"The rich are not like you and me." That famous phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" has relevance today as CEOs walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars without a backward glance, while casually looting the pensions of thousands of poor, loyal employees.
Fitzgerald coined the phrase to explain how Tom and Daisy Buchanan could so carelessly ignore their summer vacation victims leaving them to deal with the crimes of manslaughter and murder, knowing that the rich en
joy an immunity that the rest of us only dream of.
Fitzgerald was famous in the roaring twenties when the gap between rich and poor was as shameful as it was ostentatious. Today that gap is widening and if unchecked will destroy our democracy. Bush and Cheney ignore this disparity and instead act as if they have a mandate to recklessly redistribute our wealth from the poor to their corporate friends and others of the upper crust. They even cravenly imply that the poor are under-taxed. Fitzgerald would have plenty to write about today.
Where is that guy who used to shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore?" I don't think he's around or maybe he's given up. It is a travesty that ordinary people, instead of getting mad as hell, are so easily duped into believing this trickle down garbage. Unbelievably some even become cheerleaders for a system that gives them only the crumbs from the rich man's table. When Bush tells them that the average tax cut would be a thousand dollars, they forget that when Bill Gates enters a room with a nurse, a fireman, a laborer, and a teacher, the average jumps instantly.
The outrage may be muted but the income gap is real. In 1998 the top one percent garnered 15 percent of the nation's income for itself. This had increased from 8 percent in 1980. This is more income than was earned by the 100 million people in the bottom forty percent combined. Who will speak for the poor working stiff?
How can we explain this tax cut madness other than a handout to the very rich? Common sense suggests that the government tread softly on such rip-offs for the time being. Reasonable people are asking, "Is there a method to this madness?"
I think there is. Conservatives have long reasoned that the only way to destroy popular programs that actually help Americans (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) is to starve the government of the money needed to pay for them. Ronald Reagan, for example, thought Medicare was an affront to the very idea of America. He saw it as the advance wave of socialism. Newt Gingrich, during a budget fight in the 90's, said, "we don't get rid of it (Medicare) in round one because we don't think it's politically smart."
What is politically smart for these radical conservatives is to cripple these hated programs without openly opposing them by bleeding the government of the money to pay for them.
With perpetual war and budget deficits stretching far into the future and with baby boomers already into their 50's, seniors beware--the day of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare is not far off.
