Per the census, almost half of our fellow citizens are officially "low income" or live in poverty.
Six members of the Walton family have more income and assets than the bottom 30% of all Americans.
Newt Gingrich proposes a new income tax code giving us a choice of the current handful of brackets with a top end of 35% (would be 39% if the Bush cuts had expired on schedule) or a flat 15% (with a few less deductions). Gosh, what should I choose? It, of course, amounts to a big tax break for high income earners.
Robbie Portman wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, even though many huge companies find ways to pay no corporate income tax whatsoever.
Completely impromptu, Mitt Romney offers Rick Perry a $10,000 bet, like he has it in his pants pocket (which he very well might).
To use the lexicon of the moment, all of this is a "disconnect" of epic proportions. It's populism vs. privilege. While so many -- too many -- struggle, there are those well-to-do few (one percent, perhaps?) who demand even more of the unfair advantages which they clearly do not need. And they seem to be blind to it all.
There have been moments in times past when certain societies have experienced similarly extreme concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny, unsympathetic minority. Faced with such aristocratic oligarchs, the historical remedy for this serious malady has been . . . Lexington and Concord, 1775; Paris, 1789; Moscow, 1917 . . . and so on and so forth.
I'm not saying we're gonna have another American Revolution, or that we should, or that I want one. But I'm just sayin' . . .
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