Fantastic piece. The issues you bring up are the most pressing and solutions seem to be so pragmatic and fair, ie. "lift the cap". The fact that the social security tax is actually a regressive tax for people above the cap should be viewed as outrageous but so many people don't get it and buy the nonsense argument of "why should I be punished for being successful". I've had students argue that CEO billionaires deserve their "wealth" (not income because they won't pay themselves a real salary subjected to the income tax) because they work that much harder than the average worker. Really?! Infuriating.
The wind’s been up since before 7. You can hear it in the siding, that low shake it makes when the gusts come off the river.
I’ll say it straight.
You’re right to be angry.
You’re right to call it what it is.
They stop paying.
Everyone else keeps paying.
That’s the whole thing.
No theory. No grievance. No story about success or punishment. Just a ceiling built high enough that most people will never touch it, then told to feel grateful for the arrangement.
I’ve heard the same lines you’ve heard. Kids repeating billionaire folklore like it’s gospel. Men my age defending a system that would never defend them. None of it comes from malice. It comes from the training. The conditioning. The machinery.
Lift the cap.
Make the rate honest.
Make the burden shared.
That’s not radical. It’s the country we pretend we already live in.
The wind keeps pushing across the valley. It always does.
I'm old enough and Midwestern enough to remember when we bragged on our "graduated tax system" that put the lightest burden on earned income and a heavier one on "unearned" income meaning payouts from investments. I don't recall many people invested in the market - we didn't hobnob in such a rarified world. Our neighbors were diverse working people, some blue collar, some white collar. (OK - there were two mob connected people. I knew nothing of that just that they were people to avoid.)
I recall that emphasis on the primacy of earned income and lower rates lasted well into the 1970s. But then came a slowdown c. 1973, and the whole thing shifted. By Reagan in the 1980s, there was an overt assault on first unions as "greedy" then working people in general as failures, lazy, etc. What I don't understand is that those were people who had voted for Reagan - and did again. From Regan on, Wall Street was very much the baby of the GOP, not working families. And yet, probably due to racism (it's more complex, but we don't have months to discuss it) the blue collar folks kept returning them to office even with Dem presidents trying to go back to graduated tax systems and emphasis on the power of working families.
As long as I live I will never understand how the GOP so successfully harnessed message of fear about Black and Brown people, then later LGBTQ people, then women to create such a mess for THEMSELVES. "Voting against one's own interests" economically seemed the norm. But clearly they were voting FOR something, too, and it still remains opaque to me what and why.
Maybe we really, as a nation, DID have to have a house fall on us - twice. Maybe now we will be more rational. But habits are hard to break. We shall see.
Nothing particularly complicated about the Democratic Party. They're the release valve. They assure you that something will be done, and then they accomplish nothing substantive. They're there to remind you to be civil and nonviolent. To protest peacefully. To go high when they go low. To remember that the long arc of history bends toward justice.
Of course it's all bull. Just another version of "heaven" that we'll surely receive in the sweet by and by, if only we believe!! (And tithe appropriately...)
There’s nothing mystical about it. No hidden gears. No secret doctrine. Just a party that tells people to calm down while the house burns a little hotter each year.
They talk about norms.
They talk about civility.
They talk about the long arc like it’s a natural law instead of a story they tell to keep people seated.
Most folks don’t need a theology lesson dressed up as politics. They need something real. Something that moves. Something that costs someone in power something.
Instead they get reassurance.
They get patience.
They get the promise that justice is coming if they just hold still and behave.
You’re right to call it what it feels like. A kind of secular heaven. Deferred. Conditional. Always just out of reach. And yes, there’s always a tithe. Time. Hope. Votes. The quieting of your own anger.
"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work – and then they get elected and prove it."
Nothing of value? EVERYTHING of value - when they're not blocked by voters returning the GOP to Congress. Every good thing we've had was from Dems right up to the past administration. I never once felt cheated by Dems but always by either the GOP or the rancid left. They keep putting forward ideas that are good, passing bills on them, then getting gutted by Congress or the next administration. That they remain civil is hardly a failing.
You want a 'revolution'? To WHAT? In all of history the revolts we've known have been toward something of freedom, of greater autonomy over one's life, of more inclusiveness in having a say about the course of government and economy. What would be better than a democratic republic in which everyone can participate? What would becoming as uncivil, coarse, hateful, and violent produce for us? You can't just overthrow ONE leader. We do that in VOTING. You saw that success in Hungary. Nobody's had a liberal coup EVER. Violent revolutions always yield autocracy. It becomes essential to set the chaos to some form of operational level, and it never goes away. From John Rogers Commons who described it as "rationing decisions" in violent times to Klein's "Shock Doctrine" that is true. Moving from freedom to authoritarianism is not a goal.
I have been waiting, trying, for decades to understand why politicians call the US the greatest or most powerful nation in the world. How can that possibly be true with a government underpinned by and of greed? Bought and paid for by a minority of citizens who are increasingly disconnected from the reality most of us experience as daily life? Why aren’t more of us outraged? Greatest nation? Smoke and mirrors. Total bullshit spoon-fed to the masses. And accepted because we align with the party stance on a single issue like guns, abortion, human rights, climate.
The greatest nation question has been bothering me for sixty-six years.
Here is what I have come to.
Greatest at what is the question nobody asks because the asking would require an answer and the answer would require a reckoning and the reckoning would cost the people doing the calling something they are not prepared to pay.
Greatest military. That one is true and the truth of it is not entirely comfortable. The machine that enforces the American arrangement globally costs $886 billion a year and the people who fund it are the same people whose hospitals closed and whose school counselors disappeared and whose wages have not moved in real terms since before their children were born. They are paying for the greatest military in the history of human civilization while doing the math at the kitchen table at eleven o'clock on whether the symptoms are ambulance-grade.
Greatest economy. Also true in the aggregate. The aggregate is doing the work that aggregates always do, which is to average the billionaire and the warehouse worker into a number that sounds impressive and means nothing to either of them individually but flatters the people whose job it is to make the number sound like a shared achievement.
It is not a shared achievement.
The achievement belongs to the people who structured the tax code and the campaign finance system and the revolving door and the payroll tax cap to ensure that the achievement keeps compounding in the same direction.
Your question about why more people are not outraged is the right question and the answer is not that people are stupid. The answer is that the single issue works. It has always worked. Find the thing the person will not negotiate on, the gun, the fetus, the flag, the fear of the other, and make every election about that thing and only that thing and the carried interest loophole survives another term and the payroll tax cap survives another term and the warehouse worker votes against her own check stub because the other side wants to take something she cannot afford to lose.
It is not manipulation in the crude sense.
It is architecture.
The architecture has been built over decades by people who understood that a working class united around its economic interests is the only thing that actually threatens the arrangement. So the working class must never be united around its economic interests. It must be divided. Along the lines of the gun and the fetus and the flag and the fear.
As usual, you are spot on. I’m not overly proud of that military might as we don’t always use it wisely or carefully in my opinion. And that great economy is built on minimum wage and benefits which is disgraceful. Also, in my opinion. But you are correct, regardless.
My late husband used to say people voted against their own best interests because things weren’t bad enough yet— I wonder what bad enough will look like in this land? I have a feeling our instant gratification society will not fare as well as our ancestors did in depression-like, or worse, conditions. At 70, I hope I don’t find out but we seem to be barreling toward that outcome.
I actually believe that Congresspeople and Senators should make a higher salary, but not be allowed to trade stock while they're in office. Given the cost of living in the Washington, DC area, and the fact that many of them need to have residences there as well as in their home states, their salaries are pretty low. But stock trading can't help but be a conflict of interest. And yes, absolutely the Social Security wage cap should be raised.
This is not a difficult solution, why is it so hard for this to be accomplished? Greed. Nothing but pure unadulterated greed. I've paid into the system all my life as a contributing member of the workforce, and as a property owner. I'm abjectly terrified that in 20 months when I turn 65, there will be no Medicare benefits, and when I turn 67, no SS for me. It's not a gift, it's not a handout, I have been paying for it all my life. It's beyond discouraging. Thank you for this great piece breaking it down for us. Love, Virg
Both parties serving the same moneyed interests while pretending to fight each other is a really sad honesty here. As someone who feels deeply I can feel the strain on the working class people it’s the sad reality all around the world.
It took the Great Depression to change things last time. What will it take this time? When the rooms have all the money, who will buy what they have to sell?
As is so often the case, beautifully rage-instilling. The conditions you describe are spot-on, and get worse over time. If the Revolution ever does arrive, the people in the room must be made to repay our blood, sweat, and tears that they have spun into their gold. It will not be pretty, but it will be justice.
Man, does this hit home. Thanks. I remember someone saying something to the effect, "Well, just work harder." Every four letter I ever learned came to mind immediately. Seems like the only solution is to start...
Fantastic piece. The issues you bring up are the most pressing and solutions seem to be so pragmatic and fair, ie. "lift the cap". The fact that the social security tax is actually a regressive tax for people above the cap should be viewed as outrageous but so many people don't get it and buy the nonsense argument of "why should I be punished for being successful". I've had students argue that CEO billionaires deserve their "wealth" (not income because they won't pay themselves a real salary subjected to the income tax) because they work that much harder than the average worker. Really?! Infuriating.
The wind’s been up since before 7. You can hear it in the siding, that low shake it makes when the gusts come off the river.
I’ll say it straight.
You’re right to be angry.
You’re right to call it what it is.
They stop paying.
Everyone else keeps paying.
That’s the whole thing.
No theory. No grievance. No story about success or punishment. Just a ceiling built high enough that most people will never touch it, then told to feel grateful for the arrangement.
I’ve heard the same lines you’ve heard. Kids repeating billionaire folklore like it’s gospel. Men my age defending a system that would never defend them. None of it comes from malice. It comes from the training. The conditioning. The machinery.
Lift the cap.
Make the rate honest.
Make the burden shared.
That’s not radical. It’s the country we pretend we already live in.
The wind keeps pushing across the valley. It always does.
I'm old enough and Midwestern enough to remember when we bragged on our "graduated tax system" that put the lightest burden on earned income and a heavier one on "unearned" income meaning payouts from investments. I don't recall many people invested in the market - we didn't hobnob in such a rarified world. Our neighbors were diverse working people, some blue collar, some white collar. (OK - there were two mob connected people. I knew nothing of that just that they were people to avoid.)
I recall that emphasis on the primacy of earned income and lower rates lasted well into the 1970s. But then came a slowdown c. 1973, and the whole thing shifted. By Reagan in the 1980s, there was an overt assault on first unions as "greedy" then working people in general as failures, lazy, etc. What I don't understand is that those were people who had voted for Reagan - and did again. From Regan on, Wall Street was very much the baby of the GOP, not working families. And yet, probably due to racism (it's more complex, but we don't have months to discuss it) the blue collar folks kept returning them to office even with Dem presidents trying to go back to graduated tax systems and emphasis on the power of working families.
As long as I live I will never understand how the GOP so successfully harnessed message of fear about Black and Brown people, then later LGBTQ people, then women to create such a mess for THEMSELVES. "Voting against one's own interests" economically seemed the norm. But clearly they were voting FOR something, too, and it still remains opaque to me what and why.
Maybe we really, as a nation, DID have to have a house fall on us - twice. Maybe now we will be more rational. But habits are hard to break. We shall see.
As long as someone will tell you that you predicament is the "others" fault and you are better than "them", people will believe you.
I have to sit with the anger, sorrow, frustration and urge to burn it down before I can comment coherently on how much your words resonate.
Me, too, friend. Me, too.
Nothing particularly complicated about the Democratic Party. They're the release valve. They assure you that something will be done, and then they accomplish nothing substantive. They're there to remind you to be civil and nonviolent. To protest peacefully. To go high when they go low. To remember that the long arc of history bends toward justice.
Of course it's all bull. Just another version of "heaven" that we'll surely receive in the sweet by and by, if only we believe!! (And tithe appropriately...)
I hear you.
There’s nothing mystical about it. No hidden gears. No secret doctrine. Just a party that tells people to calm down while the house burns a little hotter each year.
They talk about norms.
They talk about civility.
They talk about the long arc like it’s a natural law instead of a story they tell to keep people seated.
Most folks don’t need a theology lesson dressed up as politics. They need something real. Something that moves. Something that costs someone in power something.
Instead they get reassurance.
They get patience.
They get the promise that justice is coming if they just hold still and behave.
You’re right to call it what it feels like. A kind of secular heaven. Deferred. Conditional. Always just out of reach. And yes, there’s always a tithe. Time. Hope. Votes. The quieting of your own anger.
You don’t have to dress it up.
You don’t have to soften it.
A release valve is exactly what it looks like.
"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work – and then they get elected and prove it."
~ P.J. O'Rourke
This one makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
Nothing of value? EVERYTHING of value - when they're not blocked by voters returning the GOP to Congress. Every good thing we've had was from Dems right up to the past administration. I never once felt cheated by Dems but always by either the GOP or the rancid left. They keep putting forward ideas that are good, passing bills on them, then getting gutted by Congress or the next administration. That they remain civil is hardly a failing.
You want a 'revolution'? To WHAT? In all of history the revolts we've known have been toward something of freedom, of greater autonomy over one's life, of more inclusiveness in having a say about the course of government and economy. What would be better than a democratic republic in which everyone can participate? What would becoming as uncivil, coarse, hateful, and violent produce for us? You can't just overthrow ONE leader. We do that in VOTING. You saw that success in Hungary. Nobody's had a liberal coup EVER. Violent revolutions always yield autocracy. It becomes essential to set the chaos to some form of operational level, and it never goes away. From John Rogers Commons who described it as "rationing decisions" in violent times to Klein's "Shock Doctrine" that is true. Moving from freedom to authoritarianism is not a goal.
Nice try, FBI.
Makes one want to reach for the torch, and the pitchfork.
For sure as it has always been except for SS, Medicare and work place rules. There is no calvary coming.
I have been waiting, trying, for decades to understand why politicians call the US the greatest or most powerful nation in the world. How can that possibly be true with a government underpinned by and of greed? Bought and paid for by a minority of citizens who are increasingly disconnected from the reality most of us experience as daily life? Why aren’t more of us outraged? Greatest nation? Smoke and mirrors. Total bullshit spoon-fed to the masses. And accepted because we align with the party stance on a single issue like guns, abortion, human rights, climate.
The greatest nation question has been bothering me for sixty-six years.
Here is what I have come to.
Greatest at what is the question nobody asks because the asking would require an answer and the answer would require a reckoning and the reckoning would cost the people doing the calling something they are not prepared to pay.
Greatest military. That one is true and the truth of it is not entirely comfortable. The machine that enforces the American arrangement globally costs $886 billion a year and the people who fund it are the same people whose hospitals closed and whose school counselors disappeared and whose wages have not moved in real terms since before their children were born. They are paying for the greatest military in the history of human civilization while doing the math at the kitchen table at eleven o'clock on whether the symptoms are ambulance-grade.
Greatest economy. Also true in the aggregate. The aggregate is doing the work that aggregates always do, which is to average the billionaire and the warehouse worker into a number that sounds impressive and means nothing to either of them individually but flatters the people whose job it is to make the number sound like a shared achievement.
It is not a shared achievement.
The achievement belongs to the people who structured the tax code and the campaign finance system and the revolving door and the payroll tax cap to ensure that the achievement keeps compounding in the same direction.
Your question about why more people are not outraged is the right question and the answer is not that people are stupid. The answer is that the single issue works. It has always worked. Find the thing the person will not negotiate on, the gun, the fetus, the flag, the fear of the other, and make every election about that thing and only that thing and the carried interest loophole survives another term and the payroll tax cap survives another term and the warehouse worker votes against her own check stub because the other side wants to take something she cannot afford to lose.
It is not manipulation in the crude sense.
It is architecture.
The architecture has been built over decades by people who understood that a working class united around its economic interests is the only thing that actually threatens the arrangement. So the working class must never be united around its economic interests. It must be divided. Along the lines of the gun and the fetus and the flag and the fear.
The division is the product.
The outrage you are looking for exists.
It is just pointed in the wrong direction.
That is not an accident.
That is the whole design.
As usual, you are spot on. I’m not overly proud of that military might as we don’t always use it wisely or carefully in my opinion. And that great economy is built on minimum wage and benefits which is disgraceful. Also, in my opinion. But you are correct, regardless.
My late husband used to say people voted against their own best interests because things weren’t bad enough yet— I wonder what bad enough will look like in this land? I have a feeling our instant gratification society will not fare as well as our ancestors did in depression-like, or worse, conditions. At 70, I hope I don’t find out but we seem to be barreling toward that outcome.
I actually believe that Congresspeople and Senators should make a higher salary, but not be allowed to trade stock while they're in office. Given the cost of living in the Washington, DC area, and the fact that many of them need to have residences there as well as in their home states, their salaries are pretty low. But stock trading can't help but be a conflict of interest. And yes, absolutely the Social Security wage cap should be raised.
Thank you for stating that so clearly.
This is not a difficult solution, why is it so hard for this to be accomplished? Greed. Nothing but pure unadulterated greed. I've paid into the system all my life as a contributing member of the workforce, and as a property owner. I'm abjectly terrified that in 20 months when I turn 65, there will be no Medicare benefits, and when I turn 67, no SS for me. It's not a gift, it's not a handout, I have been paying for it all my life. It's beyond discouraging. Thank you for this great piece breaking it down for us. Love, Virg
Both parties serving the same moneyed interests while pretending to fight each other is a really sad honesty here. As someone who feels deeply I can feel the strain on the working class people it’s the sad reality all around the world.
It took the Great Depression to change things last time. What will it take this time? When the rooms have all the money, who will buy what they have to sell?
Thank You Tom
As is so often the case, beautifully rage-instilling. The conditions you describe are spot-on, and get worse over time. If the Revolution ever does arrive, the people in the room must be made to repay our blood, sweat, and tears that they have spun into their gold. It will not be pretty, but it will be justice.
Man, does this hit home. Thanks. I remember someone saying something to the effect, "Well, just work harder." Every four letter I ever learned came to mind immediately. Seems like the only solution is to start...