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What's Wrong with Class War?
From time to time, I will hear someone on the news cautioning participants in a conversation that they are saying things in support of "class warfare." Inevitably, that shuts the conversation even quicker than calling someone a racist (or trotting out some stomach-churning childishness like references to 'the N word") . Apparently any notion that doesn't glorify socioeconomic stratification in our society is denigrated as "class warfare", and all parties go scurrying for cover.
This has irked me for quite some time, but it never occurred to me to mention it on Slope until today, when I saw the following letter to the editor in that centerpiece of superb journalism, the Palo Alto Daily Post. The emphasis in yellow I added, although I encourage you to read the entire letter:
Now, let me say at the outset I understand what this person is saying, and in a certain world, I would actually agree with him. That "world" would have........
- Had no TARP or any other bailout in 2008;
- Would have allowed any business facing bankruptcy (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.) to have done so;
- Would have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of white collar zillionaires tossed into prison, led by Lloyd Blankfein and Dick Fuld;
- Would have passed draconian regulation following the financial crisis to assure it never happening again;
- Would provide simple-to-understand information to the public laying out what had happened and who the perpetrators are, just so Joe Six-Pack had a sporting chance of understanding what actually took place (I assure you, in the real world, Mr. Six Pack has no clue)
In case you didn't notice, we don't live in a world anything like that. Instead, the rich got richer (much, much richer), none of them went to jail, and it's as if nothing had ever happened (with the sole exception of Madoff, who was some kind of sacrificial lamb in the whole thing). So the notion that we live in some kind of meritocracy in which everyone plays by the rules is just plain wrong. The game is heavily, heavily, heavily tilted toward the "haves".
If, in fact, it was pretty much a dog-eat-dog world (even if the "dog" in question is Lloyd
Blankfein or Goldman Sachs), I'd align pretty squarely with the letter writer's main point, which is not to pick on folks who have made it to to the top. After all, if you're a so-so actor working at your local playhouse doing musicals in the summer, should you shoot arrows at Kevin Spacey just because he's a rich, successful actor? No, you shouldn't. Because he's undoubtedly a hell of a lot better actor than you are, and he deserves his success.
Let's stay in fantasy world for another moment and pretend there were no bailouts and there was no moral hazard. Should we agitate for punitive taxes against Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and other billionaires, simply because they are billionaires and we are not? Again, no. If we're all playing by the same rules, and the system is fundamentally fair, then I say: good for you, billionaires! Well-played!
As it is now, though, things are far afield from the level playing field I'm pretending might exist, thus, I really have no beef with someone like Bernie Sanders trying to raise hell and take on the rich corporations and rich individuals as well as specific issues like offshore tax havens and the ridiculous carried interest tax rate.
To compare someone like Bernie Sanders to bloodthirsty monsters like Stalin and Pol Pot is too ludicrous for words. I've heard of slippery slopes before, but good lord, this guy must be totally off his rocker. And as for the mewing about how we should never engage in talk that might incite class warfare? My response is: the class war is already started, and it's the rich that fired the first shots.

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All one needs to do to eliminate the problems with capitalism is:
1. eliminate corruption by putting the corrupt in jail (tough to do when the government, banks and media are corrupt)
2. get rid of the equity markets completely
3. enforce the rule of law equally
4. create a free market ... if we ever had one it disappeared long, long ago.
The reason it will not happen is because there are seemingly no good and decent people in power. They are ALL corrupt and enjoying the theft and benefits of their fraudulent existence.
It cannot be changed from the bottom. It can only be changed from the top allowing themselves to lose power and wealth through good acts (and I am not talking about trivial charity). Creating another dialectic fight, only helps mainatin the class system.
there are real consequences to the vast inequality of income - the positive ones are enjoyed at the top, and the ever-expanding bottom suffers the negative ones. People misunderstand the nature of "redistribution" that, as far as I understand, Sanders represents - which is taxation that is then invested in society (not warfare).
We are at a tipping point in the US, largely due to a new fed-minted cohort of billionaires hoarding money, crushing money velocity. The only real solution is to pry some of that money away from them and get it back in circulation.
This will happen either through draconian taxation of high income, which is then used to fund WPA-like projects that put people back to work (I would imagine it would be used to rebuild the highways and grid), or through starving mobs with torches, pitchforks and guillotines forcibly taking from the ultra-rich - their panic rooms and bugout yachts will be of little use, as they will be surrounded (and hunted) wherever they go.
The Sanders kind of redistribution will be a lot less painful than the alternative - but I assure you, history shows it will be one or the other.
frankly, even in middle-age when I should be mellowing, I get angrier and angrier when I look upon the world. I believe that a purge would be really be the best solution. Bernie Sanders and others like him are powerless in the face of the Military, Wall Street, and the Intelligence Apparatus. The NSA, DHS, CIA and FBI will probably disappear me into some Eastern European torture hell for this, but I think the best solution is hunting them down and stringing them up...and that goes for ALL our ruling elite, not just the billionaires.
funny how working stiffs can't recognize someone who is on their side. bernie is a paleodemocrat when democrats were the party of labor and the middle class. the .1% have gotten away with murder and you were charged and convicted and will serve your time without a chance for parole yet you dumbfucks rail against the guy on your side trying to get you out of prison. the stupidest meme is leveling the playing field for labor is socialist and investing in the stock market is productive.
The problem boils down to ignorance, propaganda and stupidity. Most Americans seem to believe in Horatio Alger. They think that Europe is classless (except for a few inbred nobles slithering around cold stone palaces) but that social mobility is rare.
In reality, social mobility, by which I mean moving up the income scale from, say, poor to middle class, is much higher in Europe than in the US. In the US, you are born poor and remain poor. You are born middle class, and end up lower middle class. You are born rich, you get richer and inherit your father's Senatorial seat in the bargain!
I am not sure if the same idiots (sorry, but I don't have a better word) who rail against class warfare and socialism are as vocal and vehement about corporate welfare and handouts to the rich. Possibly. But I bet they would load up their guns to go after welfare mothers who accidently received and spent double their normal payout while they don't seem to be willing to go after Wall Street and other corporate vampires who have raped America for the past thirty years.
Class warfare is not about communism or even nobbling the rich. It's about making a level and fair playing field where Horatio Alger can actually succeed, where minorities don't dominate prison populations or war dead, and where being rich is not a Get Out of Jail Free card.
If more Americans would turn off Fox News, read and travel abroad (without their guns and uniforms) they might discover that America is pretty shit in many ways while other countries are pretty good in many ways.
Perhaps not. Perhaps the defining feature of American Exceptionalism is how exceptionally and willfully ignorant we are.
I think the biggest story on Zerohedge was the story about some ghettorat using his EBT card at a strip club, the next one about a guy selling his Mercedes AMG with a license plate that read EBTDAWG. Of course the incensed haters on this forum raged and raved about welfare without realizing that EBT actually stood for EAST BAY TIRE.
This goes with what Michael Hudson said about his conversation with Arthur Burns(Fed Chairman) that most Americans are not jealous of millionaires, but are jealous of their neighbors.(small minds)
Very well said.
newspapers often print letters either poorly written or extremist in their view, to prove that the readers who are against their candidate or policy are uninformed and unintelligent. if you want to discredit the opposition only allow the least articulate critic to voice his or her opinion.
this is an argument that wouldn't get by a middle school students level of critical thinking. message, the anti-Sanders crowd is pretty irrational. the Palo Alto DP is a liberal paper? nice when the critics of the Democratic candidate make such poor arguments.
the argument to repeal the policies which have created income inequality doesn't even need to be a moral argument, it makes sense, if people in the 99% have more money they will spend it and the economy will improve. that's the sort of argument Donald Trump might make, but if he did, the only letter writer in support of Trump at a Democratic newspaper might say "Trump has his own TV show, he's a smart guy. I think he should be President and I like his hair.." Ah those Trump supporters in Palo Alto are not very bright, and the Sanders critics, they're rabid dogs.
Dear, Tim Knight,
1. You don't seem to realize that people have woken to the fact that they are constantly being lied to and taken advantage of by the power elites of the duopoly. We know that the Democrats and the Republicans are in cahoots and divide power in order to loot and pillage and oppress the citizenry -that is us... I loath and distrust Obama/Clinton/Pelosi/Sanders/etc. just as much as I loath and distrust Bush/Trump/Huckabee/Fiorina/etc. because I know they don't give a shit about anything but lining their own pockets with the products of my labors and the labours of other hard working honest productive people.
2. YOU are an asshole. YOU don't seem to comprehend that people such as myself neither want to pay themselves or divest other honest productive citizens of the fruits of their labor, and specifically don't want to subsidize the likes of YOUR fucking Tesla luxury automobile. YOU are a glaring part of the problem, douchebag. I'd try to shame you but you have no conscience being as much a narcisist as a pure expropriationist deliberately fronting as some kind of so-called moderate rational statist.
3. Please quit buying space on ZeroHedge to promote your hypocrisy and hubris and the Slope. This marginal space is reserved for Gold hucksters, race baiters, and political extremists.
"To compare someone like Bernie Sanders to bloodthirsty monsters like Stalin and Pol Pot is too ludicrous for words."
No it isn't. Stalin followed Lenin. Who would follow Sanders?
The scratch test is easy.
Do you hate or love The Walton family?
Reinstating Glass/Steagal is a good start. Downsizing the federal government is another good idea.
Remember folks...the US stopped being a free market system in the early twentieth century. The US govt has been wholly captured by Banking since 1913 and MIC since the end of WW2.
We are seeing Oligarchic Capitalism being run by MAFIASO(Bush/Clinton)/Banking/MIC.
We need REAL capitalism and Free Market back. You can't have that with TPP/NAFTA etc. that support the corporate takeover of sovereign nations.
Competition is a sin.
John D. Rockefeller
Wow. I've never seen Tim Knight get so wound up over so little. Tim, your blog could and should be part of the solution. Today it was part of the problem. The points made by the letter writer are valid in all places at all times - who decides who gets what. If you want politicians to decide, don't be surprised if the very crony capitalism and Fed over-reach you are so apparently against continue ten-fold with any candidate we're looking at today. The only difference is the speed with which we go to hell. The good news is that with Bernie, we won't have to wait that long to witness the societal breakdown. Any author who fails to see that their solution employs the same abbrogation of rights that are part and parcel to the problem is not worth reading.
"If you want politicians to decide, don't be surprised if the very crony capitalism and Fed over-reach you are so apparently against "
You have fallen for Tim Knight's bullshit.
He isn't against crony captialism.
He owns a heavily subsidized Tesla roadster, a rich man's toy that is subsidized by .GOV cronyism both at purchase and by the mile as there is neither a surcharge for the highway fund and he purchases no petrolum and thus skirts the highway taxes levied on ALL automobile petroleum fuel purchases.
Sadly, Tim is just another fraud hustling those that do not do their due diligence...
The BEST commentary ever, Tim Knight!
These "all or nothing" thinkers are what's wrong with the entire nation right now. They make compromise impossible by holding everyone hostage to their allegiances. They refuse to see the reality for their ideological blindness.
Too bad. Reality will take care of it one way or the other. The only choice we have is the length of time and the degree of pain.
Thanks.
P.S. For the trolls: Electing a "socialist" to throw the "greed-heads" out does not mean that we become "socialists" over night anymore than does electing a democrat make us all democrats. One round of "throw the bums out" might be just what we need. Unless you love "greed-heads" of course.
Do your best to keep it above the belt, now...
Have you ever actually thought about the word "greed" for 10 minutes? I don't give a shit if anyone or everyone is greedy. In a soceity that respects free markets and the law, the only way for anyone to acquire the money they desire is to provide value to society. You know, exchange? In which case, who cares if they're greedy? It harms no one. Or maybe they break the law by stealing or fraud. In that case, they are prosecuted and the harmed are made whole to the extent possible. In that case greed is punished, which is the best a free, law-abiding society can hope for. So again, who gives a shit about greed? Prosecute those that break the law and respect the market's decision as whether a "greed-head" gets his money. Ignorant takes on greed are pathetic and part of the problem. Damn! Do some homework! Your grievances are with the breakdown of the free market and the rule of law! Go ahead and vote for the one guy least willing to understand this.
Mortimer., who gets prosecuted for fraud and stealing ? Jon Corzine ? No. JPM ? Bank Of America? Country Wide mortgages? Angelo Mozillo ? Hedge funds that use quants to game the stock market and trade a stock a million times a second to beat down the long holders or the LIBOR and PM gamers? Lobbyists that game the legal system by writing legislation and then paying off a lawmaker to get it passed? The breakdown of the free market ? Maybe it would be best to go back to the 70s and 80s to the way the markets worked then.
Nope, wouldn't help. Unfettered capitalism always ends in financial oligarchy, indeed its very lifeblood is financialisation. Anyone who thinks that 'real' capitalism (not this rigged markets, fiat currency one) would result in a society where those that 'contributed most' would be rewarded the most, needs to take his tongue out of Yellen and co.s bunghole. There is no real real capitalism. It's always been like this.
this nation will get better when the guillotines have quenched their thirst and sung their beautiful song
Wow! Every bullet point in your article is wrong. And why did you use the word "world" and put it in quotes? The letter writer did not use the word world.
Ok, I admit I did not understand Tim's point until I read it a second time. That said, the idea that since our society is no longer (never was?) a free market capitalist society, the solution to that is to veer even further away from free market principles (and embrace Bern) seems illogical to me. I'd imagine the majority of psycopathic .1 percenters would love Bernies socialism since it is the cheapest way for them to "contain the masses".
Lets say crony capitalism resulted in a single person owning all natural resources. We then switch to laissez faire, how does this change anything?
A relatively even distribution of natural resource ownership OR a relatively high value of labour relative to natural resources is a necessity for capitalism to raise all boats in and of itself. In the past we had the second, that past is not coming back, now we need the former.
Bernie Sanders won't do a damn thing to stop any of it. Neither will getting Rand elected.
The danger isn't Bernie Sanders, he's an ineffectual idiot. It's the evil statists that will manipulate him and grow the government to even grosser proportions taking what little freedom you have left with them. If you think things are bad now, just let the evil statists get more control and you'll be looking through the bars of your re-education camp.
The greatest evil in the US are all of the crony capitalists and the special deals they get by buying off our phony politicians. All of the special interests, like ethanol, sugar subsidies that cause Americans to pay 40% more for their sugar that the rest of the world. End all of the cartels in America, level the playing field by imposing a flat tax, where everyone pays something, stop incentivizing people not to work, reduce the Federal government and state governments payroll and budgets by 50% and we can reclaim America.
"the class war is already started, and it's the rich that fired the first shots." Correct and the ony way to actually redistribute this wealth is to ENSURE a free market. Stop crony capitalism in all its forms. Make the wealthy truly compete in a free market, Uncle Warren would not do so wel without regulatory capture..
The really rich don't need to compete, untaxed their ownership of natural resources alone generates enough rent to fund their lifestyle while they still get richer.
The ongoing war within the US is just as much GENERATIONAL as it is CLASS based. Probably more.
WHO spent their Social Security retirement funds and now wants someone else to pay it back at the present wildly inflated rate required for it to buy more than cat food?
WHAT AGE DEMOGRAPHIC also owns most of the wealth in the nation?
WHAT DEMOGRAPHIC is the largest voting block in the United States?
It sounds like someone borrowed the entire contents of their own annuity fund and squandered it all, trashed the economy and the monetary system; and is now crying foul because none of their 'retirement money' is sitting in the lock-box fund -isn't invested in a healthy domestic economy and isn't earning any interest from sound monetary stewardship...
WHO to blame? WHO to blame?
WHO should be expropriated now? WHO should be expropriated now?
This will be interesting.
Sounds like you're supporting . . . gasp, my guts are twisting like a case of ebola . . . redistribution.
Statism. Central Planning. Dot guv picking the winners and losers. Regulation!
Socialism. NWO. Agenda 21. The politics of envy. Populism!
My head hurts. I think my eyeballs are about to explode!
All the Galts are gonna go nuts on this one, methinks.
0% interest rates are already redistribution- upwards redistribution.
It's not about picking winners and losers. It's realizing that losers are a natural part of capitalism so what do you do with them? And when the winners are able to leverage their advantage through crony capitalism we get LOTS of losers and now what's your solution?
Honestly, at this point in the evolution of the machine, I don't see any solution. Earlier in the process, limiting everybody to a wealth maximum of, say, $100 million might have kept the disparities in power that money will inevitiably produce at least within reason and the reach of law.
But of course that ain't gonna happen in a system absolutely controlled by oligarchs and their puppets. That ship sailed long ago.
The rich and their sychophants are gonna run humanity as deep into the gutter as possible until the majority raise hell, far as I can tell.
It sure as hell won't be socialism that screws us.
Ask TIm Knight how much his Tesla roadster purchase subsidies amounted to.
Ask Tim Knight how many miles he has driven on the highways for which he pays zero tax by not paying the petroleum tax.
He is a subsidy queen and much closer to being a 1%er than the median.
People are being bamboozled by these greedy elitist crony neo-capitalist assholes that claim to care about the plight of the common man while sucking up enormous subsidies to enjoy a lifestyle that they can actually afford without other people's money.
Tim Knight and those like him institute class war by taking money from less wealthy people to buy expensive toys they can already afford and then screams that the class war is actually other people's fault.
The hypocrisy of these bastards is beyond comprehension.
Limited time offer: cease theiving from other people via .GOV cronyism and we might decide not to march you to the gallows with the other more eggregious and unrepentant thieves, Tim.
Bernie Sanders is the first cobblestone in paving the road to hell. Instead of trying to return the country to a Constitutional state he wants to destroy the Constitution. His success would pave the way for a real despot to take over. The evil is in the size and power of the state.
It's frightening that six ZH readers, as I write this have downvoted this. Stupid statists.
We're not able to go back to your libertarian utopia (which never really existed in the first place) while we still have tens of trillions in debt sorry. Bernie Sanders has the best medicine for the short term even if it tastes nasty. The alternative is more naked theft by the wealthy elite and their crony central bankers.
Because naked theft by the government is so much better. The wealthy elit can't execute, incarcerate or tax your lazy, worthless ass.
All powrful states run gulags, concentration camps, no delusions of utopia there.
If everybody played from the same rule book, there would be no problem. Unfortunately we have two sets of rules and it creates a friction. Sanders is merely a useful idiot who doesn't know who he's really helping......
Bernie Sanders aside:
The epicenter of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto has been named the second-richest small city in America by Movoto. Bethesda, Maryland claimed the number one ranking in the list, which looked at cities with populations between 30,000 and 80,000 people, according to 2010 Census data.May 30, 2014
Thanks for the objective letter, Bob!
And if we made a political power-compensated racial wealth distribution map, how much of the US would belong to Bernie's tribe? How about 99%.
Whining about weath distribution while ignoring the ZOG is just what I would expect from tim knight.
Besides, Bernie is a bolshie and has no business being allowed to partake in any democratic process. Instead he should now be pleading to the American people for mercy.