On Aug. 14, 2011, billionaire Warren Buffett published a controversial opinions editorial in a New York Times articulating why he believes Congress is “billionaire friendly” and hypocritical when it calls for “shared sacrifice.” A firestorm of arguments ensued after the logical article, but now Buffett finds himself back in the news for being an instigator in the class war.
President Obama is now backing the Buffett Rule: a new proposal that those with incomes in excess of 1 million dollars should pay at least the same federal tax rate as middle-income tax payers.
This is supposed to remedy a situation Buffett sees as problematic: “what I paid [in taxes] was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent, and averaged 36 percent.”
Upon learning of the disparity between the tax rates for the super rich and the less-so, EMU junior Nick Marek said, “That’s just not fair. The idea that Warren Buffett pays less proportionally than I do is ridiculous.”
Republican politicians by and large agree with Marek: it is ridiculous – ridiculous that anyone would attempt to raise the super-rich tax rate. As a result, politics has found itself throwing around the words “class warfare” as political weapons.
As a Sept. 18 Fox News article details, Congressional representatives Paul Ryan (R – WI), Lindsey Graham (R – SC) and Mitch McConnell (R – KY) have all suggested the tax raise is blatantly unfair, a cannon shot in the class war.
Bizarrely, President Obama, when supporting his Buffett Rule, conspicuously noted that the measure is not “class warfare.” One cannot help but scratch their head at Obama’s unwillingness to turn the Republicans’ words on them. After all, if he engages them, he is clearly the champion of the people relative to the Republicans.
Additionally, Republicans make unsubstantiated claims about the economic legitimacy of lower tax rates for the rich. A Sept. 27 CNN article labeled the assertion that drastically low tax rates on the rich lead to job creation as “myth-making propaganda.”
EMU junior Andrew Wilcox critiqued the view of job creating minimal tax rates. “I think it’s a bit silly that people believe that because certain individuals don’t fully control the economy and just because the rich have more money doesn’t mean they’re going to invest it.”
Perhaps President Obama should hire Wilcox to his PR team. After all, thus far Obama has failed to challenge Republicans on their economic wisdom, or lack thereof.
The broader issue here is whether there actually is a class war being waged. One need only quickly peruse the landscape of American income inequality to see there is something happening and we need to begin critically thinking about it.
Is it not at the very least pause-worthy that according to the previously cited CNN article, the bottom 50 percent of the United States’ population possesses less than 2.5 percent of the nation’s wealth?
An AlterNet article from Sept. 2 voraciously argues that the government is an instrument for the rich to protect themselves. Through the use of protectionist measures for the rich and a tax structure riddled with loopholes, the rich are winning the class war pretty handily.
The article “4 Ways Government Policy Favors the Rich,” said, “While government programs for working or jobless Americans are under constant attack, the state frequently intervenes on behalf of the rich.”
Ultimately, it is only when we begin to contemplate the situation in which ordinary people find themselves that we can begin to rectify the inequity. It is noteworthy that Warren Buffett has noticed a class war raging and he’s benefiting quite handsomely from it.
Nonetheless, Buffett’s final words should resonate with us all, “It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
