Psyche, Science, and Society

Krugman:

By Paul Krugman

Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge.

No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.

These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.

Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled “The Wail Of the 1%,” it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses. When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.

Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts — will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? — the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character.

For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It’s one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, “anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.” When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.

At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable.

Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.

These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts don’t really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.

And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Ever go to the beach and not think of slapping together a sand castle? And who doesn’t enjoy the feeling of wet, warm sand between her toes?

According to federal authorities who recently intercepted an oil-hunting reporter on a Florida beach, those activities have been deemed “illegal.”

The officers’ legal revelation (which is not actually true) came as something of a surprise to Dan Thomas, reporter for WEAR ABC 3 in Pensacola, Florida, who was visiting the Gulf Islands National Seashore for a special report.

Shovel men at the ready, it did not take Thomas long to uncover splotches of oily crude less than a foot below the surface. Within seconds, his report had shown that BP’s cleanup efforts, which have been limited to just the top six inches of sand in most cases, are not entirely effective.

That’s when a representative of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed up, demanding he produce a permit to use shovels on a public beach.

“Are you digging for oil product?” the official asked. When Thomas did not immediately confirm his intentions, the man threatened to call law enforcement and advised the journalist to move down the beach.

Moments later, an officer of the National Parks Service was demanding the reporter identify himself, insisting over and over, “you can’t dig.”

“So, no sand castles?” Thomas asked. “None of that, huh?”

“You’re right,” the officer replied.

Black tape

BP has since August been deploying its so-called “Sand Shark” machine to beaches around Florida and Louisiana. The device is capable of burrowing 18-inches into the sand and sifting oil particles out at the rate of dozens of tons per hour.

However, the Department of the Interior stands in the way, as digging deeper than six inches requires a waiver from the agency.

“It’s an archaeological issue. [...] The cleanup might disturb cultural sites protected by the national historic preservation act,” a BP spokesman told the Pensacola News Journal.

But even at 18 inches, that’s not enough. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has permeated beaches and the Gulf seabed.

“Judy Haner, a marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy, favors deep-cleaning because the sand is home to small creatures like sand fleas, which form the base of the coastal food chain,” the Associated Press reported. “They’re the ones exposed to (oil) every tidal cycle, and they’re living in the sand,” she said. “It’s the bioaccumulation up the chain that is problematic.”

BP has previously been accused of burying oil-coated beaches with clean sand shipped in from other locations, but conclusive evidence proving the claim have yet to surface.

Despite what officers told the ABC reporter, it is not illegal to build sand castles on beaches in Florida — but you’re still likely to get the runaround if you’ve got a camera crew in-tow.

And finally, despite the presence of oil down below, many of Florida’s beaches are mostly clean, at least on the surface.

Retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, the US pointman for the response to the disaster, said Sunday that the operation to intersect and cement BP’s blown out oil well had been completed successfully.

“Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.

This video is from WEAR ABC 7 in Florida, broadcast Sept. 18, 2010.