Chrystia Freeland and the One Percent

Karl Marx said capitalism grows with a poison pill embedded in its roots: Eventually the winners will take all, leaving the rest, the 99% frustrated and ready for revolt.

At the Democratic national convention they showed a very effective cartoon of people climbing up rope ladders and reaching the cliff at the top and some pulled up those ladders and tossed them back into the abyss while others leaned down and offered hands to pull up those behind them. The Democrats did not have to say who the people who were offering the helping hands were, or who the people who did not were.

Chrystia Freedland in todays New York Times (10/15/12) notes that there is historical precedence for states which fail when the winners are allowed to throw away those ladders so others cannot join them atop the mountain: She cites 14th century Venice.

But history is one long argument and who really knows what happened in Italy in the 1300's?  What she does provide is information about what is happening in the USA in the 21st century, where of the 400 richest Americans in 2009,27 paid 10 percent or less, none paid more than 35% (the top bracket) and  6 paid no federal income tax at all. 

Most people here in New Hampshire stop listening when numbers are trotted out, but they can understand this:  The truth is when Mitt Romney talks about the 47% of Americans who are caught in a habit of dependence on the federal government, he means those people who do not pay income tax because they are either not making enough to reach even the lower brackets, or soldiers who are on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.  He does not mean the upper 1% who have Republican candidates and Congressmen in their pockets, who are dependent on the sweet deals and the laws their bought an paid for Congressmen and Senators have sent their way, ensuring they continue to live off the fat of the land while the middle class folks labors under the weight of having to carry those fat cats on their backs.

Inexplicably, the Democrats have never shown that cartoon from the convention again, as far as I know.  It's another example of the Democrats simply failing at mass communication--snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Hopefully, President Obama will have the presence of mind to mind America of all this, Tuesday night, and hopefully he'll find a way to say it forcefully enough to get the message down to the least educated Joe Sixpack.