To the right wing ideologue, the worker, no matter how skilled or noble, is simply just a worker: merely someone who works for someone else. Regardless of his skill or professionalism or courage, he is not a truly creative, innovative individual. That description is reserved for the
entrepreneur, the owner-executive, the MAN WHO MAKES THINGS HAPPEN. For the Right, the worker, whether he be a brain surgeon or nuclear physicist, star athlete or a great musician,
is just an interchangeable carbon unit to be exploited and utilized by the true geniuses of the marketplace. People like them. The worker is a tool, perhaps to be admired like a well-balanced hammer or a sharp blade, or even a good horse, but never respected as a human triumph in his own right.

The one thing I’ve learned in the last few years of hanging around politically oriented websites and
studying what the Right actually is saying, is the incredible contempt they have for those who “work for a living”. They may have a certain grudging comprehension of a worker’s skill, just like an ante-bellum Southern aristocrat might have recognized a slave’s skill at picking cotton or driving a mule team, but the recognition is patronizing and condescending and always tempered by the realization that the management/ownership class needs that skill, and cannot function without it. They don’t like being dependent on those they consider their social or intellectual inferiors. You will note the businessman or executive or manager is never dismissed as “simply doing his job”. No, THEIR job is more important, more valuable, more noble than that of the “mere” technician. To them, the rest of us will always be, at best, “mere technicians”. For the most part, they see us as lazy, stupid, immoral and criminal louts.

Perhaps this is just their way of recognizing that they really don’t know how to do anything, that they are actually parasitic on those who do. Too often, management jobs are the result of educational or class position, promotion within the ranks of a self-defined cohort, not any intrinsic quantifiable skills. True entrepreneurial skills rarely have anything to do with it, ask yourself, how many of the people you’ve worked for were genuine entrepreneurs? But they all seemed to think they were, didn’t they? Real entrepreneurs, real leaders of commerce, come from all parts of the political spectrum. The right-wing ideologues have rarely had to actually meet a payroll, they are mostly wannabees who need an excuse, someone else to blame for why they can’t make it: a lousy workforce, Jews, Socialists, liberals, ethnics, foreigners, the government, unions, regulations, taxes…need I go on? I’m sure you know the litany by heart, hell, you’ve heard it here often enough. As far as they’re concerned, it’s never their fault. It’s always someone elses. Have you ever heard one actually say “I’m a lousy businessman?” It would be like the stereotypical studly macho boogie dude admitting to himself “I’m a lousy lover and can’t please a woman”. It ain’t gonna happen.

And the funny thing is that real entrepreneurs, real businessmen, don’t talk about politics. They do it with deeds, not words, and they don’t whine when they get a setback. The Wing Nuts, the professional patriots and other assorted defenders of the faith and othewr True Believers and flag-wavers are all just employees themselves, working class grunts just like us; they just can’t seem to admit it to themselves, much less to anyone else. The entire management mystique is that the ownership class possesses an intrinsic quality that others do not, some skill at being a generalist that gives them the right to rule. Essentially it is fascistic, a superiority based on racism. No doubt they smugly congratulate themselves because this racism is not genetic in origin, it’s not because they feel they are born into some master race. Neither is it based on some imagined superiority of aristocratic breeding or family name. These people see themselves as more evolved than the rest of us because their interests and psychology are superior. They made themselves that way, because of their ambition and work ethic, which of course the rabble seems to lack. Businessmen are just BETTER than scientists or artists or skilled artisans, or for that matter, any profession that is not involved in the manipulation of capital and the exploitation of the labor of others. For them, that is what really matters, the real measure of a human being. They possess it and the mob doesn’t, which proves why they deserve to be in charge.

Thoughtful, educated and capable workers represent a threat to that view of the world. John Lennon, an artist from the British working class obsessed with the Blues of the American Negro, figured it out early in his song “Working Class Hero”;

“They hate you if you’re clever, but they despise a fool.”

However, I know too many people where this appears to be their only argument.

Anecdotal post, I did. It is all I have.

What this is about is a national economy which benefits only a very few, an economy which is shifting wealth from the middle class to the wealthy at an unprecedented rate. An economy which is meeting the needs of fewer and fewer people. The destruction of the “American Dream”.

It’s about an economy which will produce the conditions which have led to every revolt in the world.

That, like anthropomorphic global warming, GWB’s lies, the lack of WMDs in Iraq, American torture, the killing of innocent people through terrorist UAVs, is a given.

That the wealthy are far, far better off is a given.

That the middle class is losing ground faster than the wealthy are getting wealthy is understood by all.

The lucky folks are those living off of Union jobs and benefits, that shrinking part of society under Conservative attack for generations.

I wanted someone to tell me how great it is for the majority of Americans, how well capitalism is working for them, how they can plan on great lives for their children and grandchildren, and it’s just not happening, except for the wealthy.

Oh, it’ll be all right for the folks who run their factories, mines, mills. It’ll be maybe OK for the health care workers they need, and they will keep their armies under control, and police forces.

But that’s it, isn’t it. Even you can see that. It ain’t getting any better for the vast, vast majority of Americans.

But you won’t admit it. A psychological quirk prevents that. There is a name for it, but that’s another story.

I looked up the report. Here’s the numbers for income growth for 1979 to 2007:

275 percent for the top 1 percent of households

65 percent for the next 19 percent

Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent

18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.

See any numbers going down?

Now go back and compare the statistics in the original post about 2007 to 2010.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be living in the first situation. I bet a lot of other people would, too. Remember 2007? Highest Federal revenues in our history? Stock market cracking the 14,000 mark? Unemployment rate in the 4.5 percent range? A lot of that income increase came during the 90s. Remember the surplus?

We’ve had a century to see which ideas result in slavery, and which ones result in freedom and prosperity.

Hatred of the wealthy simply for being wealthy, as a basic political philosophy, is economic death. And the sooner we get the idiots out of power who believe it, the better.

“The rich are getting richer, U.S. study says.”

“The top 1% of households earned 275% more in 2007 than they did in 1979, while the poor saw just an 18% increase, according to a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”

Now, you might say that an 18% increase in the 28 years from 1979 to 2007 doesn’t mean the lower level is getting poorer, but that they are much, much better off than they were, practically wallowing in their riches.

I’d respond that it is 18% of what, compared to 275% of what.

Face it, this economy, this new world order so loved by Conservatives, is only working for the ultra-wealthy, no one else. And that the outcome of the policies Conservatives promote is a banana republic. Why you want the US to have untold millions of very poor people and a few ultra-rich is beyond me, but you are locked into that outcome and quite vociferous about it.

Doesn’t seem reasonable, rational, or right. Yet there you are. Advocating economic slavery for almost all.

Go figure.

According to the table, the median income of the top quintile percent dropped by 5 to 6 percent.

The middle two quintiles dropped by 8 to 9 percent.

The median income of the bottom quintile went up by 4 percent.

When we were arguing about taxes, liberals here spent a lot of time telling me that the actual amount of taxes paid by the wealthy (many times that paid by the less wealthy) was irrelevant, and it was all about tax rates or percentages.

Have we switched back now? I do have trouble keeping up sometimes.

We needed those statistics. I’ll rest easier.

Summary:

Data from the 2007 and 2010 SCF show that median income fell substantially and that mean income fell somewhat faster, an indication that income losses, at least in terms of levels, were larger for families in the uppermost part of the distribution.

Overall, both median and mean net worth also fell dramatically over this period—38.8 percent and 14.7 percent, respectively. Changes in housing wealth and business equity were key drivers in those wealth changes. The preceding three years had seen only small changes in median and mean income and in median net worth, but a sizable gain in mean net worth.

See also: Table on page 8.