Arkady
President
In order for the economic elite to win elections, they need a lot of people to vote against their personal economic self interest. They use various strategies for that, including getting people to focus on matters other than economics (e.g., voting Republican out of a desire to promote their religion in public schools, or to punish gay people, or something of that sort). But what's amazing is how the elite can re-frame even the economic part of the decision-making, by getting people to sweat the small stuff. In these economic hard times, it's amazing how often I hear middle-class people venting anger at the poor for any bit of underserved comfort, versus how infrequently I hear people venting anger at the rich for their extreme luxuries, even though those luxuries have a much larger tax impact.
Here are two examples. First, there's the example of a person buying groceries with food stamps while, supposedly, filling up his shopping cart with T-bone steaks. I'm skeptical about these stories to begin with, but surely there are some people on food stamps who occasionally buy things we'd view as minor luxury items (presumably by saving up and scraping by for a while to allow an occasional splurge for a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary). So what? We're talking about chump change, in terms of tax impact. Meanwhile, consider the execs at defense contractors, who get seven-figure bonuses for helping to convince Congress to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars for weapons we don't even need. The C-130 Hercules cargo plane is a great example. Between 1978 and 1998, the Air Force requested five of the planes. Thanks to Lockheed Martin playing Washington like a fiddle, the American taxpayer bought them 256, instead.
If some poor person is essentially stealing a few dollars of tax money by working the system, in order to take for himself a few extremely modest luxuries he's not entitled to, I suppose that's bad.... but I have trouble getting worked up about it. On the other hand, if some rich person is essentially stealing millions or billions of dollars of tax money by working the system, in order to channel vast wealth into our military industrial complex, that's a lot harder for me to stomach. But I seem to be in the minority. At least among my relatives and Facebook "friends," outrage over poor people getting away with something seems to be at a fever pitch among the middle class, while outrage over the rich doing so seems to have been dormant since a very brief flourishing during the Occupy movement. It seems people would rather hand over a big chunk of their paycheck to a shifty millionaire to help him buy another yacht than to hand over a small chunk to a shifty poor person to help him buy a T-bone steak.
Here are two examples. First, there's the example of a person buying groceries with food stamps while, supposedly, filling up his shopping cart with T-bone steaks. I'm skeptical about these stories to begin with, but surely there are some people on food stamps who occasionally buy things we'd view as minor luxury items (presumably by saving up and scraping by for a while to allow an occasional splurge for a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary). So what? We're talking about chump change, in terms of tax impact. Meanwhile, consider the execs at defense contractors, who get seven-figure bonuses for helping to convince Congress to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars for weapons we don't even need. The C-130 Hercules cargo plane is a great example. Between 1978 and 1998, the Air Force requested five of the planes. Thanks to Lockheed Martin playing Washington like a fiddle, the American taxpayer bought them 256, instead.
If some poor person is essentially stealing a few dollars of tax money by working the system, in order to take for himself a few extremely modest luxuries he's not entitled to, I suppose that's bad.... but I have trouble getting worked up about it. On the other hand, if some rich person is essentially stealing millions or billions of dollars of tax money by working the system, in order to channel vast wealth into our military industrial complex, that's a lot harder for me to stomach. But I seem to be in the minority. At least among my relatives and Facebook "friends," outrage over poor people getting away with something seems to be at a fever pitch among the middle class, while outrage over the rich doing so seems to have been dormant since a very brief flourishing during the Occupy movement. It seems people would rather hand over a big chunk of their paycheck to a shifty millionaire to help him buy another yacht than to hand over a small chunk to a shifty poor person to help him buy a T-bone steak.
