From Tony Benn: An invitation to join the Coalition of Resistance

5 Responses to From Tony Benn: An invitation to join the Coalition of Resistance

1. DUGGIE FIELDS on September 22, 2010 at 08:31

   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/opinion/20krugman.html?_r=1
   RE:
   The Angry Rich
   By PAUL KRUGMAN
   Published: September 19, 2010

   THIS ARTICLE MAY BE ABOUT AMERICA BUT APPLIES HERE TOO EXCEPT OUR GOVERNMENT AND IT’S CABINET COMPRISES ALMOST ENTIRELY OF THE ECONOMICALLY PRIVILEDGED…

   Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge.

   Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
   Paul Krugman
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   No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.

   These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.

   Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

   The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled “The Wail Of the 1%,” it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses. When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.

   Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts — will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? — the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character.

   For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It’s one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, “anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.” When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.

   At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable.

   Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.

   These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts don’t really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.

   And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.

   The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

   You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

   And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

   But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

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2. 

   Martin on September 28, 2010 at 23:30

   Oh wow Duggie. From the heart and soul or what? Amazed and sorry more have not added to your eloquent voice. I really do not get this place. Is it that we are all too busy ‘out there’ building barricades we have not got the time to talk to each other here? Alway’s the optimist me.

   For me what you say personifies my anger. This is big. Something bigger that any generation has faced since 3/9/1939 in the UK.
   Is it that the two generations that followed have become so complacent and ignorant they think any kind of ‘Welfare State’ is a given at birth. From the fairies or ‘Narnia’. Or even the X Factor. As you say, justified anger at this social vandalism seems to be only in the mind’s doing it. We have to change that

   The cut’s here in the UK will. Be ready ‘Red Ed’. Yeah right!

   Just one thing Duggie. You in the US are only following the economic privelage championed by her Brittanic Majesty and UK PLC. There are 17 Millionaires in this Govt of ours in the UK.

   Forgive the harsh analogy. A bit like putting Hitler in charge of a synagogue.

   They will wake up. I hope. General strike. NOW.

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3. mark copestake on September 29, 2010 at 10:31

   My message is simple, we are not going to fight the impending crisis by waving sponge hands, we are not going to fight it by shouting at the tories accross the hosue and only opposing some of the cuts, we are not even going to oppose it by marching in march, we need it now and fast !!!!!

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4. 

   Martin on September 29, 2010 at 23:44

   Spot on mark. What is the point of ‘fighting corporate state tanks with bows and arrows?’. Even more when even the ‘arrows’ have been blunted by New Labour before we release them.

   I am honestly feeling the only lawful and permitted political choice in this country for decades now can really be compared to North Korea. Whoever we vote for Rupert Murdoch gets in. It took only three days apparently for him to be spotted coming out of Camerons back door at Downing St.

   30 years of ‘Bread tomorrow Prudence’. Since Thatcher in 79.

   If only we work harder. Work smarter. Scrap any terms and conditions we have. Buckle down and enjoy the dismantling of rights fought for in over a century by generations before us.

   Our reward in 2010? The letter from the bank.

   ‘Sorry to inform you, the ‘Krays PLC’ you invested in have just gone and lost the lot. Now about your job, house, family, pension. Of course the small print you did not read will tell you that was what we were after from the beginning. Sorry. Have a nice life’

   They bloody put something in the water in the 1980′s that passed me by. Pleased I was not the only one who did not drink.

   Sending the collected works of Ralph Miliband to his younger son in the morning.

   Cheers comrades

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5. Roger on October 19, 2010 at 09:06

   Good for Tony Benn. Let’s start by abolishing the Monarchy thereby making massive savings to distribute amongst the people in true Christian spirit/principle.

   Reply