‘Who will stand up to the Superrich?’ (by Frank Rich)

Here are a couple of quotes from a recent Frank Rich article in the New York Times titled Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich? The quotes include a reference to a book by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson that provides empirical evidence for the claim that the US is now dominated by a plutocracy (or what I describe as a plutocratic order). You will find a link to the book in question at the bottom of this post.

According to Rich,

‘The Americans I’m talking about are not just those shadowy anonymous corporate campaign contributors who flooded this campaign. No less triumphant were those individuals at the apex of the economic pyramid — the superrich who have gotten spectacularly richer over the last four decades while their fellow citizens either treaded water or lost ground. The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 — up from less than 9 percent in 1976. During the boom years of 2002 to 2007, that top 1 percent’s pretax income increased an extraordinary 10 percent every year. But the boom proved an exclusive affair: in that same period, the median income for non-elderly American households went down and the poverty rate rose.

It’s the very top earners, not your garden variety, entrepreneurial multimillionaires, who will be by far the biggest beneficiaries if there’s an extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for income over $200,000 a year (for individuals) and $250,000 (for couples). The resurgent G.O.P. has vowed to fight to the end to award this bonanza, but that may hardly be necessary given the timid opposition of President Obama and the lame-duck Democratic Congress.’

After noting that the Obama administration is now trying to stop the Bush-era tax cuts by arguing that they cannot be ‘afforded’, Rich suggests that

‘The bigger issue is whether the country can afford the systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, whether poor, middle class or even rich. That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970.

“How can hedge-fund managers who are pulling down billions sometimes pay a lower tax rate than do their secretaries?” ask the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker (of Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley) in their deservedly lauded new book, “Winner-Take-All Politics.” If you want to cry real tears about the American dream — as opposed to the self-canonizing tears of John Boehner — read this book and weep. The authors’ answer to that question and others amounts to a devastating indictment of both parties.

Their ample empirical evidence, some of which I’m citing here, proves that America’s ever-widening income inequality was not an inevitable by-product of the modern megacorporation, or of globalization, or of the advent of the new tech-driven economy, or of a growing education gap. (Yes, the very rich often have fancy degrees, but so do those in many income levels below them.) Inequality is instead the result of specific policies, including tax policies, championed by Washington Democrats and Republicans alike as they conducted a bidding war for high-rolling donors in election after election.’

You will find part of the first chapter of Hacker and Pierson’s book at this Simon & Schuster web page.

Plutocracy? Did I hear someone say Plutocracy?

A truth finally seems to be taking hold: commentators in the U.S., if not Great Britain, are starting to accept that what we now face is not just a period of ‘greater inequality’, but a time when the very richest will rule in much the way they did until the 1920s. To read all about the way this is happening in the U.S., see Timothy Noah’s

The United States of Inequality

If you think Britain is different, then have a look at the statistics offered in that article to see which European country isn’t doing better than the U.S. when it comes to rampant inequality.

If you’re still not convinced, perhaps you might want to have a look at who has been in charge of reviewing higher education financing in the UK….

You’ve gotta worry when even the liberals turn ‘commies’

I’m fully aware that many readers of this blog (and probably a friend or two) regard my writing an example of the kind of conspiratorial, loony-lefty, Tory-bashing, doom-saying discourse that long ago left the corporate media’s airwaves.

So it’s food for thought when a liberal (read, quite conservative, but open to new ideas) economist writes an article in the New York Times—the New York Times!—that essentially warns about the same forces that I’ve been ‘ranting’ about for the last three years.

Don’t get me wrong, Krugman is infinitely brighter than I am, and his writing is far better than my own, not least because it respects the genres he employs (you have to be quite foolish to write posts as long as I do in this blog).

But you’ve also gotta be very, very worried when someone who is so reasonably middle–of–the–road (by most rational standards) decries what has become a James Bond–like conspiracy involving a handful of people at the very top of the plutocratic order. Here’s just a taster of what you’ll find if you go to the original article:

“As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.

So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?

Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business. What the Koch brothers have bought with their huge political outlays is, above all, freedom to pollute. What Mr. Murdoch is acquiring with his expanded political role is the kind of influence that lets his media empire make its own rules.

Thus in Britain, a reporter at one of Mr. Murdoch’s papers, News of the World, was caught hacking into the voice mail of prominent citizens, including members of the royal family. But Scotland Yard showed little interest in getting to the bottom of the story. Now the editor who ran the paper when the hacking was taking place is chief of communications for the Conservative government — and that government is talking about slashing the budget of the BBC, which competes with the News Corporation.

So think of those paychecks to Sarah Palin and others as smart investments. After all, if you’re a media mogul, it’s always good to have friends in high places. And the most reliable friends are the ones who know they owe it all to you.”

So here’s the question: if you’re at all concerned about this, do you

1) shrug your shoulders and say you can’t do anything about it

2) resent the negativity of the bloggers/friends/relations that warn you about it

3) berate them for not doing anything about the ‘state of the world’ if they’re so bloomin’ worried about it

4) nod vigorously and return to your lunch

5) write a blog

6) mind your own business

All of the above are quintessentially liberal responses. Having long indulged in them myself, I can quite understand their appeal. Heck, I’m still writing this blog. After all, if other people are willing to do the work, why should I engage?

Thing is, it seems that with the step–change we’re witnessing, before long the Kochs and Murdochs of the world may be coming for you too. By then the things you cherish (as a liberal) will be gone, and it will be too late to think about stopping the plutonocrats (no relation to Pluto, in Disney). So the time may have come to do something like join a political party, or hit the streets.

Oh dear, how illiberal is that?

p.s. Do you read the (London) Times? (I’m assuming you don’t do the Sun, the News of the World, the Wall Street Journal or any of these other Murdoch titles). Or do you subscribe to Sky, or use any of these other media? Maybe you should begin any activism by taking ‘one small step’ for man and womankind by refusing to fork over the money that’s fueling the corruption.

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

I’m simply using the title of Frank Rich’s excellent article, in which he tells you all, or at any rate, most of what you need to know about who’s behind the Tea Party movement, and its nefarious history. Great that at least someone in the New York Times is engaging in some honest to goodness truth-telling about these all-American extremists.

Update 30 August 2010

Rich himself mentions this essay in his article, and provides a link, but here it is again, in case you’ve not seen it: Jane Meyer’s

Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama

What, if anything can be done? For starters, websites need to be set up that identify, in detail, what products and services are most closely associated with the Murdochs and the Koch brothers so they can be boycotted around the world.

On the way down: the erosion of America’s—and Britain’s middle class

Back in the days when I was a postgrad student a wise professor noted that he couldn’t understand why public services in the UK were being slashed. He offered a series of compelling statistics that showed how the first wave of Thatcherite politicians (we’re now experiencing the third wave) was lying through its teeth about the need for what the neocons today describe as ‘fiscal austerity’.

Many years later, Britain is once again in the jaws of a neoliberal crocodile that is about to do another death roll. The United States is in more or less the same position, despite the timid flailings of Barack Obama and his coterie of apparently Rambo-esque advisers. This time, many people wonder whether it will be the neoliberal croc’s last hurrah; a country can take only so many ideological drownings before the social air runs out. Alas, the Thatcherite crocs in both countries may soon find that they too, can be devoured by bottom-dwellers.

This post is simply to say that I’ve finally found an article that represents, in all clarity, what this process is really all about. Have a look at the international edition of Der Spiegel, which provides a razor sharp analysis of who stands to lose—and gain—from the neoliberal spell.

On The Way Down: The Erosion of America’s Middle Class