Chasm of the Classes

Chrystia Freeland has spent years reporting on the people who've reached the pinnacle of the business world. Freeland says that many of today's richest individuals gained their fortunes not from inheritance, but from actual work.

“It is a sense of, you know, 'I deserve this,' “she says.”I do think that there is both a very powerful sense of entitlement and a kind of bubble of wealth which makes it hard for the people at the very top to understand the travails of the middle class."

For there being so much conversation about the sense of entitlement among Americans, specifically lower to middle class people, I found this statement really gave me an "aha moment". I have tried to reason why people who have so much as so unwilling to give up even 1% of their income to help balance the budget or improve schools. Until now, I didn't really have an answer. I didn't have a real reason why I believed in Keynesian economics vs trickle down economics.

In theory, trickle down economics (Reaganomics, laissez-faire, or supply-side) should work. If successful businesses and owners are given a tax break, they should reinvest in their business giving them the potential for more growth and wealth. However, the tax cuts given during President George W. Bush’s two terms did not encourage growth. I think what Freeland discovered during her research and interviews were why we didn't see growth from the Bush Tax Cuts. 

There is a sense of entitlement among the wealthy to their money. No one really likes to have money taken from their salary/wage, but a huge majority know how wonderful that little bit we contribute is; that it goes to regulating food, improving roads, providing a first class military, educating the children, and investing in good ideas/business that need a little help getting started. Yes everyone wants a smarted government that wastes less, but that doesn't mean we cut revenue(taxes) and cuts spending. It means no more special interests, it means no more partisanship, and it means tackling/reforming the tough topics like education, immigration, welfare. 

As the top 1% you persuade yourself that, things like spending on education, which is what created that social mobility in the first place, need to be cut so that the deficit will shrink, so that your tax bill doesn't go up. They have forgotten that even though they worked hard and are talented, there were tools and steps for them to go upward. 

This books (which i plan to read) I would recommend to any college economics or gender studies class.

Chrystia Freeland: Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else