Outside Counsel

Mittens sez,

"You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a President encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 per cent versus one percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the one per cent—you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it."

Well, first of all, if what he is counting on is for the 1% to carry him to victory in November, okay. I suppose it is possible that the American capacity for wishful thinking to be engaged by this sort of talk. After all, we are all middle class, right? Ask anyone. I like Matthew Yglesias' take on this:

"You often hear that for one reason or another the United States "can't afford" this or that. We "can't afford" to pay people Social Security benefits. We "can't afford" to build high-speed trains. We "can't afford" to give everyone early childhood education. But why can't we afford this stuff? Are we a poor country? No, we're not. We're one of the richest countries that's ever existed. Are we a poorer country than we used to be? No, we're not. But a very large share of the gains we've made over the past three decades have gone to a relatively small number of people. If the gains has been broadly shared, then the burden of paying for that basic infrastructure and public services would have to be very broadly shared. But the gains have been very concentrated, and so if we're going to afford that stuff a large share of the revenue has to come from the people who've gotten the money.
That's not envy, that's math."

The Occupy movement deserves a lot of credit for injecting the concept of the 1% into our public discourse. It is hilarious that Mittens and his ilk are trying to turn it around and suggest that greater economic equity is somehow class warfare, when the reality is that the concentration of wealth is what is actually grinding the American economy into dust. It is unfortunate that (a) most people are too stupid to get this, and believe that having to buy health insurance is Red Communism; and (2) that Barrack Obama may not be able to explain the fallacy in this argument to the electorate. It should be easy enough to understand: if all of the dough is in one place, more of the dough will accumulate there. If more people have more of the dough, they will spend it, and start businesses, and hire people and spread the dough around.

You're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house...right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then, they're going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?...Now wait...now listen...now listen to me. I beg of you not to do this thing. If Potter gets hold of this Building and Loan there'll never be another decent house built in this town. He's already got charge of the bank. He's got the bus line. He's got the department stores. And now he's after us. Why? Well, it's very simple. Because we're cutting in on his business, that's why. And because he wants to keep you living in his slums and paying the kind of rent he decides. Joe, you lived in one of his houses, didn't you? Well, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten what he charged you for that broken-down shack? Here, Ed. You know, you remember last year when things weren't going so well, and you couldn't make your payments. You didn't lose your house, did you? Do you think Potter would have let you keep it? Can't you understand what's happening here? Don't you see what's happening? Potter isn't selling. Potter's buying! And why? Because we're panicky and he's not. That's why. He's picking up some bargains. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We've got to stick together, though. We've got to have faith in each other.