Mindless and Heartless
I find it difficult to get behind the Occupy Wall Street protests. Of course, I enthusiastically support their right to protest. I also agree with what seems to be the basic premise: a protest against the inequality that has grown to epic proportions in the last 30 years and highly accelerated in the last 10 years. Yes, I agree but my very next thought is, “What do we do about it?” But the “99 percenters” refuse to move on to what next. They seem to have little to offer that might work in our current political system.
That problem (if you see it that way) does not make the 99’ers wrong. Bernard E. Harcourt wrote an excellent piece in the New York Times on exactly what the seeming inchoate protest is really about.
The OWS protests led to a Tumblr site called “We Are The 99 Percent”. Take a look and you will get the picture. A right-wing blogger launched his own Tumblr site called “We Are the 53 Percent”.
This “53 percent” idea is what is known as a zombie lie: a lie that won’t die no matter how many times it is proven a untrue. The lie here is that only 53% of Americans pay taxes. The clear implication is that the other 47% are freeloaders that the brave 53% are carrying on their backs.
The simple, not to hard to understand truth is that approximately 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax. The reality is that everyone pays taxes of some kind. Especially egregious are very regressive sales and payroll taxes. Of the 47% that don’t pay federal income taxes, over 70% are the elderly (living on non-taxed Social Security benefits) and the working poor. The remainder of the 47% make a small enough income that deductions like mortgage interest and education credits eliminate their federal income tax liability.
As frustrating as this zombie lie is what really got to me is the entries on the site. The sentiment so often expressed is so mindless and heartless. Mindless because they ignore simple truths and heartless because they deny even a semblance of the social contract. Matthew Yglesias focused on one that I also find compelling.
“I joined the Marine Corps when I was 20 years old to avoid the indignity of moving back into my parents’ house.”
As Yglesias put it:
“After all, can one really credibly say that the Marine Corps is a field in which one’s success and failure is going to be determined by one’s individual effort rather than collective efficacy? …[it] would be a mighty strange kind of military in which solidarity, teamwork, and the effective operation of a large public bureaucracy play no role.”
I would go further. As so many contributors on the site insist, this man thinks he has accomplished everything in his entire life without any help from anyone else. Does he not realize that we (the 100% that pay taxes) paid for the training and salary he received in the Marine Corps?
But it gets better….
“I pay taxes, provide for my kids, and pay for the mortgage for a house that is worth 60% of what it was worth when I bought it.”
Then just a few sentences later…
“I don’t blame Wall Street because it doesn’t matter what Wall Street or anyone else does.”
And finally…
“I will succeed of fail because of me and me ALONE.”
Really? How does he explain why his house is worth 60% of what it used to be? Is this something that he and he alone caused. I’d say he fucked that up pretty badly.
No, Marine, you have been dependent on others since you were conceived (I assume you didn’t manage that on your own). You used to work for the federal government. I assume you take the tax breaks available for your mortgage interest and for your kids. I hope that expensive (but worthwhile) new GI Bill is helping you pay for college. I hope you get a great education and raise great kids. Hell, I hope you get rich if that’s what you want.
After all, the rest of us are paying for you to succeed.
You can thank us later.
