“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.”
-Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer (b. 8 Jan 1935)

Our friend John Whittier posted this quote today, and I’m pretty sure he was thinking of Donald Trump when he posted it.

That quote brought to mind something Trump said many years ago when he wanted to buy the only parcel of open/green space left in Manhattan. Someone asked him why, when he was already so wealthy and already owned so many properties, would he want to buy the only open space left along the river. He replied that he didn’t need the money and didn’t really have any plans for what to do with the property. He said it was all about the competition and winning when others wanted something. He said something to the effect that it was the thrill of victory that motivated him.

I suppose, in a way, people whose goal is to make as much money as possible or to own as much property as possible share the same kind of human desire to win as do athletes, politicians or chess masters. Men have gone to extremes to be the “first” at things like climbing the tallest mountain in the world.

It’s part of our nature to strive, to compete, to enjoy victory. Many times it’s about the money (e.g., the gold rush.) Sometimes it’s about breaking a glass ceiling. To my dismay, sometimes it’s women wanting to show they can maim and kill other human beings just as effectively as men can.

Many times when my husband is watching a college or professional football game, I can’t help wondering why supposedly sane men would stand out in the cold, bare chests painted the colors of their team, theater props on their heads, screaming like howler monkeys.

Or why hundreds of thousands of sports fans would spend inordinate amounts of money on clothing, blankets, and doo dads to publicly display their support for a certain team. This is especially puzzling when students who really can’t afford all that stuff feel they have to do it to “belong.”

Of course we Americans have always enjoyed competition. And I’m proud of the one tennis trophy I earned years ago. But it seems to me that the exaggerated attention given these days to sports and, especially, the way the public is being manipulated by team owners, can’t be just about the thrill of winning a game.

Let me go off the deep end here and toss out some ideas that may or may not help explain what’s going on in America today.

First, I think everyone has by now heard that the vast majority of Americans are not “winning” economically any more. In fact, incomes are not only stagnant, a lot of people took a direct hit during the “Great Recession.” (Who came up with that label?)

In a recent column in the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria mulled over why middle-aged Caucasian Americans are killing themselves at higher rates than previously. Why are so many people turning to alcohol, drugs and eventual suicide who probably wouldn’t have reached such a level of despair in the past?

True, globalization and technological change have made it more difficult for workers to advance financially. But there is more to it, according to Princeton anthropologist Carolyn Rouse whom Zakaria contacted for comments on this phenomenon.

It may be about expectations as much as actual events in the lives of our white working-class neighbors. Although they have never seen themselves as “elites,” they have always had an edge in terms of reaching their goals. They have always been a “superior” class because there was always someone they could point to as poorer than they were. I think it was Kris Kristofferson decades ago who sang, “Everybody needs somebody to look down on. Help yourself to me.”

People who have never expected much aren’t as affected by the changes in our economic situation. They may be hurting financially along with their white co-workers, but they may not feel they’ve lost a “leg up” in the competition because they never had one.

A personal note here. I grew up in a working class family. Neither parent finished high school. My father was a factory worker; my mother worked in retail. My father put cardboard in the bottom of his shoes that had worn through the soles. My mother sewed our clothes and exchanged hand-me-downs with our cousins. But we never thought of ourselves as poor because our church was always collecting something “for the poor” and because there were really poor migrant workers who came to town to buy supplies during the summer and fall harvest seasons. This was post World War II when the U.S. had no real global competition, and there were no limits on what we could accomplish with more schooling and a determination to succeed. My sisters and I all attained a professional level of education because it was expected of us.

I know I was a beneficiary of “white privilege” because my grandfather emigrated from England and walked right into a good factory job where blacks need not apply.

The Princeton anthropologist quoted in Zakaria’s column suggests that part of the reason African-Americans, Hispanics and others who were never part of the “privileged” group are not killing themselves at the same rate as whites is because they never felt the kind of superior status that whites did in the past.

Now we circle back to sports mania and Donald Trump. I think it’s obvious that middle-aged whites are the ones making the worst fools of themselves at sporting events. And there may be something going on with them about this whole Rams stadium fiasco. (How old are Governor Nixon and Mayor Slay???)

But the seriously disturbing phenomenon is the support for Donald Trump among middle-aged whites. I try to avoid watching anything about Trump on TV, but it’s getting more and more difficult because our media outlets seem to be obsessed with him. I wrote a few months ago that the American media will get Trump elected president just by pushing him in our faces constantly. Admit it… Americans love to jump on a bandwagon. Why else would they stand in line in the rain for hours to be the first to see a certain movie? Why are normally solidly sane people running out to buy powerball tickets?

Trump is not only in our face constantly, he is saying, according to one of his supporters in New Hampshire “what the rest of us are thinking but afraid to say out loud.”

Another supporter, who also happened to be a middle-aged white resident of New Hampshire, said something to the effect that “we” have lost so many of our freedoms and Trump is going to give them back to us. While any rational person knows that ‘s nonsense, maybe we should look more closely at what that woman meant.

My husband, like most other level-headed voters, said he doesn’t understand why Trump groupies don’t realize he can’t do all the things he is promising. My only explanation is that they really don’t want to know that. They feel they’ve been cheated and don’t know what to do about it. Along comes someone with a strong personality and a dash of charisma who promises to return us to the glory days of empire. Let’s not examine this savior too carefully. Cognitive dissonance? What’s that?

Another personal story: When I was finishing up my doctorate at Illinois State University in 1990, I told a neighbor I was moving to New Hampshire to take a job. She said I’d love New Hampshire because there weren’t any Mexicans there. I thought that was an odd thing to say, but now I think I know what she meant.

So what we may have in this presidential primary season is a combination of Trump’s need for self-aggrandizement and victory over competitors along with the need for middle-aged white working class folks for some kind of champion. Their fears are real, but they are looking for a miracle cure just as Dorothy, the lion, the tin man and the scarecrow were in the land of OZ. The man behind the curtain is a charlatan, but how do we get folks who think he has a miracle cure to realize this?

Obviously facts don’t matter. They didn’t matter when Hitler told despairing Germans that Jews were the source of all their troubles. Or maybe it was their Slavic neighbors. Or gypsies. Or homosexuals. When people want to believe someone is their savior, don’t get in the way because you’ll be run over by their contempt for your rational arguments.

When I was doing voter registration at a sliding-scale health clinic in rural Missouri, a woman with missing teeth, terrible skin problems and greasy hair came up and told me proudly that she was voting for Trump because “he’s made himself rich and can fix our country.” After she complained about her food stamps being cut, I told her that it is Republicans who are cutting food stamps. She glared at me indignantly and told me that “Trump won’t let them do that.” I rest my case.

Those of us who want to save our democratic republic from total ruin will have to figure out how to keep the man who would be king from seizing power. But how?

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Spend a little time on the Ft. Lauderdale water taxi and you’ll soon get a feel for the world of the 1% of the 1%. As you drift along you will see row upon row of mega-yachts – sleek vessels, 80 feet, 120 feet, 200 feet or longer in length. According to the City of Ft. Lauderdale, about 1,500 mega yachts visit annually. There are some 100 marinas housing 42,000 resident yachts.

Among all of the craft that dominate the view, one stands out. It’s 282 feet long. It has a black hull and a huge equipment mast. According to a story in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel,

It boasts luxury amenities for 12 guests, with a crew of 26. There is a large master stateroom with a study and private deck, a helipad, indoor cinema and an infinity pool with a 15-foot glass wall that converts to a movie screen so the director and his guests can take in a film while swimming.

The Seven Seas is the personal toy of Steven Spielberg. The cost? Just $200 million. The flag on its stern? Cayman Islands. Why is that?

The reason so many American yachts fly non-American flags has a whole lot to do with tax and employment laws and United States Coast Guard regulations.

According to Power and Motoryacht Magazine, U.S.-registered yachts must be staffed by American citizens who have obtained USCG certification. What’s more, the yacht owners must actually comply with U.S. employment tax laws. Of course, it’s much cheaper for them to register in a friendly country and hire foreign nationals.

Power and Motoryacht Magazine further points out that U.S.-registered yachts also are required to meet USCG regulations for firefighting, safety equipment and staffing. These regulations insure that a yacht is safe for both passengers and crew. All of that boosts the cost of ownership and operation.

Spielberg is not alone. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s yacht is registered in the Caymans. So is Larry Ellison’s (CEO of Oracle and ninth richest man in the world). Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s yacht Octopus also flies the red Cayman flag. In fact, most U.S.-owned mega-yachts are registered in the Cayman Islands and other tax-friendly countries.

Safety, decent pay, fair taxes? That must be too high of a price for the mega-rich to pay.

Maybe I’m just envious, but I can’t wrap my head around what one might do with a 282-foot, $200-million yacht. Do a little fishing? Enjoy the ocean breezes? Escape from the drudgery of the workaday world? Maybe.

But then again there’s sea level rise waiting at the doorsteps of the ostentatious $10-million mansions that line the Ft. Lauderdale waterways. Perhaps escape is what those yachts are really for after all.

[Editor’s update, February 2016: One billionaire’s mega-yacht recently made news when its anchor destroyed a section of an endangered coral reef in the Cayman Islands. Read about it here.]

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Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered

I’ve seen lots of funny men,

Some will rob you with a six-gun,

And some with a fountain pen

-Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd” (1939)

Leave it to Woody Guthrie, our great American poet, to stick it to the man in four short lines. Woody was about as blunt a fellow as you can imagine.  He was certainly not one to mince words when it came to calling out economic injustice and the exploitation of working people.

Investigative reporter and author David Cay Johnston is another blunt man. Johnston also pulls no punches when he warns middle-class voters about the devastating effects of Romney/Ryan economics:

Under Romney’s plan your economic future would be determined the same way it was in 18^th century France—primarily who you picked as your parents, not by hard work, perseverance and that illusive element of luck

If you’re looking for someone who can explain the Romney/Ryan tax proposals in a clear, understandable way then Johnston, president of Investigative Reporters, is your guy. In an article published on September 7, 2012, entitled “Romney and Ryan’s Dangerous Tax Roadmap,” Johnston explains how the tax structure Romney and Ryan are selling as simplified and fair is in truth a scam proposal for “tax-free living for the richest Americans.”

In case voters don’t get what a Romney/Ryan economy will look like, Johnston explains that “lower taxes for the already rich and highly paid” will inevitably mean “heavier burdens on the middle class along with cuts in government service.”

Shall we put the Republican tax plan into context so we can understand what’s going on here?  According to CNN Money, if the Republicans have their way on just one element of the tax code—eliminating the estate tax—the Republican presidential nominee’s estate could save at least $90 million. If Romney/Ryan are given the chance to legislate their tax vision, Johnston explains that “more than $21 million of Romney’s 2012 income of $21.6 million would be untaxed.”  (I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions on the “appearance” of a conflict of interest.)

And on the gift tax and our possible new president’s family? It’s uncertain how the Romneys have gamed the system so successfully:

His [Romney’s] plan would retain the gift tax, but it is already so porous that, as Reuters reported in January, the five Romney sons enjoy tax-free  income from a $100 million trust fund on which no gift taxes were paid. Only about $2 million could have originally gone into the trust without triggering gift taxes.

Johnston, along with independent economists and tax experts, is hoping (probably in vain) that voters understand that the Romney/Ryan tax proposals are no more than a reprise of the catastrophic Republican economic policies of the Bush era. As Johnston recalls,

those policies ushered in flat to falling incomes for the vast majority, weak job growth, but skyrocketing incomes for the top one percent of the top one percent, including Romney.

And how about Romney and Ryan’s math?  Well, Johnston thinks they need to go back to elementary school to relearn some basic math skills:

Slashing tax rates, keeping the share of income taxes paid by the top unchanged and increasing military spending without any additional red ink may win votes from innumerates, but it is a mathematical impossibility.

Johnston has earned his reputation as a meticulous researcher who trusts the experts, assembles the facts, and ignores the spinners and big talkers—like the statistics-spewing Paul Ryan. (I’m with Johnston on giving the experts their due.  I once hired a New Jersey burglar-turned-locksmith who confided to me:  “Who better to advise you on how to secure your windows than a guy like me who knows firsthand the in’s and out’s?”)

One of Johnston’s sources who also knows the in’s and out’s is Edward Kleinbard, a highly successful, and now repentant, tax lawyer who “spent decades . . . finding creative ways for clients to defer or escape their obligations.” According to Kleinbard,

The Roadmap [the Ryan Budget] is a mechanism for redistributing tax burdens down the income scale.  Most ordinary Americans would see their tax burdens increase by around 50 percent, while the most successful individuals would see reductions in their labor income tax rates and elimination of all capital tax burdens – including the elimination of the gift and estate tax.

Kleinbard, as Johnston points out, has studied the Republican tax plan and concuded that it would

. . . turn individual and corporate income taxes into the equivalent of two large payroll taxes with the burden falling almost entirely on workers, not  owners and executives.

Evidently, Romney and Ryan wouldn’t have hired my burglar-turned-locksmith expert just like they won’t be hiring tax experts from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center whose conclusions they reject.  Here’s Johnston again:

The Romney campaign told me it pays no heed to analyses by the Tax Policy Center, even though Romney cited its work when it favored him in   the primaries.  The nonpartisan center is led by Donald Marron, a former economic official in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush.

By the end of his article Johnston is unequivocal in his unmasking of Romney and Ryan as two pen-wielding, wannabe robbers:

Romney and Ryan would shove the burden onto those with less, a radical plan by an oligarch and his partner in promoting tax-free living for the richest Americans.

.

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Things just don’t seem to be getting much better for poor Leon Cooperman, about whom I have previously written on Occasional Planet.

[Scarmucci] said that the guests had witnessed the “activation” of a “sleeper cell” of hedge-fund managers against Obama. “That’s what you see happening in the hedge-fund community, because they now have the power, because of Citizens United, to aggregate capital into political-action committees and to influence the debate,” he said. “The President has a philosophy of disdain toward wealth creation. That’s just obvious, O.K.? We talked about it all night.” He later said, “If there’s a pope of this movement, it’s Lee Cooperman.”

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Conventional wisdom is that Democrats are more pleasant individuals than Republicans. In numerous ways, it’s clear and obvious that this adage is true. When it comes to extending Head Start, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, the Democrats pound the Republicans in the empathy game (somewhat of a mixed metaphor).

Turn on the television – oops that’s a disadvantage for Democrats, so many \ boycott the tube in favor of their laptops – but television and computers both show their share of political commercials. Are Democrats less prone to engage in negative advertising than Republicans? A cursory examination as well as statistical analysis show that Democrats deal in the same slime as Republicans.

The two criteria that I am using in measuring consistency in meanness are (1) abusing capitalism by indulging in actions that are clearly unfair and detrimental to the less fortunate in our society and (2) creating and distributing negative political campaign materials. The greater the congruence between these two variables, the more likely the individual reflects the stereotype of a Republican.

For example, Donald Trump has made a career of making money – the kind of money that largely comes from glorifying the superficial. His television shows are rigged in his favor and his edifices pander to the vanities of the wealthy. At the same time, his politics are as confusing as they are despicable. He is one of the few Republicans who is still playing the “birther” game, asserting that President Obama was born in Kenya rather than the United States. What’s clear is that there is considerable consistency between his view of capitalism as a source of taking advantage of the weak and the way in which his politics show disdain towards the less fortunate.

Mitt Romney’s and Donald Trump’s views and practices towards capitalism and politics are surprisingly similar. This was evident in late May when Romney asked Trump to be the main speaker at lavish fund-raiser. Trump, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and others now do much of the shilling for Romney, so  Romney can appear to be the civilized statesman –which is hardly what he was during the farce of the Republican debates.

Democrats are not as pure as we would like to think. How can President Barack Obama raise $1 billion dollars (probably less than Romney will) if he doesn’t hobnob with the rich and famous? He seems to have a dual personality, with the ability to be comfortable with middle and low income individuals as well as the wealthy. Romney  fits well with only one of those groups.

Most of Obama’s politics are directed towards those in need, but actions such as remaining in Afghanistan well beyond any necessity or cavalierly tossing the public option in the health care bill show a certain simpatico to the wealthy. Most progressives believe that his real home is with them but he has to play the elitist game in order to have the resources to win elections. Let’s hope so.

John F. Kennedy was comfortable in both worlds. His personal wealthy limited his pandering to other wealthy people. As time went on, he became more concerned about the plight of the poor in West Virginia and the discrimination against African-Americans in the South and elsewhere.

Missouri’s Senator Claire McCaskill seems to function well in both worlds as well. The real key is whether someone truly cares about the less fortunate. I believe that McCaskill does. I have trouble believing that about her Republican opponents.

The nature of politics is a combination of attraction to, or at least acceptance of, excessive money and power. Both of these can coexist with a sense of compassion and concern about one’s fellow citizens. There are some Democrats who seem to be missing that empathy gene, and for all intents and purposes might as well be Republicans. However, it is Republicans who seem to take a crass approach towards the needs of those citizens who are least capable of taking care of themselves. While a grand generalization such as “Democrats are nicer that Republicans” may seem excessive, a thoughtful analysis of the situation seems to indicate that this premise is true. Once Republicans adopt the premise that there are inherent benefits in being sensitive to the needs of others, they will be a more responsible party, and bi-partisanship can once again flourish.

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When confronted with accusations regarding his history as a corporate raider with Bain Capital, Mitt Romney has famously responded that his accusers are “jealous” of his wealth and accomplishments. If jealousy is the key motivation of those advocating for change of the distribution of power in the US, then all that is needed is for advocates to change their own efforts from working for equity, to becoming part of the 1 percent themselves – problem solved. The reality is that “jealousy,” while no doubt present (who would turn down $200 million if offered?) has little to do with the motivations of advocates who seek to end abuses of the uber-wealthy in the US.

Examples of problems created through the misuse of wealth in our democracy abound and can easily fill a multi-volume tome dedicated to the subject. For brevity’s sake, I have decided to limit this quick glance at legitimate grievances that the average American has towards the 1% who control more than 48% of our nations wealth, based on stories linked to, or discussed among my acquaintances on facebook. Some would surely argue “your friends are a bunch of liberals,” which is true enough, but hey, they are my friends, and I never said this was a scientific sampling, just a list of legitimate grievances!

1.

The largest and most serious complaint is that the wealthy use the power money buys to “game the system.” An acquaintance posted a link that documents how every $1 spent lobbying by big oil results in $58 of profit. The super rich spend vast sums to influence the politicians who pass laws that allow the wealthy to continue growing their fortunes. There has actually been a drop in lobbying money this year – my personal thought is that the wealthy are throwing their funds into Super PACs, since the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision made it legal to spend unlimited amounts on elections. Which leads to…

2.

The 1% are now buying America’s elections thanks to the Citizens United decision. As if direct contributions to candidate’s campaigns were not enough, Super PAC spending is the story of the current election cycle. When a single wealthy person can spend millions on TV ads attacking candidates with accusations that may have little connection to the truth, the votes of ordinary Americans matters much less.

3.

The 1% and their corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes. Another friend linked to a story stating that top CEOs and corporations are legally avoiding paying their fair share of the cost of running this nation. What is worse, these are overwhelmingly the same people who attempt to demonize the social safety net as “bankrupting” America. So they skip out on the dinner check, while accusing everyone else at the party of eating too much and driving up the bill. Talk about rubbing salt in a wound.

4.

The 1% use their wealth in a shady manner to undercut legitimate opposition to their actions. A fellow writer for Occasional Planet linked to this story about Monsanto hiring Xe (the artist formerly known as Blackwater) agents to infiltrate groups they see as a potential threat to their profits. This goes to a problem that threatens even the 1 percent, though they seem not to see it that way.

 The uber-rich have placed profits not just above the well-being of individuals, but are pursuing policies that threaten America’s stability and possibly the long-term health of everyone on the planet. Global warming threatens everyone, and major causes include cars, factories and electricity production. These three causes are making the one-percenters fabulously wealthier every day. These same fabulously wealthy people have been funding climate warming deniers in order to prevent changes to Federal policy that might affect their bottom line negatively – such as ending subsidies for the oil industry which is making record profits already.

5.

The super wealthy are actually benefitting from the suffering of others. Mitt Romney does not deny that foreclosures in Florida made money for him. No wonder Mitt believes that the best way to handle the foreclosure crisis is to allow the market to “hit bottom!”

Five seems a good number to stop at – sadly I have enough material just from links on facebook from the last 24 hours, to continue further. The wealthy seem oblivious to the needs of others (with noticeable exceptions) and begin to remind us of 17^th century aristocrats who believe that they are so far above the peons that they need not give them a second thought except to lie to them about who to vote for. Perhaps they should be reminded of what happened as a direct result of these policies. At the very least, we see that jealousy is not a top motivator for the grievances of the 99%.

The post 99 percenters’ top 5 grievances against the 1 percent appeared first on Occasional Planet.

1. At a town hall meeting on Tuesday, February 22, a supporter of Georgia Republican Paul Broun asked the U.S. representative, “Who’s going to shoot Obama?” The question got laughs from the audience and reportedly a chuckle from Broun himself, along with this response:

The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

This ugly little exchange crystallizes over two centuries’ worth of racial, economic, and political history in America.

Did that old man in Georgia clamoring for the assassination of America’s first black president really have health care on his mind, as Broun implied? And how could Broun pivot so smoothly from talk of assassination to talk of repealing “Obamacare” and its modest efforts to spread out some of the wealth that has become so concentrated in America?

How? It’s the same old song. Politicians of Broun’s ilk have been pivoting smoothly from racism to economics since our country’s beginning.

2. During the run-up to the last presidential election, Republicans mounted an attack on Barack Obama based on his response to Joe the Plumber’s question about taxes. At the end of a long and nuanced response, Obama talked about how he thought the country worked better when you “spread the wealth” around. Republicans gradually mustered a sense of moral outrage at this notion, even though it underlies accepted economic practices in most developed nations that aren’t straight-up oligarchies.

Let’s take a step back to consider some of the history of “spreading the wealth” in America.

The end of slavery in the South, for instance, constituted a gigantic transfer of wealth—from Southern slaveholders to the slaves themselves. The wealth transferred, of course, was the value of the slaves, a tangible monetary loss for all of the slaveholders. The emancipation of the slaves was the starkest redistribution of wealth in American history. Our nation is arguably still feeling the aftershocks of that cataclysmic act of justice.

In the debate leading to the passage of the health care bill—to whose repeal Rep. Broun so quickly turned in response to a proposed political assassination—what was ultimately at stake was another, much less dramatic redistribution. As Hendrik Hertzberg noted in a New Yorker piece from August of 2009, the Blue Dog Democrats (not to mention Republicans), resisted Barack Obama’s plan to provide health care for all because they “vociferously oppose[d] a modest surtax on the top one per cent, whose effective tax rates have dropped by fifteen per cent since 1979, while their after-tax incomes have more than tripled.”

The debate over health care, at its core, was really about this central question of American politics: To what extent should government intervene to ameliorate inequality and offset the damages wrought by vicious greed?

The federal government fought a war and amended the Constitution to outlaw the owning of one human being by another. Then, over a period of decades, Southern states gradually clawed their way back toward a slave system (as Douglas Blackmon argues persuasively in his 2008 book Slavery By Another Name). Eventually, under the intense pressure of the Civil Rights Movement, the federal government again came down hard on the side of equality.

In response, as LBJ predicted, the South turned its back on the Democratic party and conservatives embraced a doctrine of states’ rights and laissez-faire capitalism, essentially declaring that the government should do little or nothing to protect its citizens from being exploited. Profiteering and prejudice, in the minds of some, became synonymous with patriotism.

Those who control wealth will always complain about its redistribution. Slave owners were outraged to have their chattel taken from them. FDR was a “traitor to his class” for engineering the New Deal. White southerners violently resented the federal troops who made them open schools to blacks. And now Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and “liberty-loving” Tea Partiers decry Obama’s health care plan as socialism.

3. Fogging this central economic debate is the issue of race. As the historian Edmund Morgan argues in American Slavery, American Freedom, our country was founded by wealthy white men who gained the allegiance of poor white men by presenting them a vision of freedom and liberty—a freedom that was explicitly predicated on their whiteness, and a freedom that implicitly excluded blacks. The wealthy, from our country’s very beginnings, have mitigated class conflict by cultivating racial solidarity among whites, a sense of shared superiority over African Americans.

Something similar occurred in the South after the abolition of slavery. Racist repression and exploitation served mainly to enrich a small percentage of whites. Poor whites who clung to their sense of racial supremacy were no doubt harmed economically by being pitted against oppressed blacks in the labor market.

A racially equal society, on the other hand, could have spread the wealth out more equitably to both blacks and whites, helping the South to share more fully in the wealth of America at large, but perhaps reducing the individual fortunes of the most wealthy.

Likewise in America today, our nation is stronger if more people have access to affordable health care and fewer people are driven to economic ruin by crushing medical debt. “Obamacare” and progressive taxation are not socialism. They’re reasonable plans for moderating a market economy in order to deliver the best quality of life for the most citizens possible, regardless of their race. And these measures are on a spectrum with the abolition of slavery, the New Deal, and the Civil Rights Act—a spectrum of controversial but necessary steps by the government to make the nation a better place for its citizens.

This is essentially the point that Barack Obama was making to Joe the Plumber. It’s a point that is evidently threatening to many of the wealthiest Americans, who have so dramatically outstripped the rest since the election of Ronald Reagan. And so, as we saw in Georgia last week, in order to defend wealth, the defenders of the wealthy yet again join hands with those who favor violence to advance a misguided sense of racial superiority.

The future of our country depends upon how many Americans can understand this classic American swindle—the use of racism as a fog to obscure predatory greed—and upon how many Americans can instead support the vision of a country, and indeed a world, in which the wealth of the few is not built upon the impoverishment of the many.

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