catapult magazine

Does any one of the democratic candidates stand a chance of unseating President Bush? Please feel free to expound.

mrsanniep, is there a link to where you got those stats? i guess i gotta see to believe.

The numbers come from the IRS.

The rich HAVE gotten richer, but the poor have also gotten richer, albeit not at the same pace. However, these wealth and income gaps are a necessary byproduct of a rising tide of prosperity. Inequality might be greater today, but that’s because so many people in the middle class have moved up and become millionaires, mainly because of the 1980s.

• In 1980, if you earned $55,000 a year, you’d be in the top 5 percent of income earners in America. That’s like $75,000 today. If you want to be in the top 5 percent of income earners today, you have to earn $150,000.

• In 1980, there were only about 750,000 families with a net worth of $1 million or more. Today the number of millionaire households is 5 million families.

By moving up and increasing the gap between themselves and the rest of the population, these former-middle-class folks have increased what people like you, Dan, refer to as the “growing gap” between rich and poor. What you ignore is that people are actually getting richer compared to 20 years ago – and it’s not just the trust fund babies and undeserving lazy asses (the filthy rich make up less than 4% of the population), but the middle class of the 1980s.

This is not a bad thing. America has created the first mass affluent class in world history, extending to millions of average folks the same avenues of personal wealth and fulfillment that only used to be available to aristocracy.

I guess I don’t see it as a fundamentally good thing either. I can understand the source of the affluence you describe and I would be shocked if there aren’t 5 million “millionaire” households in the greater Milwaukee and Chicago areas alone. However, how many billionaires does it take to equal the income tax paid by the nations lowest quarter of earners? I guess that’s where your earlier stat of 40% makes me feel a little uneasy.

I don’t understand your question, Norb. I mean, I do, but I don’t understand why it would make you uneasy, as it probably doesn’t take many billionaires to equal the income tax paid by the lowest quarter of earners. Please clarify.

Another interesting fact that I perhaps didn’t make clear was the incredible economic mobility between quintiles, i.e. the people who are in the lowest income bracket at the beginning of a decade are not the same people in the lowest income bracket at the end of the decade.

I don’t dish out this information to make light of poverty. However, our economic system and tax codes are not as biased and horrible as many would like us to believe. The sky isn’t falling.

I didn’t see Moore at the Oscars, but I remember hearing something about that now. What I like about him is that he is that rarest of entities – a working class guy from Flint, Michigan, with a public voice. He may be guilty of exaggeration, but I like the fact that he got pissed off and decided to do something about it. There is nothing less cynical. Sure he supported Nader, but at least he was offering an alternative. He’s engaged. What I can’t stand is the celebrities who use their public voice to bash Bush because it’s easy and fashionable, but haven’t bothered to put any thought into recommending an alternative.

The range of political choice (in Canada no less than in the U.S.) sometimes leads me to wonder what anarchism would look like if more Christians got involved in it. I don’t mean the cheap, popular impression of anarchism that many high schoolers (and college activists) have, but the genuine, decentralized, community-rooted, grassroots activist type of anarchism. I’m not a political analyst, but I have a friend who is and she considers it the truest form of democracy. I’m out of my depth here, so feel free to bash. But I do wonder.

And how is using your vote to set up weak candidates in the opposition’s party not cynical?

On further consideration, that last question sounds a little harsh.

Let me temper it a bit by also saying that, despite a difference in opinion, I do respect how seriously you take your politics, and what seems to be a genuine effort to make intelligent and well-informed political decisions. That is certainly not a cynical attitude.

The voting thing does seem to me somewhat manipulative, and I am bothered by that. Perhaps I don’t fully understand the process.

One of the great things about being in a community is that we can trust that, despite national and political differences, we are united by a love which transcends all of those. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that.

Henry (not Blisster)

Sorry, one more thing, then I’ll shut up. Honest.

America’s (and Canada’s) “mass affluent culture” is built on the back of global poverty. North America does not exist in isolation from the rest of the globe, as we all know. When you are considering figures relating to the gap between the rich and the poor, you have to take into account the cost paid by people suffering the extreme realities of poverty all over the world. What is “not bad” for Americans, can be shown to be very bad indeed for some other people.

I understand your point about worldwide poverty. However, my discussion of poverty is to counteract claims that America’s poor are getting poorer, that the rich aren’t taxed enough and that higher taxation is necessary to eliminate American poverty. I’m leaving worldwide poverty for another discussion.

No doubt about it, though, we have the most obese poor people in the world. That puts it in some context, doesn’t it?

As for voting in Democrat primaries, I see it as an extension of voting my will in the general election. You vote in the general election so that the person you vote for will win, right? Well, back up to the primary and you have an additional chance to cast a vote in their direction by actually casting a vote for someone who would be a weak opponent in the general election. This doesn’t work if your candidate of choice is the underdog in their own primary. In that case, voting for your candidate in the primary is a better idea.

It’s not manipulative in a bad sense at all. It’s legal and anyone with any stake or interest in the final outcome of a general election knows to do it. In Wisconsin we aren’t allowed crossover voting in primaries, so people who choose to do what I do are stuck voting (or not voting) for all the Dem candidates. I give up the privilege of voting in other Republican primaries I might be interested if I really feel compelled to vote in the Dem primary for some reason.

I don’t see it as cynical. It’s FUN!

It all balances out.

It may not be cynical, but it is dishonest. I don’y think you can deny that.

How is it dishonest? There’s no lying involved. Instead of voting for a candidate because of their strengths, I sometimes vote for candidates because of their weaknesses.

The only thing that can be dishonest about voting is ballot stuffing and other forms of election fraud available only to people handling the actual ballots and tallying the votes. Machines do most the work these days, anyway. I couldn’t engage in any sort of dishonest voting if I tried. Not that I would.