It’s hard to feel sorry for the top 1 percent
Venture capitalist Thomas Perkins is an arrogant jerk. Actually, I have a
more appropriate description of him, but it would be inappropriate in these
pages.
Perkins is the rich guy who, in a Wall Street Journal letter titled “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?” compared “the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘1 percent,’ namely the Jews, to the progressive war on the American 1 percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
How much ego and chutzpah does Perkins have to dare compare him and his fellow 1 percenters to the victims of the Holocaust? I truly despise such comparisons, just as I despise how people equate President Obama, or George W. Bush or any current politician with Hitler and our political parties with the Nazis. People toss such comparisons off way too lightly. There’s a vast abyss between disagreeing politically and sending millions of people to gas chambers.
Oh, Perkins apologized for using the word “Kristallnacht,” which was the “Night of Broken Glass” in 1938 when Nazis in Germany and Austria ransacked and vandalized Jewish businesses, homes, schools and hospitals and sent 30,000 Jews to concentration camps.
But, Perkins didn’t back away from his rich pitiful me whine about how the big, bad poor and what’s left of the middle class pick on the wealthy minority. This from a man who, while making his “apology” on Bloomberg TV, boasted of his “airplane that flies underwater” and his watch “that could buy a six-pack of Rolexes.” (If you talk about either of those because you have them, it’s boasting in my book.)
People like Perkins is why there’s such a growing backlash against the wealthy in America who flaunt their “I’ve got mine, the heck with you” attitude.
Perkins is a venture capitalist who’s made his millions by using other people’s money to build his fortune. In doing so, he says it puts him in the position of a job creator. My question is while America’s elite like Perkins are buying underwater airplanes and watches whose price tags equal the gross national product of some third-world countries, where are the jobs they’re creating? Oh, it’s because of the oppressive government, isn’t it? People with more money than they, their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren could ever spend in their lifetimes can’t afford to spare any of it to create jobs because of the government.
Just as the poor always have been with us, so have the rich.
It’s just that now the ostentatiousness of the wealthy and the disparity between those at the top of the pyramid and the rest of us below is so much more blatant. Television, magazines, the internet rub images of the wealthy living the good life in the faces of the overwhelming majority of Americans scrambling to get by. Yes, that creates envy, but it also reminds people daily of just how far down the ladder they really are and the little likelihood of most ever climbing even a rung or two from their working class roots bottom no matter what they do. Sure, there’s the occasional Horatio Alger story of someone working their way up the financial and social ladder, but that’s the exception not the rule.
We see Wall Street barons and corporate tycoons crashing the economy and walking away virtually unscathed with outrageous salaries and mind-boggling bonuses as people’s jobs, life savings and home values evaporate. At no time in American history has the undue political influence of the wealthy been more visible than now. It’s to the point that, as others have suggested, members of Congress should wear sponsor emblems on their suits like NASCAR drivers so people can tell who owns them. And to be clear, this applies across the political spectrum, although that’s pretty much devolved into two polarized factions.
Every day you can hear discussions and debates about how the wealthy are being put upon, how they’re bearing a much larger tax burden and how they should get more breaks because they’re wealthy. Have you ever noticed that many of the talk-show hosts and pundits touting tax breaks for the rich and urging us to support tax relief for the wealthy are themselves rich?
I’ve also wondered why people who aren’t wealthy, and likely never will be wealthy, should be concerned about how much the rich are taxed. Their concern should be why they’re paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes and not how to ease the “tax burden” of people like Perkins.
Just as we’ve become so polarized politically, our nation grows more polarized socially and economically. The best politicians and corporations have offered economically distressed constituents is advice to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That’s great, if you have boots. And don’t forget, the economically distressed includes from an overburdened middle class and the growing working poor.
Maybe if Perkins docked his underwater plane, strapped on a Timex and climbed out of his ivory tower he’d learn he’s nowhere near as oppressed as he imagines.
Perkins is the rich guy who, in a Wall Street Journal letter titled “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?” compared “the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘1 percent,’ namely the Jews, to the progressive war on the American 1 percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
How much ego and chutzpah does Perkins have to dare compare him and his fellow 1 percenters to the victims of the Holocaust? I truly despise such comparisons, just as I despise how people equate President Obama, or George W. Bush or any current politician with Hitler and our political parties with the Nazis. People toss such comparisons off way too lightly. There’s a vast abyss between disagreeing politically and sending millions of people to gas chambers.
Oh, Perkins apologized for using the word “Kristallnacht,” which was the “Night of Broken Glass” in 1938 when Nazis in Germany and Austria ransacked and vandalized Jewish businesses, homes, schools and hospitals and sent 30,000 Jews to concentration camps.
But, Perkins didn’t back away from his rich pitiful me whine about how the big, bad poor and what’s left of the middle class pick on the wealthy minority. This from a man who, while making his “apology” on Bloomberg TV, boasted of his “airplane that flies underwater” and his watch “that could buy a six-pack of Rolexes.” (If you talk about either of those because you have them, it’s boasting in my book.)
People like Perkins is why there’s such a growing backlash against the wealthy in America who flaunt their “I’ve got mine, the heck with you” attitude.
Perkins is a venture capitalist who’s made his millions by using other people’s money to build his fortune. In doing so, he says it puts him in the position of a job creator. My question is while America’s elite like Perkins are buying underwater airplanes and watches whose price tags equal the gross national product of some third-world countries, where are the jobs they’re creating? Oh, it’s because of the oppressive government, isn’t it? People with more money than they, their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren could ever spend in their lifetimes can’t afford to spare any of it to create jobs because of the government.
Just as the poor always have been with us, so have the rich.
It’s just that now the ostentatiousness of the wealthy and the disparity between those at the top of the pyramid and the rest of us below is so much more blatant. Television, magazines, the internet rub images of the wealthy living the good life in the faces of the overwhelming majority of Americans scrambling to get by. Yes, that creates envy, but it also reminds people daily of just how far down the ladder they really are and the little likelihood of most ever climbing even a rung or two from their working class roots bottom no matter what they do. Sure, there’s the occasional Horatio Alger story of someone working their way up the financial and social ladder, but that’s the exception not the rule.
We see Wall Street barons and corporate tycoons crashing the economy and walking away virtually unscathed with outrageous salaries and mind-boggling bonuses as people’s jobs, life savings and home values evaporate. At no time in American history has the undue political influence of the wealthy been more visible than now. It’s to the point that, as others have suggested, members of Congress should wear sponsor emblems on their suits like NASCAR drivers so people can tell who owns them. And to be clear, this applies across the political spectrum, although that’s pretty much devolved into two polarized factions.
Every day you can hear discussions and debates about how the wealthy are being put upon, how they’re bearing a much larger tax burden and how they should get more breaks because they’re wealthy. Have you ever noticed that many of the talk-show hosts and pundits touting tax breaks for the rich and urging us to support tax relief for the wealthy are themselves rich?
I’ve also wondered why people who aren’t wealthy, and likely never will be wealthy, should be concerned about how much the rich are taxed. Their concern should be why they’re paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes and not how to ease the “tax burden” of people like Perkins.
Just as we’ve become so polarized politically, our nation grows more polarized socially and economically. The best politicians and corporations have offered economically distressed constituents is advice to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That’s great, if you have boots. And don’t forget, the economically distressed includes from an overburdened middle class and the growing working poor.
Maybe if Perkins docked his underwater plane, strapped on a Timex and climbed out of his ivory tower he’d learn he’s nowhere near as oppressed as he imagines.
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