class warfare

So, Bill O'Reilly says to Barak Obama that restoring the taxes on the top margins to the pre-Bush levels would be "tax warfare."

One of these days I'd like someone to say, in response to this "argument," that the changing of those marginal rates downward by the Bush administration was also "class warfare." The destruction of unions, the tax structure favoring the wealthy, the subsidies and tax credits handed out to people and corporations who are in that $250,000 a year + class while similar breaks and subsidies for middle income families are cut--all that amounts to redistribution of the wealth and class warfare that is waged by the "side" wearing the same colors as Mr. O.

There is no other answer that has integrity and in the end none that really make ssense.

You cannot win that argument, Barak, until you frankly say that groups are constantly vying with one another in this economy about how the income is divided and that this is a legitimate vying and that we need to acknowledge that and put it on the table where we can openly engage in some rule making to govern the process and make it fair. That would simplify all this considerably, wouldn't it?

The way it is right now it's an unregulated war and a denied war--so those waging it aren't scrutinized or held in check by concepts of fairness applied to their behavior...not exactly harmony, is it? Peace? Equality? People who have it can portray themselves as exploited by taxes and never have to explain how they exploited others by using the government to get it, in the first place.

Our incomes are not "ours" in the sense that no one else contributed to our making it. We are part of a system and we take our incomes out of a system, benefitting from the efforts and investments (especially public investments) of others. We all owe the system so as to keep it working for us and for others as it does. We are all in this together. It's an interdependent community.

Why is it so radical to propose that people who take more out of this economy--and have the power to structure it so that they do take more out than others--should not be required to pay more to keep it working for them?

Who is offended when people who sit in the best seats pay for the highest priced tickets?

Class warfare? Duh!

Say it, Barak. Own it. It's true.

And as long as we deny it then it cannot, as it is the function of the truth to do, set us free.