Members of the 1 percent are on the defensive claiming that their wealth is well deserved and legitimate.
A recent Bloomberg article features interviews with high profile CEOs defending their wealth. The willful cluelessness of these 1 percenters is almost beyond belief. A befuddled Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, complained, “[A]cting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it.” Dimon personally received $23 million in “compensation” for the year 2010.
Since Dimon accumulated vast amounts of wealth by making people homeless, it should not be so difficult to understand.
On the other hand, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman contends that it is the bottom income earners who should be contributing more. Speaking of those so poor they do not pay income tax, he said: “You have to have skin in the game, I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.” Schwarzman appears to be holding back on the amount of “skin” he is putting in the game. Some of Schwarzman’s capital gains at Blackstone, the world’s largest private-equity firm, are taxed at 15 percent, instead of the 35 percent top marginal income-tax rate.
Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot and founder of the “Job Creators Alliance,” a non-profit organization that seeks to shape the “national agenda,” went on the offensive regarding the Occupy movement. “Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
Ken Langone, another co-founder of Home Depot, likewise is proud of his parasitic role in society as he boasts, “I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed.”
Some members of the 1 percent are cognizant of their potentially tenuous grip on power. Some have resorted to a call for Keynesian policies including progressive taxation. The group Patriotic Millionaires, Warren Buffett, and Nick Hanauer, co-founder of the advertising company aQuantive, suggests that the government “… tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth.”
These more liberal members of the 1 percent are keen to note the historic lessons of the Great Depression when government expenditures, through progressive taxation and other measures, averted the destruction of the capitalist system. The theme of this plan is for the rich to concede a little now for the preservation of their exploitive system in the long run.
While progressive taxation can be useful as a short-term goal, it is only a small step toward total liberation.
It is heartwarming to see the 1 percent so proud of the fact that they have made millions on the backs of hardworking people. They smile knowing that their rise to the top has meant millions without homes, without access to health care and without enough to eat while they enjoy the luxuries that they have extracted from the exploitation of working people. It is only a matter of time before we remove them from power and create a just and rational society based on meeting the needs of the majority.
