A commentary on an infuriating Bloomberg article on what the 1% think of the rest.. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/20/the-plight-of-the-1/ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-20/bankers-join-billionaires-to-debunk-imbecile-attack-on-top-1-.html ----------------snip The plight of the 1% DEC 20, 2011 10:19 EST
inShare INEQUALITY | PLUTOCRATS Max Abelson has a fantastic column today from simply asking prominent members of the 1% about their embattled status. There’s Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who characterizes any potential critic of his wealth by asking the timeless question “who gives a crap about some imbecile?”. There’s BB&T‘s John A. Allison IV, who says that any rule requiring public companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEO and their median employee would constitute “an attack on the very productive”. And then there’s Steve Schwarzman, displaying his legendary deftness of touch in a TV interview: Asked if he were willing to pay more taxes in a Nov. 30 interview with Bloomberg Television, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke about lower-income U.S. families who pay no income tax. “You have to have skin in the game,” said Schwarzman, 64. This isn’t an “I see what you did there” moment so much as it’s a brazen decision to go on the attack against “the 47%”: Americans who earn so little money that they don’t pay federal income tax. (Of course, they still have “skin in the game”: they still pay sales tax and payroll taxes and local taxes.) 61% of these families — let’s call them the 29% — are earning less than $20,000 per year. Let’s say that Schwarzman has been working for 40 years and is now worth $6 billion: that works out at $20,000 an hour, every hour of every day, even when he was sleeping, since the day he started working. But never mind the fact that Schwarzman is earning more per hour than the people he’s criticizing make in a year. There are other billionaires just itching to weigh in. Like Paychex founder Tom Golisano: “If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star. Remember that, people. If you start agitating to reduce inequality, there might be vomiting in the neighborhood of Monica Seles. And we wouldn’t want that. And then — just for comic relief — there’s Peter Schiff, who probably needs to bone up a bit on his medieval history: Schiff, 48, disclosed assets of at least $64.7 million before losing the 2010 Republican primary for a Connecticut U.S. Senate seat, according to filings. He’s wealthier now, even though his taxes are “more than a medieval lord would have taken from a serf,” he said. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
