled government to enact. Over time, the money and the power accumulate in only one segment of society – the segment that then uses its money and power to make all the rules. Corporations write their own regulations and legislation. Media conglomerates grow so large that they control the flow and packaging of information. The tax structure is designed to enable the rich to amass ever more money. The government begins to receive less revenue because the people are earning less and the rich are paying less, so it needs to borrow ever more in order function. Needless wars are started and then continued so that trillions of dollars get funneled into the pockets of the war machine. The combination of this regressive tax structure, the prioritization of the few at the expense of the many, and the excessive borrowing you -- the puppets of the rich -- engaged in is then, unbelievably, used as an argument for why we need to further reduce taxes on the wealthy and slash only those aspects of the government that still exist to benefit the people as a whole. All of the priorities of the rich are off the table (increased taxes on the wealthy, reduction in corporate tax breaks, cessation of wars, reduction in defense spending, etc). It is as sickening as it is unbelievable.
The trillions of dollars that the rich individuals and corporations caused the government borrow and spend on priorities selected by them, for their benefit, could have been spent on roads and schools and healthcare and education and medical research and green energy technologies and myriad other things that would benefit the country as a whole, would have supported the economy as a whole, and would have increased the living standards across the board (and thus the tax revenues). But that wasn’t done.
Why wasn’t that done, Mr. Cantor? Because that isn’t your function, is it? Your function is to rig the system to benefit your masters. Your function is to lie and obfuscate and prevent progress that might really benefit the misguided and confused people who voted for you, all so that you and your boys can “win” – both politically and financially.
THAT, Mr. Cantor, is why people are angry.