Bernie Isn't Trying to Start a Class War. The Rich Are Trying to Finish One.

[Uncle Joe]

David Brooks’s latest column asserts that, in the United States, workers’ wages are determined largely by the value of what they produce. The quality of the well-paid pundit’s ensuing argument fatally undermines its own premise.

(snip)

Even if there were a way to increase the measured productivity of those who perform socially necessary care work, this still would be insufficient to eliminate poverty. You need to progressively redistribute income in order to accomplish that. And American billionaires are, in fact, trying to prevent that from happening by “rigging” our political economy. Although there are some high-profile exceptions, about 64 percent of billionaire political donors give exclusively or primarily to Republican candidates and conservative organizations; which is to say, to a party and movement that opposes major expansions of the welfare state, and supports eroding the existing safety net’s fiscal security by slashing taxes on billionaires.

The billionaire class’s investment in the GOP is one reason why our historically wealthy nation has an aberrantly stingy welfare state. And our aberrantly stingy welfare state is a leading cause of our nation’s extraordinarily high levels of economic inequality. If Brooks’s thesis were correct — and America’s inequality problem were driven overwhelming by gaps in productivity rather than policy choices — then inequality in the U.S. and Western Europe should have grown at roughly similar rates over the past four decades, as both regions were subject to the same basic economic developments. But this did not happen, because Western Europe’s plutocrats aren’t quite as good at class war as the ones we’ve got over here.




Fortunately for Brooks, precisely because his column is so exquisitely wrong, its wrongness will have no adverse impact on his economic condition. The market for all-explaining cartoons that comfort the comfortable is a lucrative one, and he is indisputably a master of his trade.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/bernie-sanders-david-brooks-class-war.html

[Magoo48]

1. Ronnie Raygun fanned he flames of the ever smoldering class war.

Today’s economic conditions are calculated, oppressive, and relentless. Corporate Dems who want to play pretty with Wall Street are an unnecessary and shameful hurdle in the daily trudge of the working classes and the poor.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Wealth went bonkers

when Karl Marx began 'class consciousness'. He was accused of 'turning reality on its head'. Ever since the rich have tried to flip class consciousness on the lower classes, the proletariat to use Marx's term. They shout "Class warfare!" and blame liberals. They are particularly vehement about the labor theory of value, denying that products are worth the labor that is used in manufacture. Right wing economists even go crazy over the term "political economy" - the term used for economics in most of Europe, even western Europe. In America, using the term gets one accused of being a pinko Bolshevik economist.

[Evolve Dammit]

3. I believe it was Warren Buffet who confirmed it absolutely is class warfare, and we're winning.

Few years ago. Pretty sure I got the quote right.

[colsohlibgal]

4. No Doubt

Again B Actor Reagan started the ball rolling slashing the top marginal tax rate drastically, to comfortably lower than it has been since Herbert Hoover. He also went along with axing the long standing Fairness Doctrine.....and since then Fox News, Limbaugh etc have been convincing middle and lower classes to call any serious attempt to raise rates on the super wealthy as socialism they are partially right but it is democratic socialism.

But loyal Fox viewers are convinced it is Communistic, Class Warfare etc.

Now it has led to electing a rich stupid clown as President.

[DanieRains]

5. It Isn't Class Warfare It's Class Genocide

Mike Papantonio.

[booley]

6. yep

thanks for posting

[LiberalArkie]

7. I think the Europeans still remember the little parties like the French and Russian revolutions

[George II]

8. So why doesn't he give a couple of his millions away so he can reduce the size of the "1%"?

[David__77]

9. It's the right of the state to correct this trend.

And it should be done. It can be done through tax policy, and establishing broader guarantees to health care, education, and housing.

[PETRUS]

10. Another reaction to latest silliness of David Brooks:

https://www.epi.org/blog/yes-david-brooks-there-really-is-a-class-war/

(In case you're interested.)

[Uncle Joe]

11. Thanks for the addition PETRUS.

[PETRUS]

12. You bet.

Thanks for your posts in general.

[msongs]

13. multi millionaire 1%er bernie IS the rich lol nt