An excellent animation that tells, in a remarkably accurate and understandable way, the story of how we got where we are today and what we should do about it. (Thanks to reader Tim.)
The animation was produced by the California teachers unions and was narrated by veteran actor Ed Asner. Needless to say, Fox News was not pleased and sent someone to confront him. The totally unrepentant Asner’s response was classic. He clearly does not give a damn what Fox News thinks. I noticed that just after the clip was shown, someone on the Fox set laughed at Asner’s remarks just like I did. He was probably summarily fired.
Hell, at this point, I’d be happy if we taxed the wealthy at the same rate as the rest of us. Right now, once someone gets past a certain point, they start paying less, due to various tax breaks.
I love how Fox news manages to conflate “demonizing” with “insisting on some modicum of responsibility.” I also love the misdirection of disapproving of rich people “for their success” as opposed to “for not playing fair and constantly trying to avoid contributing to the society that enabled them to get so wealthy in the first place”!
The problem with equating wealth with success is that it makes it sound as if we all took place in a totally fair contest and some people just worked harder. No, the best way to become wealthy is to be born wealthy. It’s better to be a shareholder than a worker since, when times are tight, the worker will be squeezed so that shareholder wealth can continue to increase.
Why not just openly state that wealthy people don’t work, but earn money because of passive ownership? I mean, they hire people to manage their assets for them so they can’t even be said to be wise investors much of the time, and frequently they rig the game so that a company will go under before they take a loss.
Well. some rich people are creative and work hard to produce novel products and services or greatly increase efficiencies in delivery of existing products and services. In other words, they take risks and work hard to make the economy grow. I don’t mind them becoming rich for their efforts.
But I think the majority of the rich today are simply parasites and predators who get richer by making other people poorer. Mitt Romney is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I used to date a business school undergrad, and I was shocked at what she learned in her class. I figured it was all about inventory accounting and extrapolate turn rates, but it was really just asshole finishing school.
Yeah I agree with you ! Having them AT LEAST pay the same % would be a good start !
Good point. Thats FOX news for you. They have no defense so they love to use words like “demonizing”, class warfare, etc. etc.
This reminds me of an excellent TED talk on the subject by Nick Hanauer. Nick is a venture capitalist with a net worth of one billion dollars, and he argues that the economy is like an ecosystem: every piece is interconnected, and having one unhealthy segment hurts everyone. His talk was actually banned by TED for a short while, until the public outcry forced them to upload the video. It’s well worth the 6 minutes to watch:
I wrote about Hanauer’s views and also his TED talk earlier this year. I agree that it is worth watching.