How does the left feel about the 1% on its side of the aisle?
Check out the salaries of some Team Obama members in their lives before working at the White House.
$1.1 million - President Obama’s new chief of staff, Jacob Lew
$8.7 million - Prior chief of staff, William Daley
$16 million - First chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel
$5 million - National economic director, Larry Summers
$2 million - Budget director, Peter Orszag
$7 million - National security adviser, Tom Donilon
I think firing up anger at the 1% is foolish whether one truly believes the 1% are evil or whether the anger is stoked for political purposes.
Are there excesses in a capitalist society?
Yup.
Does that mean we should decry all the "1%" folks?
Nope.
3 comments:
Is the right that dumb or are they always trying to distort the message?
Anyone reasonable knows the concern over income inequality is nothing about anger towards the rich and everything about unequal availability of opportunity in our society.
Warren Buffet is unarguably the primo 1% and yet his view lies with the left. Do you think the 99% or the President really hates him?
Yeah you are correct, the left doesn't dislike all 1%, just the ones who aren't on the left! 8-)
Certainly concerns about opportunity in society is valid and it is an issue that resonates with Democrat, Independents and Republicans.
But the 99% vs 1% rhetoric I see in the evening news comes across as a bit too much for my taste.
When the President gave his Kansas speech last year, I thought he seemed to echo the Occupy people and one writer at the LAT agreed.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/07/news/la-pn-obama-occupy-kansas-20111207
Rhetoric aside. I want to hear numbers.
The numbers I'd like to hear from BOTH sides are these:
All told how much of the GDP should be "occupied" by the Federal government?
This gets at the question of the size of government footprint in our economy.
And what percent should be allocated to the different aspects of the Federal budget?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png
This gets at the question of the priorities of the government.
I don't think the President echoed the Occupy message per se. More like he is addressing what he interprets is the source of their frustration. Indeed, he also acknowledges frustration from the Tea Party as well, in this and other speeches. He is merely responding to the people which I think is a good thing.
As to your question of how much government we should have, may be we can use this guideline from the President's SOTU speech?
"That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more."
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