The Middle Class And The Poor Are Lousy At Class Warfare

This was first published in June 2013, but it is still relevant in too many ways, especially with Republicans now totally in charge. 

Back when George W. Bush was still president, renowned businessman Warren Buffett commented that there had been class warfare waged in America for a couple of decades, and that his class, the very rich, had been the class waging that war and that indeed his class was winning. Since Buffett's remarks, we've seen an economic meltdown largely triggered and made so horrendous by housing and mortgage manipulation by, ah well, Buffett's class, none of whom spent a day in jail, let alone in prison, as they claimed they hadn't known about all of the mortgages issued to people who hadn't yet been carted off to the coroner's office.* Even then, when forced to give up part of multimillion dollar bonuses, some of the perpetrators kicked, shouted and screamed how unfair all of this was, some seeming to show ingratitude to the taxpayers who helped bail out their banks as well as their own sorry asses. This opened a new front in class warfare, as the guilty were let off, but the poor were blamed for the plunging economy and skyrocketing unemployment, and since then the war on the poor has escalated. Since the economy hit bottom in 2009, it has made a slow, but fairly steady recovery, but with almost all income gains going to ah, Buffett's class. Meanwhile, cuts are being made, or proposed, to food programs in many states and have been proposed nationally. The Republicans, who have made no secret that they favor ah, Buffett's class, lost the presidential election in 2012, but such cuts may come under a Democratic president.**  

So let me set this out there for you: since Reagan and the conservative philosophy came to prevail, taxes were cut, especially for the rich (which we were told would not create budget deficits). Jobs were first sent to what were generally non union, generally lower wage states, putting pressure on wages for middle class people and the working poor. Then trade deals were promoted with countries where workers make a fraction of what American workers make, with whole plants eventually being transferred to some of these countries by those great patriots of ah, Buffett's class. With wages stagnant or falling for many Americans, conservatives appealed to those people's desire to maintain life style by offering tax cuts (to also help pay their growing credit bills often brought about by the attempt to bridge incomes with credit buying), which then brought serious budget deficits, which brought calls for cuts to programs for poor people to help balance the budget, the number of whom has been growing because of all of the above. The vicious cycle continues, although recently more revenues will be added from ah, Buffett's class. As Warren Buffett told politicians to "quit coddling the rich." You think maybe we should listen?   

* When defaults on mortgages grew, housing prices began to plummet, and the effects of job transfers overseas and the downward pressure on wages for the non wealthy had people who had paid their mortgages for years swept up in the resulting carnage.  

** All of this traces back to the 2010 election. For more on why, see: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2010-was-such-important-election.html
  
WORD HISTORY:
Rare-This is the word meaning "uncommon, scare," as the word with the same spelling, but meaning, "not fully cooked," is a different word. "Rare" goes back to Indo European "re," which had the notion of "loose, divide;" thus, "solitary, thin, scarce." This gave its Latin offspring "rarus," with much the same "solitary, thin, scarce" meanings. Old French, a Latin based language, inherited the word as "rere," meaning "uncommon, sparse." English borrowed the word from French in the 1400s.