do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?

[NJMaverick]

Quote:This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.”

Quote:As background, it helps to know what has been happening to incomes over the past three decades. Detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — which only go up to 2005, but the basic picture surely hasn’t changed — show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinio...r=2&src=tp

[jaxx]

The wealthy look to me like they got theirs and they want yours too. Well written by Mr. Krugman, he's coming around.

[Ikonoklast]

If this country does not stop the concentration of wealth at the very top, it will fail. The massively wealthy are desperately trying to buy the government, and if they aren't stopped, we are well and truly finished as a nation.

I am not even kidding about this, there is no way our Democratic Republic would continue if it is beholden to an Oligarchy, as they would be able to have every law written to benefit them only, and exclude all others from participating in government in any way.

People like the Kochs see this as the path to running the government entirely for their benefit, even as those without any means, votes, or political power starve in the streets.

[Eponine]

Not at all.

[RoyGBiv]

Oh, yeah. All bloody and battered they are. Poor dears.

[Brewman_Jax]

Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and the Walton family, to name a few, look like they're real victims of class warfare--NOT!