It must be nice to be Leon Cooperman.  He’s rich, well-educated, well-respected,  married and the father of two children.  He lives in a leafy suburb in New Jersey and serves on numerous high-profile boards.  The hedge fund that he started, Omega Advisors, has netted him a fortune estimated at $1.8 billion (yes, that’s “billion” with a “b.”)

Even though he is a Republican and a major donor to many GOP candidates, he has some progressive instincts.  He supports higher taxes for the wealthy. He has signed “The Giving Pledge,” vowing to give away at least half of his wealth. He says he voted for Al Gore in 2000.  He says he has some sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Despite all of his advantages and all of his generosity, I am concerned about Mr. Cooperman.  I fear that he is blind.

In an article in the Dec. 6 Business Section of the New York Times, reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin writes about a letter that Mr. Cooperman wrote to President Obama.  The letter criticizes the President for what Mr. Cooperman calls the “divisive, polarizing tone of (his) rhetoric, (which is) cleaving a widening gulf…. between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them.”

And then there is this paragraph:

 I came from nothing,” he (Cooperman) said, explaining how he grew up in the Bronx and went to P.S. 75.  “I have lived the American Dream.  I don’t want to be constantly attacked.

Give me a break.

Mr. Cooperman did not “come from nothing.”  Let’s look at the privileges he apparently cannot see or chooses to ignore:

First, he was born a white male.  These two race and gender cards have given him a head start in the game of life, whether he knows it or not.

Second, Mr. Cooperman is Jewish.  Jewish families, even those of modest means, traditionally emphasize education and hard work so the children can rise above the status of the parents.

Third, Mr. Cooperman has the advantages of a quality education.  He graduated from Hunter College and has an MBA from Columbia University Business School.  If he were burdened by student loans, he has managed to pay them off years ago.

Fourth, Mr. Cooperman was born in 1943 and grew up in the “boom years,” when our country and our economy were both energized and opportunities seemed endless for those who worked hard.

Fifth, Mr. Cooperman parlayed his intelligence and education into a first job at Goldman-Sachs, where he stayed for 25 years.  The benefits of the professional network he established there have accrued throughout his lifetime.

The advantages of being a white, straight, healthy, intelligent male in America during the past 50 years cannot be over-estimated.  They have been powerful, direct forces in Mr. Cooperman’s life, whether he sees them or not.  He may enjoy claiming a rags-to-riches story, but the intangible riches were there to nourish him from day one.  And they were gifts; he did nothing to earn them.

I once heard Cory Booker, the major of Newark, N.J., say:  “I have drunk deeply from wells that I did not dig.” It’s something Mr. Cooperman should think about.

I’ll stop worrying about Mr. Cooperman’s vision when he opens his eyes to realize the privileges he has that his money did not buy.  It’s certainly his right to complain about what he perceives as the “tone” of President Obama’s rhetoric.  Let’s just hope that most people can see through his “poor me” posture.  After all, how many “poor me” individuals do you know who can write a letter of complaint to the President and end up with a photo and 34 inches of copy on the front page of the Business section of the New York Times?

The post Rich man, blind man appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Millionaires back higher taxes! It sounds like another April Fool’s joke or a story concocted by The Onion, but it’s not. Earlier this year, a group of America’s most wealthy individuals , improbably, called for the elimination of Bush-era tax cuts that benefit the rich. In light of the financial deal just cut between the Obama administration and Congressional Republicans, this remarkable, selfless statement is more intriguing than ever.

Responsible Wealth (RW) is a network of over 700 business leaders and wealthy individuals in the top 5% of wealth and/or income in the US who use their surprising voice to advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability. The group is part of a larger organization called United For a Fair Economy (UFA), which describes its members as people who are concerned about growing economic inequality and are joining together to publicly address the problem. UFA also has been influential in the battle to maintain the estate tax. The group’s mission statement says:

“As beneficiaries of policies that are tilted in our favor, we feel a responsibility to speak out and change the system to benefit the common good. We believe it is also in our own best interest to do so… As our nation struggles amidst the Great Recession, we can no longer afford tax cuts built on the failed trickle-down philosophies of the past.”

This year is a particularly apt one for the organization, as the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010. Their demise, says Responsible Wealth, is not a foregone conclusion, as many in Congress and in the ranks of the wealthy are working hard to make the tax cuts permanent. Calling the tax cuts a train wreck that has reduced available funding for education, health care, infrastructure and other critical government services, Responsible Wealth is lobbying Congress and President Obama to let the tax cuts expire and restore fiscal sanity to the country.

“These tax cuts were irresponsible when they were passed in 2001 and 2003.  In the midst of a deep recession, they are downright inexcusable,” said Mike Lapham, director of the Responsible Wealth project and one of the millionaire members. “To be clear,” he added, “low- and middle-income households only received a small portion of the Bush tax cuts.  The overwhelming share of the income, capital gains and dividend cuts went to wealthy taxpayers.”

A report by Citizens for Tax Justice shows that nearly half of the Bush tax cuts went to the top 5% of income-earners, while the bottom 60% of income-earners received less than 15% of the Bush tax cuts. Responsible Wealth seeks to reverse the Bush era-cuts, the total cost of which, it says, will reach $2.5 trillion by the end of 2010.

Among its seemingly counter-intuitive activities, Responsible Wealth has created a Tax Fairness Pledge, in which members estimate their tax savings from the Bush tax cuts, and redirect those savings to support tax fairness efforts at the national and state level. The RW website even offers a confidential, 3-minute Tax Cut Calculator to make this process easy.

Far from an assemblage of kooks and outliers, Responsible Wealth’s membership roster boasts a who’s who of entrepreneurs and financial leaders who have signed the Tax Fairness Pledge, including:

• Jeffrey Hollender, the co-founder of Seventh Generation natural products
• Eric Schoenberg, whose wealth comes from the computer and telecom industries.
• Marnie Thompson, who accepted an inheritance from her father, an Ohio businessman, on the condition that she could give it away to charity.

Why would super-rich people voluntarily give back their tax savings and advocate for repeal of a law that serves their own self-interest? Lapham puts it this way:

“Members of Responsible Wealth recognize that their own prosperity and success would not be possible without the foundation of a strong public education system, an effective transportation network, a strong legal system and more,” he say. “Those are the kinds of foundational building blocks that we get through our tax system. Responsible Wealth members are more than happy to pay their share to support those public investments that they have benefited so greatly from.”

What could be more refreshing and hopeful, in a time when Tea Party rallies get massive publicity for their anti-tax, anti-government sloganeering,  than a group of wealthy people who care for the common good and are actually doing something to promote it?

[Originally posted on Occasional Planet, April 15, 2010]

The post Tax us more, say some of America’s super-rich appeared first on Occasional Planet.