FireDogLake is just one of many blogs excited today by a James Webb Wall Street Journal piece on economic justice.
Webb, who was assumed (by those who don’t know him) to be fairly conservative (since he served in the Reagan Administration) has written something Republicans will automatically deride as "class warfare" but which echoes with many, many people:
The most important– and unfortunately the least debated–
issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a
class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th
century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more
removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are
literally living in a different country. Few among them send their
children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight
our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an
unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top
1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in
1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate
America, through a vast system of loopholes.Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages
for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this
newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizable corporation makes
more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers
amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a
decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO
made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400
times as much.
In my work on political cycles, I have often asked which previous cycle this one is most like. We have an initial answer.
We say to you that you have made the
definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man
who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer;
the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the
corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the
cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New
York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day–who
begins in the spring and toils all summer–and who by the application
of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates
wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board
of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a
thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the
cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals
to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as
the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of
the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.
What is interesting to me is that the Democratic Party today seems to have two strains in it, the descendents of the old Republican Progressives, absorbed as part of the New Deal Era, and these new Populists. Had these forces been on the same side during the Progressive-Populist era just imagine the majorities they might have commanded.
Too bad mere majorities won’t be enough to win against the coming environmental disasters…
The revealing thing about Webb’s prose describing a Vietnamese soldiers, er, interaction, with his son is that Webb claimed to have actually witnessed such a thing and that it was common behavior. Yet, lots of Americans who worked closely with those soldiers on the ground were pretty dumbfounded by his claims. He is most certainly a gifted writer, but his assertions are garbage.
Take the slap at private schools as elitist… In 2004, 28% of public school teachers in DC sent their own kids to private schools. Read about it here. Sending a kid to private school (K-12) is comparable (within a factor of 2) in cost to financing a BMW 5-series or a tricked out Expedition. Yet we don’t hear Webb lamenting that millions of families with incomes under 6 figures make the decision to forego the BMW and send a kid to private school. Or that millions of families get the cool ride and use the implicit $5K-$10K subsidy to educate their kids.
He might as well have said that the super-rich have broadband Internet at home, while our homeless don’t even have dial-up to their shopping carts. Oh how our frail hearts would bleed.
He’s a talented writer, but there’s no “there” in the facts he brings into it. I can guarantee that he will continue to embarrass himself, and worse, the people that buy his stories, throughout his 6 year term in the Senate. The dude is a giant dork.
The revealing thing about Webb’s prose describing a Vietnamese soldiers, er, interaction, with his son is that Webb claimed to have actually witnessed such a thing and that it was common behavior. Yet, lots of Americans who worked closely with those soldiers on the ground were pretty dumbfounded by his claims. He is most certainly a gifted writer, but his assertions are garbage.
Take the slap at private schools as elitist… In 2004, 28% of public school teachers in DC sent their own kids to private schools. Read about it here. Sending a kid to private school (K-12) is comparable (within a factor of 2) in cost to financing a BMW 5-series or a tricked out Expedition. Yet we don’t hear Webb lamenting that millions of families with incomes under 6 figures make the decision to forego the BMW and send a kid to private school. Or that millions of families get the cool ride and use the implicit $5K-$10K subsidy to educate their kids.
He might as well have said that the super-rich have broadband Internet at home, while our homeless don’t even have dial-up to their shopping carts. Oh how our frail hearts would bleed.
He’s a talented writer, but there’s no “there” in the facts he brings into it. I can guarantee that he will continue to embarrass himself, and worse, the people that buy his stories, throughout his 6 year term in the Senate. The dude is a giant dork.