Just figured that out for yourself, huh?

The Washington Post opened itself up for some more mockery, today, boldly declaring (in a small headline on the front page) "Tax Policy Feeds Gap Between rich, poor".

To be honest, I really shouldn't mock. This is a very important topic, and I do hope the front page placement gets it a bit more notice than has yet been the case.

But it's really hard not to mock when it takes the paper at least eight years to notice this. I can't see any way in which this is news. Really, when the debate over continuing the Bush tax cuts was happening would have been a more appropriate time to make this case.

Still, maybe this will get some notice, particularly among the political class. And maybe, next, they[Post and politicians, both]'ll notice that the inheritance tax is even more slanted than the capital gains cuts. And even more pernicious, as it creates a permanent aristocracy that doesn't care how those tax policies hurt people less fortunate than themselves.

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

It finally hit me exactly why Objectivism pisses me off so much. The underlying assumption (yes, I'm sure this seemed completely obvious to everyone but me, but it took me a while to put my finger on it) of Objectivism is that all men are not created equal. And the superior people can (and should) do exactly what they want to do.

And this is amazingly un-American, as well as a moral morass. Objectivism is objective in exactly the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic.

No wonder the reading is so popular on Wall Street. They need some way to try to justify the amount of money they make on the backs of the poor and middle class.

A Couple more notes on "Class Warfare"

I don't really have too much to add to these links. The first is from Daily Kos, and it talks about the dangers of considering government to be a business. This is something I've been wanting to talk about for a while, but I haven't taken the time to put my thoughts down in any coherent way.

This manages to touch most of the main points I was thinking about, but phrased better, and adding some other details I didn't realize were applicable.

In addition to that, here's an excellent piece from EJ Dionne about the moral fecklessness of the richest people in the country. It also touches on how that recklessness is stupid, as well as evil, and even brings Teddy Roosevelt into the picture (always a good addition, in my book).

Class Warfare?

The Diane Rehm show came on NPR Thursday morning, and I was listening to it as I frequently do. But when one of their guests was first given the chance to speak, he goes off about how Obama's plan was class warfare.

Frankly, I was so disgusted by the whole thing that I had to turn it off immediately.

If you'd like to see class warfare in action, take a look at the book Perfectly Legal, about how the tax code has been wildly distorted over the past decade or two to heavily favor the rich. You will find out how it can be cheaper for a company CEO to take a corporate jet than to take a taxi (which is outright thievery from the shareholders, but also from taxpayers). You can also be reminded about how badly Social Security and the mortgage income deduction favor the rich. Plus how there is more money put into enforcement of the Earned Income Tax Credit (which pays the working poor to make it worth their while to work instead of just taking in welfare) than there is to making sure the rich pay the appropriate amount in taxes (where far more money is at stake). Frankly, if you aren't sick to your stomach well before the end of the book, you must be stupid or both wealthy and amoral (hmm... I suppose poor and amoral, but with aspirations of getting rich is also possible).

And, perhaps, an even starker example can be seen in a , comparing justice for poor criminals versus that for rich criminals.